Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

by Timothy Zahn

  "Oh, well, that's easy enough to fix," Kanai said. His shuriken was still in his hand; raising it, he hurled it down squarely into the little man's throat.

  The woman inhaled sharply. "You—"

  "He was a Security spy, and I was going to kill him anyway," Kanai told her calmly. "All right—your job's safe again. Now can we get out of here?"

  But Lathe was still looking at the woman. "Your choice," he said.

  For a second more she eyed them in silent indecision. Then she gave a sharp nod. "Back here," She motioned to them, stepping back from the counter. "There's a hidden trapdoor back here, leads a few blocks away—"

  She broke off to fire a burst of paral-darts through the doorway. "The company's getting restless,"

  Lathe agreed, taking a long step and vaulting over the counter. "Let's go."

  The other blackcollar followed; with a deep breath and underlying misgivings, Kanai joined them.

  The girl pushed aside a rack of coats and sent a hard kick against the wall there, and a small square of flooring popped up a millimeter or two. A knife appeared in her hand, and she pried the square up, revealing a handle. She tugged, and the tiling around the handle cracked into a rectangular shape and lifted up. "Down the stairs and along the tunnel," she instructed, gesturing. "I need to grab a couple of things and then set up the self-destruct."

  "Right." Lathe's fingers found his tingler: Backup: Pull out. Escaping via rathole. Rendezvous at point beta.

  Acknowledged.

  Kanai took another deep breath and followed Lathe down the stairway. He hoped to hell the comsquare knew what he was doing.

  —

  The stairway led a dozen meters beneath Denver's streets to a complex and ancient-feeling warren of ceramic-walled tunnels. With the blackcollars' penlights throwing odd reflections from the frequent puddles of stagnant water underfoot, they traveled along in silence, all of them apparently aware that Security could conceivably have scattered audio sensors in the tunnels.

  The woman was clearly familiar with the territory, guiding them through the maze without hesitation. Fifteen minutes later they came to a more modern-looking metal ladder disappearing upward through a broken section of roof. The woman headed up, and a minute later they were all standing around a dimly lit basement smelling strongly of mildew and neglect.

  "Sorry about the mess," she apologized, stepping to a rickety set of stairs and shining Lathe's light briefly onto a white square set into the wall there. "We should be safe here for a while—long enough for Security to shift the search somewhere else, anyway."

  Kanai moved to her side, glanced up the stairs at the closed door there, then flashed his own light on the white plate. Fifteen or twenty barely visible black threads were set into it, leading off in all different directions. "What's this?" he asked.

  "Passive intruder alert," the woman told him. "The monofilaments are anchored upstairs to doors and windows and whatnot. If anyone comes in, the thread is pulled out of the plate. Looks like no one else has been by here since the last time I was in. Not surprising."

  "Interesting system," Lathe commented, removing his flexarmor battle-hood. "Sounds like the sort of thing that an organization with more ingenuity than funds would come up with."

  She gave the comsquare a long look, but then shrugged. "You're right on that one. Being the last surviving member of a resistance group is hardly a money-making proposition—and we were never exactly rich even at our strongest."

  "Your group being...?"

  "Torch, of course. What else?"

  Chapter 20

  Her name was Anne Silcox, and she wasn't anything like what Caine had expected.

  Outwardly, she didn't seem especially out of the ordinary. Her voice and manner of speech were normal enough, her face and body language tense but under reasonable control. Nowhere was there any obvious display of the holy fire Caine would have looked to find in a member of such an avowedly fanatical group.

  But then he'd already learned a lot on this mission about discrepancies between theory and reality.

  "I wish I knew what happened to the rest of them." Silcox shook her head. Her eyes made their fourth quick search of the unfurnished living room, as if she wasn't ready yet to put complete faith in Lathe's assurances about the safe house's security. "I was only seventeen when they disappeared, and hardly in the inner circle. All I know is that it wasn't something unexpected, because they set me up in the Shandygaff specifically to keep an eye on things in the absence of better information sources."

