The Blackcollar (33 page)

Even as the Argentian slumped forward, Novak was twisting around in his seat, his own
nunchaku
coming reflexively to hand. "What—"

Skyler cut him off with a sharp shake of his head, gave him four quick hand signals. Frowning, Novak put his
nunchaku
down and reached under the dashboard, coming up a moment later with two freshly disconnected wires. Taking the portable bug stomper Skyler handed him, he connected the wires to it and flipped it on. The device came to life; a green light flashed briefly as it did so.

"No bugs," Skyler muttered. "They're cockier than I expected."

"Who, the collies?" Novak still looked confused.

"Yeah. I guess they figured their spy had us covered well enough."

Novak glanced at Valentine's crumpled figure and then looked back at Skyler, his eyes demanding explanation.

Skyler sighed. "You heard his slip yourself. Remember earlier, when he suggested a soft penetration? He said we could do the same thing Lathe and O'Hara had done.
How did he know it was O'Hara who hit Cerbe Prison?"

Novak frowned. "He supposedly got that from Radix contacts—" he began slowly.

"Right. But how would they know which blackcollars were involved? Lathe wouldn't have given that out, and it certainly isn't public knowledge yet. That leaves exactly one source."

Novak shook his head. "This is pretty flimsy evidence to hang a man on."

"I'm not done yet." Skyler dug his new Security ID from his pocket. "What were you going to ask him when he first mentioned this forger of his?"

"When you cut me off? I wanted to know why anybody would bother forging something that could damn you that quickly."

"Good question.
Mine
was why Tremayne had never mentioned these supposed Radix forgers." Skyler slanted the ID toward the fading light. "Beautiful work. I studied it for ten straight minutes earlier and didn't see a single error anywhere."

Novak was gazing thoughtfully at Valentine. "Lathe said he got into the Strip with a simple visual check," he mused. "You'd think the collies would be more thorough if there were false IDs known to be in circulation." Reaching over, he picked up Valentine's right hand. A dragonhead ring glinted there; with some effort Novak got it off. "A hunch," he said, squinting at the ring in the faint glow of his shielded penlight. "If he's a collie spy his ring will be a fake... hmm. It's got the Centauri A logo behind the crest." He drew one point of the crest along the steel roof brace, examined both the point and the scratch it made.
"And
it's genuine hullmetal," he said with a sigh, handing the ring and penlight across to Skyler.

"Could be stolen," Skyler offered, but even as he said it he felt uncertainty returning. He'd been a hundred percent sure... but the ring dropped that to eighty percent, and he couldn't justify a quick execution with those odds. "I still don't think he should come with us."

"Okay. We leave him for interrogation when we get back?"

"I suppose—" Skyler broke off as something on Valentine's ring caught his eye.

"What is it?" Novak asked.

"Examine the eyes," Skyler said quietly, handing the ring and light back.

"They're just the usual slitted-pupils carved into the metal," the other said. For a long moment he studied the ring in silence; and when he looked up his face was carved from black ice. "The original eyes have been removed," he said softly. "These were grafted in afterward. This used to be a comsquare's ring."

"Or a tactor's, or even a secturion's—they may have had to scour the whole TDE for a captured dragonhead that would fit him."

"Deliberate deception." Novak's voice was hard. "That pretty well settles the issue, I guess. We've been compromised—and we're going to have to modify our plans."

Skyler grimaced. "I know. I've been trying all afternoon to come up with something else that might work."

"Then you haven't been trying. The answer's obvious." Novak explained.

"No." Skyler shook his head. "Out of the question."

Novak snorted impatiently. "You're trying to be noble, but you're just wasting time. It's the only way we're going to clear an escape route all the way out of town, and you know it."

Skyler did; but that didn't make it easier to accept. "I can't allow—"

"Rafe," Novak said quietly, "if Jensen's being tortured in there I want to get him out—or to give him a clean death. He's my friend—please let me take this risk for him."

Skyler sighed. "All right," he said at last. "We'll leave the car here—it's probably known. We can get another vehicle easily enough." Steeling himself, Skyler drew a knife from its forearm sheath.
Execution of a spy is not murder,
he told himself. "Valentine stays too, of course."

