The Blackcollar Series

by Timothy Zahn

  He led the way to a living room the size of Galway’s entire Capstone apartment and gestured to a feather-plait couch. “This had better be as important as you claimed,” he warned as he took a matching chair across a glow-pit from the couch. “I have even less interest in getting involved in Denver’s Security programs than Quinn has in my doing so. I presume you didn’t tell him you were coming?”

  “No, sir, but as I mentioned this morning I’m essentially a free agent—”

  “Which also thrills Quinn right down to the marrow, I expect.”

  “Ah—I think that’s a fair statement, sir. But I felt I had to see you because I’ve come across information that indicates you may be in danger.”

  Trendor’s eyebrows lifted with polite skepticism. “You’ll forgive me if I tell you that’s ridiculous,” he said. “Why would anyone want to hurt me?”

  Galway shrugged uncomfortably. “I can’t say for sure, sir. But I looked up the record of your tenure as Security prefect, and—well, it occurred to me that it might have made you some enemies.”

  Trendor’s expression didn’t change. “I make no apologies for what I did, Galway,” he said coldly. “Denver was at flashpoint—it could have gone up like a strat nuke practically overnight. I kept it together, and if it cost a few lives, so be it. Better to decapitate a few radical organizations than watch the whole thing go up in flames.”

  A slight shiver went up Galway’s back. In principle he agreed…but the way Trendor said it made it sound decidedly cold-blooded. “Yes, sir,” he said, allowing the older man to take that any way he wished. “The records certainly indicate you were successful in keeping the peace. But there may still be people who resent what you did back then.”

  “I suppose that’s possible.” Trendor shrugged. “Though I don’t know why anyone would wait this long to do something about it.”

  “I don’t know, either, sir…unless it’s because the right people for the job have just arrived. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the reason I’m here on Earth is that an off world blackcollar force has just arrived, in Denver.”

  Trendor’s eyes narrowed, and he seemed to sit up straighter in his seat. “I think you’d better start from the beginning,” he said quietly.

  Galway did so, describing Caine’s team and its still-secret mission, the trip into the mountains and its proximity to Trendor’s own home, and the unexpected arrival of Lathe on the scene. “And you think these blackcollars, out of touch with Earth for over thirty years, would want to seek me out for some sort of delayed retribution?” the former prefect asked when he’d finished.

  “Unfortunately, they haven’t been entirely out of touch,” Galway shook his head. “General Lepkowski and their three Novas have made several trips to Earth in the past year, and it’s conceivable they received intelligence during one of those flybys that caused them to latch on to you for God only knows what reason.”

  Trendor stroked his chin thoughtfully. “You said Caine had asked specifically about old war veterans. You think that fireworks display over Athena last night was designed to attract their attention?”

  “I don’t see what else it could have been. Does his asking about the vets mean anything to you?”

  “It might.” Trendor stood up and wandered over to the picture window at the south end of the room. “Some of the groups I quashed had a high percentage of war vets in them. Could be he’s trying to reactivate one of them with some new blood.”

  Galway thought about that. With the last of the resistance groups, Torch, apparently gone the way of the others, Caine could indeed be trying to start his own. Certainly he would accomplish a lot more with that kind of support behind him. “Possible,” he admitted. “But then I don’t understand exactly how you fit in.”

  Trendor smiled grimly. “I can think of at least two ways. Once, I knew a lot of the vets, both inside and outside the subversive groups. He may think that I could be persuaded to give him enough names to get started on his recruitment drive. Or else”—he snorted—“I’m to be another way to attract their attention.”

  Assassination of a former Security prefect. Galway licked his lips. But it would certainly do the job. Nowhere in the records had he ever seen a case of political murder by blackcollars, but there was a first time for anything. “I think, sir,” he said quietly, “that you should consider moving back to Athena, at least for the time being.”

  “No,” Trendor said flatly, his eyes still on the wooded hills outside his window. “I’ve earned my home and my peace out here, and I’m not giving it up for anyone—I don’t care if there are a hundred blackcollars gunning for me. Let them come—I’ll blow them all to hell and back.”

