“That’s the thing with you, isn’t it? Control. You want to control yourself, the suit, and now me.”
He didn’t respond and she grew uneasy in the silence that stretched out, until Jack finally said, softly, “I can’t do it without you.”
“I know.” She looked away, toward the panorama window. It looked out on a part of Malthen she had never thought she’d be privileged to see … a park that stretched along the street. Small, but green, and bursting with life. She sighed gustily. “I know.”
“How do I start?”
“First you’re going to have to let me work with it.” Reluctantly, she laid her hands across the Flexalinks. Her eyes flew wide open. “God, it’s strong now! Life, death, life … it sings, Jack.”
“I know,” he said. He sat back, and watched her.
“But it’s gibberish … I mean, it doesn’t sing right.” She frowned. The tiny line of concentration etched itself into her smooth forehead. “What could it be?”
“DNA, maybe, like whalesong. Who knows? If it’s regenerating, maybe that has something to do with it.”
“A mystery,” she said faintly as she let herself sink into it.
Jack watched uneasily, alertly, wondering if the bloodlust he’d felt in battle could be heard in that song. The frown faded, to be replaced by an expression of happiness, and she smoothed her hands back and forth across the links. She whispered, “I could never kill this.”
He reached out and grabbed up her hand, suddenly afraid. Amber snapped back to attention. “It’s strong.”
“Too strong for you?”
“No, but … I’ll have to teach you some meditation exercises.”
“I know a few already.”
“Good, that’ll help. That song … it really draws you in. It catches at me.” Amber moved back, but remained kneeling. “Do you really think it helped you kill all those people?”
“I don’t know. I only know I don’t remember most of what happened,”
“I don’t think it was the suit.”
He didn’t want to think otherwise. She looked at his face and shrugged. “We all know man’s the most vicious killer in the skies.”
“Except for Thraks.”
She responded to the impatience in his voice by adding, “I want to do one last thing, and then I’ll work with you.” Leaning forward, she placed her palms on the suit again, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Jack asked, “What was that for?”
“Well, I put a … a repulsion on it. I don’t think it’ll be able to break through. You know what? I don’t think it knows it exists yet.”
“What?”
She tossed a long strand of hair off her shoulder. “Well, it’s hard to explain, but I don’t think it knows it’s an it yet. It’s like a baby, y’know? All they want to do is eat and sleep and piddle on everybody, and they make a lot of noise about it, but if you try to ’feel’ them, they don’t know they’re an it.”
“No self-recognition.”
“I guess that’s it. Okay. Stretch out on the floor behind the suit and close your eyes and do what I tell you.”
Jack breathed deep and tried to shut out the furor of the staging area around him as some fifty men equipped and readied for the drop. He didn’t have the qualms this time that he had had working for Tomcat as to whether he did right or wrong. He was helping the tax collector for this region “collect,” but he also did not have the same confidence in his commander. Truthfully, Wayne was a self-righteous prig, and Jack had yet to decide if he was a tax collector because of his personality or had acquired his personality in order to rationalize his job. But, because of his abrasive nature, Wayne had failed to pull the men together or coordinate what they were about to do.
Nor were they exactly sneaking up on their target. On the contrary, Wayne was determined to make an example of this seizure. The show of force he’d attempted to orchestrate would not surprise anyone.
Jack hated to walk up and knock on the front door that way.
He spewed his breath out, unable to do the exercises Amber had taught him. The suit pressed around him tightly. He made a slight adjustment on the humidity/temperature control as his breath steamed the inside of the faceplate. The being that shared the suit with him had already come awake. Even Jack could feel it now … a wispy, breathless nothing that swept over him like an intuitive feeling or an ill wind. Now and then it would quest, or at least, he thought he could feel the query in the touch. Most often, it made him uneasy, on demand, as though there was something he should be providing and wasn’t.
“The drop tubes are ready.”
