Zahn, Timothy - Blackcollar 2 - The Backlash Mission

VIP免费

2024-12-01 0 0 621.05KB 246 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

Timothy Zahn

BLACKCOLLAR:

THE BACKLASH MISSION

For Uncle Timmy—

Who locked up the mountain and then gave me the key.

Prologue

The wind coming northward over Ralston Buttes had been increasing steadily throughout the night,

shifting gradually around toward the west with the promise of bad weather coming in behind it.

Lying flat on his belly beneath one of the surrounding pine trees, Lonato Kanai listened as the

branches scratched at his flexarmor battle-hood and peered through the gloom at the darkened

mansion directly ahead. In an hour—maybe sooner—the storm would arrive, drenching the whole

Denver plateau and turning the slope he was on into fairly obnoxious mud. But long before that

happened Kanai and his fellow blackcollars would be on their way home. It had taken them six

hours to crawl through the last hundred meters of forest, but now all the early-warning motion

sensors were behind them and the target lay open ahead.

Reasonably open, anyway. There were still the roof-mounted chain guns and hedge mines, their

infrared and ultrasonic autotarget systems waiting only for the intruders to move away from the

waving tree branches and onto the elaborately sculpted lawn. And, of course, inside the mansion

itself would be a dozen or more armed men.

Reaching to his left forearm, Kanai unlimbered the collapsed sniper's slingshot strapped there and

unfolded it, setting the brace against his arm and slipping a tiny lead sphere into the pouch. He'd

barely managed to make marksman rating during the war, but thirty years of practice had honed his

skills considerably. The nearest ultrasonic projector—a small tripartite horn—was nestled under the

eave, just barely visible in the cloud-reflected lights of Denver over the hills to the east. Eyes on the

projector, peripheral vision and other senses alert, Kanai eased his elbows into a less uncomfortable

position and waited for the signal.

It wasn't long in coming. Abruptly, the tingler on his right wrist came to life, tapping the dots and

file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E...ollar%202%20-%20The%20Backlash%20Mission.htm (1 of 246) [1/3/2005 12:23:25 AM]

Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

dashes of blackcollar combat code into two sections of skin: attack.

Even through the whistling wind Kanai heard the crack as his lead shot drilled its way deep into the

ultrasonic projector. Quickly he set up his second shot as the sounds of other freshly ruined sensors

reached him. Ahead, the side door that was their target was suddenly rimmed in red warning lights.

The nighttime sentry chief was right on top of things... for all the good it would do him. Kanai's

second shot arced lazily toward the door—slow enough for the antipersonnel motion sensors to pick

up—

And the eaves directly above the door exploded into a lethal cloud of flechettes.

The tiny metal darts were still ricocheting off the patio flagstones when the two black-clad men

flanking Kanai rose from cover and zigzagged off toward the mansion. On the rooftop a chain gun

began to track; an instant later its first salvo went wild as the impact of Kanai's shot knocked it a

couple of degrees off target. Beside the door a gunport slid open, and a scatter of flechettes sprayed

at the running men. Uselessly, of course, as the few darts that managed to connect were stopped by

their flexarmor. One of the attackers windmilled his arms, sending black throwing stars into the

gunport. The barrel sagged as the shuriken found a target... and then the runners were at the door,

one crouching beside it as the other slapped tiny shaped charges in an X pattern on the nearest

window. With luck, Kanai's elimination of some of the door's automatic defenses would delude the

mansion's defenders into expecting the main assault there.

The attackers dropped to the ground, and the window exploded with flashes.

It didn't shatter—the glasstic was too strong for that—but when the afterimages faded Kanai could

see the honeycomb of cracks there. A few good whacks with a nunchaku would finish the job... and

then only the inside defenders would be left.

Both attackers were on their feet now, flanking the window and flailing away at the glasstic with

their nunchaku. Kanai loaded another pellet into his slingshot, trying to watch everywhere at once

for the inevitable counterattack.

His tingler gave first warning: Bandits coming around north side. A second later they were there:

three of them, encased in heavy body armor, with flechette repeaters at the ready. Two came around

the corner into military kneeling stances, their repeaters laying down an inaccurate but intimidating

fire. The third stepped between them, a scud grenade clutched in his hand.