  Galway grimaced, wondering fleetingly whether refusal to face reality was a requisite for Security positions in this city. “They’re more likely to blow you away, sir—and you know it.”

  “Are they now?” Trendor snorted contemptuously, turning back to face the other. “Well, let me tell you something, Galway. I killed a few blackcollars, too, when I was in charge of things around here. And I’m damned if I’m going to start running from them now.”

  Galway took a deep breath: “In that case, sir, I respectfully suggest that you should at least request some additional security around here. Some perimeter guards, at the very least—perhaps a full sensor/defense network as well.”

  Trendor didn’t reply for several heartbeats, his eyes drifting back to the window. Then he sighed. “Because if I don’t, I’ll be handing Caine an easy victory and making things tougher for Quinn, right?” he said at last. “I suppose you’re right. Damn it all—if Quinn wasn’t so loose-wired about crunching dissension, people like Caine wouldn’t show up within a hundred kilometers of Denver.”

  Galway swallowed. For the first time since he’d read the records of that period, the almost casual carnage of Trendor’s reign was beginning to sound believable. “With your permission, then,” he said, “I’ll head back to Denver and start making arrangements with General Quinn’s office.”

  “What size guard contingent did you have in mind?” Trendor asked as the two men headed for the door.

  “I thought perhaps a three-tiered force of sixty or seventy men—”

  “You thought what? Don’t be ridiculous, Galway. Give me ten men and to hell with layering. All outside guards are for is to slow down the attack and give me some advance warning, anyway—you know that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Galway said, resorting again to the most neutral tone possible. “Then for electronic surveillance equipment—”

  “There’s enough of that around the area already,” Trendor interrupted. “You just get me my ten men, give them lasers and comms and a sandwich apiece, and we’ll let it go at that.”

  Quietly, Galway admitted defeat. He’d done his duty; if Trendor refused to accept his advice, there was nothing more he could do. “As you wish, sir. Thank you for your time…and I hope I’m wrong about what Caine’s up to.”

  “You probably are,” Trendor agreed. “But somebody’s got to do the unnecessary worrying, don’t they?”

  The spotter aircraft was halfway back to Athena before the hot flush finally receded from Galway’s cheeks.

  The preliminary reports on the midnight catapult attack had arrived while Quinn was downstairs at lunch, and with the meal churning in his stomach he read them over twice. Probability ninety-four percent that the explosives used were the same strength as those stolen from the water reclamation center earlier that evening; probability less than fifteen percent that that theft had involved inside help.

  The hell with probabilities, Quinn snarled to himself, jabbing at his intercom. “Yes, General?” his aide answered.

  “I want this Geoff Dupre brought in for questioning,” he told the other. “Bring in his wife, too, and their housemate—that Karen Lindsay woman. Have interrogation prepare a full-spectrum for them.”

  “Yes, sir,” the other answered. “Do you want the surveillance on their house lifted
once they’re here?”

  “No—Caine may decide to drop by, and if he does I want someone there to follow him.”

  “Yes, sir. Oh, General, there’s a message just coming in for you from one of the search squads.”

  Quinn tapped the proper switch. “Quinn here.”

  “Abramson, sir,” the voice came, brisk and self-satisfied as all hell. “We’ve got him, General—we’ve found Caine’s stolen car, parked right out in the open on the sixteen-hundred block of Rialto Avenue.”

  Quinn felt his lips curl back from his teeth in a tight smile. “Any sign of Caine or his men?”

  “Not yet, sir, but we’ve been holding back as far out of sight as possible, per your instructions.”

  “Continue doing so—I’ll have backup units there in five minutes. Under no circumstances are you to move in or confront any of them until we’ve got the net solidly in place—you understand? Pass that on to any other units already in the area—I’ll have the skin off of any man who spooks them.”

  “Understood, General. They won’t get away.”