Jack looked up and saw the others making their way to the tubes. They were dropping in shifts—Jack, as usual, would be in the forefront. The five other men in line for his tube moved to make way for him. Jack shrugged, making sure his field pack and parachute were secure before he climbed into the tube.
They shut the hatch after him, and Jack was in darkness except for the faint glow from his instrument panels. His heart missed a beat. He was always nervous in the drop tubes. Always. It would never change. Sarge had told him not to worry, that it was part of his job and his makeup, and that’s what made him a good soldier, a good Knight. Jack licked his lips and felt his skin quiver. The contacts shook.
A probing thought touched him. Who?
“Us,” he thought back, before he realized what he’d done. Then he snapped to, and the fear that had just gently pricked at him before sent him rigid. What in the hell was communicating with him?
The tube flared, and with an awful force, he was slung into space. No time to think further. He drifted, weightless, floating above the blue and white marbleized planet, then through the low cloud layer. The chute popped, pulling him roughly into awareness that he’d been launched safely and now approached the target city.
Wayne expected them to seize an entire city. Jack looked down, half-expecting to see tracers etching their white fingers toward him and his fellow assaulters. But no one was shooting at them. With a jolt he felt clear to his molars, he landed feet first, and ran forward, turned, and gathered the chute to him, so he could shrug off the pack. Others landed about him. Some wore only jumpsuits, disposable oxygen masks and weapon belts, others were equipped nearly as heavily as he was.
Wayne shrilled in their ears. “Go get those bastards! I want that writ served—I expect you to shove it up their noses! I want that city!”
On the local frequency, Jack heard someone mutter, “I’ll shove it up their asses if that’ll shut him up any faster.”
The corner of Jack’s mouth quirked. He checked his compass for position, but it wasn’t necessary—the line of mercenaries dropping into formation told him which way they were headed. The terrain was mildly broken. As he walked, dirt clods puffed up from his boots, and sweet grass twisted under his steps. It was semi-arid land, and the trees twisting upward had sparse, parched leaves, and shaggy bark that sloughed off even as they passed because it was the dry season. As they rounded a knoll, Jack caught sight of the walled city Wayne expected them to seize.
It was little more than a settlement built up around a main water evaporator operation. Little wonder—to the farmers in the area, the project meant life itself. From that nucleus, it had collected traders, bars, stores and so forth. Then, as though aware it had blossomed into a city, it had wrapped an enormous metal wall about itself … protecting the water rights, no doubt.
Jack eyed the wall. With a short run and a power vault, he’d be over. But he might be the only man to scale it that quickly. Wayne had told them to blast the main gates. He hadn’t seemed to care how many lives it might take to accomplish that maneuver.
They approached the city unchallenged, and it wasn’t until they drew near that Jack could see the weapons his sensors were picking up. Hand-held, most of them, and relatively short-range. Their owners perched on top of the wall and glared down at the invaders, unaware, perhaps, of the excellent targets they themselves made against the skyli
ne until somebody barked an order at them, and they all flattened,
Jack felt grateful for that someone on the other side of the wall. He also had a feeling he was about to dislike this whole operation. He squinted as the sun reflected off the wall, dazzling him.
“Serve the writ!” Wayne shrilled in his headset.
The com line screen was already on as they came to the gates. A picture of a tan, lean, silver-haired man focused in. Even as he said, “What is it you want?” a khaki-clad mercenary stepped forward with laser rifle cradled in his arm.
“I’ll serve his fracking writ,” he ground out. He etched the writ into the metal wall, writing until the barrel of his laser rifle turned crimson, looked at it critically, then finished the job.
Wayne, catching the gist of what was happening, began to scream maniacally. “Not like that! Into his hand! Storm, where the hell are you? I want that writ placed in his hand.”
“You’ll have it,” Jack said complacently. He faced the com line screen. “We’re representatives of the Dominion Treasury. We’d like to talk to your city administrator, mayor, or whatever de facto head you’ve chosen to represent you.”
The silver-haired man who had been looking askance at the metal gate, now turned back, scowling. “You’re talking to him. What are you, a walking bucket of bolts? I won’t talk to you. Get someone made of flesh and blood in front of me.”
