The thought had crossed Caine's mind. Frequently. "True. But maybe they were looking in the wrong place."
"And you expect me to know the right places?"
"I know you were in charge of this sector before the Ryqril took it. Surely you knew most of the military safe drops on Earth and elsewhere."
Lepkowski snorted, a wry smile touching his lips. "Safe drop. I haven't heard that term in years.
Your tutors had a definite military bias."
"General Morris Kratochvil was one of them."
"Kratochvil." The age lines around Lepkowski's eyes seemed to deepen. "A good man... No, Caine, the formula for Backlash wouldn't have been put in any safe drop. If it still exists, it'd have to be in one of the Seven Sisters."
Caine frowned. He'd heard that term before.... "Those were the seven top command/defense bases, weren't they? One per continent, roughly."
"Right." The general nodded. "Major secrets of all sorts would have been stored there.
Unfortunately... well, maybe there's a way to check." Leaning forward again, he began working his keyboard. "We've got some orbital maps of Earth from our last flyby a few months back. Thirty years is a long time, but the force necessary to destroy one of the Sisters ought to have left some lingering scars."
Within a very few minutes that prediction was painfully borne out. Six of the seven spots Lepkowski pointed to were in the middle of either slowly eroding blast craters or unnaturally defoliated wildernesses. Or both.
The seventh...
"Almost completely untouched," Lepkowski murmured as he tried various image-enhancement programs and topographical reconstructions. "Incredible. How could they have missed it?"
"Where is the base, exactly?" Caine asked.
Lepkowski did something to the keyboard and a topographic overlay appeared on the orbital photo.
"Here," he said, tapping a wide mountain peak. "Aegis Mountain, about thirty klicks west of Denver, North America. Major highway passes north of it here; the entrance opens onto it about here."
Caine stared hard at the image. No defoliation; certainly no obvious crater. "What are those things up there to the north?" he asked, pointing to a pair of slightly off-color patches.
"Uh..." Lepkowski tapped keys. "Neutron missile scars, I'd say. Probably from the war—they don't look recent."
"Could that be how the base was neutralized? Saturation neutron bombing?"
"No, Aegis had better shielding than that. But you're right—the base was neutralized somehow. The Ryqril surely wouldn't have left a fully manned and armed base sitting untouched on the doorstep of a major metro area."
"Maybe they didn't need to destroy it," Caine suggested. "Maybe they got inside and took it over."
"In which case you might as well scratch any plans to get in yourself." Lepkowski rubbed his chin.
"Hard to believe, though. Once the base was locked down no one should have been able to get in without bringing the whole mountain down on top of himself."
Caine bit at his lip. "Maybe it was unlocked, then. Surrendered to them."
Lepkowski was silent a long moment. Then he shook his head. "No, that doesn't sound right, either.
Kratochvil wouldn't have given Aegis away. And neither would the local commander."
There was another pause. "So what's your end-line assessment?" Caine asked at last. "Is there any use in my looking for Backlash there?"
"Your chances are slim at best," Lepkowski said bluntly. "Whether Aegis is locked down, burned out, or up to its hangar level in Ryqril, your chances of getting in are almost nonexistent. Maybe with some help—but I don't even know what kind of help you could find in the area."
"I might," Caine said. "There were supposed to be some blackcollars working in the central continent somewhere. And my Resistance tutors also had limited contact with a North American group called Torch."
"Competent?"
Caine shrugged. "They were still around when I left, as far as I know. Real hard-wrapped fanatics, from what I heard—ready to do anything to overthrow the Ryqril."
Lepkowski shook his head. "I wouldn't go near them if I were you. Never trust fanatics any farther than you absolutely have to."
"Because they take stupid chances?"
"And because they'll turn on you in a second if you stray half a step off their personal version of the
'correct' way."
Caine hissed a breath between his teeth. "Well... is there any other place in the TDE where I'd have a better shot? What about Centauri A?"
"The blackcollar training center?" The general shook his head. "It's gone. Bombed so thoroughly the planet looks to be headed into an ice age. The Ryqril had had enough experience with blackcollars by then to know they sure as hell didn't want any more of them coming out of Centauri."
No, of course the Ryqril didn't want any more blackcollars. Caine had seen for himself just what blackcollars could do against the aliens and their loyalty-conditioned human allies... and the memories reminded him of exactly why he'd decided on this goal in the first place. "All right," he said slowly. "Then Aegis is it, I guess. Can you tell me anything about the base—layout, defenses, anything?"
Lepkowski eyed him. "I can give you a few generalities, but not much more." He tapped a spot on the photo. "The entrance is off the highway here. Leads back under the crest of the mountain, about three klicks away. The tunnel is wide enough for fighter aircraft, which would be rolled out onto the highway for launch."
"About how many of them were there?"
"Aircraft? I'd say a hundred at least, maybe more. But there won't be any of them left—they would all have been out attacking Ryqril landing craft and escorts at the end."
"None of the survivors would have had the proper codes to get back in?"
"There aren't any codes for opening a battle-sealed fortress from the outside," Lepkowski said flatly.
"When I said no one could get in, I meant it. Unless the people inside open up, the place stays sealed. Well. Below the hangar level are eight personnel levels, plus one more with the fusion generators and gas turbine and fuel cell backups. Water from artesian wells dug to various depths, air through long ventilation tunnels with a dozen different filtration systems. Enough food, fuel, and spare parts to survive a good fifteen years. That's for the entire contingent of about two thousand officers and enlisted men, of course."
Caine shook his head in wonderment. "The place must be huge. Any emergency escape tunnels?"
"There would have been one, but don't count on using it. It would have been collapsed automatically after any survivors got out."
"Or collapsed manually by those still inside?"
"Point," Lepkowski admitted. "A small contingent could have survived in there this long. If they'd lost weapons capability during the last battle the Ryqril might have postponed dealing with them....
No. No, it doesn't make sense. They wouldn't have left a group of potential rebels locked up in a functional military base."
"Unless they don't know where the entrance is," Caine suggested suddenly. "If there were even a minor rock fall—"
"Except that anyone in Denver could have shown them where it was," Lepkowski put in dryly. "It wasn't exactly hidden or anything. In fact"—he peered at the display—"it looks to me like there's a small encampment right by the door now."
If there was, Caine's untrained eyes couldn't spot it. "A Ryqril checkpoint? Or just a group of cultists worshipping the dead base?"
"Don't laugh—it could easily be something that crazy." Lepkowski pointed to a spot a few kilometers west. "That town shows signs of habitation, too, despite the fact that the tunnel linking the highway through to Denver has clearly collapsed. I don't know about you, but I sure wouldn't want to live that isolated from everywhere else."