CHAPTER 9
The freighter's navigational computer put the distance to Argent as six parsecs. A Corsair would make the trip in three days; Caine's old passenger liner could have done it in seven. The freighter, designed for fuel efficiency rather than speed, took almost twelve.
There were twelve exceptionally busy days, however. While most of the eleven blackcollars aboard worked at organizing the equipment they'd brought along, Lathe detailed Skyler and Novak to give Caine a condensed version of blackcollar training. It was an intensive course, straining Caine's mnemonic and fighting skills to the limit. He learned the blackcollar combat codes, both tingler and hand signal forms; was given new unarmed fighting techniques and drilled in their use; and acquired at least a modest proficiency with nunchaku, slingshot, and shuriken. In between lessons he spent his time getting to know his fellow travelers... and asking carefully worded questions.
"Oh, yeah, me and Tardy go back to before the war. He knew every still on Plinry, and we used to steal the whiskey from 'em and use it as a primer in our bombs. Lathe? No, I didn't meet him till after the amnesty...."
"...Seems to me Lathe and Dodds had adjacent units—somewhere in the New Karachi area, I think. I didn't know either of them until I started coming to the lodge get-togethers...."
"...Dodds was always a quiet sort; never worked out with us at the lodge. I hear a nerve gas attack laid him out during the war and sort of scrambled his fighting reflexes. Smart guy, though, and he and Lathe get along pretty well. Sure, I've known Lathe a long time—we were standing in line together for the collie interrogation...."
And so it went, until Caine was forced to the inescapable conclusion that no one aboard had ever heard of Lathe or Dodds until after the war.
The revelation wasn't all that remarkable, of course. Plinry had started with three hundred blackcollars—twenty-five of the standard twelve-man guerrilla teams—and with only thirty-one left it was reasonable that several of them would be the sole survivors of their units. Still, combined with Lathe's steadfast refusal to discuss Dodds's special mission, this new bit of information made Caine uneasy.
Three days out from Argent, when he finally finished decoding the Plinry record, he put the eight critical numbers—six spatial, two temporal—into a special mental file. Six hours of self-hypnosis later, it was ringed by a series of psycho-mental blocks that no drug or neurotrace could break before killing him.
No one—neither Lathe nor anyone else—would get those numbers until Caine was good and ready to give them up.
Argent was a bright speck with a clearly discernible disk when the freighter reentered normal space. Chelsey Jensen, at the helm, set the computer to working out an approach curve, and then punched for a schematic of the system. "That one's Argent," he told Caine, tapping the second planet. "Third or fourth most Earthlike world in the TDE and a real goldmine of minerals. The place was filthy rich before the war."
"Hmm." The schematic showed twelve more planets plus a strangely shaped haze. "What's that?" Caine asked, pointing to the latter.
"It's an asteroid belt, called the Diamond Ring for obvious reasons."
"What makes it bunch like that instead of distributing itself more evenly?"
"No idea. Made mining a lot easier, though, with so much of the stuff concentrated in one place. Ten to one it's where your Novas are hidden, too."
"Maybe. A good place to run guerrilla raids from, too."
In his mind's eye Caine could see tiny fighters appearing from nowhere to strike at the Ryqril forces—
"Not really. Asteroid belts aren't that dense; even the Diamond there is mostly empty space, and a ship moving with any decent drive trail would be trivial to track You'd do better hiding in a swamp or forest down on Argent."
The heroic vision vanished. "Oh. Is that what we're going to do, then?"
"Yes and no," a new voice said, and Caine turned as Lathe came up the tight spiral staircase. "We'll hide someplace like that for a day or so until we can contact the local underground."
Caine blinked. "You've been in touch with Argent's underground?"
Lathe gave him an odd look. "Of course not. We've been isolated on Plinry; you know that."
"But you just said—" Caine snapped his fingers. "Oh, of course. Dodds. He's already here, isn't he?"
"Caine, you have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions." Lathe turned to Jensen. "Situation?"
"The autopilot's taking us in," Jensen said, studying the readouts. "ETA of fifteen hours. Of course, we'll be challenged long before then."
"All right. Go get some rest and finish your preparations; I'll have Spadafora watch things here. Be back in nine hours."
"Right." With one last glance at the instruments Jensen crossed the room and vanished down the stairway.
"You, too," Lathe told Caine. "Go to the cargo bay and help get the drop pods ready."
"I want to be here when you talk to the planet," Caine said.
Lathe shrugged. "Okay. Just make sure you're in your flexarmor, ready to go."
Thirty minutes out of Argent's main traffic orbits, the call finally came. "Unidentified freighter on vector two-eight-zero, plus four-mark-nine, this is Argent Space Control. Identify yourselves."
Jensen gestured to the hand mike clamped to the control board. Picking it up, Lathe glanced at Caine and thumbed it on. "This is Trader First Class Donovan; special cargo from Magna Graecia. Request priority orbit insertion away from major lanes."
"Your landing ID code?"
"I have none. This is a special cargo, as I said. I was given a code number and told to repeat it only to the Security Prefect's office."
Caine could almost hear the traffic controller sit up straighter. "Understood. Ringing Security now," he said. A minute passed and a new voice came on the speaker. "Security Prefect's office; Lieutenant Peron. What's this about a special cargo?"
"That's right," Lathe said. "Special and hazardous. The code gamma-twelve should identify it to you."
"Who gave you that code?"
"A Graecian Security officer—called himself Hydra. Look, he's down there somewhere; just get him over there and he'll confirm it."
There was a short pause. "We have no agent with that code name," he said, suspicion creeping into his voice. "Are you sure he was a genuine Security agent?"
"Positive, but I told you he works out of Magna Graecia, not Argent. He said he'd fly on ahead to get all the paperwork done so I could get rid of this stuff."
Another pause. "One moment."
Lathe turned off his mike. "Jensen, call down and order everyone into the pods. I don't know how long I can keep them running in circles down there, and we may need to break fast."
Jensen nodded and began speaking softly into the intercom. Glancing out the viewport, Caine could see the edge of Argent's blue-and-white disk, now less than a hundred thousand kilometers distant. A big, dangerous world—and the fact that he would be with eleven blackcollars didn't seem nearly as reassuring as it had a few days ago.
At the control board, the speaker again came to life. "This is Colonel Eakins, Assistant Security Prefect for Argent. Can you tell me anything more about this Hydra?"
"I can describe him for you," Lathe offered, launching into a three-minute description which seemed, to Caine, to be that of Plinry's Prefect Galway. Perhaps, he thought, Lathe did have a sense of humor. "But if he's not already down there I don't know what's happened."
"It's possible he works directly under the Ryqril military governor," Eakins rumbled. "We'll send a message there right away. In the meantime, you're cleared for deep polar orbit; we'll feed course data to your computer."
A two-tone signal acknowledged receipt. "Thank you," Lathe said. "And make sure everyone else stays clear of me. This stuff is damn touchy and I don't want a drive backwash anywhere near it."