Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

by Timothy Zahn

  Lathe frowned... and suddenly understood. Reaching down, he picked up the rifle again and lobbed it gently over the desk.

  Reger didn't move as the weapon arched neatly through his chest and chair and clattered to the floor behind.

  "My congratulations," Lathe said. "An exceptionally good hologram. I didn't know they could be made that realistic."

  "All sleight-of-hand," the other said modestly. "The light in your eyes is the key—even this one has the usual flat look when you see it under normal conditions. But most of the visitors I use it for don't have the time to be that observant."

  Lathe nodded. "So what happens now?"

  Reger folded his arms across his chest. "We discuss business, of course. Why don't you start by telling me exactly what you want here.—Ah."

  The "ah" was for the arrival of the medical team. Lathe watched them closely, half expecting them to suddenly sprout guns and attack. But they merely loaded the casualties onto stretchers and carted them off.

  "You were saying...?" Reger's image said when they were gone.

  "We need information," Lathe told him. "I'm guessing you have the connections to get it for us."

  "I see. And in return you offer what?"

  "That's negotiable. I realize that blackcollars-for-hire is probably a new concept for you, but we have a number of specialties you might find useful."

  Reger's face didn't acknowledge the delicate probe. "From what my men said and implied, I take it you haven't been in town long."

  "About seven hours now," Lathe admitted.

  "From...?"

  "Plinry."

  That got a raised eyebrow. "Indeed. Off the shuttle that came in from orbit?"

  "More or less."

  "Which means that along with information, you also need protection. Security exists in large part to hunt down people like you."

  "With the paying off of informers part of their yearly budget?" Lathe asked pointedly.

  Surprisingly, Reger smiled. "You really are uninformed. Do you know who I am?"

  Lathe pursed his lips. "You're Manx Reger, who collects a share of smuggling operations in this area. I gather there's more."

  "A great deal more. I own nearly every illegal operation from Arvada west to the mountains, and a fair amount of the legal stuff as well. My yearly income is in the three-quarter-million-mark range, my total assets probably five million. What the hell can Security offer me that'll make it worth turning you in?"

  "I suppose that depends on what you want us to do for you?"

  For a moment Reger was silent. "Yes, it does," he conceded. "Okay. Let's start with what exactly this information is that you need."

  "We weren't the only team that dropped from that shuttle," Lathe told him. "The other group's gone to ground, and we need to find them."

  "Didn't you have signals or a rendezvous place picked out? I'd have thought—"

  "They don't know we came with them."

  Reger snorted, shook his head. "Damn pretzel thinking'll get you every time. So you want them found, but not brought in or tipped off?"

  "Right—and I don't want Security to get a sniff of them, either. Your people have the finesse for something like that?"

  "Enough of them do. I've been in this business a long time, blackcollar. I know how to find people I can trust."

  "I hope so, for your sake," Lathe told him grimly, "because any unravelings will come back here to spawn."

  Reger gazed at him a moment. "Let's get one thing straight from the top," he said coldly. "I don't react well to threats. Not yours, not anyone else's. You ask, you deal—you don't threaten. All right?"

  "Fine," Lathe said. "As long as we've got a clear understanding. Now, let's discuss your half of the trade."

  "Yes." Reger stroked his lip thoughtfully, his eyes drifting to the side wall and the hidden gunport there. "You caught the Judas holes pretty quickly earlier. You always that good at finding stray openings?"

  "Some of us are better at it than others. You need someone infiltrated?"

  "No—quite the opposite." Reger waved his hand in an all-encompassing sweep. "You've seen my home and grounds, at least in passing. What do you think of its security?"

  Lathe shrugged. "I'd have to take an in-depth look. Good security is never visible on the surface."

  "True. All right, then, here's the deal. I'll find your stray team and offer you shelter if you'll upgrade my security system. Totally upgrade. When you're through, no one is to get in here without my knowing about it."

