"Wouldn't have helped much," someone muttered.
"Nothing would have," Dodds, sitting next to Lathe, countered.
"Well, we'll never know for sure," Caine said. "The five ships were delivered on schedule by special skeleton crews, who hid them and then returned to Earth. The convoy that was carrying the regular crews ran into a Ryqril ambush and was completely destroyed, though we're sure the Ryqril never knew just what they'd done. Anyway, with the incredibly tight secrecy around the project the report of the incident didn't get to the right people until it was too late. The Ryqril had already passed and it would have been nearly impossible to get crews through the front. All records on Earth were destroyed before the Ryqril victory, and everybody who knew where the ships were hidden is dead now, so the handful of officers who knew about the project gave up on it until about seven years ago."
"Duplicate records exist on Plinry?" Skyler asked.
Caine nodded. "General Kratochvil located a former Rear Admiral who'd been based on Plinry. The ships' location is hidden in one of the mundane, non-military records in the archives. It's in a special code, overlaid on the wording of the record."
"Go on," Dhonau prompted.
"No. The rest has to remain secret."
"I see." Dhonau scratched his chin. "What were your plans once you had the information?"
"The original plan was for me to return to Earth, still as Alain Rienzi. The Resistance was supposed to recruit all the old starmen that they could find, steal some ships, and try to get to the Novas before the Ryqril figured out what they were doing. Now—" he shrugged uncomfortably— "I'm not sure what I'll do."
"Speaking of Alain Rienzi," Dhonau said, abruptly changing the subject, "how come you're able to masquerade as him?"
"Oh, he really exists—aide to a TDE Senator, son of a well-connected government family—all of that's true. I apparently look enough like him to pass. The Resistance kidnapped him and changed his ID and the computer banks to fit my fingerprints and retinal patterns."
"That's impossible."
Hawking's flat tone left no room for argument. Caine tried anyway. "I don't know how it was done, but—"
"Look, Caine, you can't tamper with the plastic on a collie ID. I've seen yours, and I've tried it on others. And as for getting into an ID computer file unnoticed, that's even worse nonsense."
"Well, it obviously was done." Caine felt anger rising within him and forced it down. "If it was impossible I wouldn't be here. They would've nabbed me right at the New Geneva 'port."
"All right, at ease, everyone," Dhonau's voice cut in. "Vale, Haven—escort Caine back to the other room. We need time to discuss this," he added to Caine. "We'll let you know our decision shortly."
Caine stood up, but his muscles were strangely tense, and he didn't trust himself to speak. So he simply nodded and left. The door closed solidly behind him.
For a few moments the room was silent as the assembled blackcollars considered Caine's words. Stroking his dragonhead ring gently, Lathe glanced surreptitiously around him, trying to judge the others' thoughts. His own mind was racing with possibilities.
Dhonau spoke first "Comments?"
"I think," Skyler said slowly, "the first order of business is Caine's credentials. Hawking, were you overstating your case?"
"Nope. It's probably possible to get into a collie ID computer, but not without someone finding out."
"Before he got off the planet?"
"Easily. The most likely explanation is that the Ryqril had broken the Resistance leaders by then and let Caine go, hoping he'd lead them to the ships."
"But if they're on to him, why didn't Galway let him into the Records Building?" O'Hara objected. "The collies should've been falling all over themselves giving him what he wanted."
Beside Lathe, Dodds shifted slightly in his seat. "There's one other possibility," he said. "The Resistance may have pulled a very sophisticated trick with Caine. It's possible he's a clone of Rienzi."
Dhonau's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"Within a couple of years after the war's end it should have been possible to guess which of the collies were likely to hold onto position and power. The Rienzi family sounds like a prime choice. All that would be needed would be to obtain a scratch sample of skin from a newborn Rienzi baby, make a clone from it, and raise the resulting child under Resistance supervision. He'd have the same fingerprints and retinal patterns, and the few months' age difference would be undetectable."
"Where was Security while the sample was being taken?"
"Bound to be loose in the first couple of years," Lathe pointed out. "It was on Plinry, certainly."
"Maybe," Dhonau grunted. "Anyone know whether cloning techniques had advanced that far by the end of the war? Dodds?"
"They were working on it a lot, I'd heard," Dodds said. "I know they'd finally broken the instability problem, but whether the method was ready to use I don't know. But I'd say the chances are good that it was."
"Let's let that pass for now," a big black man named James Novak said. "Even if the Ryqril are on to this, we can stay a jump ahead of them. What I want to know is whether five Novas are really worth going after."
"Good point," O'Hara agreed. "After all, the Ryqril fleets must have a good two hundred comparable ships, plus an unholy number of smaller craft."
"True, but those are probably all off fighting the Chryselli," Hawking said. "Not much left in the TDE except Corsairs, I'd imagine."
"We're way behind their shock fronts, too," Kwon mused. "Thirty years late, but we could follow the original script and hit their materiel shipments."
"Hmm. The Chryselli." Dhonau looked thoughtful. "What does anybody know about them?"
There was a short silence. "The TDE sent a mission to talk with them a couple of years into the war," Lathe offered at last. "General Lepkowski was in charge of it, before he took over the war theater here. I had a brother aboard his ship." He said this last with complete confidence, only Dodds knew it wasn't true, and Lathe could trust him to control his face.
"What are they like?" Novak asked.
"Short, dumpy things—like giant hairballs on legs, Paul described them. Warm-blooded, oxygen-breathers—I forget the rest. Anyway, Lepkowski was supposed to talk them into coming into the war on our side."
"Obviously, he failed," O'Hara said dryly.
"Yes, but not because they didn't see the danger. They just weren't ready for war yet and figured they would do better to build up their defenses while the Ryqril were busy stomping us."
"Helpful types."
Lathe shrugged. "You can hardly blame them. Even now, after forty years' head start, they're barely holding their own against the Ryqril, if news reports are to be believed."
"If things really are balanced out there, five Novas would be a force worth taking seriously," Kwon commented.
"Agreed," Dhonau said. "Alternatively, if we decide the Chryselli aren't worth helping directly, we could pull the ships into Earth orbit, say, blast as much Ryqril hardware as possible, and try to precipitate a revolt. Just having the ability to break the isolation they've put our worlds into would be a big help."
"Just remember that they'll have hunters on our tail from day one," Chelsey Jensen cautioned, running his fingers through his mop of gray-blond hair. "So don't get any ideas about massed assaults—five Novas together would leave a wake-trail six parsecs long."
"That's no problem," Skyler said, "unless you're partial to big space battles. Even skulking around individually the ships would be well worth having. I say we go with it."