He raised the knife, but Novak touched his arm. "I'll do it," the other said grimly. "I consider it his fault Jensen got captured."

A few minutes later, bags of equipment and explosives over their shoulders, the two blackcollars exited from opposite sides of the car and started down the street.

Behind its outer wall and courtyard the ten-story government building stood dark against Millaire's skyline, its only lighted windows those on the first three floors. Gazing at it from the vacant office building across the street, Skyler once more checked the floor plan they'd found among their car's maps. "You know where you're heading?" he asked the shadow beside him.

Novak nodded. "First floor west; control room and secondary support column." His voice was calm, his hands steady as he checked the ties on his shoulder-slung bundle. The bundle worried Skyler; even wrapped in the late Valentine's flexarmor, the high-explosives it contained could be set off prematurely by a direct laser blast. But they hadn't had time to put together anything safer.

"Okay." There was a great deal more to be said, but Skyler could sense Novak didn't want to hear it. Swallowing hard, Skyler contented himself with a brief gripping of the other's shoulder. Then, silently, he led the way back outside.

Their diversionary blasts began right on schedule, sending dull roars one at a time from selected spots a few blocks from the government building. By the third blast the flow of Security men through the wall's mesh gate had begun; by the seventh it had dropped to a trickle.

"Quite a show," Novak murmured through his gas filter as they crouched in an alleyway. "Maybe they really
have
emptied the building."

"Maybe. It's a bunch less to deal with, anyway." Taking a deep breath, Skyler thumbed the safety off the radio detonator they'd rigged up. "Here goes." Flattening himself against the wall beside Novak, he flipped the switch.

The blue-white flash lit up the streets as the sound of the blast echoed through the tall buildings like a mad ricochet. Skyler shot a quick glance around the corner and then was off and running toward the fading red glow where their handmade shaped charge had blown a hole through the wall a quarter of the way around from the gate. Through the ringing in his ears he could hear excited shouts from the guards there. For perhaps a few more seconds, though, they wouldn't realize the script had been changed.... Skidding to a halt, Skyler leaned over and thrust his arms and torso through the hole; a tight fit, but he knew he could make it. Novak, arriving half a second behind him, grabbed his legs and pushed, shoving him unceremoniously through onto the ground. Scrambling up into a crouch, Skyler looked around. The courtyard was deserted and, except for a gravel path just inside the wall, basically featureless. Behind him, Novak's bundle came through the hole, followed by Novak himself. "How's it look?" he whispered, slinging the package over his shoulder again.

"No obvious defenses; probably needle mines everywhere except under this path." Skyler pointed toward the building. "That looks like the emergency exit the map showed. Let's go—and stay in my footprints in case there's something stronger than needle mines out there."

Like twin ghosts, they set off across the courtyard... and around by the gate, Security slowly began to realize that something had gone wrong.

Jensen became aware only gradually that the latest cycle of questioning was over, bringing with it an end to the debilitating flow of emetics that had been turning his stomach inside out for the past hour. He took a slow breath, forcing his battered digestive system to unknot and trying to ignore the smell of vomit in his nostrils. Characteristically, the collies had turned the lights back on so that he could see what he had done to himself. A wasted refinement; he was too tired to keep his eyes open, anyway.

From in front of him came the sound of a door opening and a light breeze swept over him, inducing a violent shiver. Raising his head against the weakness in his muscles, he saw Prefect Galway enter the interrogation cell and close the door behind him. Stepping over the mess on the floor, he moved to Jensen's right and sat down on a small stool facing the blackcollar. A gunbelt, Jensen noted, was secured to his waist.

For a moment the prefect studied him in silence. "Not easy, is it?" he said at last, his almost conversational tone sounding distant in Jensen's ears. "Pain-block techniques don't work very well against an indirect pain like vomiting."

"They work well enough," Jensen rasped. "It's still too early to start gloating."

Galway shook his head. "I don't gloat over pain. If I'd had my way you'd already be dead."

Jensen blinked back the tears of fatigue and tried to read the other's face. But there was no malice there; nothing but grimness and—Jensen thought—a touch of compassion. "Thank you," he said, and meant it.