  Lathe returned the other's gaze steadily, trying not to show any reaction. It was a far more ethically acceptable bargain than he'd expected to have to make, all things considered. And yet, the oddness of it was setting off quiet alarms in the back of his mind. A man with Reger's resources shouldn't need to hire blackcollars to fence his yard for him.

  Unless he was trying to keep out other blackcollars. Such as those Lathe and Skyler had been mistaken for. Whose existence Reger had blatantly avoided mentioning.

  "All right, it's a deal," the comsquare said. Whatever the undercurrent was he was sensing, he needed time to track it down, and this was the simplest way to buy a few days. "We'll need complete specs on the system you've got now, plus layouts of house and grounds, power and water systems, and other odds and ends we'll think of as we go along."

  "You'll have them," Reger said. "How many of you are there?"

  "Enough," Lathe replied. "You probably won't see more than three of us at any one time."

  "If you're staying here—"

  "Not all of us will be. You're too far from central Denver for this to be a practical base."

  He'd expected Reger to object, but the other merely shrugged. "Fine. I trust you'll accept local clothing, money, and IDs?"

  "Certainly. At the moment, though, we need to return the tow truck and these coveralls before their owner misses them."

  Reger smiled. "Of course. We don't want any extra attention drawn this way, do we? I take it you'll return for your money and clothing before you head into Denver?"

  "We'll be back within the hour," Lathe promised. "And I'll leave two men here to start on your security system at that time. For the moment we'll all use my name as a pass with your gateman."

  "And that is—?"

  "Comsquare Damon Lathe, Blackcollar Forces. Temporarily at your service."

  Reger smiled again. But it was a tighter smile than before, and it was accompanied by a slight shiver.

  —

  They rendezvoused outside the still-closed service station after the tow truck and coveralls were back in place. Or, rather, four of them did. "Where's Hawking?" Lathe asked.

  "I left him outside the road into Reger's little subdivision to watch for interesting traffic," Skyler told him. "Reger bought it?"

  "It and us. And our part of the deal is to secure his house for him."

  "Oh?" Skyler cocked an eyebrow. "Against whom?"

  "He skimmed around that part, but there's only one real possibility."

  Skyler glanced back at Phelling's car, where the barman was peacefully sleeping off the drug they'd given him. "The blackcollars Phelling mentioned."

  "Whom he also implied were for hire," Lathe reminded him.

  Jensen's eyes flashed with contempt. "Blackcollars for hire. He'd better have been wrong."

  "Maybe they're just running a mission with the mercenary bit as cover," Hawking pointed out.

  "Especially given that Reger apparently can't buy them out himself."

  "Possible," Lathe agreed. "He certainly isn't dying to talk about them—I dropped one or two conversational gambits around the topic that he totally ignored. He may be hoping we'll get his job done before we find out we're working against other blackcollars." Lathe looked at Jensen. "I want you and Hawking to start work on the project as soon as we get back there. Do a good job, but leave a keyhole from due west to the house in case Reger tries to pull something backhanded. The rest of us will take the supplies he's offering
and set up a safe house in central Denver. Then tonight..." He hesitated.

  "It's only Monday," Mordecai reminded him quietly.

  "I know," Lathe said. "But I think we'll give the Shandygaff Bar a try anyway. If this blackcollar contact man Kanai isn't there, maybe someone will know where we can find him."

  "Are we in that tearing a hurry?" Skyler asked.

  Lathe glanced at Jensen. "If Reger and the blackcollars are on opposite sides of the fence, we need to find out which side we should be on. And we have to do so before Reger's men find Caine."

  Chapter 9

  It was nearly ten when Colvin and Braune returned with the team's new clothes. Pittman, still keen on trying to find transportation, headed out alone shortly afterward on that errand. Privately, Caine considered it a likely waste of time, but was willing to let him indulge it for a short while, anyway.

  Leaving his own house-hunting route with Colvin and Braune so that Pittman would be able to catch up later, Caine and Alamzad headed out.

  And ran straight into delayed culture shock.

  Caine had been raised in Grenoble, Europe, and his Resistance tutors had exposed him to even larger cities during his training. But none of that had prepared him for Denver at full blast.