  That’s for damn well sure. Quinn cut off the connection, punching for tactical command. At last—at long and bloody last—they had him. By nightfall at the latest Caine would be in a cell; by midnight, psychor training or no psychor training, they’d know just what the hell he was doing in Denver.

  And half the pleasure of this was going to be seeing the look on Galway’s face when they brought him in to see the prisoners.

  Tactical command answered, and Quinn began issuing orders.

  Chapter 17

  IT WAS NEARLY THREE in the afternoon, and Lathe was idly searching his maps for a secondary escape route from the Shandygaff, when Jensen arrived with the news.

  “Where?” he asked the other as Skyler and Mordecai joined them from other parts of the safe house.

  “Over on Rialto Avenue, Reger said—sixteen hundred block,” Jensen told them. “Looks abandoned, but I doubt Caine’s dumped it this soon.”

  “No, he’d hold on to it as long as possible,” Lathe agreed, stroking his dragonhead ring gently. “Having lost his original car, the only way to get a replacement would be to steal one, and Security would be bound to notice something that obvious.”

  “So what now?” Skyler asked, “We go pick him up, dust him off, and set him back on his feet?”

  “I’d like to avoid that,” Lathe said. “Besides the question of putting Caine’s nose out of joint, there’re certain advantages of running two independent groups. But we sure as hell are going to get our eyetracks back on him. Jensen, are you mobile, or did someone drop you off?”

  “I’ve got one of Reger’s vans—I was coming into the city to pick up some new equipment anyway when the word came through from his people.”

  “All right. I’d like you to come in convoy with us, if you can spare the time. We may need the van for surveillance purposes, depending on what cover’s available in that neighborhood.” Lathe glanced at Skyler and Mordecai, wondering whether he really needed to drag both of them out there for what was likely to be a simple reconnaissance probe. But this was enemy territory, and he’d hate to run into trouble with his backups unavailable. “You two can come along—the fresh air will do you good,” he told them. “Jensen, you lead the way.”

  Lathe had long since resigned himself to the fact that he would never really become comfortable with Denver’s horrendous traffic level, but as Skyler guided the car through the mess he found it was becoming possible for him to ignore the whizzing vehicles and concentrate on the buildings and pedestrians beyond them. Denver was easily the most prosperous city he’d seen since the war, and it was with a mixture of envy and determination that he gazed around them? Someday Plinry will be like this, too, he promised himself silently. Without the Ryqril, if at all possible.

  “Makes you wonder what kind of deal the city’s leaders struck with the Ryqril after the war, doesn’t it?” Skyler commented, waving a hand toward the unscarred landscape. “They sure as hell didn’t go down fighting.”

  Lathe shrugged. “Maybe they decided it was futile to do so. Plinry would’ve given in a lot faster if we hadn’t been all hell-bent ourselves on keeping a guerrilla war going. Anyway, look on the bright side—if they’d made the Ryqril scorch the city there wouldn’t have been nearly as large a populace here for us to blend into.”

  “There’s that, of course,” Skyler admitted. “Though I don’t suppose—”

  He broke off as their tinglers came on; Lathe: Note quiet Security, position at right curb.

  Frowning, Lathe took a careful look as they passed. It was a surveillance team, all right: a parked car with four men sitting in it trying to look inconspicuous. “Maybe it’s a stakeout by one of the raft of criminal organizations in town,” Skyler suggested.

  “They’re Security. “Mordecai was quietly positive. “Backup position off on the left now—there. Standard unimaginative Security placement.”

  “It’s standard because it makes sense,” Lathe pointed out. But a small knot was beginning to form in the pit of his stomach. “Skyler, turn left up here,” he directed, fingers finding his tingler. Jensen: Continue straight; rendezvous in three blocks. Watch for stakeout positions; estimate enemy strength.

  Acknowledged. Battle conditions?

  Lathe hesitated. Prebattle. Soft probe only.

  “Damn them to hell,” Skyler muttered. “I hope we’re not too late.”

  “Me too.” Lathe leaned against the edge of his window, trying to get a view of the sky above them. “Mordecai, check out your side. Any suspicious aircraft up there?”

