The Blackcollar

CHAPTER 9

The freighter's navigational computer put the distance to Argent as six parsecs. A Corsair would make the trip in three days; Caine's old passenger liner could have done it in seven. The freighter, designed for fuel efficiency rather than speed, took almost twelve.

There were twelve exceptionally busy days, however. While most of the eleven blackcollars aboard worked at organizing the equipment they'd brought along, Lathe detailed Skyler and Novak to give Caine a condensed version of blackcollar training. It was an intensive course, straining Caine's mnemonic and fighting skills to the limit. He learned the blackcollar combat codes, both tingler and hand signal forms; was given new unarmed fighting techniques and drilled in their use; and acquired at least a modest proficiency with nunchaku, slingshot, and shuriken. In between lessons he spent his time getting to know his fellow travelers... and asking carefully worded questions.

"Oh, yeah, me and Tardy go back to before the war. He knew every still on Plinry, and we used to steal the whiskey from 'em and use it as a primer in our bombs. Lathe? No, I didn't meet him till after the amnesty...."

"...Seems to me Lathe and Dodds had adjacent units—somewhere in the New Karachi area, I think. I didn't know either of them until I started coming to the lodge get-togethers...."

"...Dodds was always a quiet sort; never worked out with us at the lodge. I hear a nerve gas attack laid him out during the war and sort of scrambled his fighting reflexes. Smart guy, though, and he and Lathe get along pretty well. Sure, I've known Lathe a long time—we were standing in line together for the collie interrogation...."

And so it went, until Caine was forced to the inescapable conclusion that no one aboard had ever heard of Lathe or Dodds until after the war.

The revelation wasn't all that remarkable, of course. Plinry had started with three hundred blackcollars—twenty-five of the standard twelve-man guerrilla teams—and with only thirty-one left it was reasonable that several of them would be the sole survivors of their units. Still, combined with Lathe's steadfast refusal to discuss Dodds's special mission, this new bit of information made Caine uneasy.

Three days out from Argent, when he finally finished decoding the Plinry record, he put the eight critical numbers—six spatial, two temporal—into a special mental file. Six hours of self-hypnosis later, it was ringed by a series of psycho-mental blocks that no drug or neurotrace could break before killing him.

No one—neither Lathe nor anyone else—would get those numbers until Caine was good and ready to give them up.

Argent was a bright speck with a clearly discernible disk when the freighter reentered normal space. Chelsey Jensen, at the helm, set the computer to working out an approach curve, and then punched for a schematic of the system. "That one's Argent," he told Caine, tapping the second planet. "Third or fourth most Earthlike world in the TDE and a real goldmine of minerals. The place was filthy rich before the war."

"Hmm." The schematic showed twelve more planets plus a strangely shaped haze. "What's that?" Caine asked, pointing to the latter.

"It's an asteroid belt, called the Diamond Ring for obvious reasons."

"What makes it bunch like that instead of distributing itself more evenly?"

"No idea. Made mining a lot easier, though, with so much of the stuff concentrated in one place. Ten to one it's where your Novas are hidden, too."

"Maybe. A good place to run guerrilla raids from, too."

In his mind's eye Caine could see tiny fighters appearing from nowhere to strike at the Ryqril forces—

"Not really. Asteroid belts aren't that dense; even the Diamond there is mostly empty space, and a ship moving with any decent drive trail would be trivial to track You'd do better hiding in a swamp or forest down on Argent."

The heroic vision vanished. "Oh. Is that what we're going to do, then?"

"Yes and no," a new voice said, and Caine turned as Lathe came up the tight spiral staircase. "We'll hide someplace like that for a day or so until we can contact the local underground."

Caine blinked. "You've been in touch with Argent's underground?"

Lathe gave him an odd look. "Of course not. We've been isolated on Plinry; you know that."

"But you just said—" Caine snapped his fingers. "Oh, of course. Dodds. He's already here, isn't he?"

"Caine, you have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions." Lathe turned to Jensen. "Situation?"

"The autopilot's taking us in," Jensen said, studying the readouts. "ETA of fifteen hours. Of course, we'll be challenged long before then."

"All right. Go get some rest and finish your preparations; I'll have Spadafora watch things here. Be back in nine hours."

"Right." With one last glance at the instruments Jensen crossed the room and vanished down the stairway.

"You, too," Lathe told Caine. "Go to the cargo bay and help get the drop pods ready."

"I want to be here when you talk to the planet," Caine said.

Lathe shrugged. "Okay. Just make sure you're in your flexarmor, ready to go."

Thirty minutes out of Argent's main traffic orbits, the call finally came. "Unidentified freighter on vector two-eight-zero, plus four-mark-nine, this is Argent Space Control. Identify yourselves."