Jack took the sunscreen shield off his faceplate. “You’ve got him,” he said, leaning forward.
The man’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Good god,” he muttered. He looked over his shoulder at someone out of range, then looked back. “I’ve got a Temporary Restraining Order. Tell that to that bastard, Wayne. Can he hear through you?”
Jack pulled a hand out of his gauntlet and sleeve and thumbed his interior switches. He said, “Now, he can. Repeat what you’ve just said.”
The flat image grimaced, then said, “Forget it, Wayne. We’ve got an injunction. We’ve got a Temporary Restraining Order. Call off your dogs.”
The mercenaries around Jack began to laugh. They lowered their weapons and went into at-ease stances.
Jack’s headset fairly vibrated with Wayne’s response. The man on the com line waited until he was finished, then said, “Same to you, Wayne. Come get me if you want me … and watch us sue the pants off you and your department. We’ll have free water for the next two generations!” The com line went blank.
Around him, the men began muttering darkly. Wayne spat out, “Go get him.”
“He’s got a restraining order,” Jack said.
“I don’t give a good goddamn what he says he’s got. It’s a forgery. A mistake. I want that writ served and the city seized.”
Jack began to back up, wondering how in the hell he was going to get off-planet if he pissed off his ride back. But it might be worth it.
Wayne began offering outrageous bonuses to anyone who would go in. The mercenaries looked at one another. A few brought their weapons back up to firing level as the headset continued to crackle with the tax collector’s venom. The mercenaries started to fan out, when Jack’s cameras caught sight of a considerable amount of action on a nearby rooftop. He focused it in. “Holy shit—that’s a well blaster they’ve got aimed at us.”
He, and others, thought twice about how poorly defended the city appeared to be. Anything that could blast through rock strata would cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter. He patched in to Wayne, saying, “We can have a first class slaughter here, on both sides, unless you listen to reason.”
“I’ll make sure your writ is served, but there has to be another way to do this.” From the static on the line. Jack was fairly certain the call was being monitored. “Look, Wayne,” he persisted, “if the man’s injunction is the right stuff, your ass is on the line, as well as ours.”
A short silence, then, “I can be reasonable if they can.”
The gates began to swing open slowly, and the com line came back on. The tanned man smiled grimly from the screen.
“I know you want your pound of flesh, Wayne—so tell you what. Our champion against yours. You win, I’ll pay the taxes and then we’ll straighten it out in court. We win … and you pull back your troops until after the hearing. Agreed?”
A sputter on the wires, and then Wayne said, “Agreed.” Sotto voce, he said, “Go get ‘em, Jack.”
Jack abruptly chinned off the com line. His heart sank a little, suddenly wanting absolutely no part of this. He knew he was right when he heard the gasps of his comrades, as they moved back from the gate.
“It’s the Purple!”
He pivoted quickly, and saw the monstrous mauve-tinted suit coming out toward him.
It was such a shock to see another suit of battle armor that his knees went weak, and he felt his thoughts jumble abruptly, as though the world had spun to a stop. And the other inside his suit, feeling the barriers go down, took a stab at his mind. Me? Us? came the alien thought and Jack started, just like a wild creature, inside the battle armor.
An incredible lust for blood and mayhem seized Jack. Before he could salute the other fighter or signal readiness for combat, he lunged, gauntlets curled.
He seized the purple suit and threw it three man-lengths away, shuddering with the effort as the suit hit, dust blossoming from the meteoric impact. Jack shook his head, trying to shake off the alien thrust inside his mind. He circled the purple suit, waiting for movement—for attack. No longer a soldier, he’d become a predator.
The warrior in the purple battle armor rolled over slowly.
Jack bared his teeth in feral joy.
