Zahn, Timothy - The Blackcollar

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The Blackcollar

Timothy Zahn

The Blackcollar

CHAPTER 1

Blazing down from a clear blue sky, the mid-morning sun seemed to be making only token effort to

drive away the cold snap that had interrupted spring for most of central Europe. Tightening his collar

against the northerly wind blowing off Lake Geneva, Allen Caine picked up his pace a bit. It would

have been nice to ride at least part of the way, but only the uninformed waited for autocabs in

eastern New Geneva on Victory Day. Most of the vehicles had been preempted early in the day to

take government officials to the stadium for the annual rally celebrating the end of the Terran-Ryqril

war. Caine had half expected the cold to keep participation to a minimum—loyalty-conditioning

didn't extend to anything as trivial as rallys—but there would be several Ryqril there and New

Geneva's officials clearly knew which side of their bread should stay off the carpet. Already Caine

had heard the muffled roars of two cheers, and he was a good three kilometers from the stadium. An

amazingly unashamed display of hypocrisy, he thought bitterly; and at this, the twenty-ninth year of

such pageantry, one of the longest lived. A visiting stranger would have concluded the Terran

Democratic Empire had won the war.

The streets at this end of town were bustling with business as usual—the common people treated

Victory Day with sullen indifference—and Caine had no trouble blending into the throng. He'd only

come to New Geneva two weeks ago—a slightly late twenty-sixth birthday present, he considered

the trip—but already he felt like a native. Like every other group of people on Earth, this one had its

own characteristic gestures and mannerisms, the learning of which had been Caine's most recent

task. Combined with his clean-cut appearance, such preparation would permit him to pass, if

necessary, as a student, a rising young executive, or—if he trimmed his beard in the proper

fashion—a member of one of the city's semi-professional guilds. Of course, it wasn't really a

question of whether or not he could pass muster on this side of the city, but since he wouldn't be

crossing to the government end for some weeks yet, he wasn't especially worried. Presumably he'd

be prepared for that by then.

His clothes were a bit on the thin side, but Caine arrived at his destination before he was too badly

chilled. Sandwiched between two bars in a lower-middle-class part of town was a small tape-and-

book store with faded volumes of Dickens and Heinlein in the front window. Entering, Caine stood

just inside the door a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the relative darkness. A few meters away,

lounging by his cash register, the store's proprietor eyed him. "Getting any warmer out there?" he

asked.

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"Not really," Caine replied, glancing around the store. Three or four other men were browsing

among the shelves. Looking back at the owner, he raised his eyebrows. The other gave a fractional

nod and Caine moved off down one of the two aisles, pretending to study the titles as he did so.

Taking his time, he worked his way to the back. There, half hidden behind a wide shelf, was a door

with a faded "Employees Only" sign taped to it. Waiting until all the customers were facing away

from him, Caine slipped silently through the door and into the cluttered stockroom beyond. He

squatted down in the middle of the old tile floor and gave a gentle push on one of the tiles. Clearly,

he was expected; the two-meter square of concrete floor pivoted open without resistance. He stepped

into the pit, his feet finding the wooden stairs there. Crouching down, he let the concrete block rotate

shut above him; and as he did so a metal bar slid silently across its underside, locking the trap door

in place. Turning, Caine headed down the dimly lit stairway.

A short hallway awaited him at the bottom of the stairs; and at the end of the hall was a door.

Opening it, Caine stepped through into a dark room. The door closed itself behind him.

And abruptly a blinding light flashed on. He threw an arm up to protect his eyes and took an

involuntary step backward. "Who are you?" a voice demanded.

Caine's response was immediate. "I'm Alain Rienzi, aide to Senator Auriol," he snapped. "Get that

damn light out of my face!"

The spotlight winked out and other, more muted lights came on. Through the purple blob floating

before his eyes Caine could dimly see three men and a woman seated around a low table.

"Excellent," one of the men said, fiddling with a shoebox-sized gadget. "No hesitation, no

recognizable 'liar's stress,' and just the right amount of arrogance. He's ready, Morris."

Another man nodded and gestured to Caine. "Sit down, Allen," he said in a gravelly voice.

