The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  “What?” Tremayne’s voice was soft.

  “But as it happens,” Lathe continued, “our time limit’s no longer critical, either.” He gestured toward the screens.

  Caine turned to look…and froze at what he saw.

  “Oh, my God!” Tremayne breathed. “Where in hell did that come from?”

  Even to Caine the answer was obvious. The huge warship bearing down on them was moving at low speed, its drive trail diffuse and virtually invisible except at close range. Without such visual cues even the simplest sensor shielding would have been enough to hide the ship’s approach from the freighter’s equipment. “They must have been practically on top of us when we got here,” he said mechanically. Part of him still refused to give up…but the rest knew it was over.

  “But how could they have known?” Tremayne snarled. His voice showed he, too, knew they were finished.

  “Because I sent them the location almost twenty hours ago,” Lathe said calmly.

  Caine spun to face the blackcollar, his hand falling to his laser butt. “You what?”

  “Relax,” Lathe advised, “and take another look. It’s not what you think.”

  Frowning, Caine looked back at the screen. The warship, nearly Nova-class size itself, was growing clearer by the second as its delicately spined ellipsoid form began to fill the display.

  It was Nmura who spotted it. “That’s not a Ryqril design,” he said, sounding puzzled. “At least not one I’ve ever seen.”

  “No reason why it should be,” Lathe told him. “It’s a Chryselli ship.”

  “A Chryselli?” Nmura gasped. “What in hell is a Chryselli doing here?”

  And it all clicked together. “Dodds!” Caine whooped. “That’s where he’s been—whistling up some help!”

  Lathe stepped to the communications board and made an adjustment. “Comsquare Damon Lathe aboard Chainbreaker I to Frank Dodds; come in, please.”

  Dodds had clearly been waiting; almost instantly the small communications screen came alive with his broadly smiling image. “Dodds to Lathe and Chainbreaker I,” his voice boomed from the speaker, sounding as relieved as Caine felt. “Glad you could make it. What’s the situation?”

  “We’ve got a number of Corsairs vectoring in on us, but I don’t think they’ve got anything heavier in the system,” Lathe said. “Can you hold them off until we get the Novas activated?”

  Dodds turned his head and said something inaudible to the alien figures moving around in the background. “My hosts say it should be no problem,” he said, turning back to the screen. “But you’d better get moving; we sneaked past some pretty big ships getting in and I want those Novas ready before the Ryqril send for reinforcements.”

  “Right.” Lathe nodded to Nmura. “You heard the man, Commander. Get your teams organized and start checking those ships out. I can handle the bridge for now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nmura sent Tremayne a questioning look. There’s a lot of nontechnical work your people could help with, if you’re willing.”

  “All right.” Tremayne gave Lathe a look that was not quite hostile. “With your permission, of course, Comsquare.” Turning, he followed Nmura out the door. Leaving Lathe and Caine alone with the bridge crew.

  “I see your leadership style hasn’t lost its old ramtank-like charm,” Dodds said dryly.

  “He’s just a little disgruntled,” Lathe said. “I’m sure he’ll feel better when what we’ve accomplished finally hits him.” He stretched tiredly and looked at Caine. “You can leave, too, if you’d like. Mordecai and the others will be down there watching out for possible collie agents, and they could probably use another pair of eyes.”

  Caine nodded. “Sure.” He hesitated. “Before I go, though, I’d like to apologize for certain of the things I’ve said and thought about both of you these past few weeks. I realize now why you had to keep your plans secret, with Bakshi and the other spies still loose. But I didn’t understand at the time.”

  Lathe waved a hand. “Forget it—you don’t get a red-eyed dragon in order to become popular.”

  “The first time on the battlefield’s always pretty rough, Caine,” Dodds added. “You look like you survived okay—better than some I’ve seen.”

  “Thanks.” Caine looked back at Lathe. “For the record, though, I wish you’d told us about the Chryselli ship three hours ago. By then it was too late for the Ryqril to do anything about it, and it would have done my blood pressure a lot of good.”

  “I had my reasons.” Lathe shrugged.

  “Mainly a promise to me,” Dodds murmured unexpectedly.

  “Dodds—”

  “No, Lathe, it’s all right,” Dodds assured the blackcollar quietly. “It’s bound to come out now anyway. And with these new ships the situation’s considerably changed.”

  Caine looked back and forth between the two men…and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. There was only one man Lathe could have sent to ask for Chryselli aid; only one man from Plinry who knew enough about the aliens to present the request; only one man the Chryselli themselves could conceivably have known, let alone trusted….

  Lathe still looked doubtful, but Dodds was studying Caine’s face, and his half smile showed he knew Caine had figured it out. Squaring his shoulders, Caine faced the screen and gave Dodds his best salute. “I’m honored to meet you at last, General Lepkowski,” he said. “It appears reports of your death have been somewhat premature.”