Jensen gestured to the hand mike clamped to the control board. Picking it up, Lathe glanced at Caine and thumbed it on. "This is Trader First Class Donovan; special cargo from Magna Graecia. Request priority orbit insertion away from major lanes."

"Your landing ID code?"

"I have none. This is a special cargo, as I said. I was given a code number and told to repeat it only to the Security Prefect's office."

Caine could almost hear the traffic controller sit up straighter. "Understood. Ringing Security now," he said. A minute passed and a new voice came on the speaker. "Security Prefect's office; Lieutenant Peron. What's this about a special cargo?"

"That's right," Lathe said. "Special and hazardous. The code gamma-twelve should identify it to you."

"Who gave you that code?"

"A Graecian Security officer—called himself Hydra. Look, he's down there somewhere; just get him over there and he'll confirm it."

There was a short pause. "We have no agent with that code name," he said, suspicion creeping into his voice. "Are you sure he was a genuine Security agent?"

"Positive, but I told you he works out of Magna Graecia, not Argent. He said he'd fly on ahead to get all the paperwork done so I could get rid of this stuff."

Another pause. "One moment."

Lathe turned off his mike. "Jensen, call down and order everyone into the pods. I don't know how long I can keep them running in circles down there, and we may need to break fast."

Jensen nodded and began speaking softly into the intercom. Glancing out the viewport, Caine could see the edge of Argent's blue-and-white disk, now less than a hundred thousand kilometers distant. A big, dangerous world—and the fact that he would be with eleven blackcollars didn't seem nearly as reassuring as it had a few days ago.

At the control board, the speaker again came to life. "This is Colonel Eakins, Assistant Security Prefect for Argent. Can you tell me anything more about this Hydra?"

"I can describe him for you," Lathe offered, launching into a three-minute description which seemed, to Caine, to be that of Plinry's Prefect Galway. Perhaps, he thought, Lathe did have a sense of humor. "But if he's not already down there I don't know what's happened."

"It's possible he works directly under the Ryqril military governor," Eakins rumbled. "We'll send a message there right away. In the meantime, you're cleared for deep polar orbit; we'll feed course data to your computer."

A two-tone signal acknowledged receipt. "Thank you," Lathe said. "And make sure everyone else stays clear of me. This stuff is damn touchy and I don't want a drive backwash anywhere near it."

There was a short silence. "I think I understand," Eakins said. "Very well. Argent out."

Lathe shut off the mike and replaced it in its clamps. "Just about in orbit," Jensen reported. "When do you want to head in?"

Lathe rubbed his dragonhead ring thoughtfully. "Let's hold off as long as possible," he suggested. "If we can study the territory we'll have a better chance of finding a good landing spot."

"Right." Jensen hit some switches and four display screens came to life.

Lathe glanced at Caine before turning to the screens. "Caine, go to the bay and get into your pod. I don't want you hanging around here until the last minute and then rushing to get strapped in."

Caine nodded. "Okay. See you below." He hesitated. "Good luck, Jensen," he added.

The drop pods were shaped like truncated cones, each about three meters tall with a two-meter-diameter base. There were five of them crowded by the cargo hatch: two four-passenger models and three which would be carrying cargo plus one passenger. Jensen, who would still be flying when the others left, had a smaller pod stashed in the bridge's emergency lock.

The others were already in their places, and from the open pod doors came rustlings as straps and buckles were adjusted and double-checked. Crossing the floor, Caine peered into the narrow door of his pod. "There room for me in there yet?" he called.

From the shadows inside, Skyler waved an arm. "Sure; come on up."

Stepping up over the pod's thick ceramic heat shield, Caine squeezed through the opening and sidled a step to his right, twisting and ducking to avoid the three-dimensional maze of cables, straps, and bars hanging from the ceiling. Wedging himself between Vale and Novak, he strapped into his harness.

And then came the waiting.

Listening to the quiet conversation in the pod, studying the blackcollars' faces, Caine was struck as never before by the underlying similarity between these men. Underneath their differences in style and manner was a deep feeling of what? Strength, he decided, combined perhaps with a casual confidence—qualities hard to reconcile with the raging warriors of the legends. A bit disappointing, he had to admit, and yet, the quietness was somehow reassuring.

They had been waiting nearly an hour when the pod abruptly jerked to the side as Jensen threw the freighter into a maneuver too fast for the artificial gravity to quite compensate. Conversation cut off instantly, and Caine could hear the muted whine of straining engines.

"This is it," Novak, by the pod door, announced grimly. He seemed unusually tense, but Caine knew it had nothing to do with the upcoming ride. He'd noted earlier in the trip that a special friendship existed between Jensen and Novak... and for several minutes after the others were gone Jensen was going to be a hellishly big target. "Shall I seal up?"

