Flynn's foot shot past above and in front of Caine's face, exactly where he'd anticipated it would go.

Shoving off with his back foot, cocking his right fist for a punch, he leaped to the attack.

And staggered backward as a pair of somethings thudded hard into his ribs and upper thigh.

He looked down. Embedded halfway into the padding were a pair of black, eight-pointed shuriken throwing stars.

Flynn finished his kick and spun around toward Skyler, and Caine looked across the clearing at Lathe.

The other gave him a tight smile and drew a line across his throat with his finger. It wasn't a standard blackcollar hand signal, but the meaning was clear.

For Caine, the game was over.

Grimacing, he nodded and backed up. Setting his personal pride on hold, he shifted to analysis mode and settled in to watch the rest of Flynn's test.

The exercise was over, and Caine had had time to get out of the suit and take a shower, when Lathe appeared at his room at the blackcollars' lodge. "So what did you think of Flynn's technique?" he asked as he came in, closing the door behind him.

"Odd but interesting," Caine said, studying the older man's lined face and gray-flecked goatee as he snagged a chair and pulled it over. Damon Lathe had been a commando commander—a comsquare—

during the losing war against the Ryqril thirty years ago. Instead of continuing a guerrilla-style fight after Earth's defeat, though, as other blackcollar and special forces units had, he and the remnant of Plinry's blackcollars had chosen instead to pretend to settle down under the alien domination. For nearly three decades they'd played the role of bitter but demoralized veterans, allowing themselves just enough of the youth drug Idunine to let their outer appearances age normally while still maintaining their muscles and joints and stamina, nurturing their strength and hope against the chance that one day they'd find an opportunity to strike one final serious blow against the Ryqril overlords.