  Her eyes flicked from Lathe's face to Caine's and Hawking's, then settled onto Kanai's. It was a tendency Caine had already noted in her, perhaps a need to connect with the familiar in such an unfamiliar situation.

  Beside Caine, Lathe shifted in his seat. "That's not much to go on," he told her. "Do you know anything about their contacts here—communications with the criminal hierarchy, perhaps?"

  Her eyes were still on Kanai. "All I know is that they occasionally had doings with blackcollars—both the ones here and some from other areas. Kanai could probably tell you more about that."

  Lathe shifted his own gaze to Kanai. "You never mentioned other blackcollars."

  The other shrugged. "I've heard reports, mostly through Torch, of other teams operating east and south of here, but I've never met any of them. You have to remember that long-distance travel is pretty severely restricted. As to dealings with the crime lords, if Torch did any of that I never heard about it. Frankly, I doubt it—their goals wouldn't mesh very well."

  Lathe nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps. I presume Bernhard handled your contacts with Torch—do you know whether or not he was in touch with them at the time Anne says they closed up shop?"

  "Possible, but I don't know. Bernhard isn't big on telling us everything he knows."

  "Occupational hazard," Caine murmured.

  If Lathe heard the remark he didn't show it. "Did Torch have any standard records caches?" he asked Silcox. "Hard copies, computer files, even a dummy program on someone else's machine? Anything that might give us a clue as to what happened to them?"

  She shook her head. "All I was was a walking eavesdrop in the Shandygaff. No one would have trusted me with stuff like that."

  "All right, then," Lathe said. "Let's switch to exactly what you've learned in the last five years. Any idea when the Ryqril started taking such an active interest in Aegis Mountain? Surely they haven't been trying to break in since the war ended."

  "No, that's been a recent development," she said. "I started hearing rumors about it a year ago from smug-runners who were annoyed at how the extra security around there was interfering with their runs westward."

  "The same time we snoggered them out of the Novas," Hawking pointed out. "Maybe they decided they needed to play catch-up again."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Caine asked.

  "Means they're hoping to find more of our technology to steal," Lathe said. "Makes sense, I suppose.

  There could very well be something left in Aegis they didn't get elsewhere from us after the war—"

  "Wait a second," Caine cut in. "Why should they care about the thirty-year-old technology of a race they've already beaten?"

  Lathe turned a strange frown on him. "You're serious?" the comsquare asked. "How did your teachers miss that one?"

  "Maybe I was absent that day," Caine returned archly. "If it's not a state secret...?"

  "The Ryqril are technological imbeciles," Lathe told him. "That's a literal, medical term—no insult implied. The whole race is incapable of creating new technology on their own beyond a fairly low level. It's probably the main driving force beyond their constant attempts to conquer their neighbors, in fact—it's one of the few ways they've got to advance their technological level."

  Caine stared at him. It was such an unbelievable statement... and yet, now that it was in front of him, a lot of other things began to make sense. The gamble the Ryqril on Argent had taken—and ultimately lost—of trying
to beat the blackcollars to the hidden Novas was suddenly a lot less foolish than it'd seemed to him at the time. With their forces bogged down in a standoff with the Chryselli, an influx of new weaponry could have made a real difference in that war. "I gather," he said slowly,

  "that's why Security is still using the old-style aircraft and equipment designs that we know how to deal with."

  Lathe nodded, the frown still on his face. "It's risky, certainly, but even when you know how to disable an aircraft, that doesn't mean you can pull it off in actual practice. The Ryqril can copy any technology they can steal, of course, so they're not stuck using the actual thirty-year-old crates."

  "You really didn't know?" Hawking broke in. "It was common knowledge among the TDE hierarchy even before the main conflict started."

  "There was a lot my teachers seemed to forget," Caine told him, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. Once again, the Resistance leaders he'd trusted so fully had withheld important information from him, and while this one didn't hurt as badly as the first of those revelations had, back on Argent, it hurt enough.

