The Blackcollar (27 page)

"Yes, from light neural damage. You've seen it before?"

"One or two cases." Someone might have mentioned Dodds. "Is that why none of you can fight?"

Bakshi smiled bitterly. "Oh, we can fight, all right. We didn't get your thirty-year vacation, you know. But, yes, that's why Fuess and the others aren't as good at hand-to-hand combat anymore. And as for the other problem—" He hesitated. "I think maybe they resent the fact that you're still as good as you always were. As they were once."

Lathe extended a hand, and Bakshi dropped the last
shuriken
into it. "I suggest you have a talk with them," he told the Argentian. "We're not here to show up anyone. The time for medals and glory ended when the TDE surrendered. If your people can't accept that, then pack them off somewhere where they won't be in our way."

"I'll tell them." Bakshi smiled wryly as the two blackcollars turned and started back toward the door. "We haven't had to fight this kind of war for quite a while. But we'll get the hang of it." He paused abruptly, brow furrowing. "Someone's coming," he murmured.

Lathe had also heard the running footsteps. Speeding up to a fast walk, he headed for the door, automatically reaching for a
shuriken.
Bakshi, he noted peripherally, was matching his pace but drifting to the side with a blackcollar's instinctive aversion to bunching up. They were five paces from the door when someone pounded on the panel and charged in.

It was Jeremiah Dan, clutching a scrawled note. "They've found Jensen!" he announced excitedly, waving the paper.

"Where is he?" Bakshi asked as Lathe snatched the note.

"Millaire," Dan told him, catching his breath and slowly regaining his usual professorial bearing. "They picked him up along the Hemoth River this morning."

Lathe glanced up. "Are the collies still checking traffic in and out of the city?"

"Probably, but there are ways to sneak out, if you want to go down there and get him," Dan said. "Greenstein suggested you might want to do that."

"So his people can stay clear of Calarand, in other words," Bakshi commented.

"Who's Greenstein?" Lathe asked.

"Uri Greenstein's head of our southern division," Dan said. "You saw him at our first meeting, but you weren't introduced."

"This message come in by secure phone?"

"Yes, directly to me. Commando Jensen said to tell you that the moon children agree with your calculations."

Lathe nodded; it was the code phrase they'd set up. "How far is Millaire?"

"About seven hundred klicks southwest of here," Bakshi said. "It should be a relatively safe drive if you want to go."

Lathe hesitated. He definitely wanted Jensen in Calarand... and the timing presented unexpected possibilities. "All right," he said. "I'll need two cars—can I get them right away?"

"Now?" Dan glanced at his watch. "It's almost twenty o'clock."

"There's no curfew, is there?"

"No. But it's a long trip and it's supposed to thunderstorm tonight."

"My men don't melt. Two cars, and we could use a guide."

"Take two of my blackcollars," Bakshi offered. "I promise they'll behave this time."

"Well...." Unfortunately, Lathe couldn't think of a good reason to say no. "Okay, but we'll only need one. The second car can follow the first."

"Risky," Dan said doubtfully. "What if they get lost?"

"They won't. Just make sure both cars have lots of maps." He looked at Bakshi. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get my men ready."

"One other thing," Dan called after him. "We've got definite word now that the quizlers are preparing Cerbe Prison for a major influx of new prisoners."

"Good. I'll get the details from you later. Right now, just get me those cars."

He had a workable plan ready by the time he reached the blackcollars' room. Pushing through the door, he gestured to Mordecai—who, as usual, was standing guard—and turned to the three men sitting around the table. "Free time's over," he announced. "Radix found Jensen."

The air was suddenly electric. "Where is he?" Skyler and Novak asked together.

"A place called Millaire." Lathe filled them in on Dan's message. "What's the word on Cerbe?" he asked Skyler. "You and Hawking found a weakness yet?"

"Yes—their secure communications system." The two blackcollars and Caine, Lathe noted, had been looking through Radix's somewhat skimpy file on the old fortress, and Skyler shuffled out a telephoto picture. "Rotating comm laser turret here on the roof of the main building," he said, tapping it with a finger. "Hemispherical, twenty centimeters in diameter. Secure messages from Calarand are relayed through one or more hovering patrol boats. Theoretically, it's a tap-proof system, since the whole thing is up off the ground."

