The Knights of the Black Earth

by Margaret Weis; Don Perrin

  “Very funny,” Xris muttered, wincing and rubbing his shoulders. “Shut up and move out.”

  Inside the loading dock, all was quiet. Maintenance lights cast a pale, sickly yellow glow over the entire area. The two jumped out of the truck, ran for cover behind a row of shipping pallets. Pausing, they looked around, matching their location to that on the mental map each carried inside his head.

  The dock was filled with row after row of container pallets. To one side was a small office, probably for the shipping supervisor. At the back of the area was a divider wall, with several sets of double doors. The chemical storage room doors were marked bright yellow, with black warning signs posted on them.

  Ito studied his scanner. “All clear.”

  Xris keyed his commlink.

  “Sunray, this is Delta One. We are inside. Over.”

  “This is Sunray. Proceed. Out.”

  Ito took the lead. They left the loading dock through the double doors, entered the chemical storage room. It was completely dark. Only the red exit sign on the far side of the room provided any light, and the two padded silently toward it. Xris lit his nuke lamp, flashed it over a set of double doors fitted with electronic sensors.

  He glared at it. “Damnation! This wasn’t in the plans. Might be some sort of newly installed alarm system.”

  He could contact the controller, but if it wasn’t in Armstrong’s original plans, he wasn’t likely to know anything about it, either. Rowan would. He could tell from the type of sensors used whether the door was rigged to alert someone on opening or if it was just an ordinary automated door.

  Xris whispered, “Okay, Ito, my son, we bust through as fast as we can. You dive right and I’ll go left. Got it? Let’s move.”

  The two of them ran. The door started opening. They both sprinted through, dove for cover. Ito crouched behind a drilling machine, his lasgun arcing left and right. Xris was under a table, doing the same.

  They saw nothing in the room but machinery gleaming in the yellow glow of the maintenance lights. Ito stood up and started toward the office containing the main computer.

  Xris was just sliding out from under the table when suddenly his ears buzzed with static.

  He stood up, tapped his comm. Ito was apparently experiencing the same thing, for he turned around, looked at Xris with a puzzled expression on his face.

  The static dissipated; the channel went clear. A fear-distorted voice shouted, “All Deltas! Joker’s wild! For God’s sake, get out of there! Joker’s wild! Joker’s wild!”

  “The abort code!” Xris yelled at Ito, who had heard the same and was already moving. “Get the hell out of here!”

  But it was too late.

  Behind them, in the chemical storage room, a small detonator attached to a storage container filled with refined high explosives triggered its charge.

  The explosion hurled Xris backward. He landed under a large table with a laser drill press on it, just as the blast wave struck. The heavy table and machinery crashed down on top of him.

  Ito was caught out in the open. The blast ripped him apart. He died instantly, never knowing what hit him.

  Xris wasn’t so lucky.

  He writhed in agony. Blinding white agony . ..

  Betrayed.

  Fade to gray .. .

  Rowan.

  Black ...

  Chapter 5

  We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal.

  Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

  “So that’s my story,” Xris concluded, shifting his good leg into a more comfortable position. He made a conscious effort to appear relaxed, keep his hand—his good hand—from clenching, unclenching. That was his story, all right. Most of it—up to the ending. He left out the part about Rowan’s betrayal. “Rowan arrived later in the shuttle, saved my life. He must have. Someone pulled me out of that burning factory—”

  “But not Dalin Rowan,” said Wiedermann.

  Xris’s eyes narrowed. The fingers of his good hand twitched.

  “In this business,” Wiedermann continued, “we are used to our clients lying to us. We expect it. We don’t take offense. All part of the job. Dalin Rowan didn’t save your life, because Dalin Rowan wasn’t there at the time the factory blew up. And the reason Dalin Rowan wasn’t there was because he knew it was going to blow up. Am I right?”

  Xris took out another twist, put it in his mouth. “Go on.”

  “You spent a year in the hospital having most of your body parts replaced by metal—a god-awful year, if what I’ve heard about recovery from this sort of procedure is true. When you were finally released, you went home to your wife, but that didn’t last long.

