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.