"You have a way to do it?"

"Hawking does. He's making a gadget he says worked perfectly the one time he got to use it on Plinry."

"Can it be ready in an hour?"

Skyler's eyebrows rose fractionally. "Are we in that much of a hurry?"

"Yes, because he's leaving with the group going to Millaire. It's the perfect way to get him out of the city without alerting the local collie spies. Once you're clear of any roadblocks he can fall back and head for Cerbe."

"Was that 'you' singular or plural?" Novak asked, his voice carefully neutral.

Lathe smiled. "Plural, of course. You and Skyler will both be going."

Skyler glanced at Caine, then back at Lathe. "Can you spare both of us?" he asked quietly.

"Mordecai and I can protect Caine," Lathe assured him. "I want you to go to Hawking right away. Tell him what's happening; if he can't be ready in an hour, get his best estimate and I'll do some stalling. Then go to the garage and make sure the cars they assign us aren't bugged or marked. Oh, and Hawking said he was going to put together a portable bug stomper, too—if it's ready you should take it along."

Skyler stood up and began fastening a civilian shirt over his flexarmor. "We traveling alone or with a native guide?"

Lathe grimaced. "The latter—Bakshi's giving us one of his blackcollars."

"Great. I'll warn Hawking." With a cheerful wave at the silent Mordecai, Skyler left the room.

"You don't like Bakshi and the others, do you?" Caine asked quietly. He was seated alone at the table now, Novak having vanished into the corner to begin collecting equipment.

"Bakshi I don't mind," Lathe said, pulling out one of the chairs and sitting down. It felt good; that workout had worn him out. "It's the other four that bother me."

"Why? Because they aren't as phlegmatic toward the Ryqril as you are?"

Lathe declined to take offense. "A good fighting spirit is fine. But so far they haven't shown anything
but
spirit. Tell me, what's your opinion of Lianna Rhodes?"

Caine blinked. "Why, I... in what way?"

"How do you think she would do under pressure, for instance? More importantly, what are the chances she's a Security spy?"

Caine frowned. "I don't think she's a spy," he said slowly. "That's only gut instinct, of course. She said she was leaving Radix soon, though, and I can't see a spy doing something like that."

Lathe nodded; Caine's information and instincts meshed with his own. "You think she could face down a group of collies?"

Surprisingly, Caine smiled. "She sure doesn't wilt in front of
us."
The smile faded into curiosity. "Why all the questions?"

"I want her to help us get into Cerbe Prison." Lathe told him.

Caine's expression hardly changed. "I won't waste my breath telling you you're crazy," the younger man said calmly. "Do I get to know anything about this one in advance?"

Lathe hesitated, but only for a second. He'd been cutting Caine out of a lot lately, and the other was clearly beginning to resent it. Telling Caine this part of the plan would be safe enough... and it might help divert his mind from Dodds for a while. "Sure," he said, glancing at the quietly humming bug stomper standing sentinel in the middle of the room. "Let's go sit by the stomper and I'll tell you all about it."

The storm clouds had been rolling in from the north for half an hour, replacing the already overcast night sky. Occasional flickers of lightning lit up the landscape, emphasizing the implicit promise of a heavy rain. At the car's wheel, Dael Valentine risked a quick glance behind him. "I told you this would happen," he said. "Driving in convoy at night's just plain stupid."

"Just relax," Skyler advised him from the back seat. "They have maps, and we know they got out of Calarand all right. Maybe they decided to take a different route."

" 'Maybe'?" Valentine snorted. "In other words, they did. And naturally you didn't bother to tell me."

"You were having so much fun complaining about their incompetence it seemed a shame to enlighten you," Novak, next to Valentine, said tartly.

Valentine didn't reply. Novak was overstating the case a bit, in Skyler's opinion, but not by much. The Argentian had done a lot of bitching during the trip, almost as if he considered a chip on his shoulder to be standard equipment. Skyler had run into that kind before, back on Plinry, and considered the type to be a royal pain in the butt. They were dangerous to be around, too, usually getting themselves killed doing something stupid.

In the front seat a tiny penlight flicked on briefly as Novak checked his map. "Shouldn't we be seeing Millaire by now?" the black man asked.