Caine took the indicated chair and looked around at the others, and as his eyes recovered, his heart

began to beat faster. This was no routine meeting; the four people facing him were probably the top

Resistance leaders in all of Europe. The man with the box was Bruno Hurlimann, a former captain in

the Terran Star Force; the second man was Raul Marinos, who'd been planning and executing

sabotage operations against the government and even the Ryqril's own military bases for most of the

past twenty-nine years; the woman was Jayne Gibbs, a former member of the long-since dissolved

Parliament; and "Morris" was General Morris Kratochvil himself, the last commander of Earth's

final defense efforts. None of them looked their proper ages, of course; despite government controls,

enough bootlegged Idunine was getting to the Resistance via the black market to keep even the

ninety-two-year-old Kratochvil at the biological equivalent of forty. Caine had met all four of them

at one time or another, but he'd never seen them together in one place. Something important must be

happening.

General Kratochvil might have been reading Caine's mind. "I'm afraid your orientation has come to

an abrupt end, Allen," he said. "We're moving things up drastically. All the cards have unexpectedly

fallen into place, and you're going to be leaving for Plinry in just under twenty hours."

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Caine's mouth felt a little dry. "I thought I was going to have to replace Alain Rienzi first for a few

weeks."

"So did we," the general said, "but it turns out that's not going to be necessary. Rienzi left yesterday

on a private vacation and doesn't seem to have told anyone where he was going. It was the perfect

opportunity, and we decided to take it."

So much for the rest of his training... but if he wasn't going to be spending much time with

government people he could probably get by without it. "You've got Rienzi tucked away?"

Marinos nodded. "Picked him up this morning. No problems." He gestured to an envelope on the

table. "There's his ID—suitably altered, of course—and the rest of your stuff."

Caine picked up the package, careful not to bump the mushroom-shaped "bug stomper" which sat in

the table's center, electronically blanking out any nearby monitoring devices. Opening the envelope,

he withdrew a blue ID, a wallet containing both government and personal credit plates and several

hundred marks in crisp TDE banknotes, and an unconfirmed ticket for the distant world of Plinry.

"The ticket is basically just a reservation," Marinos explained. "You'll need to have your ID checked

at the 'port before you can board."

The face on the ID was long and a bit thin, framed by a carefully coiffured mass of brown hair—a

clean-shaven replica of Caine's own. But there were also a set of thumbprints and retinal patterns

sealed under the supposedly tamper-proof plastic—and those patterns were duplicated in a heavily

guarded computer system not ten kilometers away. "You're sure my prints and patterns have made it

into the government's records?" he asked Marinos.

"It's all been taken care of," the other said, his offhand tone belying the difficulty of what must have

been one hell of a job. Broaching Ryqril security was no joke.

"We don't yet have authorization for you to examine the Plinry archives," Kratochvil said, "but it'll

be here by six this evening. If you're lucky all you'll have to do is walk in, spin your yarn about a

book, pull the proper record, and cut out." He gave Caine a tight smile. "In practice it's never that

easy, of course. But I expect you'll be able to handle most problems they throw at you."

Caine nodded. Though he'd never been on any actual missions, he'd had the best combat and psycho-

mental training the Resistance could offer. "What's the latest military situation, and how is it likely

to affect conditions on Plinry? The Ryqril will probably have a base there, right?"

"We expect so, but it shouldn't bother you any." Kratochvil turned to Hurlimann. "Captain?"

"The reports of a big Ryqril victory over the Chryselli near Regulus appear to be true," Hurlimann

said, his manner reminding Caine of a college lecturer. "However, it seems to have cost more than

they admit. Already they've pulled two Elephant-class troop carriers and a full wing of Corsairs from

various bases on Earth and sent them off, presumably to the Chryselli front. If there's a base on

Plinry the same sort of mobilization may be going on there. But that shouldn't be a problem; as long

as you've got the proper papers any extra confusion will be to your advantage." He smiled. "And for

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our purposes, the more the Ryqril are tied up in Chryselli territory, the better."

"As I said, the cards are falling right," Kratochvil said. "By the time you get back with the

information we hope to have crews ready to leave." He glanced around at the others. "Was there

anything else?"

"Assistance on Plinry," Jayne Gibbs murmured.

"Oh, yes. Allen, we haven't had any contact with Plinry since it was captured thirty-five years ago,

so we don't know what you're going to be walking into. We expect a political structure like

Earth's—a group of Ryqril ruling through a loyalty-conditioned human government—but we have

no way of confirming that. If you have any problems you should try to contact whatever

underground has been put together there and enlist their aid."

"Assuming there is one," Caine pointed out.

"True," Kratochvil admitted. "Still, I have hopes that General Avril Lepkowski survived the planet's

capture. Mark that name, Allen; if Plinry has an underground, Lepkowski will probably be the man

in charge of it. There were also nearly three hundred blackcollars there at the end—some of them

may also still be alive."