  It was incredibly crowded, for starters—crowded not only with pedestrians but also with all kinds of vehicles. Caine had seen traffic of such ferocity only once before, in the government sector of New Geneva. Alamzad, born on Plinry after its fall to the Ryqril, was clearly and thoroughly dazzled by it all.

  The pedestrians they passed among were almost as bad a shock as the cars. The young people, especially, showed an incredible range of clothing style and demeanor, in sharp contrast to the drab outfits and almost universal sullenness Caine had always noticed in the teenagers of Capstone.

  But perhaps strongest of all was the sense of antiquity that gradually grew as they wandered about the city. Denver felt old, its years somehow permeating even the newest of its buildings. Like an old man being kept physically young by Idunine, Caine thought once—and that realization prompted bitter comparisons. Plinry had been nearly destroyed by the Ryqril; on the other side of Earth, old Geneva was a blackened ruin.

  Denver had hardly been touched. And Caine found himself resenting the city its good fortune.

  They had been searching for nearly two hours without finding any place that had the combination of accessibility, safety, and space Caine was looking for when a familiar voice called to them. A

  familiar voice, from a distinctly unfamiliar car. A minute later he and Alamzad were inside.

  "Where did you get this?" Caine asked Pittman, looking around the aged but neat interior.

  "I bought it," Pittman told him, voice tight with tension. Fighting the local traffic was clearly taking its toll. "I found a place that resells cars the owners don't want anymore. You have any luck out here?"

  "Not so far." Caine shook his head. "What'd you use for money? One of our diamonds?"

  "Indirectly. There was a jewelry store a block from this place, so I went there first, sold the diamond, and then went back and talked the car dealer down to that amount of cash."

  "What did he say when you didn't have an ID?" Alamzad put in.

  "He didn't ask for one. I get the feeling cash on the counter bypasses a lot of official regulations around here."

  They reached a corner and turned right. "Where are we going?" Caine asked.

  "I passed an old house on the way here that looked promising," Pittman said. "As long as you haven't found anything, I thought it'd be worth a closer look."

  Then suggest it—don't decide it. With an effort, Caine swallowed the words unsaid. Command discipline and individual initiative, Lathe had often warned, could easily become mutually exclusive.

  The best blackcollar comsquares worked hard to walk that thin line.

  And in this case, it paid off. The house Pittman took them to was perfect.

  "Probably been abandoned for months," Caine guessed, eying the broken windows, darkened gaps in the siding, and wild hedges gradually taking over the small front yard. "Wonder why it hasn't been torn down."

  "A lot of the houses along here aren't in much better shape," Alamzad pointed out. "Could be no one's noticed."

  "Maybe." Caine grunted. "Let's go inside."

  The front door was locked, but not seriously so. Alamzad got it open while Caine and Pittman, the latter waving an official-looking note stick, stood near the sidewalk making house-inspection-type comments for the benefit of anyone watching. Inside, the house was in slightly better shape, though Caine had doubts about the stairs to the second floor, and in ten minutes he was satisfied. "Some blackout covers for the windows and I think we'll have it," he told the others. "Let's go get Braune and Colvin and load the gear into the car. We'll move in after dark tonight when we won't be so conspicuous."

  "What do we do in the meantime?" Pittman asked as they locked up and went back to the car. "Try and hunt up the vets you want?"

  "Or look for Torch?" Alamzad added.

  Torch. Fanatics. Caine's lip twitched as he remembered Lepkowski's warning about such allies. But at least now he understood why the local resistance had gone that way. If Denver was at all representative, North America hadn't suffered from the war nearly as much as Europe had, and with life under the Ryqril essentially business as usual, there was little incentive for ordinary citizens to get interested in their overthrow. "I think just looking around would be a waste of time," he told the others. "We'll need to attract their attention, and that'll take preparation. For now I think it'd make more sense to go take a look at our target."

  "Our target?" Pittman asked, his voice oddly tight as he slid into the driver's seat and gripped the wheel.

  "Well, the place we need to get into, anyway," Caine amplified. "Let's get moving; we've got a long day yet ahead of us."

