Rafe Skyler was a big man to begin with, and with the heavy armor he was wearing he looked positively monstrous. "I think I'm glad I couldn't see you," Caine told him. "You look like a giant sculpture of a beetle."

Skyler chuckled as he got easily to his feet. "A lesser man might take that as an insult," he commented, unsnapping his helmet and lifting it off for examination. On the top was a flaming-red mark a few centimeters across. "Good shot," he said approvingly. "Clean hit, with enough force to break even a Ryq's skull." Craning his neck, the big man looked down onto his chestplate and the twin red marks left there by Caine's heels. "Nice," he said.

"Of course," a voice behind Caine added, "ideally you shouldn't have let him get that close."

Caine turned, feeling the rush of mixed emotions that always, on some level, accompanied his interactions with Damon Lathe. A blackcollar commando commander—comsquare for short—doyen of the remaining blackcollars on Plinry, Lathe had saved Caine's life at least twice and had succeeded in pulling the younger man's first Resistance mission to success out of what had been wet ashes indeed.

On the other hand, he'd also lied to Caine on several occasions, sent him around the red-herring track more times than Caine cared to remember, and had virtually reduced him to pawn status on that same mission. And to top it off, for the past seven months Lathe had been the one running Caine through Plinry's brand-new floating blackcollar academy.

Which had included a lot of this brand of tooth-grinding test.

Stepping to Caine's side, Lathe glanced over Skyler's armor. "Not bad," he said. "You also got three fast kills and two slow ones with your shuriken. The last one, though, you nearly missed. Let's go to the lodge and run the tapes."

Skyler was looking upward. Caine followed his gaze, found the tiny black dot hovering far above.

"Smile for Security's cameras," Skyler suggested.

Caine considered sending an obscene gesture instead, decided not to bother. Replacing his shuriken in its pouch, he followed Lathe back through the trees as, all around him, the "dead" returned to life to await the next victim.

—

It was really rather sobering to see the performance on tape.

Seated before the screen, his mind replaying his own memories as he watched, he listened to Lathe's running critique. "...here you lost half a second in the backward underhand throw.... Good roll, but he should by rights have nailed you on his next shot.... Skyler may have been too quiet to hear, but you should have sensed his approach.... Late, but a good takedown anyway."

The tape ended, and Caine uncurled his fists. "So what's the verdict?" he asked. "Are you graduating us now, or do I have to wait until the next time the Novak heads for Earth?"

Lathe set his elbows on the desk in front of him, fingering the ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand as he gazed into Caine's face. Caine's eyes dropped to the ring: a silvery dragonhead, its batwing crest curving back over the knuckle, its ruby-red eyes proclaiming its owner to be a blackcollar comsquare. A symbol of ability, dedication, and sheer fighting power... and for Caine, a symbol too of what he intended to do with his new skills.

"You'd like to wear the dragon, wouldn't you?" Lathe asked into his thoughts.

"Not without earning it," Caine told him.

Lathe shrugged fractionally, his eyes still on Caine's. "We could grant you a special exception, provided we could find an unused ring to fit you."

"What good would that do?" Caine snorted. "I want to be a blackcollar, not just dress like one."

Lathe pursed his lips. "If we had any Backlash, you'd be the first to get it. You know that."

Caine nodded. Backlash—the code name for the drug that had been the heart of the whole blackcollar project. Given in a tailored dosage pattern, it permanently altered a man's neural chemistry, effectively doubling his speed and reflexes in combat situations. Backlash, and Backlash alone, had allowed the blackcollars to successfully pit their low-tech, low-profile weaponry against the more sophisticated Ryqril equipment and, in many cases, come out ahead. Shuriken and nunchaku passed detectors set for lasers and high-metal projectile guns without raising a ripple; Backlash speed and blackcollar marksmanship turned them into deadlier weapons than they had any right to be.

But there was no Backlash on Plinry, and no indication that it still existed anywhere else in the TDE... and if that was true, the first generation of blackcollars would also be the last.

Lathe was speaking again, and Caine snapped his attention back to the blackcollar. "But without it, you and your team are about as ready as we can make you," the older man said. "So if you want to talk to Lepkowski about travel arrangements, this is the time to do so."

Caine licked his lips briefly. The moment he'd been aiming at for the past year... the moment when he would leave the relative safety of Plinry and strike out on his own against the Ryqril puppet government on Earth.

But there was no way he was going to show his private uncertainties before Lathe. "Good," he said briskly, getting to his feet. "Is the general still here?"

"He will be for another two hours. Then a shuttle's due to take him back up."

Caine nodded. "Okay. See you later."

—

General Avril Lepkowski's room at Hamner Lodge was small and sparsely furnished, as befit a man who'd spent perhaps a total of six days there in the past year. A cot, a desk and pair of chairs, a computer with scramble/code capability—brought down from one of the Nova-class warships Lathe and his blackcollars had dug out of decades-old storage from under the Ryqril collective snout a year earlier—and, of course, one of the ubiquitous "bug stompers" that seemed to sprout around the lodge and environs exactly like what their mushroom shapes suggested. Caine eyed the device dubiously as he entered the room. At the moment a good bug stomper was supposed to be proof against all known electronic monitoring devices, but that was bound to change someday. Unfortunately, no one would immediately know when that happened.

"Be with you in a minute, Caine," Lepkowski said, eyes on something tracking across his display.

Nodding silently, Caine took the chair beside the desk, from which the screen was out of view.

Whatever Lepkowski was working on, it was probably none of Caine's immediate business... and both Lathe and Lepkowski were very big on the compartmentalization of secrets. If you didn't need to know, you weren't told. And you didn't ask twice.

A minute later the older man sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Damn them all back to hell," he muttered.

"Trouble?" Caine asked.

"Yes, but so far only at the annoyance level." Lepkowski gestured at his screen. "The Karachi's last intelligence sweep through the TDE indicates the war front with the Chryselli has shifted again, and the damn Ryqril convoy routes have changed accordingly. Means we're going to have to detour around Navarre and maybe New Morocco if we don't want to run into anything big."

Caine grimaced. The huge Ryqril war machine which had overrun the TDE thirty years earlier was currently locked in combat with the Chryselli Homelands, and the legged furballs were giving the Ryqril a distinct run for their money. It was the only reason Lepkowski's three Novas were being allowed to wander around loose, in fact—the Ryqril simply couldn't afford the front-line ships and time it would take to chase them down. But that didn't mean a ship that just happened to bump into one of the Novas wouldn't take a shot at it. "You going to have any trouble hitting Earth?"

Lepkowski shook his head. "None at all—Earth's way off the convoy routes. I understand your team's riding with me."