  Your marriage couldn’t stand the strain. You walked out on your wife—”

  “That has nothing to do with anything,” Xris observed coolly.

  “The next place you went was FISA, the bureau.” Wiedermann either hadn’t heard or wasn’t interested in the interruption. “They offered you your old job back. But you didn’t take it. You turned them down flat. You began asking questions. Questions about Dalin Rowan: Where was he? What had happened to him? What did the bureau tell you?”

  Xris hesitated, then said, “According to Armstrong’s report, Rowan left in the shuttlecraft. That was the last anyone heard from him. The next thing the bureau knows, one of Warlord DiLuna’s ships reports that they received a distress call from Vigilance the day of the mission. The Warlord contacted the bureau, waited until they arrived—standard procedure, due to all the classified stuff we handled—then sent out a search-and-rescue team. They found the ship dead in space. Dead’s the right word. The crew had been murdered. Most died from asphyxiation—a deliberate air leak. The captain and bridge hands had been shot.

  “Only Armstrong was still alive. He was trapped in the control room. He’d been supposed to die in the vacuum, but apparently the air leak triggered some sort of emergency device that shut the blast doors, sealing him up inside. When that happened, he guessed immediately what was going on and gave us the abort code. Too late. He was trapped inside the control room until the search-and-rescue team found him, about twenty-four hours later.

  “It was easy to figure out what took place. One of the shuttlecraft was missing. Logs indicated Rowan took it. No one ever saw him again.”

  “You didn’t get a chance to talk to Armstrong personally, did you?”

  “No. He was killed shortly after that. Not surprising.” Xris grunted. “Those who deal with the Hung have a habit of dying prematurely. But I read his report.”

  “And you believed it.”

  “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”

  “Yes, why shouldn’t you? The bureau told you that what you had long suspected was true. Rowan had been on the take. The Hung had bought him. Dalin Rowan let you and your partner walk into that factory, knowing it was going to blow up. He wanted you dead. Why?” Wiedermann shrugged. “Probably figured you had caught on to him. You were going to expose him. That’s the reason the bureau gave you, wasn’t it?”

  Xris didn’t respond.

  “The bureau claimed that they had been searching for Rowan all this time. No luck. They said he was probably living on some tropical paradise, richer than Snaga Ohme. You said you were going to track Dalin Rowan down if it took you the rest of your life. The bureau was extremely helpful. Extremely. How long did you look for Rowan?”

  “A year,” Xris answered, chewing on the twist. “Then I ran out of money.”

  “Find any trace of him?”

  Xris shook his head. “It was like he dropped off the edge of the universe.”

  “In a way, he did,” said Wiedermann softly.

  Xris’s fist clenched. “You have found him. Goddammit, you’ve found him!”

  Wiedermann shifted his gaze, regarded Xris speculatively, curious to see his reaction to his next statement. “Yes, I found him. The bureau lied to you. They knew where he was all along. They know where he is.”

  Xri
s sat very still. LED lights flashed, tiny beeps and clicks ran up and down his cybernetic arm, indicating a systems check. One of the lights flared red instead of the usual yellow and green. Xris made a minor adjustment without thinking about it.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” he said after a moment. “For someone to disappear that completely, he’d had to have had help. But if he was on the take—”

  “All the better. Gave the bureau leverage. Here’s what we were able to find out. About nine months after the explosion, while you were in the hospital, the bureau cracked a big case—one of their biggest ever. They broke up the Hung, the largest crime syndicate in the inner part of the galaxy. One of their undercover agents had infiltrated the Hung’s organization, raided their computers, probed their files, discovered everything about them. Contacts, bribes to government officials, tax evasion schemes, money laundering, phony corporations, dealings with the Corasians—he found out everything. Not only did this infiltrator raid their files, he made a few ‘adjustments,’ ruined them financially. That hurt the organization worse than their leaders doing prison time.”

  “Computers,” said Xris. “Rowan.”

