The Knights of the Black Earth

by Margaret Weis; Don Perrin

  And thus the members of Mag Force 7 who were present were wondering what they were doing here. Planning sessions were usually held in Xris’s condo on Alpha Gamma. Mag Force 7 was a mercenary team, handpicked by Xris himself. They were licensed by the government, had a well-deserved reputation as being the best in the business. They had done jobs for the topmost of the top levels in government. Xris was on a first-name basis with the Lord Admiral, Sir John Dixter, and had once saved the life of the fleet adjutant, Mendaharin Tusca. It was rumored, but not known for certain, that Xris had once been secretly employed by Her Majesty the Queen.

  Mag Force 7 didn’t need to take on shabby or dirty little jobs. And though they took care to keep a client’s business secret—if that’s what the client wanted—they had never before taken the extraordinary precaution of meeting at the Exile Cafe.

  Xris took another turn around the room. Harry—whose specialty was piloting every craft that flew, floated, or ran on wheels— watched his boss in perplexity. The two had been together a long time—years, in fact. Other members in the original team had come and gone. Died on the job, some of them: Chico, killed by the Corasians on Shiloh’s Planet; Britt dead in the tunnels of a Corasian slave labor mine. Lee had quit the team to get married. Harry was the only one left of the old bunch. He’d never seen Xris—usually as cool as the metal he was mostly made of— nervous, on edge.

  A lilting voice came floating through the commlink. “It is—” A pause, as if the person speaking had to think about it.

  “Raoul,” said Harry, grinning.

  “Raoul,” decided the voice. “And the Little One.”

  Xris switched the screen from the bar area to the hallway outside the meeting room.

  Raoul, resplendent in an eye-piercing fluorescent green unitard, smiled blissfully and waved to the cam.

  Xris activated the controls, admitting the Loti, the raincoated Little One, and a heady wave of perfume.

  Raoul wafted inside the room. “Xris Cyborg,” he said gravely, gliding over and giving Xris a light kiss on his left cheek. “I am extremely pleased to see you again. The Little One also extends his most gracious compliments.”

  The raincoat shook itself, like a dog readjusting its fur.

  Xris, accustomed to the typical Adonian form of greeting, submitted to the Loti’s kiss with a good grace, but only after he’d taken a close, scrutinizing look at Raoul’s lips. Not that Xris feared Raoul would deliberately poison his boss, but the fact that he was wearing lethal lip gloss occasionally slipped the Loti’s drug-fogged mind.

  “Peach-flavored, nothing more.” Raoul flicked his tongue over his orange-tinged mouth.

  Xris grunted. “You’re late.”

  “I am? For what?” Raoul was astonished.

  “The meeting. I didn’t bring you here to celebrate old home week,” Xris added wryly.

  “Meeting . . .” Raoul cast a vague glance around the room, suddenly noticed there were other people present. He gave them a charming smile, fluttered his fingers at them. “The team assembled. I am extremely pleasured to see you all again. The Little One, as well. We are sorry to have kept you waiting.” He turned to Xris with a reproachful air. “We were not informed that our presences were required in a timely and immediate fashion.”

  “The meeting was called for thirteen hundred hours—”

  “But you didn’t tell us we had to be here by then,” Raoul pointed out with an aggrieved air. Green eyelids—to match his unitard—fluttered. “I do not see how this can be my fault, Xris Cyborg.”

  Xris opened his mouth, shut it on what would have been a caustic remark. The last thing he wanted to do now was hurt the Adonian’s feelings. The thought of Raoul’s face, streaked with tears and green eyeliner, was too much. Besides, what Raoul had said was true. The Loti operated on his own time system, which bore little or no relation to any other time system currently in use anywhere in the galaxy. Xris had never quite figured it out. When timing was critical to the operation, Raoul and the Little One were always where they were supposed to be at the precise second. But to casually mention to Raoul that he should be attending a meeting at 1300 hours ...

