The Blackcollar (39 page)

Lathe still looked doubtful, but Dodds was studying Caine's face, and his half smile showed he knew Caine had figured it out. Squaring his shoulders, Caine faced the screen and gave Dodds his best salute. "I'm honored to meet you at last, General Lepkowski," he said. "It appears reports of your death have been somewhat premature."

On the ship's blueprints it was the number three officers' lounge; but with its lights out and the protective hullmetal dome retracted it became a fantasy world that was part observation deck, part planetarium, and part private sanctum. The stars seemed to crowd in toward the clear plastic hemisphere, and Caine could imagine the nearest asteroids to be parts of a free-form mobile. In the near distance one of the other Novas was visible, dwarfing the two freighters lying alongside like tender-craft. Half hidden below the dome's rim he could see the Chryselli ship, maintaining its silent vigil against a resumption of the attacks that had already cost the Ryqril a half wing of Corsairs.

Unseen in the starlight, the lounge door slid open and closed. Caine tensed; but as the shadowy figure silently approached he relaxed. "Hello, Lathe," he said into the darkness.

"Hello. I thought I'd find you here." The blackcollar slid into a seat across from Caine.

Caine nodded. He'd spent a lot of time here in the past couple of days—ever since he discovered the
Novak
had such a room, as a matter of fact. It was a good place to think... and he had a lot of thinking to do. "What's on your mind?" he asked.

"You. I hear you're not happy with our negotiation position."

Caine sighed. "Oh, I don't know. It's all right as far as it goes, I suppose. It would be nice to open up interstellar travel a little, of course, and I certainly agree that the TDE's economy could use the boosts you're asking for. It just seems to me we could be demanding a hell of a lot more."

"Such as demanding the Ryqril pull entirely out of TDE space?"

Caine felt his face reddening. "Yeah, I suppose I was thinking that," he admitted. "I always envisioned this mission as the stroke that would bring back the pre-war TDE."

"It would have been nice," Lathe agreed. "But I'm afraid the real world doesn't work that way. If we'd demanded anything that drastic they would have had no choice but to hit us with whatever it took to destroy us. That would've gained the Chryselli a brief respite at best and gained
us
nothing at all. But don't mistake a backdoor approach for surrender." Lathe's silhouette gestured toward the stars. "With the two ships we're giving the Chryselli the Ryqril war machine is going to be tied up even tighter over there, slowing their response time drastically to events in the TDE. The Novas and the eased restrictions on interstellar travel will meanwhile let us coordinate planetary resistance efforts like we never could before." In the dark Caine sensed, rather than saw, Lathe's smile. "What exactly will come out of a mixture like that I can't predict, but the point is that our end of the deal is a lot better than it looks."

"Maybe." Caine hesitated. "Tell me about Dodds."

Lathe understood. "Not much to tell, really," he said. "New Karachi was under siege, and I was assigned to get Lepkowski to a secondary command post that had been set up. We had to cut through two units of Ryqril assault troops to get through... it cost what was left of my squad." Even at a distance of thirty-five years Caine could hear the pain the memory evoked. "And then, half an hour later, the Groundfire attack began. When it ended so did official resistance on Plinry." He fell silent.

"So you took the general and turned him into a blackcollar?" Caine prompted.

"Yes. But not without a great deal of argument. The last shreds of his army were preparing for a final stand, and he wanted to come forward and order them to surrender instead." Lathe sighed. "His silence cost a lot of men their lives. I think probably that's why we never told anyone else his true identity, not even the other blackcollars. The secret had cost both of us a great deal, and we were damned if we were going to take even the slightest risk with it."

"I think I understand," Caine said.

"I doubt it," Lathe returned, not unkindly. "You won't really understand until you've held a command of your own." He paused. "What are you planning to do when we leave here? Go back to Earth?"

That question had occupied a good deal of Caine's thought lately. "I don't know," he confessed. "It's my home, and I can't think of any place I'd rather fight the Ryqril But..." He trailed off.

"You're not still mad at them for not telling you you're a clone, are you?"

"Oh, no I don't think so, anyway It's just that if the government really did crack the top level of the Resistance just before I left, then everyone I ever knew is probably dead or in prison. I'd be completely on my own."

"Nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Only if I intend to get anything done." Caine smiled tautly. "You're forgetting I was intended to be a one-shot weapon. I was trained for exactly one purpose: to impersonate Alain Rienzi and do whatever damage I could before getting caught. Well, I've done that, and now my programming's run out. No one ever taught me more general skills, like how to organize my own underground or how to plan and carry out missions. Or even how to fade into the general populace while the enemy's hunting me, for that matter."

"You think the Ryqril will be out to get you?"

"I doubt that the leniency concessions you've wangled for Plinry and Argent will apply to me," Caine said dryly. "I also doubt they realize how minor a threat I actually am."

"Well, we can't have them acting on false assumptions, can we?" Lathe said. "Perhaps you'd like to come back to Plinry with us."

For a long moment Caine was sorely tempted. Sanctuary among the blackcollars... "Thanks, but no," he said, almost regretfully. "I'd just be in the way."

"You don't understand—I'm not offering you a place to hide. Lepkowski's going to need trained guerrilla fighters, and Plinry seems the logical place to set up shop, at least for now. We've got the best teachers in the TDE; what we need now is promising students."

"You mean... full blackcollar training?"

"As full as we can make it. Understand, though—without the Backlash drug we can't make you into a true blackcollar." Lathe hesitated. "And you should also recognize that you'll be setting yourself up for even more trouble from the Ryqril this way. I understand Galway's already on his way back to Plinry, and he'll be watching us like a hungry fan-dragon."

But the Ryqril were already gunning for him... and it occurred to Caine that if the formula for the Backlash drug existed anywhere anymore it was probably on Earth. A worthwile target to go after—possibly even more valuable than five Nova-class ships, in the right hands. And Caine had a pretty good idea whose hands those would be. "All right, you're on," he told Lathe's silhouette. "Just make sure I can get back to Earth after my training—and remember that I'll need a supply of that anti-asthma drug while I'm on Plinry."

"No problem," Lathe said without hesitation. "I've already ordered the lab to mix up a truckload of the stuff for you."

Caine stared at him. "Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you? What if I'd said no?"

"Then I'd be stuck with a truckload of histrophyne," the other said. "But I thought you'd say yes. We're a lot alike, you know, you and I." He stood up and moved toward the door. "Your first class is tomorrow at nine o'clock in the aft ready room; see you there." The door slid open and closed and he was gone.

For a moment Caine gazed after him, feeling the warmth of the other's compliment. A lot like Lathe, was he? High praise indeed—and he was going to do his damnedest to live up to it.

Looking up at the stars, he smiled wryly. The Ryqril didn't know it yet, but they were in big trouble.

Copyright © 1983 by Timothy Zahn.

Cover art by Vincent DiFate.

ISBN: 0-87997-843-0