"Wait'll Lathe gets here," Skyler told him.

Seconds later the bay door slid open. "Button up, everyone," Lathe called, loping to his pod. "Jensen will blow the hatch in less than a minute. When you pop, head due west."

Novak reached out and pulled the door closed, plunging the pod into darkness. In his imagination Caine could see patrol ships diving toward them, threatening to open fire. Jensen would be stalling for time, claiming mechanical trouble, trying to get them in as close as possible—

And with a dull blast the pod gave a spine-wrenching lurch. An instant later they were tumbling through space, twisting violently as the freighter's turbulence caught them.

Fortunately, it was only a few seconds before the pod settled into a relatively stable vertical position, with air resistance providing a small but noticeable effective weight. Outside, Caine could hear the faint hiss of air whipping by, and it was all he could do to keep from reminding Skyler to watch the altitude gauge.

The minutes dragged by Caine's weight increased steadily as the pod slowed, and he could feel the floor heating up beneath him. The air around them was getting warm, too, and the scream of their passage made conversation impossible. Gripping the straps of his harness, Caine tried to relax.

"Stand by chute!" Skyler had to shout to be heard. "Three, two, one—"

The first tug, as the drogue popped, was fairly gentle; the second, as the main chute snapped open, jammed Caine hard into his harness. Almost instantly the scream outside dropped to a whisper as full gravity returned. Getting his slightly trembling legs under him again, Caine took a careful breath. "Some ride," he commented.

"You think so?" Skyler said. His face, visible in the faint light of the luminous gauges, showed no more strain than his voice did. "We're thinking of selling it to an amusement center. Okay. We're two klicks up, breakout's at one-five. Forty seconds—everyone set?"

There were three affirmatives, and for a moment the pod was silent. "Five seconds, brace yourselves."

Caine tightened his grip on his harness and with a jerk the pod's walls split from floor to ceiling. The floor disintegrated, and the sudden inflow of air snapped the walls up like a broken umbrella. Still fastened by the harness to his section of wall, Caine was thrown outwards as the pod fell apart in midair.

He had time only to notice that they had come in on Argent's night side before something snapped in the wall section which now hung over his head, and, with a loud hissing of compressed air and the clicking of spring-loaded connectors, a shadowy wing unrolled and stiffened above him. Within seconds, Caine found himself lying horizontally in his harness, gliding swiftly through the cold night air.

"Caine, you're pointed the wrong way," Skyler's voice said in his ear. "Turn about twenty degrees left."

The plastic control bar hung just in front of him, and Caine felt a touch of trepidation as he grasped it with both hands. He'd trained with grav belts back on Earth, but they were a far cry from hang gliders. Gingerly, he pulled on the bar—

The glider turned sharply left, and Caine got a glimpse of other dark wing shapes as he swung past the indicated direction. "Easy, easy," Skyler said. "The steering is very sensitive."

"Read that 'touchy,' " Caine muttered. He tried again and this time came around more smoothly.

"Good. One more tap and you should be on course."

Caine did so and then took a moment to search the sky. "I only see two other gliders," he said. "Where is everyone?"

"Well, I'm above and behind you," Skyler told him. "You can't expect all the pods to come down within eyeshot of each other. That's why someone always pops early, to act as spotter."

A new voice cut in. "Skyler, this is Kwon. Hit your UV, will you? Okay, turn it off. Your group together?"

"Affirmative," Skyler answered.

"Okay. Shift south; you're about half a klick north of O'Hara. Lathe? Okay; you're ahead of O'Hara, so just hold course. Haven?" Pause. "Yo, Haven? Your UV?"

"Must be broken," Haven's voice came back. "It's okay, though; I can see Skyler ahead and left of me."

"All right," Lathe said. "Our target is a wooded area about two klicks north of a medium-sized town. It's about thirty klicks away—a bit of a stretch—but we spotted some hotspots from the ship, so hopefully we'll get some assist from thermals. Kwon'll signal via tingler if the IR shows anything promising. Strict radio silence once we're back in tight formation."

The two gliders ahead of Caine had turned about fifteen degrees; carefully, he matched the maneuver. "Good turn," Skyler commented. "Not hard to pick up, is it?"

"No. Uh, Skyler, what exactly are we going to do once we get to this town?"

"Contact the local underground, of course."

"Fine, but how do we do that? Just walk up to a local and ask for directions?"

The blackcollar chuckled. "Not at all. It's simpler to let ourselves get captured."

And with that the radio went silent. "Great," Caine muttered to himself, and then settled down to concentrate on his flying.

Like black-winged wraiths the eleven gliders slid silently along between the stars and the dark landscape.