  “Right. He spent months patiently worming his way into the system, burrowing deeper and deeper, crawling through layer after layer. He knew all their secrets, every one. And he used those secrets to bring them down. He spent another couple of months on the witness stand, laying those secrets bare. Two attempts on his life were made during the trial. God knows how many others that were never made public. When the trial was over, Dalin Rowan walked out of the courtroom and was never seen again. The bureau gave him a new identity.”

  Xris frowned, thinking. “What about Armstrong?”

  “Like you, he was trying to track Rowan down. Obviously, he succeeded. He was probably the one who led the agency to Rowan, who was already in bed with the Hung. Nice and convenient.”

  “And instead of blowing the traitor’s head off, the bureau uses him!” Xris took the twist out of his mouth, leaned forward. “What have you got? A name, a planet? That’s all I need. Give that to me and we’ll call it a deal. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Ah, this is where I enter a moral and legal dilemma,” Wiedermann stated sonorously.

  “Fuck it!” Xris swore. “I’m paying you enough to get over your moral and legal dilemma. I want to talk to him, that’s all.”

  Wiedermann studied Xris, gazed at him long and intently.

  The cyborg could see his own metal body reflected back to him in the detective’s pale and watery green eyes.

  “Having heard your story, I would say that you are entitled to that much,” the detective conceded. “If anything goes amiss—”

  “You won’t be involved.”

  “Damn right, we won’t be,” Wiedermann snapped. “I’ve already established that you lied to us. Our lawyers have indicated to me that we’ll be in the clear—”

  “Clear for what? You worried about the bureau? Hell, this was almost nine years ago. We’ve gone through a major change of government since then. FISA’s still around, of course, but I doubt if anyone’s left in the department who remembers—”

  “Not the bureau,” said Wiedermann shortly. “I’ll bring up the file.”

  He swiveled in his chair, rolled the chair over to one of the computers, and placed his hands on the keyboard. Data and a blurred picture scrolled rapidly past Xris’s vision. A printer whirred. Hard copy slid out into a tray, including—Xris could see from his vantage point—a color photograph. Xris waited with ill-concealed impatience while Wiedermann examined the documents, collated them, tapped them into neat order on the desk, then handed them over to Xris.

  The photograph was on top.

  Xris looked at it, looked up at Wiedermann. “Who’s this?”

  “Dalin Rowan. Not his real name now, of course.”

  Xris frowned, eyes narrowed. “What is this? A joke?”

  “I never joke.”

  “Neither do I.” Xris rose to his feet. Hinging the photo and the rest of the data onto the desk, he leaned over it, leaned into Wiedermann’s face. “I paid you—paid you damn well—to get information for me. As for what I do with that information, that’s none of your goddam business! You—”

  “Please, sit down,” Wiedermann said.

  “Not until you give me my information! The real information!” Xris clamped his metal hand over Wiedermann’s collar, bow tie and all, and twisted. The tie crumpled into a wad. Wiedermann tilted his head back; his Adam’s apple bobbed up over Xris’s fingers.

  “That is the information,” Wiedermann croaked, remaining calm. “Read it, if you don’t believe me. Frankly, I didn’t believe it myself. But when you think about it—”

  Xris let loose, shoved Wiedermann backward. The cyborg remained standing a moment longer, glaring, deciding what to do.

  Slowly, he relapsed back into his chair and, grudgingly, picked up the data, including the photograph. He looked at it again.

  Dalin Rowan had been two meters tall, with dark hair, slender build, brown eyes, and a wide and infectious smile. Above all, Dalin Rowan had been a he.

  The picture Xris held was of a she.

  Most definitely—a she.

  “You have to admit,” Wiedermann said in admiration, “it’s the ultimate disguise.”

  Chapter 6

  On ne nait pas femme: on le devient.

  One is not born a woman: one becomes one.

  Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxieme sexe

  “Darlene Mohini.” Wiedermann had run off his own copy of the data in the file, was reading aloud. “Thirty-six. Unmarried. No children.”

  Xris snorted.