Blackcollars. Caine straightened a bit at the word. He'd never met any of those superbly trained

guerrilla warriors, but their wartime exploits were legendary. Only a few still existed on Earth, and

most of those had destroyed their uniforms and disappeared into the general population. The handful

who remained in active service were reportedly harassing the hell out of the Ryqril in North

America.

Kratochvil was still speaking. "I'll try to get a few more names of people who may be on Plinry

before tonight. I'll also make up a micro-letter of introduction for you in case you find General

Lepkowski. It'll be a bit risky to carry, I'm afraid, but I think it'll be worth having. Of course, that

decision's up to you." He stood up, Caine and the others following suit. "I think that's all we can do

right now. Be here at six tonight for the rest of your papers and any final instructions we can think

up. You might as well keep the beard until then; it's unlikely you'll run into any of Rienzi's

acquaintances out here but there's no point in taking chances. Also, starting at noon today we'll be on

a two-hour security cycle in the bookstore upstairs. Watch for that."

"I understand."

"Good." The general reached over the table and grasped Caine's hand. "I may not be here tonight

when you arrive, so I'll say my farewells now. You're very valuable to us, Allen, and of course we

want you to be careful and protect yourself. But at the same time, this is probably the most important

mission we've undertaken in twenty years, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that any chances for

a free Earth depend on you. We may never again be able to send a person off-planet on this kind of

quiet probe, and you know the impossibility of getting the information by force. Don't let us down."

Caine looked the general straight in the eye as he shook the other's hand. Kratochvil's brown eyes

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were clear, alert, and—thanks to Idunine—relatively young. But there was something else there, too,

something no youth drug could touch. Ninety-two years of life, thirteen of them spent in a losing war

and another twenty-nine endured under enemy rule, had aged those eyes in a way that suddenly

made Caine feel like a child again, and the confident statement he'd been about to make evaporated

from his lips. "I'll do my best, sir," he murmured instead.

It was five to six as Caine, buffeted by the usual throngs of homeward-bound workers, once again

approached the bookstore. The Victory Day festivities had long since ended, and the streets were

once again buzzing with autocabs and the occasional private car. The pedestrian traffic wouldn't

clear out for at least another hour, he knew; plenty of time to slip in, get his remaining papers, and

still have a crowd to lose himself in when he left.

He was almost there, and was starting to work his way through the press so he could cross the street,

when something in the window froze the breath in his lungs. With a two-hour cycle, the window

display would have changed three times since his morning visit. By now the Heinlein should have

been rotated ninety degrees and a tape cassette should be resting against the Dickens. But the

cassette wasn't there; the display was still in its two o'clock position. Someone forgot, was his first

hopeful thought; but it emerged stillborn. There was only one explanation, and he knew it.

Sometime in the past four hours, the bookstore had been raided.

The possibility of such a thing had always been there, of course, but it had never before happened

this close to him and the shock was numbing. In the absence of conscious control his training took

over, walking him past the bookstore without any visible hesitation, and by the time his brain began

to clear he was two blocks away and safe.

Safe. But for how long? If the government had been watching the bookstore they knew he'd been

there four times in the past two weeks. Even if they didn't yet attach any significance to that they

would eventually find out about him. Surely at least one of the four Resistance leaders had been

there when the Security forces came, and was probably even now undergoing verifin or neurotrace

interrogation. Caine had to escape... but to where? The Resistance had established numerous

boltholes, but none of them could be trusted now. Kratochvil and the others had had the best psychor

training available, but even that wouldn't hold against a neurotrace reader for very long. Eventually,

they would break... and when they did the government would be able to hunt him down anywhere on

Earth.

It took a second for that to sink in; and as it did so Caine became aware of the thick packet in his

inside coat pocket. Rienzi's ID, a small supply of money... and a round-trip ticket to Plinry. Clearly,

if Kratochvil had been captured, the Resistance in this area was probably doomed—but that didn't

necessarily mean his mission was. If he could enlist the aid of General Lepkowski and the Plinry

underground, there was still a slight chance of pulling this off. Slight, hell—microscopic. But what

other choices were left? And if it fell apart anyway, he would at least have the minor satisfaction of

making the Ryqril chase him down over eight parsecs of space.

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TheBlackcollarTimothyZahnTheBlackcollarCHAPTER1Blazingdownfromaclearbluesky,themid-morningsunseemedtobemakingonlytokenefforttodriveawaythecoldsnapthathadinterruptedspringformostofcentralEurope.TighteninghiscollaragainstthenortherlywindblowingoffLakeGeneva,AllenCainepickeduphispaceabit.Itwouldhave...

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Zahn, Timothy - The Blackcollar

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