Timothy Zahn: Blackcollar: The Blackcollar

The first hurdle—the guard at the gate—had been passed; but now Caine faced an unexpected problem. He had eleven hours till his ship's six a.m. liftoff—far too long to spend at the 'port. But if he checked in at a hotel, he would have to show Rienzi's ID, and the less he waved that around the better.

The solution was obvious. Redirecting his autocab, he went to the 'port and dropped his luggage into a locker. Then, using the cash Rienzi had so thoughtfully provided, he launched himself on a one-man tour of western New Geneva. Between the bars, restaurants, and pleasure spas, he got through the night without being recognized. Finally, as the first hint of dawn touched the eastern sky, he returned to the 'port.

Even at that hour the 'port was reasonably busy. New Geneva hadn't been made Earth's capital until after the war and the field had been designed to handle passenger air traffic as well as spacecraft. In pre-war days such an arrangement would have swamped the 'port beyond hope; but now, with only government officials and accredited business personnel allowed to fly, the setup was manageable. Retrieving his luggage, Caine headed down a long corridor toward the off-planet terminal, his heart pounding painfully.

The check-in station was visible now, and he could see a half-dozen people milling around or waiting quietly in the chairs near the boarding gate. Off to one side a bored-looking guard leaned against a wall. Caine grimaced. The whole thing looked like a classic sucker-trap, where everyone within two hundred meters was a plainclothes Security man. But it was too late to back out. If it was a trap, he'd certainly already been spotted and identified, and turning tail now would only spring it a bit prematurely. Clenching his teeth, he kept walking.

The clerk smiled as he approached. "Yes, sir?"

"Alain Rienzi, traveling to Plinry," Caine said through stiff lips. He fished out his ticket/reservation and Rienzi's ID, watching the clerk's face as closely as he dared.

There was no visible reaction. "Yes, sir," the other said, sliding the ID through a slot on his console. "If you'll just put your thumbs against the plates and look over here...."

This was it. Unlike the simple visual check the Security man at the outer fence had done a few hours earlier, Caine was now in for the complete thing. His retina patterns and thumbprints would be compared to those on Rienzi's ID, and also checked against the main computer records. If Marinos hadn't performed the miracle of changing those files, it was all going to end right here.

A flicker of light, almost too fast to see, touched his eyes and the plates felt warm against his thumbs. The clerk touched a button and Caine held his breath... and on the console a green light winked on. "All set, Mr. Rienzi. Now, which account is this to be charged to?"

It was an anticlimax, though a welcome one, and Caine began to breathe again. Keeping his expression neutral, he handed over Rienzi's personal charge plate. The clerk inserted it in another slot, and in a few seconds the machine disgorged an official ticket, his ID and charge plate, and a small magnecoded card. "What's this?" Caine asked, frowning at the letter.

"Medical form, sir," the clerk told him. "Apparently there's something in Plinry's environment that may give you some trouble. You can have the prescription filled at that window over there."

Caine was about to ask how in hell anyone knew what kind of pills he might need on Plinry, but caught himself in time. Clearly, government personnel had their medical records on file, and the computer must have compared Rienzi's profile to Plinry's conditions and made a fast diagnosis. "Okay," he said. "Thanks."

"You're welcome, sir. Boarding will begin in ten minutes."

It took nearly fifteen for the druggist to fill the prescription, and so Caine was able to go immediately from there into the boarding tunnel, bypassing the bored guard who would probably never know how close he'd come to a promotion. The little vial of pills rattled uncomfortably in his pocket and Caine wondered what he should do with them. It was unlikely that his own medical quirks were close enough to Rienzi's for the drug to be worth anything to him. On the other hand, it was conceivable that Marinos had replaced all of Rienzi's records—in which case the pills might be all that would keep him alive on Plinry. He would just have to hang onto them and hope that whatever it was wouldn't kill him without lots of obvious symptoms first.

Disease, however, was likely to be the least of his troubles. So far his attention had been concentrated on getting out of New Geneva and onto a spaceship before the Resistance came apart like a house of cards. Now, with that much nearly accomplished, he was able to focus on the staggering problems still facing him. Without the forged authorization papers Kratochvil had planned to give him, it was unlikely the government officials on Plinry would let him near the records he needed. And without a letter of introduction it could be equally difficult to get any cooperation from Plinry's underground. His only hope lay in the chance that General Lepkowski was indeed in charge of the underground. If he could convince Lepkowski he was a colleague of Kratochvil's, he might get some help. And once he got the information... Caine shook his head to clear it. There was no point in looking that far ahead; there were too many impossibles facing him as it was. He was just going to have to take things one at a time.

He emerged from the boarding tunnel onto the pad where the passenger ship—a converted pre-war freighter, from its appearance—was waiting. Shifting his grip on his suitcases, he paused and looked around him. The pad was built up from ground level, and large parts of the city, the lake, and the surrounding mountains could be seen. But even as Caine glanced around at the scenery, his eyes turned almost magnetically to the southwest. There, seven kilometers away, was the blackened region where old Geneva had been. Caine shuddered, once, and headed again for the ship. The Ryqril, he knew, played this game to win.

First contact had occurred in early 2370 when a TDE exploration ship stumbled on a Ryqril outpost some two parsecs from the Terran colony world Llano. Within ten years there was regular communication between humans and the tall, leathery-skinned bipeds, and various trade agreements were being planned. The Ryqril seemed strangely reticent in matters concerning themselves or details of their empire, but this was generally chalked up to normal shyness; and the rumors that the aliens were fighting a war of conquest on their far frontier were never checked out.

Forty years later, the situation abruptly changed. Efforts at "normalization of relations" between the two races—efforts the Ryqril had been dragging their paws on—were suddenly abandoned, and new intelligence probes finally uncovered the truth. The Ryqril had indeed been fighting a war, and had won it nearly twenty years previously. All indications were that their post-war rearmament was nearly complete, and that their next target was to be the Terran Democratic Empire.

Preparations were started immediately, but it was largely an exercise in futility. The TDE controlled twenty-eight planets; the Ryqril one hundred forty. Nevertheless, there was no question but that the TDE would go down fighting.

And fight it did. Eight years passed from the revelation of its sitting-duck status to the outbreak of all-out war, and in that period mankind designed, built, and tested an impressive array of new weaponry; everything from handguns to huge Supernova-class warships. Though it had never fought with an alien race, the TDE had had enough internal squabbles in its history to have learned something of space warfare, and countless pre-war skirmishes with the Ryqril gave human forces the chance to hone their skills. But the situation was still hopeless, and in its desperation mankind was forced to rethink accepted military theory, including such basic concepts as what exactly defined a weapon.