"Don't bother," Galway retorted. "If I thought you knew anything worthwhile I wouldn't mind them getting it out of you any way they could. But all we're really doing is humiliating you for no justifiable reason. It's a waste of time and ties down far too many men."

"Afraid I'll escape?" Jensen asked. The picture of him breaking out of Security HQ in this condition almost made him smile.

"Actually, yes." Galway drew his laser from its holster, checked the safety, and laid the weapon in his lap. "Skyler and Novak are across the street right now, preparing to launch a rescue attempt."

Jensen's already sore stomach muscles felt knotted up. No—that couldn't be. Galway had to be lying.

The prefect apparently misinterpreted Jensen's expression. "Oh, don't get any false hopes—they can't possibly succeed. We know their penetration plan and one of our spies is with them. The minute they move we'll have them in a pincer maneuver that'll trap them between the outer wall and a squadron of battle-armored troops, away from any possible cover. They won't get close enough for you to hear the noise."

Jensen dropped his eyes to the laser in Galway's lap. "Then why are you here?"

Galway's smile was bitter. "I underestimated you once. I'm not going to do it again. Prefect Apostoleris still doesn't understand how dangerous you are—perhaps because four of his spies have fooled one of you all these years. Whatever the reason, he still expects you to think and act in straight lines. And to behave like normal humans."

"Whereas we're really elfin changelings, of course." A wave of nausea swept over Jensen, and he clenched his teeth until it had passed.

"You're joking, but there's a grain of truth there all the same. The more I see you in action the more I believe your training did something permanent to your minds. Made you... different. Monomaniacal, perhaps."

"Why? Because we don't roll over and die for the convenience of the Ryqril?" Jensen shook his head tiredly. "Read your history, Galway. Human beings have never taken kindly to conquest. Guerrilla fighters have always harassed invaders, usually more successfully than their numbers would have indicated."

"Granted—but guerrillas need some measure of popular support and require the morale boost of frequent raids against the enemy. On Plinry you had neither, and yet could put together a devastating attack on a few hours' notice." Galway picked up his laser, ran a thumb thoughtfully along the muzzle. "Did you know my father was a member of the military study group in 2414 that made the blackcollar proposal? He was one of three dissenters, actually—he thought we should expand the Walking Tank program instead."

A short bark escaped Jensen's lips.
"There
was a fiasco. There must be forty separate ways for an antiarmor missile to track a man in a fighting suit, and the Ryqril knew every one of them. There wasn't a single ground battle after Navarre where the Walkers weren't wiped out within the first half hour. Fighting suits are expensive suicide."

"I know. I wish he'd had his way, though. Plinry's had enough grief without the trouble you're about to bring down on her." Galway's eyes fixed on Jensen's with sudden intensity. "Or don't you care what the Ryqril will do to Plinry because of you?"

"You can't lay the blame for Ryqril reprisals on our shoulders," Jensen said. "This is war, and we have a job to do. If you expect to make us tuck tail and slink off by threatening innocent people you aren't even worthy of contempt."

"You misunderstand me," Galway said, his voice quiet again. "I'm not trying to influence your actions. You're hearing this
because
you won't be rejoining your friends; because I—" He paused, then went on, "I suppose because I wanted someone to know that just because I've been loyalty-conditioned doesn't mean I don't care about the people of Plinry. I care a great deal—too much to see them suffer because of a showy mission that can't succeed. That's why I want all of you dead before you can cause any more trouble. The reprisals might be a little lighter."

For a moment Jensen remained silent, pain and fatigue almost forgotten. "You talk the high road well—I'll give you that much. But how much is truth and how much rationalization for something your conditioning forces you to do anyway?"

"I didn't expect you to understand—" Galway broke off suddenly, his gaze focused on infinity. A moment later Jensen heard it too: a faint sound of running footsteps. Scooping up his laser, Galway slid off the stool into a crouching position, extending the weapon toward the door in stiff-armed marksman fashion. Heart pounding, Jensen took a deep breath and drew his last reserves of strength into readiness for one final surge.