  "Maybe they simply forgot to mention it," Kanai suggested hesitantly. "Or else the information was lost somehow—"

  "No," Caine said flatly. "They kept it from me on purpose. After all, I was being trained to hate the Ryqril—why tell me anything that might make their actions understandable?"

  Kanai fell silent. Hawking busied himself studying a corner of the room, and even Lathe looked uncomfortable. Turning to Silcox, Caine saw to his annoyance that even her expression had softened a bit.

  And the last thing he wanted right now was sympathy from a stranger. "You were telling us about the Ryqril and Aegis Mountain," he reminded her tartly.

  Her face went back to neutral. "As I said, they're apparently trying to get in without bringing the mountain down on top of them—and from what I hear, that's not going to be an easy trick."

  Lathe nodded. "It'll be loaded with doomsdays all the way down the tunnel. All right—change of subject. How was the rest of Torch supposed to contact you when and if they came back to Denver?"

  She shrugged. "They'd send someone to the Shandygaff or call me at home, I guess. It's not just crime bosses that go to the bar, you know."

  Lathe exchanged glances with Hawking, and it wasn't hard for Caine to read their thoughts: Silcox wasn't going to be a lot of help. "Well, I think both home and the bar are going to be off-limits to you from now on," the comsquare told her. "If you like, you can stay here—we've got other safe houses we can use." He stood up.

  "Wait a second," Silcox said, scrambling to her feet as well. "That's it? I get you out of the Shandygaff, blow my cover there to hell and gone, and you're just going to say goodbye? The hell you are. Whatever you're involved in here, you've just hired yourself a new recruit."

  "Look, I appreciate the offer, but—"

  "But nothing," she said, and for the first time Caine caught a glimpse of the fire buried beneath the ashes. "Just because I'm young doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing. I'm good with a gun, I can scrounge anything you could possibly want—probably better than Kanai here can—and even without Torch I know how to get good information from anywhere in town."

  Lathe sighed and shook his head. "I'm sorry, but to be brutally honest you're as likely to get in our way as you are to help us. And we already have our own information sources, thanks."

  "Maybe, maybe not," she shot back. "From what I hear you lost a couple of your outriders already."

  "A couple of what?" Hawking asked as he and the others followed Lathe toward the door.

  "Your informants and helpers. The people who ferried Caine out of the mountains and got you your explosives."

  Caine froze in midstride. "What? Who? What are their names?"

  Silcox cocked an eyebrow. "You mean you didn't know? Well, well."

  "Who are they?"

  She seemed taken aback by Caine's explosion. "Geoff and Raina Dupre and Karen Lindsay. Security took them in for questioning this afternoon."

  A cold hand closed around Caine's stomach, and he mouthed a silent curse. He'd hoped to convince them someday that he and his team were people they could trust; instead he'd gotten them arrested.

  "Lathe, we've got to get them out."

  "What do they know?" the comsquare asked quietly.

  "About the mission? Nothing at all. But I got them into this mess, and it's my responsibility to get them out."

  Lathe studied him for a long moment, shifted his gaze to Silcox. "Are they associated with Torch in any way? Or with any other resistance group?"

  "The names aren't familiar," she said.

  "It's nothing like that," Caine said impatiently. "They're just ordinary people that I got snarled up in this."

  Slowly, Lathe shook his head. "I'm sorry, Caine, but I don't think it would be feasible. Getting into Athena at all, let alone pulling anyone out, would be a major undertaking. We simply don't have the resources or the time. I'm sorry."

  Caine stared at him, unable to believe his ears. "Lathe, we're not talking about blackcollars here, or even soldiers who went into action knowing the risks. These are civilians—people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. We can't just abandon them."

  "We have no choice," Lathe said flatly.

  For a long moment the two men locked eyes. Then, blinking sudden moisture from his eyes, Caine turned away. He couldn't, in all honesty, argue with the logic, but that didn't make the decision easier to bear.

