Blackcollar: The Blackcollar

The other acknowledged and signed off. Scooping up his gunbelt, Galway fastened it securely around his waist. It had finally come, he thought grimly, checking his laser's power level: the explosion he'd feared for so many years had finally started.

With one final look at his sleeping wife, he hurried from the apartment.

CHAPTER 8

It was time.

The music in the Apex Club had reached a thundering climax; the echoes of it still reverberated through the room. Together, the music, lights, and alcohol had turned the crowd into a seething cauldron of anger and frustration. The teen-agers were ready to explode.

And the necessary catalyst was also ready. From the other side of the stage Denis Henrikson was looking across at Durbin, his eyebrows raised questioningly. Durbin nodded agreement. Smiling grimly, Henrikson got to his feet and stepped onto the stage, picking up a mike. For his part, Durbin pushed his chair back and prepared for action.

"Friends!" Henrikson's amplified voice boomed into the room, and a few of the teen-agers paused in their conversations to look back at the stage. "What are we sitting here for? What are we letting the damn collies do this to us for? Don't we care any more?"

More and more heads were turning, and the buzz of conversation was fading as Henrikson launched into a scathing indictment of the government. It wasn't so much the words themselves, Durbin knew—everyone had heard all this before—but the way Henrikson said them. He had that undefinable aura of authority, that charisma that made for a born leader. To his natural abilities had been added three years of secret training in psychology and sociology, until Henrikson had become a master manipulator of human emotion.

And the crowd was responding. The background noise was growing again—but it was no longer composed of frustrated conversation. The sounds were animalistic, full of hate and violence. In one corner a chant had started: "Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!" More and more people took it up, and within seconds the building was shaking with the angry stamping of feet.

At the table in front of Durbin's a dark-haired youth reached furtively into his pocket. U

Durbin replaced it in the youth's pocket, smiling in satisfaction. He'd long suspected this one of being a Security informer—it was the main reason he'd chosen the table he'd been sitting at. The collies couldn't be allowed even a hint of what was about to happen.

Suddenly, without warning, the crowd was on the move, streaming past Durbin toward a side exit like a gale-force wind. Jumping to the lee side of a table, he looked over in time to see Henrikson leave the building at the head of his mob. Joining the flow, Durbin moved toward the exit, realizing he'd been concentrating so hard on the collie stooge that he'd missed the final punch of Henrikson's speech. That was a shame; he'd wanted to hear it.

Outside, the mob made a sharp right turn. Ahead, two blocks away, loomed the Hub's south gate. Ru

"Halt!" a voice boomed from in front of them—one of the gate guards with an amp. "You are ordered to disperse."

In answer, Henrikson half turned, roared something Durbin didn't catch, and doubled his speed. A flash of light lanced out from each of the outside guards, slashing across the front rank. The weapons were apparently set low—to burn instead of kill—and for a second the crowd faltered as screams of pain mixed with the rage. But Henrikson didn't even slow down. His clear voice called and the mob surged forward once again. Ahead, Durbin could see both guards resetting their lasers even as they began to retreat. The gate was opening behind them as they raised their weapons for a second shot—a killing one, probably, which even Henrikson's hidden flexarmor shirt might not be able to stop.

The shot never came. Simultaneously, both guards' heads snapped back, and the two men collapsed into heaps on the ground. The inside man gaped at them for a heartbeat, all the time he had before he too was dropped by O'Hara's hidden blackcollar marksmen. And the gate was still open.

With a shout of triumph Henrikson led the way through the barrier. Some of the teen-agers stopped to strip the downed guards of weapons; and when a carload of Security men whipped around a corner seconds later it was caught completely off-guard, riddled with laser burns before its occupants could react. That gained them eight more weapons, and soon the air was filled with laser fire as the rioters vented their rage on the surrounding buildings. Again Henrikson shouted and gestured, and the mob once more began to move forward, striking out for the Hub's business and governmental center.

Because he was watching for a Security attack on their rear, Durbin saw the three vehicles—an autocab, a private car, and a van—that slipped out the abandoned gate behind them. Phase one completed, he thought, ticking off an imaginary checklist. Now came phase two, the mission that gave them the title of Bait: to draw down upon their own heads the worst the collies could offer. Shivering slightly, one eye still on their rear, he hurried to keep up with the mob.

The report reached Galway while still en route to the Security building. "How many got in, Sergeant?" he asked tersely.

"A couple hundred at least, sir," Grazian, who had taken over the main desk duties, said. His voice quavered despite obvious efforts to control it. "I don't know how. All three guards just collapsed suddenly while the gate was open, but the power and metal detectors didn't show anything that could be a weapon."

"Slingshots," Galway muttered.

"Sir?"

"Blackcollar sniper's weapon," the prefect amplified. "Put out an M-Seven; I want everyone in riot gear immediately."

"Yes, sir," Grazian said. Simultaneously, a large red M-7 appeared on Galway's car display screen. "Done, Prefect."

Galway pressed the reset and the M-7 vanished. "All right, now what about the other men we lost?"

"They were the four backups you'd ordered to that gate. They'd just called in that they heard the rioters when they were hit. I guess they thought the mob was still outside the wall."

"Why?" Galway pounced. "You were monitoring it, weren't you? Why didn't you warn them?"

"Sir—I—" Grazian sounded miserable. "It all happened so fast...."

"So you froze, and four men are dead." Galway's words were harsh, but his anger was quickly changing to apprehension. The blackcollars had the initiative now—as the attacker always did—and his Security forces weren't responding nearly fast enough. They'd trained for this sort of thing, of course, but no one had taken it seriously for years. Could they get organized in the heat of battle? Galway wasn't sure.

One thing he was sure of, though: allowing his men to be tied down defending the Hub was an invitation to disaster. He had to stop the riot, and fast, before the blackcollars pulled whatever else they had pla

"All eight spotters are up, coordinating the ground action. The mob's pretty well fragmented now, and each group has at least one stolen weapon. Mobs are starting to form outside the other gates, too, but so far we're holding them back."

And coordination was about all the spotters could do; they lacked the sophisticated firepower for pinpoint attacks that could hit the rioters without tearing up the surrounding neighborhoods. But there were ships on Plinry that could accomplish that. "Call the 'port. I want their patrol boats immediately."