Blackcollar: The Blackcollar

Muscles trembling with reaction, Caine got to his feet, replacing the laser in its holster, and turned to face the horrified stares of the others. "All right," he said, as casually as possible. "I guess we're ready to go now."

Moving like a man in a dream, Skyler detached himself from the group by the control consoles and went over to crouch by Lathe's still form. His hands touched the charred flexarmor, gently probed beneath the battle-hood for the carotid artery. He held the pose a moment before rising with some difficulty to his feet, and Caine decided it was a good thing much of the other's expression was still hidden behind his goggles. "Caine—" he began, his voice deadly.

"He condemned himself," Caine interrupted him. "I claim the same evidence he applied against Fuess and his friends: he attacked first." Deliberately, he turned his back on Skyler and stepped to where Nmura sat, frozen-faced, at the helm. "Commander, I have two sets of space-time coordinates for the Novas. Can this computer handle an orbit calculation from that?"

Nmura nodded, his expression uncertain.

"All right." Carefully, Caine unlocked the mental vault he'd set up an eternity ago and drew out the precious numbers. It felt strange, as if part of him resisted the action. "First position set: standard solar/galactic coordinate system...."

The figures took less than a minute to recite, and within half a minute the computer had done the orbit calculation, extrapolated it thirty-three years forward in time—with all known perturbations taken into account—and displayed both the current location and a choice of three courses from the freighter's own position.

"Yeah, that's somewhere in the Diamond, all right," Caine commented, studying the numbers. "Start off aiming somewhere to one side—we don't want our course extrapolated."

Nmura nodded and reached toward the communications board. "I'll have to give Chainbreaker II a preliminary course," he explained.

"Don't bother," a soft voice said from behind them. "No one's going any farther tonight."

There was something in the tone that discouraged hasty movement. Slowly, keeping his hand away from his pistol, Caine turned around. Standing well back from the group, his drawn laser leveled, was Bakshi.

CHAPTER 31

There is a point where the human mind loses its ability to respond emotionally to stress; where successive shocks elicit diminished reactions or none at all... and as he gazed at Bakshi's stony expression, Caine sensed their group had reached that point. His shooting of Lathe was still too fresh for any reaction but confused numbness.

"What are you doing, Serle?" Tremayne growled, the question sounding inane in the stillness. Standing to his right and slightly behind him, Caine could clearly see the tightness in the Radix leader's neck and shoulders.

"Skyler, move closer to the others," Bakshi ordered, ignoring Tremayne. "Keep your hands at chest level—remember that my reflexes are as good as yours. And don't block my view of Caine's gun hand."

Peripherally, Caine saw Skyler obey, stepping to within half a meter of Caine's right shoulder before stopping. "Who are you pla

"No one needs to die," Bakshi said in the same soft voice. "There'll be amnesty for everyone who participated in this mission, including Caine and your blackcollars, provided you surrender peacefully. Commander Nmura, inform the other freighter you'll both be landing back at Brocken on this orbit."

"If I refuse?" Nmura said stiffly.

"Staying out here won't do them any good—they don't know where the ships are yet," Bakshi reminded him.

"You traitor." The words came out of Tremayne's mouth with a bitterness Caine hadn't realized a human voice could achieve. "You lousy, murderous traitor."

"Send the message, Commander," Bakshi said. His eyes and laser, Caine noted, were firmly fixed somewhere to the left, past the console where Nmura sat. It puzzled him—and it clearly irritated Tremayne.

"Look at me, damn you!" the Radix leader snarled suddenly. "Or haven't you got the stomach to face me?"

The barest hint of a smile twitched Bakshi's lips, and he shook his head minutely. "Sorry, Ral, but at the moment you're not any danger to me. Commando Mordecai is a different story."

"Mordecai?" Tremayne glanced to his left.

Caine turned his own head more slowly. The best hand-to-hand fighter that ever lived, Lathe had once called him; but standing motionless in Bakshi's line of fire, a head shorter and twenty-five kilos lighter than the Argentian, he looked merely old. "You overestimate me, Comsquare," he murmured, echoing Caine's thoughts.

"I don't think so. Fuess, McKitterick, and Couturie were no blackcollars, but they were damn good fighters. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who could take them as easily as you did—far too much to take my eyes off you."

"So you knew they were fakes all along," Caine said slowly. "And vice versa, of course. A pity Mordecai didn't kill them more leisurely."

"It wouldn't have helped you," Bakshi said. "They never knew about me. I reported directly to the Ryqril."

"To the Ryqril." Tremayne's voice was quiet, almost calm. But his face was pale, and the one eye Caine could see burned with hatred. "Betraying your own race for a lousy—what's the going rate these days? Still thirty pieces of silver a person?"

Bakshi sighed. "I don't expect you to understand, but I was trying to help."

"Of course. Without traitors we couldn't possibly have functioned."

"You couldn't have survived," Bakshi snapped, his icy veneer cracking for a second. With a visible effort he regained his control... and when he spoke again there was infinite sadness in his voice. "Don't you see," he said softly, almost pleadingly, "that the Ryqril could never have let an effective underground function this close to the Chryselli battle front?"

"So you chose emasculation for us, did you?" Tremayne spat.

"It was that or mass destruction. Apostoleris had the Calarand and Millaire HQs infiltrated from top to bottom. You could have been wiped out in a single night if the Ryqril had ordered it. The outlying Radix cells would have been dealt with even more harshly—whole towns killed, probably, to make sure of getting everyone. Is that what you wanted for Argent, Ral? Really?"

Tremayne exhaled loudly. "There are worse things than dying for a cause you believe in. Living as someone's tame pet, for instance."

"I didn't think you'd understand," Bakshi said, his voice weary. "And get your hand away from your laser. You wouldn't even clear the holster with it."

"No." Tremayne's voice was even. "I'm not accepting Ryqril charity anymore. Let's see if your spineless toadying left you enough guts to gun me down."

"Ral," Bakshi began warningly—

And a chunk of silver light flashed across the room from Caine's right, catching Bakshi's gun arm at the wrist and knocking it to the side.

The impact wasn't all that great; Bakshi kept his grip on the weapon and would have had it back on target in half a second. But for Mordecai half a second was all the time in the world.

His spi