  The blackcollar forces are the elite warriors of this upcoming conflict.... The ancient words echoed in his mind, sounding more than ever like a hollow mockery.

  It was Silcox who eventually broke the silence. "Well?"

  "I suppose you've made your point," Lathe said dryly. The annoyance of civilians caught in the grinder was obviously already forgotten. "All right. Temporarily, anyway, you're hired. You can still use this house as HQ; we'll drop by periodically to get whatever information you've picked up."

  Her eyes were steady on him. "You won't just walk off and forget me, will you?"

  Lathe shook his head. "We'll be in touch. In the meantime..." He shifted his eyes to Kanai. "The night's still young, and we haven't had our talk with Bernhard. Shall we go?"

  Chapter 21

  The sounds of the riot south of the Hub had faded out of Haven's hearing nearly an hour previously, and he finally felt safe in taking a cautious look outside his rooftop hideaway. There was, unfortunately, no direct way to know whether or not Kelly O'Hara had made it inside the Hub safely—using even tinglers this close to the Ryqril Enclave would likely be a quick form of suicide.

  But there might be a more indirect method available....

  There were no aircraft flitting around the night sky as he took a careful look outside the elevator shed. Stepping out onto the roof, he moved to the corner of the structure and raised his light-amp binoculars for a leisurely sweep of the surrounding rooftops. Nothing moved anywhere.

  Still, that wasn't unexpected. O'Hara might have arrived ahead of their loose schedule and have already battened down for the night, or he might still be on his way. Easing his face around the corner, Haven focused on the Chimney, concentrating on the area by the nearest laser as he jumped the binoculars to full power.

  Five of the distorted pellets were visible there, clustered tightly together beneath the laser mount: four of his own and one more courtesy of Tardy Spadafora a couple of buildings down. Over at the Chimney's next corner, he knew, Spadafora would have put three more pellets on top of the laser's electronics, too. O'Hara would also be concentrating on that weapon when and if he made it through.

  Haven's stomach growled, reminding him that he'd been on short rations for nearly a week now and hadn't eaten even that much yet today. For a moment he debated whether or not to go ahead and shoot tonight's pellet over at the Chimney, as long as he was out here anyway, or whether he should go back inside and eat first. Hunger, and common sense, won
out; the kind of hairbreadth marksmanship this type of shooting required could be seriously affected by rumbles from the gut.

  Easing back around the edge of the shed, he went back inside and behind his false wall.

  Chapter 22

  The night breezes whispered through the pines crowding together on the slopes, sending a faintly tangy aroma wafting through the air. Shifting his grip on his snub-nosed laser rifle, Miro Marcovich sniffed at the odors as he pushed up his infrared goggles and sent a lingering look at the stars blazing down between the shadowy trees. The night sky was never visible like this from Athena or Denver, with all that background light washing it out, and more than once tonight he'd found himself wishing he could just settle back against a tree trunk and enjoy the view. But he was on duty, and neither his loyalty-conditioning nor his pride as a Security officer would let him shirk that responsibility.

  Sliding the goggles back into place, he continued scanning the dimly lit forest for intruders.

  Intruders that almost certainly weren't there. Prefect Galway's theory had been thoroughly hashed around by the guards hustled onto duty out here, and the general consensus was that no one in his right mind would travel eight parsecs just to assassinate an old, retired Security prefect.

  Though Marcovich had to admit that if anyone was going to do something that crazy, Trendor was certainly the target to go for. A shiver ran down his spine as he thought about the stories of Trendor's activities in Denver at the end of the war. Most of the tales he discounted, knowing full well the characteristic growth/mutation curve for rumors. But some of those stories were tied to his own family history, and those he knew to be true to the last detail. His own presence in the Security force, in fact, was due entirely to Trendor's warped sense of values—not satisfied with merely interrogating and executing those rebels he managed to take alive, the prefect had also insisted on loyaltyconditioning all of their children. Taking from the rebels, in effect, the last thing they could call their own.