The Blackcollar

CHAPTER 30

Though his practical experience was negligible, Caine's theoretical knowledge of warfare was fairly extensive; moreover, from his vantage point on top of one of the transport trucks parked several kilometers away from Brocken he had a grandstand view of the proceedings. Everything he saw pointed to an inescapable conclusion.

The assault was going ridiculously well.

Stretched flat on his belly, Caine lowered his binoculars and hiked his goggles up high enough over his battle hood to rub his eyes, itchy from the salt of perspiration. Both prongs of Lathe's attack were sweeping virtually unchallenged across the brightly lit 'port field, encountering only sporadic Ryqril resistance. Clearly, Lathe had been right: the aliens wanted them to get off-planet and had cut back their defense lest they discourage the attackers into retreat.

Caine swallowed, and suddenly became very conscious of the laser pistol strapped to his thigh. There could be no further doubt that there was still a spy among them... and the thought of what he would soon have to do made his throat ache with tension. "Caine!" came a whisper from below. Sliding a meter forward, Caine peered over the edge of the roof. In the dim light a dozen dark figures could just barely be seen moving among the five trucks; directly beneath Caine's position another was looking upward. "Yes?" Caine whispered back. "Time to go," Mordecai's voice answered. Gripping the edge, Caine slid his legs over the side, and half a minute later was jammed between Mordecai and Skyler in a commuter-crush of Star Force vets inside the truck. "How's it look?" Skyler asked softly.

"We're creaming them," Caine said. A moment later the truck's doors were closed, and there was a jerk that sent a ripple of motion through the packed crowd as the truck began to roll.

The ride wasn't a long one, and though Caine strained his ears he heard little of interest. Once, far ahead, he heard a faint explosion that probably signaled the opening of the 'port's main gate; minutes later a flatter, gentler crack came. A sharp turn, a few minutes of highspeed driving, and the truck squealed to a halt. Even before the men inside had recovered their balance the doors were flung open and voices were yelling for them to get moving. Caine was near the back; hopping to the ground, he looked around.

They were at the civilian end of the 'port, nestled protectively between two mammoth freighters. Four of their five trucks had already pulled to a halt, their passengers pouring out of the doors and scrambling to the dimly lit loading hatches in the ships. Laser-armed Radix people stood nearby, acting as both guards and traffic directors. Farther away, at either end of the corridor between the ships, more figures could be seen guarding the approaches. Beyond them the landscape seemed to twist and writhe with a surprisingly strong flickering light from the direction of the 'port's buildings. "What's on fire?" he asked Mordecai as the other gestured him toward the nearer ship.

"Nothing important," Skyler said, coming up stiffly on Caine's other side. "Our first truck was loaded with flammable liquid and rigged to spray the stuff to the front and rear. Spadafora parked it between us and the tower and set it off. It puts up a wall of flame about fifty meters long and maybe ten high at the peak. Discourages enemy movement, besides scrambling infrareds."

"Is Spadafora okay?"

"Oh, sure. Tardy's a born pyromaniac—he's set more firescreens than the rest of us put together. He just hitched a ride with the next truck through. Consider it insurance against the Ryqril changing their minds."

The freighter they entered was considerably larger than the one they'd left Plinry in and at least ten years younger. Skyler seemed to know the internal layout, and got the three of them to the bridge without any obviously wrong turns.

Already there was a small crowd present. Besides Lathe, Bakshi, and Tremayne, Commander Nmura and three of his men were there, the latter running a rapid check on the ship's control equipment. Tremayne was seated at the communications console, while Lathe and Bakshi, the latter sporting a laser pistol in addition to his nunchaku, had blackcollar communicators out. Finding an unoccupied corner at the rear of the bridge, Caine leaned against the wall and waited, heart thumping loudly in his ribs.

The lift-off came a few minutes later and was so smooth that if Caine hadn't heard the order he might have missed it. For a few seconds the 'port lights and the still-burning firescreen were visible on the visual displays, but Nmura was clearly in a hurry to get out of range of ground antiaircraft defenses, and the landscape beneath them was quickly blurred by speed and altitude into a featureless mass. On other displays the stars grew sharper as the freighter rose above Argent's atmosphere. Casually, Caine rested his hand on the butt of his laser and forced himself to relax.

"Orbit achieved," one of the starmen reported, his face buried in a sensor hood. "Chainbreaker II's right behind us; no sign of pursuit."

"That won't last long," Nmura said, turning to Lathe. "I need to know where we're going now, Comsquare."

Lathe nodded to Caine. "Okay, Caine. This is it."

"Not quite yet," Caine said. He slid his laser from its holster. "First there's one more government agent to neutralize."

The normal hums of a spaceship bridge where thunderous in the sudden stillness. Lathe spoke first, his eyes on Caine's face as if refusing to acknowledge the laser pointed at his chest. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

Caine ignored the question. "Everyone stay out of my line of fire," he ordered through dry lips. "If you'll consent to being tied up and sedated, Lathe, you'll get a chance to defend yourself at a trial. Otherwise I'll kill you right now. Which will it be?"

"Caine, you'd better have one damn good explanation for this," Skyler warned, his hand hovering near the hilt of one of his knives.

"Lathe's a spy," Caine said. "I don't have proof—yet—but the pointers are all there. How else could everything he pulled always work without a hitch?" He gestured minutely with the laser. "Well, Lathe—you going to let Bakshi and Nmura tie you up?"

"Oh, for—Caine, you've lost your mind. But if it'll make you feel better, all right." Lathe raised his hands shoulder-high—and leaped.

The move was abrupt, without any telegraphing whatsoever—but Caine had expected it, and before Lathe had crossed half of the three-meter gap separating them he dropped to one knee and fired. An instant later he dived to the side as the blackcollar's momentum sent him hurling past to crash into the corner. Sliding to the floor, he lay still.

The silence that returned was a darker thing than had been there seconds earlier. Caine remained crouched on the floor, laser ready, watching the blackcollar for signs of motion. Lathe lay in an almost fetal position on his side, his right arm curled back over his head while his left draped partly over the crinkly-gray rift in his flexarmor that the laser had opened across his chest. Even from a meter away Caine could smell the acrid stink of burnt flesh.

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.