  —

  The satellite image of Denver skittered across the display screen in a standard scan pattern: northwest corner working down to southeast corner, then kicking back to the top again. "Damn it all," General Quinn ground out between clenched teeth. "Damn and damn and damn."

  That makes number eight, Galway added to his mental tally, being careful to sit perfectly still in his chair. The mood Quinn was in now, even the slightest hint that Galway was about to speak might trigger a preemptive explosion. He'd argued strongly against Quinn's plan to put a tracer aboard the car they'd given Pittman, pointing out that Caine would surely go over the vehicle with a bug stomper at his earliest opportunity. The satellite-detectable infrared-reflective paint around the edge of the car's roof had been a reasonable compromise... except that the satellite had now completely lost the damn thing eight times since Pittman had driven it away.

  A motion caught the edge of Galway's eye: a foolhardy aide venturing into blast range with a sheaf of papers. "General?"

  "What?" Quinn growled, eyes still on the display.

  "I have the analysis of Postern's first stop this morning."

  "Go on."

  "Assuming he didn't park more than two blocks from his objective, it's eighty-two percent probable that he did indeed go to 7821 North Wadsworth. Two of the three people at the twoplex there—Raina Dupre and Karen Lindsay—brought in a truckload of oil shale from the Miniver depot late last night."

  "Um. Yeah, that would have come down Seventy-two. The timing work for Caine to have hitched a ride with them?"

  Galway cleared his throat. "If you'll remember, sir—"

  "I know what he told you, Galway," the other cut him off. "I'll run my own checks, if you don't mind."

  Galway pursed his lips and shut up.

  "I've got someone checking on that now," the aide said. "Background dump shows nothing that would indicate subversive leanings by any of the three. Probability that the rendezvous was somehow prearranged is below point one percent."

  "Keep digging. Double-check all relatives and previous employers for any connection to Torch. And p
ut a couple of men in the immediate neighborhood, just in case we need a fast reaction."

  "Yes, sir." The other turned and left.

  Fat lot of good two men'll be against Caine, Galway thought. But something else Quinn had said...

  "I thought Torch was supposed to be dead," he ventured.

  "It is," Quinn said. "Haven't heard from them in five years—haven't seen any of their leaders for nearly that long. Doesn't mean a damn thing when you're dealing with fanatics."

  Galway grimaced with painful memory. Plinry's blackcollars, apparently harmless for thirty years...

  until the right opportunity came along.

  "There!" Quinn barked, jerking forward to jab a finger at the display. The view had stabilized, and in the middle, centered within a red circle, was a tiny white rectangle. "Adams? You on it?"

  "Yes, sir," one of the techs across the room replied. "Feeding the LockTight program now."

  "It'd better work," Quinn warned darkly.

  "It should," the other said.

  "Then we've got you, Caine," the general muttered under his breath. "We've got you for good."

  Galway exhaled carefully, the knot in his stomach slowly relaxing. The gamble was finally working.

  "Looks like they're leaving the city," he commented. "What's out there they might be interested in?"

  "You name it." With his tracking system functional again, Quinn was almost civil. "There are at least a dozen targets in the mountains, depending on how ambitious Caine feels. Everything from oilshale miners to Aegis Mountain itself. Pity your spy hasn't been able to find that out."

  "He will," Galway replied. Aegis Mountain. The name had figured prominently in the orientation files the prefect had been skimming for the past few days—a symbol, he'd thought more than once, for Denver as a whole. Surely Caine wouldn't even consider tackling the place.

  Or would he?

  On the display the marked car was still heading west. Galway gave Quinn a sideways look, wondering whether or not he should share his sudden intuition that Aegis was Caine's target. Not, he decided. Quinn would surely reject the suggestion out of hand, and would then be that much slower to come around if Caine made a move in that direction. No, for the moment it would be better to just watch and be ready. Besides, it was Lathe, not Caine, who was the real miracle worker, and Lathe was eight long parsecs away. They could afford to give the enemy some extra rope.