  There was a short pause. “I see something that might be a spotter lazing around—it’s too high to tell for sure.”

  Lathe pursed his lips and returned his attention to the street. If the spotters were still hanging that far back, chances were Security wasn’t ready to make its move quite yet. “I’d say we still have some time,” he told the others. “Let’s get a fast strength estimate and rejoin Jensen. And try to figure out how the hell we’re going to pull Caine out of here.”

  “Once we actually find them,” Skyler murmured.

  “There’s that, of course.”

  Ten minutes later they had their estimate: something close to a hundred Security men and perhaps fifteen or twenty vehicles. Not counting whatever backup, troops might be riding in the three aircraft they’d spotted circling the area.

  “On the more hopeful side,” Lathe said as they squatted in the back of Jensen’s parked van, “Security seems to have a better pinpoint on Caine’s location, probably from checking city records on abandoned houses in the area. If we can key out the net’s structure, we may be able to get that information ourselves.” He shrugged. “Then comes the fun part. Any suggestions on where and how we cut our way out of this one?”

  “We find the sleepiest-looking carload and punch through there,” Skyler offered. “Fast and clean, and not until we’ve got Caine’s team in motion.”

  “The problem being that with this much invested in the primary net, they’ll certainly have some insurance backup primed and ready to move,” Lathe pointed out. “Ideally, what we’d like is to get a look at Security’s operational map.”

  “Well, why not?” Jensen said, an odd edge to his voice. “The spotters up there have to have copies—let’s get one down and look at it.”

  Lathe regarded him thoughtfully. “Interesting idea. Tell me, you think you’d be able to fly one of those things?”

  “Sure. An airlift makes the most sense, anyway. I was wondering when you’d get around to it.”

  “Yeah. Well…” Lathe thought for a moment. “All right, let’s try it. First step is to find the spotters’ ground-support vehicle—they’re bound to have something like that around for tight communications. Mordecai, you come in the van with me; you two follow in the car.”

  They found the unmarked van four blocks away, sitting at the far end of an office building’s parking lot. A flying
ambulance sat resting on its landing skids a few meters away; between and around the two vehicles were nine plain-dressed but obvious Security men.

  “Signal Skyler and Jensen for slingshot backcover,” Lathe told Mordecai as he pulled their van into the lot and drove toward the Security force. “You and I will handle primary assault if and when needed; we’ll try the soft approach first.”

  “Got it.” Mordecai busied himself with his tingler.

  Two of the Security men, paral-dart pistols at the ready, stepped over to them as Lathe brought the van to a stop near the group. One opened his mouth to speak; Lathe beat him to the punch. “Where’s your officer?” the comsquare snapped, striding between the pair of them toward the van. “Who’s in charge of this unit?” he called in a louder voice as the two would-be challengers scrambled to catch up with him.

  “I’m Major Garret,” a middle-aged man said, stepping down from the open van door and taking a step forward. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Lathe pulled a card from his pocket and handed it over. “Captain Hari—Special Services,” he identified himself. “We’ve got some unexpected trouble back there. This guy Caine’s apparently gotten a lock on our command and tactical frequencies—”

  “He’s what?” The major looked up from the ID card, his frown deepening. “That’s impossible. We’ve got full-spectrum scramble-freq lock codes running here, coupled with—”

  “Don’t argue with me,” Lathe cut him off. “I don’t know how the hell he’s doing it. All I know—and all you need to know—is what we’re going to do about it.” He nodded toward the van. “I want you to call the spotters down one at a time so I can clue them in on this. Then they’ll go back up and behave exactly as if nothing was happening. With luck we’ll be able to lull Caine into thinking he knows our every move while we move some units into new positions.”

  The major fingered the ID thoughtfully. “What do the spotters have to do with it?”

  “They’ll see what’s happening below, of course,” Lathe explained in a tone of strained patience. “We don’t want them broadcasting the news that some of our units are out of their proper positions, now, do we?”