  “She has a very neat little history. All completely phony, of course. Employment record, college transcript. I’m surprised the bureau didn’t make her homecoming queen. Her fake history is seamless. Not a gap. As you can see, the bureau was even able to forge a past realistic enough for her to gain her security clearance.”

  “Rowan did that, not the bureau,” Xris muttered.

  He stared at the photo. It had been taken by a hidden cam as she was walking down a street. He searched for a trace of his friend beneath the makeup. The jawline, perhaps. The eyes were a possibility. If he could once see that smile ...

  Xris felt slightly dizzy, as if his internal computer system had gone on the blink, screwed up his chemical balance, was feeding him too much juice. He popped open his wrist, did a quick systems analysis. All registered normal.

  “A disguise, you said.” Xris shifted his gaze to Wiedermann. “Rowan goes around all day dressed up like a woman—”

  “Ah, I didn’t quite mean ‘disguise,’ “ Wiedermann amended. “He’s not merely dressing the part. Or perhaps I should say ‘she.’ We located the hospital where they performed the surgery.”

  Xris gaped. “What? You don’t mean— Look, a change in identity means that a guy shaves his beard, not his legs! He gets a new driver’s license. He doesn’t have certain body parts whacked off and others added on!”

  Wiedermann said nothing. He merely stared pointedly at Xris’s metal arm. The wrist hatch was still open, the various lights blinking, the small computer screen scrolling through its readout on the cyborg’s internal workings. Xris, flushing, snapped the hatch shut.

  “That’s different. This saved my life.”

  “What’s your point?” Wiedermann gestured to the photo. “Dalin Rowan brought down people who were worth billions, ruined them financially, sent them to prison. If there is one person in this entire universe those people hate, it is Dalin Rowan. You think they can’t touch him just because they’re locked up?”

  “All right. Yeah, I know. But still . ..” Xris shook his head.

  “You—his best friend—didn’t recognize him.”

  Xris paused, thought about that. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have recognized him. Her.”

  Sure, Dalin Rowan had been worried about the Hung coming after him. But he was probably a lot
more worried about someone else coming after him. Someone who’d known him so well ...

  Xris stared at the photo. “It’s starting to make sense,” he admitted. He looked up. “I suppose you’ve got proof. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”

  Wiedermann flipped the papers. “All in here. Including a DNA match—Darlene Mohini equals Dalin Rowan.”

  “DNA match? How the devil did you get a DNA match?”

  Wiedermann grinned. “I understand that you are the leader of a mercenary organization. You do odd jobs for people. People who are—shall we say—high up on the social ladder. It was, in fact, rumored that you once worked for Her Majesty—”

  “Okay.” Xris raised his hand. “We’ve all got our professional secrets. Just curious, that’s all.” He flipped through the data file, found the information on the DNA, read through it twice. Again, he shook his head, said silently, You’re a clever bastard, Dalin Rowan. No wonder I ran smack into a brick wall searching for you. But I’ve got you now, “old friend.” I’ve got you now.

  “And then there’s the name.” Wiedermann was rambling on. “That, to me, was the conclusive proof—from a philosophical standpoint, if you will.”

  “What about the name? Darlene?” Xris spoke with a slight sneer. “I think Rowan once had a girlfriend named Darlene, but—”

  “No, not Darlene. Although the fact that both begin with the letter d and have two syllables, with the accent on the first in each case, is suggestive. No, it was the use of the name Mohini which I found significant. Your friend was a scholar, well read?”

  Xris shrugged. “College degree. Advanced. Computer science—”

  “Perhaps he dabbled in Earth religions such as Hindu? Well, never mind. Not important. According to Hindu legend, the god Shiva was so powerful that the other gods feared if he sank too deeply into meditation, the resulting energy could engulf and destroy the world. Therefore, in order to jolt Shiva from his meditative state, the other gods asked the god Vishnu to distract him. Vishnu did so by adopting the guise of a beautiful woman. Guess what her name was? Mohini.” Wiedermann was triumphant. “Interesting, don’t you think?”