Us? Me? jabbed the alien mind, and his right arm went up, gauntlet facing the sky, as the Purple sheered off a close range spurt of fire. Jack spun on his left heel, and felt the wash of heat … and a wave of fear generated by the discovery that the “other” could trigger the suit circuitry. He mentally wrestled with his suit’s co-inhabitant even as he dropped to his knee and fired, lefthanded, at the face plate of the other man.
White frost obscured the plate instantly, a little trick picked up from Gilgenbush’s satellite, blinding the other fighter.
That quick, he had him. Jack ground his teeth, fighting himself as much as he fought the man in the purple battle armor. Better to be done now, while he still had some control, for his ears buzzed, and his nerves quivered, ready to kill—not capture.
He jumped, overtaking the downed warrior and drew back his foot, to grind down the outside power packs, disabling the antiquated suit.
It was then that his own suit decided to sit down. As Jack’s ass hit the ground, he saw the other mercenaries running to give the two fighters a wide berth, and another lash of energy sizzled the air where his head had been but a second ago.
“Shit,” Jack said, and tried to wrestle control of his suit back. The song of fierce joy echoed in his brain, and nervous sweat trickled down his bare back, as he rolled over on the dirt road and literally crawled out of range. He tried to project an image of himself, in the suit, fired to a char, unless he recovered usage of it. As he got to his feet, he triggered the power vault.
He curved in midair, into a graceful somersault, and landed on his feet. He was so shocked by the sudden return of his control that he never saw the blow coming that knocked him off his feet. He slammed into the ground and lay gasping for breath, watching helplessly through the fishbowl as the Owner of the Purple jumped on his chest, and wrenched Jack’s helmet off abruptly.
The dry air of the world hit him and Jack gasped, as it sucked all excess moisture from him almost instantly. The other mind went absolutely quiet, as he lay still, pinioned under the purple suit.
The man reached in and pulled a wire out, and the suit went dead. He then took his own helmet off and grinned, saying, “Everything has its weak spot.”
Jack gaped up at the man … the tanned and silver-haired face from the com line.
The Owner of the Purple ran his gauntlet through his hair, getting it a
way from dark, humorous, brown eyes. “They elected me mayor,” he said.
“In that case,” Jack answered, reaching into his inside tool pouch. “I have this writ to serve you with,” and put the disk into his hands. “Who the hell are you?”
Sadness flickered but an instant in the other’s eyes. “I’m the last survivor of Dorman’s Stand. Who the hell are you?”
Chapter 15
And then what happened?” Amber looked at him avidly, the slice of pizza hanging from her fingers, where it had frozen a sentence or two ago.
“Then he helped me out of the suit and rewired it.” Jack watched as the slice continued to its final destination and Amber winced.
“You said his suit was really old. Did you find out how he got it?”
“Yes.” Jack trailed a string of cheese into his mouth and lied. “His grandfather was a veteran and the suit’s been passed down. He let me open it up … some things have really changed.” But not, he thought, the code of honor of a Knight. The Owner of the Purple, whoever he was, had told Jack more than he’d ever told anybody, knowing that they were both bound by the armor he wore. He wondered vaguely if Ballard would know who the Purple really was.
Amber swallowed quickly and looked up. “Do you think you know where ‘it’ is? I mean, could you tell in the difference between the suits?”
He shook his head.
“Well, if it kept the suit from moving right, you’ve got trouble.”
“I know.” He sighed. Sand War memories flooded him … of a suit moving herky-jerky, a scream of death, and then grinding to a stop. But it couldn’t be that much alive … he couldn’t even see it. And the intoxication of the contact, the sheer adrenaline pumping invincibility of it was like a drug … a drug that had done far more good for him than anything he’d gotten since being awakened from cold sleep.
Amber touched his arm. “What are you thinking?”
Jack started. “I’m not sure,” he answered slowly. “Ballard told me, and I remember, the last stages before the berserkers emerged. According to that, I’m in the last stages. But I can’t be. Nothing is assimilating me … nothing physical. It’s as though we’ve just been touching minds and the—the thing—is just learning to think. Either we’re wrong or—”
Solar Kill Page 14