"It's in a wide valley past these hills," Valentine said, pointing to the shadowy ridge that the car was approaching. "You'll see it in five minutes."

Novak grunted and fell silent. Skyler took a moment to look back along the road, and to study the territory on either side. Only occasional lights could be seen, most of them far back from the road. Not surprising, considering it was way past midnight and all good Argentians were asleep in their beds. Still, the darkness and lack of other traffic made the blackcollar uncomfortable. He'd learned long ago to dislike being conspicuous.

The car topped the ridge—and suddenly Millaire was in front of them, spreading across the valley like a two-dimensional star cluster. "Quite a town," Novak commented. "How's it compare to Calarand?"

"Larger in area; smaller in population," Valentine said. Half of Millaire's lights disappeared as they curved behind a hill, reappearing a moment later.

"Find a place where you can pull over," Skyler spoke up suddenly. "I want a clear view of the city."

"Why?" Valentine asked. "We're getting in late enough as it is."

"Just do it." Skyler's danger sense was tingling, and he was in no mood to argue.

"Yes,
sir."
Valentine ran the car onto the shoulder, raising clouds of dust as they bounced to a halt.

"Novak, give me that map," Skyler said, frowning out at Millaire. Novak handed over both the map and his penlight, and Skyler took a moment to refold the paper to the large-scale map of the city. "Valentine, show me again exactly where Radix HQ is," he ordered, cupping the penlight to block all but a faint glow.

The Argentian reached back over the seat. "It's right here," he said, tapping a spot a kilometer from the center of town. "Why?"

Skyler studied the map another moment, then flipped off the light. "You see it, Novak?"

"Yeah," the other said slowly. "I do now."

"What?" Valentine asked suspiciously, peering out the window.

"You see that patch of darkness, next to the big white building?" Skyler pointed it out. "Radix HQ is inside it."

Valentine shrugged. "So? Probably just a power substation crash."

"Maybe. But doesn't it strike you as odd that there should just happen to be an outage
now,
and at the same place Jensen happens to be?"

"Coincidence," Valentine growled. But he didn't sound entirely convinced.

"Possibly. I doubt it." Skyler handed the map and light back to Novak. "Let's go. We're under battle conditions now—you understand, Valentine?"

"Perfectly, sir," the Argentian said grimly. The car was already back on the road and picking up speed.

Opening the front of his coat, Skyler pulled his flexarmor gloves and battle-hood from beneath his belt and began checking his weapons. In the front seat, he could see movements that indicated Novak was doing likewise.

Outside, it was beginning to rain.

"Your rads won't be here for at least another hour," Uri Greenstein said, handing Jensen one of the two steaming mugs he'd just poured and sitting down behind his plain metal desk. "You're welcome to a bed until then if you'd like to rest."

"Thanks, but no," Jensen said, sipping cautiously. It was some sort of herbal coffee, delicately seasoned. "I napped some in the car. All I really needed was a shower and a hot meal, and your people have been most generous in providing those."

Greenstein shrugged, and Jensen let his eyes drift around the room. The coffee and automatic blend-maker seemed to be Greenstein's only luxuries; the rest of the fifth-floor office was Spartan in the extreme, from the simple furniture to the plain Venetian blind covering the window. He looked back at Greenstein, to find the other's gaze on him. "I take it, Mr. Greenstein," he said, "that you had some reason for asking me up here? Besides the coffee, of course, which is excellent."

The Radix leader smiled thinly. "Not really, Commando. Frankly, I just wanted to see what you were like."

Jensen shrugged. "I hope you're not disappointed."

"Not at all. Intrigued is more like it." Greenstein waved toward the west. "You escaped a crashing spaceship, evaded a massive manhunt for eight days, apparently killed quite a few heavily armed Security men—and yet you don't have a trace of the usual blackcollar bluster."

"Well, you know how jungle animals calm down after they're fed."

"You're joking. I'm not."

"I know." Jensen sobered, sipped again from his mug. "We all started with a little of that, I suppose—being a freshly graduated blackcollar is heady stuff. I think most of us lost our conceit after our first few weeks of actual warfare. When enough of your comrades have been killed beside you the word 'elite' pretty well loses all meaning."