  CHAPTER 33

  ON THE SHIP’S BLUEPRINTS it was the number three officers’ lounge; but with its lights out and the protective hull-metal dome retracted it became a fantasy world that was part observation deck, part planetarium, and part private sanctum. The stars seemed to crowd in toward the clear plastic hemisphere, and Caine could imagine the nearest asteroids to be parts of a free-form mobile. In the near distance one of the other Novas was visible, dwarfing the two freighters lying alongside like tender-craft. Half hidden below the dome’s rim he could see the Chryselli ship, maintaining its silent vigil against a resumption of the attacks that had already cost the Ryqril a half wing of Corsairs.

  Unseen in the starlight, the lounge door slid open and closed. Caine tensed; but as the shadowy figure silently approached he relaxed. “Hello, Lathe,” he said into the darkness.

  “Hello. I thought I’d find you here.” The blackcollar slid into a seat across from Caine.

  Caine nodded. He’d spent a lot of time here in the past couple of days—ever since he discovered the Novak had such a room, as a matter of fact. It was a good place to think…and he had a lot of thinking to do. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “You. I hear you’re not happy with our negotiation position.”

  Caine sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s all right as far as it goes, I suppose. It would be nice to open up interstellar travel a little, of course, and I certainly agree that the TDE’s economy could use the boosts you’re asking for. It just seems to me we could be demanding a hell of a lot more.”

  “Such as demanding the Ryqril pull entirely out of TDE space?”

  Caine felt his face reddening. “Yeah, I suppose I was thinking that,” he admitted. “I always envisioned this mission as the stroke that would bring back the pre-war TDE.”

  “It would have been nice,” Lathe agreed. “But I’m afraid the real world doesn’t work that way. If we’d demanded anything that drastic they would have had no choice but to hit us with whatever it took to destroy us. That would’ve gained the Chryselli a brief respite at best and gained us nothing at all. But don’t mistake a back door approach for surrender.” Lathe’s silhouette gestured toward the stars. “With the two ships we’re giving the Chryselli the Ryqril war machine is going to be tied up even tighter over there, slowing their response time drastically to events in the TDE. The Novas and the eased restrictions on interstellar travel will meanwhile let us coordinate planetary resistance efforts like we never could before.” In the dark Caine sensed, rather than saw, Lathe
’s smile. “What exactly will come out of a mixture like that I can’t predict, but the point is that our end of the deal is a lot better than it looks.”

  “Maybe.” Caine hesitated. “Tell me about Dodds.”

  Lathe understood. “Not much to tell, really,” he said. “New Karachi was under siege, and I was assigned to get Lepkowski to a secondary command post that had been set up. We had to cut through two units of Ryqril assault troops to get through…it cost what was left of my squad.” Even at a distance of thirty-five years Caine could hear the pain the memory evoked. “And then, half an hour later, the Groundfire attack began. When it ended so did official resistance on Plinry.” He fell silent.

  “So you took the general and turned him into a blackcollar?” Caine prompted.

  “Yes. But not without a great deal of argument. The last shreds of his army were preparing for a final stand, and he wanted to come forward and order them to surrender instead.” Lathe sighed. “His silence cost a lot of men their lives. I think probably that’s why we never told anyone else his true identity, not even the other blackcollars. The secret had cost both of us a great deal, and we were damned if we were going to take even the slightest risk with it.”

  “I think I understand,” Caine said.

  “I doubt it,” Lathe returned, not unkindly. “You won’t really understand until you’ve held a command of your own.” He paused. “What are you planning to do when we leave here? Go back to Earth?”

  That question had occupied a good deal of Caine’s thought lately. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “It’s my home, and I can’t think of any place I’d rather fight the Ryqril. But…” He trailed off.

  “You’re not still mad at them for not telling you you’re a clone, are you?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t think so, anyway. It’s just that if the government really did crack the top level of the Resistance just before I left, then everyone I ever knew is probably dead or in prison. I’d be completely on my own.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  “Only if I intend to get anything done.” Caine smiled tautly. “You’re forgetting I was intended to be a one-shot weapon. I was trained for exactly one purpose: to impersonate Alain Rienzi and do whatever damage I could before getting caught. Well, I’ve done that, and now my programming’s run out. No one ever taught me more general skills, like how to organize my own underground or how to plan and carry out missions. Or even how to fade into the general populace while the enemy’s hunting me, for that matter.”

  “You think the Ryqril will be out to get you?”

  “I doubt that the leniency concessions you’ve wangled for Plinry and Argent will apply to me,” Caine said dryly. “I also doubt they realize how minor a threat I actually am.”

  “Well, we can’t have them acting on false assumptions, can we?” Lathe said. “Perhaps you’d like to come back to Plinry with us.”

  For a long moment Caine was sorely tempted. Sanctuary among the blackcollars…. “Thanks, but no,” he said, almost regretfully. “I’d just be in the way.”

  “You don’t understand—I’m not offering you a place to hide. Lepkowski’s going to need trained guerrilla fighters, and Plinry seems the logical place to set up shop, at least for now. We’ve got the best teachers in the TDE; what we need now is promising students.”