Amateurs. Behind his gas filter Kanai's lip twisted with contempt. Scud-grenade needles were a

danger even to flexarmor at sufficiently point-blank range, and armored as they were the defenders

were essentially invulnerable to the throwing stars and nunchaku of their attackers... and their blatant

overconfidence was going to kill all three of them. The man with the grenade armed it and swung his

arm back for an underhand throw—

And Kanai's tiny pellet slammed into his wrist.

Without hurting him, of course, through all that armor. But the impact was more than enough to

file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E...ollar%202%20-%20The%20Backlash%20Mission.htm (2 of 246) [1/3/2005 12:23:25 AM]

Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

knock the grenade from his casual grip and send it to the ground.

Kanai didn't see the thing go off; even at his distance he wasn't taking chances with scud needles

against his goggles, and he kept his face pressed into the grass until the deadly sleet had spent itself

against the trees around him. When he again looked up, all three armored defenders were lying

motionless on the ground. Shifting his eyes to the broken window, he was just in time to see the

second of the two black-clad men disappear inside the mansion.

Kanai: inside backup, his tingler signaled. Getting his feet under him, he sprinted across the lawn.

The roof chain gun remained unfocused; those who should have been manning it were apparently

busy elsewhere. Replacing his slingshot in its sheath as he ran, Kanai drew his nunchaku and

prepared his mind and reflexes for the shift from long-range to close-in fighting.

But for the moment, at least, the fighting was over. Four bodies decorated the floor near the window,

their weapons scattered about even more randomly. All four faces were familiar: street lice, the

cheapest and most expendable part of Reger's organization. Put into the attackers' path for the sole

purpose of slowing them down... which meant the real soldiers were farther in, waiting. Senses alert,

Kanai headed inward.

To find the "real soldiers" hadn't done any better than their amateur counterparts. Kanai passed three

more bodies, two of them still with deathgrips on their guns. All three had clearly been shooting

from cover... and all three now carried shuriken in vital spots. Shifting his nunchaku to his left hand,

Kanai drew out a pair of his own throwing stars—just in case—and continued on.

The sound of voices reached him half a hallway from the room where the trail ended. Conversational

voices—calm, even, incongruous amid the carnage. Reaching the room, Kanai looked in.

It was a tableau he'd seen time after weary time before in the last few years. The two black-clad men

stood at apparent ease a few meters from their middle-aged target victim, the five additional bodies

silently staining the carpet around them showing their casual stance for the illusion it was. The

attackers were always the same, the minor bodies might as well be; it was only the target victim who

ever changed.

At least, Kanai thought, this one isn't begging.

Manx Reger wasn't begging. Standing by his bed, a dressing gown thrown haphazardly on, he spoke

with the calm tones of a man who has already prepared himself for death. "So I'm overreaching

myself, am I?" he was saying to the leftmost of the men confronting him. "Has it occurred to you,

Bernhard, that you may be overreaching yourself?"

"I do what the contract calls for, Reger," Bernhard told him coldly. "No more, no less. Right now my

job is to tell you our client thinks you're eating too much of the black-market business in this

territory."

"Your 'client,' eh? Sartan, I suppose? Again?"

file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E...ollar%202%20-%20The%20Backlash%20Mission.htm (3 of 246) [1/3/2005 12:23:25 AM]

Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

Bernhard ignored the question. "So now I've told you. I suggest you do something about it." His

hand curved in signal and both black-clad men began moving back.

A cautious frown creased Reger's forehead. "You mean... that's it?"

"I was told to cut back your ambitions," Bernhard said quietly. "How I do that is my choice. Though

if I have to come back the results are likely to be more permanent."

"Ah. In other words, Sartan doesn't feel up to a full-scale war yet, is that it?" The older man snorted.

"Well, let me return his favor with a little advice. No one's succeeded in fencing Denver up as his

own private preserve for over two hundred years. Not in peacetime, not during the war, not in thirty

years of Ryqril occupation. If Sartan thinks he can do it he's going to get himself buried—and if you

get too closely tied to his muzzle you'll go the same way." He glanced at Kanai, and even across the

room Kanai could see the aura of age around those eyes. With regular Idunine doses, Reger's middle-

aged appearance meant nothing, of course, any more than Kanai's lithe body showed its own six

decades. How old was Reger, anyway? Old enough to have been trying for control of Denver's

underworld himself in the days before the Ryqril threat? Possibly. Maybe even probably.

