Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

Reaching to his intercom, he buzzed for the Blackcollar Monitor duty officer. "I want locations for four trainees," he said when the other answered. "Pittman, Braune, Colvin, and Alamzad."

There was a slight pause. "All four are at the Hamner Lodge camp, sir," the other reported. "Braune since five this morning, the other three since seven."

Galway glanced at his watch. Almost five now; they'd been there for fifteen and thirteen hours, respectively. If Lathe stuck to his usual scheduling pattern the kids would be heading back to Capstone soon. "Let me know immediately if any of those four or Caine comes out," he instructed the officer and broke the co

"All of them, sir?" the other asked, moving toward the door.

"It'll be safer that way," Galway said. "Besides, I'd like to see up close how Caine's changed in the past seven months."

Ragusin nodded and left. Opening his desk drawer, Galway pulled out his laser and holster and strapped them on. If the trainees didn't want to come peaceably the weapon would be of only marginal use, but seeing how they reacted to the presence of armed Security men on their home territory might prove interesting.

Presumably the reaction would remain at nonlethal levels. But if not... well, that was something he needed to know, too.

—

Caine was in the lodge dining room, studying the orbital maps of Denver Lepkowski had run off for him, when Chelsey Jensen came in with the news.

"Galway wants me?" He frowned at the blackcollar, feeling his stomach tighten within him. "Why?"

Jensen ran two fingers through his blond hair. "All he'll say is that he wants to take you and your team into the Hub for some routine questions before you leave for Earth."

Caine grimaced. "Nothing like having secrets from the opposition, is there?"

Jensen shrugged. "Galway's always been good at reading minds," he said. "It's just one of the things we have to put up with."

"Yeah. Do you think I should go?"

"Up to you. But he's already got your team."

"Right," Caine said, getting to his feet. In the past year or so Jensen had developed almost an obsession with personal loyalty, and it wouldn't do at all for Caine to seem ready to abandon his teammates to the wolves. "Would you ask someone to take these to my room, please? No sense giving Security a head start on where we'll be dropping."

"Sure." Jensen accepted the stack. "Watch yourselves, and good luck."

—

Galway was standing beside one of two cars as Caine walked down the sloping dirt road to where the prefect had parked. The second car, he noted, had three of his new teammates in back and two men in Security gray-green in front. The fourth trainee sat in the back of Galway's car.

"Caine." Galway nodded as Caine walked up to him. "I presume Jensen told you what I wanted."

"Yes. And it'd better not take too long."

"I understand. Preparations to go offworld and all must have you pretty busy."

Caine suppressed a grimace. "More to the point, Lathe will take action if we're in the Hub too long."

"Two hours at the most," Galway said equably. "Shall we go?"

Seated beside Pittman, behind Galway and a Security driver, Caine maintained a cool silence through the sixteen-kilometer drive to the edge of Capstone, Plinry's capital city. The others did likewise; but as the cars began threading their way through the city streets toward the Hub, Galway half turned in his seat to send appraising looks at his two passengers. "You've both made remarkable progress these past few months," he commented. "That blind-man combat, especially, must be a real killer to get through, and you both did quite well on it."

Caine's hands, folded in his lap, curved into a blackcollar signal: no noise. Pittman made the proper interpretation and remained silent.

Ahead, the gray wall that marked the edge of the Hub had become visible, its brooding presence a symbol both of the Ryqril domination and—to Caine—of the limits to the aliens' power. Lathe's blackcollars had gotten over that wall once—gotten over it despite its sensors and automatic defenses and human guards. When the need arose, he knew, they'd get over it again.

The private pep talk helped. Caine found his heartbeat nearly normal as the metal-mesh gate closed behind them.

Galway turned around again. "I understand you're heading out in a few days," he said. "Any particular part of Earth you're making for?"

"Antarctica," Caine told him. "The Hollick-Kenyon Plateau, specifically. If you wanted to make small talk, we could have done that at the lodge."

"True, but there are other things we couldn't have handled there. New photos of you, for example, plus fingerprint and retinal patterns. For our records."

"And for export?"

Galway's lip twitched in a grim smile. "The Ryqril are very interested in you, Caine—in all of you," he amended, eying Pittman. "They just love to read about the progress you've been making."

Caine didn't reply.

—

The five trainees were taken one by one into the interrogation room Galway had set aside for the purpose. Each was fingerprinted, ret-shot, and photographed with quiet efficiency by Ragusin as Galway, for his part, kept up a steady stream of questions. Mostly, this worked out to be a monologue, a result the prefect had more or less expected from Caine and three of his teammates.

With the proper stress analysis, answers to even i

Caine knew that, and Galway knew he knew it, and it made the whole exercise rather a waste of time... except that Galway expected the fifth interview to run somewhat differently than the first four had.

And he wasn't disappointed.

"You are leaving with the Novak in five days, aren't you?"

Seated at the ret-scan machine, lips tightly compressed, Woody Pittman nodded once. The gesture was rich in nonverbal emotion, and Galway felt a twinge of sympathy for the boy's position. But the prefect had a job to do, and his personal feelings about what the Ryqril had done to Pittman couldn't be allowed to get in the way. "I gather you're going to Earth. Any idea where?"

"North America," Pittman said. "We'll be riding the shuttle down toward Denver, but Caine said we'll be dropping off before it lands."

Galway called up a file map on the room's display and gave it a quick scan. A useless gesture; there were far too many targets in the Denver area that a spy or saboteur might find interesting. "Any idea whether your mission goal is in that area?" he asked. "Or could you just be staying in the area long enough to collect identification and lose any pursuit?"

Pittman shook his head. "Caine hasn't told us anything at all. Nothing; so you can quit trying to rephrase the question. He takes Lathe's lectures on secrecy very seriously."

Galway sighed. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me." He thought a moment, watching as Pittman's face was photographed and, for good measure, layer-scan-printed as well. "Has Caine mentioned any special equipment? Or have you had any out-of-the-ordinary training?"

Again, Pittman shook his head. "There isn't a thing more I can tell you until we're on Earth, Galway.

Maybe not even then."

"All right," Galway said, giving up. Pittman wasn't likely to be holding out on him, after all. Though with the boy's lack of loyalty-conditioning Galway could never be a hundred-percent sure of that....

"I'll set you up a contact in the Denver Security office—use the code name Postern to identify yourself when you call."

Pittman nodded and stood up. "Anything else?"

"Not right now. Good luck."