Blackcollar: The Blackcollar

CHAPTER 27

"Ten minutes to sundown," Valentine reported from the front seat of their parked car.

Skyler nodded, willing to take his word for it. The thick overcast was still in place above Millaire, the sun completely invisible behind it. Already the city's streetlights had come on, and Skyler judged it was almost dark enough to move.

"When do we leave?" Novak asked, craning his neck to look back at Skyler.

"Half an hour, I think. We'll take another hour to set the explosives, and by then it'll be dark enough to start." As he spoke, he glanced around, taking a quick survey of the area. No one was visible; he'd picked a commercial-type street in the midst of rush hour to park on an hour ago, and now the block was essentially deserted. Pursing his lips over clenched jaws, he slid his nunchaku silently out of its sheath. Taking a deep breath, he swung the sticks in a hard, short arc, striking Valentine at the base of the skull.

Even as the Argentian slumped forward, Novak was twisting around in his seat, his own nunchaku coming reflexively to hand. "What—"

Skyler cut him off with a sharp shake of his head, gave him four quick hand signals. Frowning, Novak put his nunchaku down and reached under the dashboard, coming up a moment later with two freshly disco

"No bugs," Skyler muttered. "They're cockier than I expected."

"Who, the collies?" Novak still looked confused.

"Yeah. I guess they figured their spy had us covered well enough."

Novak glanced at Valentine's crumpled figure and then looked back at Skyler, his eyes demanding explanation.

Skyler sighed. "You heard his slip yourself. Remember earlier, when he suggested a soft penetration? He said we could do the same thing Lathe and O'Hara had done. How did he know it was O'Hara who hit Cerbe Prison?"

Novak frowned. "He supposedly got that from Radix contacts—" he began slowly.

"Right. But how would they know which blackcollars were involved? Lathe wouldn't have given that out, and it certainly isn't public knowledge yet. That leaves exactly one source."

Novak shook his head. "This is pretty flimsy evidence to hang a man on."

"I'm not done yet." Skyler dug his new Security ID from his pocket. "What were you going to ask him when he first mentioned this forger of his?"

"When you cut me off? I wanted to know why anybody would bother forging something that could damn you that quickly."

"Good question. Mine was why Tremayne had never mentioned these supposed Radix forgers." Skyler slanted the ID toward the fading light. "Beautiful work. I studied it for ten straight minutes earlier and didn't see a single error anywhere."

Novak was gazing thoughtfully at Valentine. "Lathe said he got into the Strip with a simple visual check," he mused. "You'd think the collies would be more thorough if there were false IDs known to be in circulation." Reaching over, he picked up Valentine's right hand. A dragonhead ring glinted there; with some effort Novak got it off. "A hunch," he said, squinting at the ring in the faint glow of his shielded penlight. "If he's a collie spy his ring will be a fake... hmm. It's got the Centauri A logo behind the crest." He drew one point of the crest along the steel roof brace, examined both the point and the scratch it made. "And it's genuine hullmetal," he said with a sigh, handing the ring and penlight across to Skyler.

"Could be stolen," Skyler offered, but even as he said it he felt uncertainty returning. He'd been a hundred percent sure... but the ring dropped that to eighty percent, and he couldn't justify a quick execution with those odds. "I still don't think he should come with us."

"Okay. We leave him for interrogation when we get back?"

"I suppose—" Skyler broke off as something on Valentine's ring caught his eye.

"What is it?" Novak asked.

"Examine the eyes," Skyler said quietly, handing the ring and light back.

"They're just the usual slitted-pupils carved into the metal," the other said. For a long moment he studied the ring in silence; and when he looked up his face was carved from black ice. "The original eyes have been removed," he said softly. "These were grafted in afterward. This used to be a comsquare's ring."

"Or a tactor's, or even a secturion's—they may have had to scour the whole TDE for a captured dragonhead that would fit him."

"Deliberate deception." Novak's voice was hard. "That pretty well settles the issue, I guess. We've been compromised—and we're going to have to modify our plans."

Skyler grimaced. "I know. I've been trying all afternoon to come up with something else that might work."

"Then you haven't been trying. The answer's obvious." Novak explained.

"No." Skyler shook his head. "Out of the question."

Novak snorted impatiently. "You're trying to be noble, but you're just wasting time. It's the only way we're going to clear an escape route all the way out of town, and you know it."

Skyler did; but that didn't make it easier to accept. "I can't allow—"

"Rafe," Novak said quietly, "if Jensen's being tortured in there I want to get him out—or to give him a clean death. He's my friend—please let me take this risk for him."

Skyler sighed. "All right," he said at last. "We'll leave the car here—it's probably known. We can get another vehicle easily enough." Steeling himself, Skyler drew a knife from its forearm sheath. Execution of a spy is not murder, he told himself. "Valentine stays too, of course."

He raised the knife, but Novak touched his arm. "I'll do it," the other said grimly. "I consider it his fault Jensen got captured."

A few minutes later, bags of equipment and explosives over their shoulders, the two blackcollars exited from opposite sides of the car and started down the street.

Behind its outer wall and courtyard the ten-story government building stood dark against Millaire's skyline, its only lighted windows those on the first three floors. Gazing at it from the vacant office building across the street, Skyler once more checked the floor plan they'd found among their car's maps. "You know where you're heading?" he asked the shadow beside him.

Novak nodded. "First floor west; control room and secondary support column." His voice was calm, his hands steady as he checked the ties on his shoulder-slung bundle. The bundle worried Skyler; even wrapped in the late Valentine's flexarmor, the high-explosives it contained could be set off prematurely by a direct laser blast. But they hadn't had time to put together anything safer.

"Okay." There was a great deal more to be said, but Skyler could sense Novak didn't want to hear it. Swallowing hard, Skyler contented himself with a brief gripping of the other's shoulder. Then, silently, he led the way back outside.

Their diversionary blasts began right on schedule, sending dull roars one at a time from selected spots a few blocks from the government building. By the third blast the flow of Security men through the wall's mesh gate had begun; by the seventh it had dropped to a trickle.

"Quite a show," Novak murmured through his gas filter as they crouched in an alleyway. "Maybe they really have emptied the building."

"Maybe. It's a bunch less to deal with, anyway." Taking a deep breath, Skyler thumbed the safety off the radio detonator they'd rigged up. "Here goes." Flattening himself against the wall beside Novak, he flipped the switch.

The blue-white flash lit up the streets as the sound of the blast echoed through the tall buildings like a mad ricochet. Skyler shot a quick glance around the corner and then was off and ru