  “You mean…full blackcollar training?”

  “As full as we can make it. Understand, though—without the Backlash drug we can’t make you into a true blackcollar.” Lathe hesitated. “And you should also recognize that you’ll be setting yourself up for even more trouble from the Ryqril this way. I understand Galway’s already on his way back to Plinry, and he’ll be watching us like a hungry fan-dragon.”

  But the Ryqril were already gunning for him…and it occurred to Caine that if the formula for the Backlash drug existed anywhere anymore it was probably on Earth. A worthwhile target to go after—possibly even more valuable than five Nova-class ships, in the right hands. And Caine had a pretty good idea whose hands those would be. “All right, you’re on,” he told Lathe’s silhouette. “Just make sure I can get back to Earth after my training—and remember that I’ll need a supply of that anti-asthma drug while I’m on Plinry.”

  “No problem,” Lathe said without hesitation. “I’ve already ordered the lab to mix up a truckload of the stuff for you.”

  Caine stared at him. “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you? What if I’d said no?”

  “Then I’d be stuck with a truckload of histrophyne,” the other said. “But I thought you’d say yes. We’re a lot alike, you know, you and I.” He stood up and moved toward the door. “Your first class is tomorrow at nine o’clock in the aft ready room; see you there.” The door slid open and closed and he was gone.

  For a moment Caine gazed after him, feeling the warmth of the other’s compliment. A lot like Lathe, was he? High praise indeed—and he was going to do his damnedest to live up to it.

  Looking up at the stars, he smiled wryly. The Ryqril didn’t know it yet, but they were in big trouble.

  The Backlash Mission

  For Uncle Timmy—

  Who locked up the mountain

  and then gave me the key.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EPILOGUE

  A Biography of Timothy Zahn

  Prologue

  THE WIND COMING NORTHWARD over Ralston Buttes had been increasing steadily throughout the night, shifting gradually around toward the west with the promise of bad weather coming in behind it. Lying flat on his belly beneath one of the surrounding pine trees, Lonato Kanai listened as the branches scratched at his flexarmor battle-hood and peered through the gloom at the darkened mansion directly ahead. In an hour—maybe sooner—the storm would arrive, drenching the whole Denver plateau and turning the slope he was on into fairly obnoxious mud. But long before that happened Kanai and his fellow blackcollars would be on their way home. It had taken them six hours to crawl through the last hundred meters of forest, but now all the early-warning motion sensors were behind them and the target lay open ahead.

  Reasonably open, anyway. There were still the roof-mounted chain guns and hedge mines, their infrared and ultrasonic autotarget systems waiting only for the intruders to move away from the waving tree branches and onto the elaborately sculpted lawn. And, of course, inside the mansion itself would be a dozen or more armed men.

  Reaching to his left forearm, Kanai unlimbered the collapsed sniper’s slingshot strapped there and unfolded it, setting the brace against his arm and slipping a tiny lead sphere into the pouch. He’d barely managed to make marksman rating during the war, but thirty years of practice had honed his skills consider
ably. The nearest ultrasonic projector—a small tripartite horn—was nestled under the eave, just barely visible in the cloud-reflected lights of Denver over the hills to the east. Eyes on the projector, peripheral vision and other senses alert, Kanai eased his elbows into a less uncomfortable position and waited for the signal.

  It wasn’t long in coming. Abruptly, the tingler on his right wrist came to life, tapping the dots and dashes of blackcollar combat code into two sections of skin: attack.

  Even through the whistling wind Kanai heard the crack as his lead shot drilled its way deep into the ultrasonic projector. Quickly he set up his second shot as the sounds of other freshly ruined sensors reached him. Ahead, the side door that was their target was suddenly rimmed in red warning lights. The nighttime sentry chief was right on top of things…for all the good it would do him. Kanai’s second shot arced lazily toward the door—slow enough for the antipersonnel motion sensors to pick up—

  And the eaves directly above the door exploded into a lethal cloud of flechettes.

  The tiny metal darts were still ricocheting off the patio flagstones when the two black-clad men flanking Kanai rose from cover and zigzagged off toward the mansion. On the rooftop a chain gun began to track; an instant later its first salvo went wild as the impact of Kanai’s shot knocked it a couple of degrees off target. Beside the door a gunport slid open, and a scatter of flechettes sprayed at the running men. Uselessly, of course, as the few darts that managed to connect were stopped by their flexarmor. One of the attackers windmilled his arms, sending black throwing stars into the gunport. The barrel sagged as the shuriken found a target…and then the runners were at the door, one crouching beside it as the other slapped tiny shaped charges in an X pattern on the nearest window. With luck, Kanai’s elimination of some of the door’s automatic defenses would delude the mansion’s defenders into expecting the main assault there.

  The attackers dropped to the ground, and the window exploded with flashes.

  It didn’t shatter—the glasstic was too strong for that—but when the afterimages faded Kanai could see the honeycomb of cracks there. A few good whacks with a nunchaku would finish the job…and then only the inside defenders would be left.