  Raoul’s eyes were starting to shimmer. “In the days of my former employment in this location—due, if you will recall, to the untimely and most treacherous death of my late former employer, Snaga Ohme—I made a considerable number of acquaintances here at the Exile Cafe, all of whom were quite pleased to see me again. But if you would have told me, Xris Cyborg, that you had called a meeting of the team—”

  “Very well, Raoul,” Xris interrupted testily. “It’s all my fault. I apologize for you being late.”

  “And I forgive you,” said Raoul graciously.

  He brushed his finger lightly across the cyborg’s flesh-and-blood arm, then minced across the room to take a seat with the rest of the team, who were now grinning at each other.

  Xris waited with exemplary patience for Raoul to settle himself. When the Adonian had his legs crossed and his hair arranged on his shoulders and his lip gloss reapplied and when the Little One had plopped himself down on the floor and pushed the fedora back to reveal the bright, gleaming eyes, Xris called the meeting to order.

  “As you’ve probably all guessed by now ...” He paused a moment to take out a twist and light it, then had to wait further while Raoul put a scented handkerchief over his nose. “We have a job. It’s going to be a tough one. Dangerous .. . and something more.”

  He took a drag on the twist, blew smoke. The LED lights winked on his arm, emitted a quick series of beeps. He glanced down, made a minor adjustment, looked up. “There could be some possible ramifications. Legal ones. I’m telling you all this up front, so that if any one of you wants to drop out, you can go with my blessing.”

  “What are you getting at, Xris?” Harry asked. “Hell, we’ve all broken our share of laws before now.”

  Xris nodded, held the twist in his hand between his thumb and forefinger. “Local laws. This job is going to require us to break into a top-level, secret, secure Royal Naval military facility.”

  “Shit,” Harry Luck said, almost reverently.

  The Little One, curled up at Raoul’s feet, stirred and shivered beneath his raincoat. Raoul murmured something, patted the empath soothingly on the fedora. The Loti regarded Xris with a peculiarly intense and suddenly focused stare that was extremely disconcerting.

  Xris shot a glance at him and the Little One, frowned. “Whatever information that damn empath is draining off me, he better keep it under his hat.”

  Raoul coughed delicately into the handkerchief.

  Xris, glaring, took a last drag on the twist, snubbed it out, and tossed it in a receptacle.

  “You’ll be paid double,” he went on, “but if anything goes wrong, we’re going to have our tails caught in one hell of a tight crack. I’ll take full responsibility. But I want you to know what you’re in for. So”—he started to light another twist, caught Raoul’s eye, and thrust it irritably back into the case—”that’s it. If you want out, leave now. The less you know, the better.”

  The others exchanged uneasy glances. It wasn’t that they were worried about the job. They were more worried about their boss.

  “I forgot to mention one more thing,” Xris went on before anyone could say a word, “this is a kill job. I’m going to be taking out a man—woman. I’ll do the killing myself. It’s sort of legal. There’s been a warrant out for his arrest for years. But essentially I’ll be taking the law into my own hands. If anything goes wrong, you could be charged with accessory to murder.”

  “Is it permitted, Xris Cyborg,” Raoul said quietly, “to ask the name of our client? Who is the one hiring us to kill this person?”

  Xris took the twist out, began to chew on it. “Me.”

  “Ah!” Raoul breathed a deep sigh. Settling back in his chair, he clasped his hands, sparkling with rings, over his shapely legs. “And is it also permitted to ask what crime this man and woman have committed
that you have marked them for death?”

  “Not a man and a woman,” Xris said impatiently. “A woman.”

  “You said a man and a woman, Xris Cyborg.”

  “I made a mistake. A woman. As for what he did, he was responsible for the death of a friend of mine. And for a lot of other deaths. Maybe thousands. Because of him, the Corasians got their robot claws on some of the latest in firepower—weapons they used against our people on places like Shiloh’s Planet.”

  The Little One jerked suddenly as if in pain.

  “Shut up,” said Xris softly, taking the twist from his mouth. “Just shut up.”

  The Little One cringed and shrank back against Raoul’s legs.

  “He was responsible for the deaths?” Raoul was puzzled. “Whom is it that we are discussing? He who?”

  “I meant she!” Xris snapped his teeth viciously down on what was left of the twist.

  “First he is a he, then a she, then a he again, and now back to a she. I beg your pardon, Xris Cyborg”—Raoul shook his head gently, so as not to muss his hair—”but I am extremely confused.”

  “Look, Xris,” Harry spoke slowly, reluctantly, “I’m not one to question your judgment. If you say this ... uh . .. person’s got to die, then that’s good enough for me. But if there’s a warrant out, why take the chance on being sent to the terminator? Why not just arrest ... this person?”

  “Because he’s dead,” Xris said.

  Raoul gave a faint moan, pressed his hands to his temples.

  “Legally he’s dead. In reality, he’s still alive, but I’d have a hell of a time proving it. Not that the case would ever come to trial,”

  Xris continued bitterly. “They’d see to that—FISA. They’ve got their own dirty little secrets to hide.”

  “My gawd!” Harry’s jaw sagged. “The Royal Navy and the bureau!”

  “You can leave,” Xris said coldly. “There’s the door. No one’s keeping you.”

  “Look, Xris. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— It’s just that—”

  “Xris Cyborg.” Raoul stood up. Taking care to avoid stepping on his diminutive partner, the Loti walked over to Xris, laid a gen-tie hand on the cyborg’s good arm. “You are not being sensible. Not being logical. And this is very much not like you, my friend. You are permitting this woman who is a dead man to run away with your emotions. You know that everyone in this room is most loyal to you, Xris Cyborg.”

  The others in the room nodded earnestly, openly voiced their support.

  “Precisely.” Raoul neatly cut them off. “But, as the saying goes, you must look at yourself from the rear in order to tell if your panty hose are crooked.”

  “Does all this have a point?” Xris demanded.

  “My friend, if you came to yourself with this job and told yourself what you have told us ... you must admit, Xris Cyborg, that you would tell yourself to go play in hyperspace. If you would reveal the truth to your friends—tell us, for example, the fact that this dead man/woman is the one responsible for the explosion which left you—”

  “All right!” Xris snapped sullenly. He glared at the Little One. “So much for trying to keep anything private around the mental sponge.”

  “He means no harm. And I think that you will feel better if you will ease your soul of this—”

  “Your lipstick’s smudged,” Xris pointed out.

  Raoul paled. “Is it? Very badly?” His hand went to his mouth.

  “Smeared all over your face.”

  Raoul was stricken. “If I might be excused—”

  “The bathroom’s over there.” Xris indicated a door.

  Grabbing his makeup kit, the Adonian departed.

  Xris could not look at the rest of the team. He walked over to the window, stared out moodily. “The crazy Loti’s right. I came into this ass-backward. To make a long story short—”

  “You don’t need to tell me any more, Xris,” Harry interrupted. “I know all I need to know. Count me in. And you don’t have to pay me double. The usual pay’s good enough.”

  “I’m in, Xris,” said Jamil Khizr. “You can pay me whatever you consider I am worth.”

  He was worth plenty, and he knew it. So did Xris. The handsome, black-skinned human had been a heavy weapons instructor in the Royal Marines. He had caught Xris’s attention during a raid on Tarmigan, when Mag Force 7—acting under cover on request of the Lord of the Admiralty—had infiltrated the marine unit posted there in order to flush out a spy.

  Major Khizr had been of enormous help, showing a real talent for this type of work, talent that was being wasted in firing off practice rounds and droning classroom lectures. When Xris made him an offer, Jamil responded by resigning his commission that very day. Unmarried and professing to like it that way, Jamil was interested in one thing: money.

  Tycho spoke through his translator. “I’m cashing in my chips.”

  Xris, after a moment, realized the alien meant that he should be included in the deal, not that he was about to get shot in the back. Translators normally reduced most alien languages’ more colorful imagery to cliches in order to better facilitate human understanding. Unfortunately, either Tycho’s translator had a glitch in it somewhere or the alien’s imagery was more colorful than usual, for the results were often interestingly garbled.

  The wiry Tycho was of a race that was so exceptionally thin that most humans mistook his people for insectoids, an impression that was enhanced by the alien’s ability to alter at will the color of his skin—anything from porcelain white to ebony black to brown to forest green. His people were thus known, unofficially, as “chameleons.” Such an ability was an advantage in his line of work. Tycho was a highly trained assassin, who came recommended by former Warlord Bear Olefsky.

  An expert shot—Xris had never seen a better—Tycho had once taken out the infamous Bergermeister of Demselhaus, the capital city of the Olefsky Hegemony, from a distance of six thousand meters with a modified needle rifle. Being double-jointed, Tycho was also capable of climbing up, into, over, or underneath almost any obstacle. He was also a financial expert and handled the monetary affairs of Mag Force 7.

  The man seated to Tycho’s left stood and bowed. “I, too, would be honored to be included, Xris. To catch the bastard who injured you would be most pleasing in the eyes of the Master of the Universe.”

  Dr. Bill Quong was the newest member of the team, and one of the most remarkable. He was an expert at fixing or altering any type of machine currently in use anywhere on any planet in any galaxy. In addition, he could also fix most “broken” living organisms, human or alien. He held advanced degrees in mechanical and hydraulic engineering, and was a doctor of medicine. He’d had little luck holding a job, however. Quong—or Doc, as he was known—had an unfortunate tendency to treat machines like people and people like machines. Xris hadn’t hired the doctor for his bedside manner, however. One of Quong’s major responsibilities was keeping the cyborg’s mechanical half in good working order.

  Xris looked around at his team, started to say something, couldn’t. He shook his head, shut his mouth.

  Feeling a tug on the hem of his pants leg, he looked down.

  The Little One was looking up.

  “You’re in, too?” Xris said, smiling.

  The fedora nodded violently. The Little One raised a small, clenched fist.

  “Thanks,” Xris said quietly. “Thanks all of you.” He drew a deep breath, motioned them to gather around a table. Switching on a hologram, he said, “Here’s the plan—”

  The bathroom door opened. A ruffled and indignant Raoul emerged.

  “My lipstick was not either smeared!”

  Chapter 10

  She’s a phony. But she’s a real phony!

  Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  “Must have been a trick of the light,” Xris told Raoul soothingly.

  “Ah, certainly.”

  Happy once again—a visit to a mirror always improved Raoul’s spirits—the Adonian started
to head for a sofa.

  “I was just about to explain the operation.” Xris intercepted Raoul, indicated the holographic image. The other team members— grinning hugely—gathered around.

  Raoul blinked. “But I was going to do my nails.”

  “You and the Little One have a critical role to play,” Xris said patiently. “I’d appreciate it if you’d join us.”

  “You could explain it to me later.”

  “We only have the room for six hours, and once we leave here, we don’t discuss the plan, even among ourselves.”

  “I understand, my friend,” Raoul said quietly, noting the steel edge in the cyborg’s voice. “Perhaps I could do both at once.”

  The other members of the team made room for Raoul. He pulled up a chair, brought his makeup kit, and proceeded to carefully paint opalescent polish on his fingernails while listening to Xris. The Little One curled up on the floor, head pillowed on Raoul’s purse, and went to sleep.

  The empath never participated in planning sessions, never looked at a hologram or a map, never took any sort of instruction from anyone except Raoul. Early on, when the two first joined the team, Xris had harbored misgivings about this arrangement; he was never quite certain whether or not Raoul was absorbing anything said to him or was off in some Loti drug-induced dream world of his own. Yet the two always managed to come through when needed.

  Xris glanced at Raoul, who was taking care to spread the polish evenly on each nail, his glistening jet-black hair falling over his shoulders and completely obscuring one corner of the holographic model of the space station.

  The word reliable came into Xris’s mind and he almost coughed. He supposed a person could get himself a nice quiet sanitarium room with a view and a caretaker to go with it for referring to a Loti Adonian as reliable. Yet, in all these years, during which the two had worked on some very dangerous and delicate assignments, Raoul and his small, mysterious cohort had never let Xris down. He’d have to remember to ask how their job on Modena had gone. It was a mark of his confidence that he’d taken it for granted it had “progressed in a manner most satisfactory,” as Raoul would say.