Not that it mattered. The world had changed thirty years back, and it was Bernhard and Kanai who

knew how to operate in it now. Reger and his kind were the dinosaurs, doomed to ultimate

extinction.

"I'll give Sartan your words of wisdom," Bernhard told the older man, his tone lightly sarcastic. "Just

don't make us come back."

Another hand signal passed, and Kanai headed back the way he'd come, ready to clear out any new

threats Reger's men might have set up. But whatever firepower still existed in the mansion was

apparently still too shaken to offer fresh resistance. The three black-clad men made their way back

outside and into the woods surrounding Reger's now slightly damaged property. Kanai sensed, rather

than saw, the four backups withdrawing with them, and all seven men arrived at their hidden cars at

the same time.

"Well?" one of the backups asked.

"He'll fall into line," Bernhard said tiredly, pulling goggles and battle-hood off and massaging the

bridge of his nose. "And once he does, all the little quarter-mark operations on this side of Denver

should follow."

"At which point," someone else commented, "we'll have something real to play with."

"Or Sartan will," Bernhard said with just a hint of reproval. "Sartan's in charge of this, not us. Never

forget that."

A minute later they were all heading toward the sprawling metropolis of Denver to the southeast. In

the back seat, leaning against the right-hand door, Kanai stared moodily out the windshield as the

first drops of rain began to fall. So the big consolidation scheme was working. The promise of a

file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E...ollar%202%20-%20The%20Backlash%20Mission.htm (4 of 246) [1/3/2005 12:23:25 AM]

Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

better future... and all they had to do to achieve it was continue to be the most elite strong-arm force

the criminal world had ever known.

What a level, he thought, for blackcollars to sink to.

The universe seemed to agree with his assessment. Outside, the sky rained down bucketfuls of tears

against the car. Tears for the shamed warriors.

Chapter 1

"The blackcollar forces are the elite warriors of this upcoming conflict of ours—the best chance the

Terran Democratic Empire has of surviving the Ryqril war machine being launched against us."

For no particular reason the words flashed through Allen Caine's mind as he stood alone in the

darkness. Words of hope, spoken originally by the TDE's chief military head at the first Special

Forces Training Center commencement in 2416. The hope had been short-lived, of course. Two

years later the war had begun: thirteen more and Earth itself had finally surrendered to the

humiliation of Ryqril occupation troops and puppet governments.

And as for himself, Caine wasn't feeling especially elite at the moment. Nor, for that matter, much

like a warrior.

So much for the wisdom of the past.

A faint scraping noise reached his ears, snapping his mind back to the immediate problem at hand.

Somewhere between four and ten men—seven, he thought, from the sounds—were out there in the

sparse woods, closing in on him with lasers and flechette guns at the ready. Against such firepower

Caine's own shuriken, nunchaku, and slingshot didn't seem like a hell of a lot.

Especially considering his opponents weren't blind.

Automatically, before he could relax them, his eyes strained against the opaque goggles. Damn you,

Lathe, this is ridiculous, he thought once. Taking a quiet breath, he forced his mind to relax and

concentrate.

He had four of his opponents firmly placed: two ahead and to the right, one behind and also on his

right, one dead ahead. The other three weren't so certain, but he at least knew they were somewhere

to his left. Whether they knew exactly where he was or not wasn't clear; but it was clear some of

them were getting too close for safety.

And blinded as he was, Caine's only hope was to take the initiative before they tripped over him.

Carefully, making no sound, he dipped his left hand into his thigh shuriken pouch and drew out a

file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E...ollar%202%20-%20The%20Backlash%20Mission.htm (5 of 246) [1/3/2005 12:23:25 AM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Blackcollar:TheBacklashMissionTimothyZahnBLACKCOLLAR:THEBACKLASHMISSIONForUncleTimmy—Wholockedupthemountainandthengavemethekey.PrologueThewindcomingnorthwardoverRalstonButteshadbeenincreasingsteadilythroughoutthenight,shiftinggraduallyaroundtowardthewestwiththepromiseofbadweathe cominginbehindit.L...

展开>> 收起<<

Zahn, Timothy - Blackcollar 2 - The Backlash Mission.pdf

共246页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Zahn, Timothy - Blackcollar 2 - The Backlash Mission

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: