Knights Of The Black Earth

by Margaret Weis

  The Nights

  Of The Black Earth

  Book One

  In The Mag Force 7 Series

  Margaret Weis & Don Perrin

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  CHAPTER 1

  Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.

  Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  Shortly after they landed on Laskar, the four men went out and bought a car. They paid cash for it, so Friendly Burl, the friendliest vehic dealer in Laskar, was not fussy about such details as Who are you really? and Where have you come from? Besides, he thought he already knew the answer. Four gray and faceless suits; probably on an illicit holiday; an escape from boss, sig-others, kids.

  "You guys planning on being in Laskar long?" asked Friendly Bud of Burl's Friendly Vehics.

  Two of the men carried briefcases; none of them carried luggage.

  "No," said one of the suits, handing over the requisite number of golden eagles.

  The manner and tone in which the man said that single word sucked the "friendly" out of Burl and caused him to revise his original estimate. These were not stressed-out execs. He began immediately and somewhat nervously to count his money. Finding it correct, he relaxed.

  "Salesmen, huh?" Bud ventured. He winked knowingly. "Or maybe not selling but dealing?" The men did not answer. They put their briefcases in the Car. Unusual. Like everything and everyone else in the sin-soaked city of Laskar, rental cars tended to lead brief, albeit exciting lives. Consequently, rental dealers demanded a hefty amount of plastic up front. Insurance, they called it.

  It cost a bit more to buy a vehic on Laskar, but the purchaser was generally glad to pay extra for the convenience and the peace of mind. Upon leaving the city, the car could always be resold--for scrap metal, if nothing else. And paying in cash left no trail.

  By now, Burl was really curious. He had a lot of friends and some of them in the city would be very interested in knowing if competition was about to move in.

  "You fellers ever been to Laskar before?" Burl asked, eyeing the briefcases.

  "No," replied the same suit who had paid for the car. He was staring in the direction of the city, squinting against Laskar's garish green sun.

  "Then you sure don't wanna lose your way drivin' around town," Bud offered casually. "If you'll tell me where you're going, I can give you directions."

  He waited hopefully. No response.

  He tried again. "I got a compu-map I can install in halfa-jiffy. No trouble. Just tell me where you're headed and I'll program it--"

  "No," said the suit.

  The four men climbed into the car--an ordinary, midsize hover, nothing special, nothing fancy--and drove it off the lot. Two rode in the front, two in the back. Friendly Burl saw them off the lot, gave them a friendly wave, then hurried inside to contact a few "friends."

  Friendly Burl's was conveniently located near the public spaceport, on the outskirts of the city. Finding the way to the city was easy--the only highway ran past the spaceport.

  One man drove. The man seated in the front next to the driver navigated. The two in the back removed needle-guns from their inside suit jacket pockets, kept watch out the windows.

  "All going according to plan, Knight Commander." The hover's driver spoke into a small handheld voice-recorder.

  The hover reached the entrance to the highway. Here a decision was required. Turn to the left and there, silhouetted against the green sky, were the high-rise whorehouses, the glitzy casinos, the holodomes of planet Laskar's major claim to fame, the city Laskar. Turn to the right and there were cactus and weird rock formations and eventually, a long distance away, the box-shaped barracks, the half-moon hangars, the sand-blasted tarmac of the Royal Naval Base.

  Glancing up and down the highway, the driver said, "How far is Snaga Ohme's from here?"

  "Straight across country. About fifty kilometers," was the reply.

  Those fifty kilometers brought one to the palatial mansion and vast estate of the late Snaga Ohme, former weapons purveyor to the galaxy's rich and warlike. Several years previous, the wealthy Adonian had died, leaving his extensive and complicated financial affairs in complete disorder. To give him credit, Ohme had not expected to be murdered.

  Always pleased to be able to help one of its citizens, the military had assisted Ohme's creditors by immediately seizing control of the Adonian's estate, including all weapons, designs for weapons, and prototypes of new weapons that the late Snaga Ohme had invented. "Is Knight Officer Fuqua still inside the Ohme estate?" "Yes, sir. But according to his latest report, his unit is due to transfer out anytime now. He'll have to leave with the unit, of course."

  The driver nodded. "He has served his purpose. I doubt if we could learn anything more from him. We will proceed to Laskar."

  Arriving at the intersection, the hovercar turned left.

  Laskar was not a planned community. Its streets had not been laid out according to any grand design. Rather, its buildings had sprung up like fungus, sprouting wherever the spores happened to fall. Buildings rarely faced each other, or fronted a street, but stood sideways to one another, like two hookers working the same block, who pretend to ignore each other yet keep a watchful eye on the competition. Consequently, the streets had been laid out around the buildings, which resulted in a great many serpentine roads, innumerable alleys, dead ends (aptly named), cul-de-sacs, and streets that had started out going somewhere only to end up lost and confused in the center of a very bad nowhere.

  The four men were driving to one of the worst nowheres in Laskar.

  Which was why there were four of them. And the needleguns.

  The navigator guided them unerringly through the maze of gambling dens, liquor bars, drug-bars, cyber-bars, bloodbars. They drove past the live sex, semi-live sex, semiconscious sex joints. They ignored the hookers of every age, race, sex, gender, and planetary origin. They paid scant attention to the occasional cop-shop--fortified bunkers from which the cops rarely emerged and then only to collect protection money that provided the citizens of Laskar protection against nobody but the cops.

  "Travel down Painted Eye half a kilometer, sir. Turn north onto Snake Road. Brownstone walk-up. Number 757. Our man is on the top floor. Apartment 9e."

  No unnecessary talk between them. No names. The two men in the back were deferential to the two in the front, especially the driver. The two in back never spoke unless spoken to and then answered respectfully in as concise a manner as possible.

  The driver, w
ho was the leader, followed instructions, swerving sharply to avoid hitting a woman with an Adam's apple and a low-cut dress, revealing a hairy chest, who swore at them in a gravelly voice and gave the car a few savage kicks with her high heels as the hover skimmed past.

  The driver pulled up in front of 757. He, the man in front, and one of the men in back got out of the car. The leader carried a briefcase. The second man had his hands free. The third man thrust his needle-gun into his suit coat pocket. The fourth man remained seated in the car. His needle-gun had been replaced by a beam rifle assembled from his briefcase. The rifle lay across his knees.

  The leader stood on the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk, .gazing intently at the building, studying it carefully. It was nine stories high, made of brick formed from the local stone, which meant that it was sandy-colored and, in the heat of the late afternoon, took on a slightly greenish cast from Laskar's oddly colored sun. (The sun was not green. According to scientists, something in the atmosphere was, which gave the sun its strained-pea tinge. The natives were proud of their green sun, however, and disputed the scientific claim.)

  Whether the green was in the sun or the sky, the sickly tint did nothing to improve the building's appearance, but rather gave it an unwholesome look. All the windows on the lower floor were boarded up, with graffiti scrawled across them. Here and there, on upper floors, TO m~T signs had been plastered onto cracked glass--the spots of white looked like an outbreak of the pox.

  People on the sidewalk brushed past the men without a glance. The citizens of Laskar had their own problems to pursue, the tourists had their own pleasures, and none of them gave a damn about anyone else. A couple of boredlooking women in see-through plastic skirts sidled over to the driver and, in a few well-chosen words, described a possible evening's entertainment. The leader didn't even bother to answer and, with a shrug, the women sauntered off.

  Several of the locals, lounging on the pavement, grinned and laughed, eyed the car with the expert air of those who know the current market value for that particular model, stripped down.

  The leader paid no attention to them, either.

  "Cover the back exit," he ordered the man with the needle-gun.

  "Yes, sir."

  The man with the needle-gun took off down a dark and grim-looking alleyway that smelled of body waste and garbage. A hand reached out--palm up--from a bundle of rags and cardboard as the man passed. A voice mumbled something unintelligible.

  The man with the gun kept walking.

  The beggar threw an empty jump-juice bottle at him. The bottle smashed into the pavement at the man's feet. He crunched calmly over the broken glass, continued into the noisome dark of the alleyway. He might have been less comfortable in his dangerous surroundings had he not been wearing full body armor beneath his nondescript suit.

  The two men in front gave the third time to get into position. When a barely heard beep on a commlink informed them that he was ready, the two men mounted splintered and broken stairs--unquestionably the most dangerous obstacle they'd faced yet. Shoving open a rickety door, they walked inside the vestibule.

  The leader took another careful look around.

  "Security cam?"

  "Temporarily out of order, sir," was the answer.

  The leader examined the entry door.

  "It's locked, sir. Modern system. The owner doesn't want any homesteaders. We could blow it .... "

  The leader shook his head. He shifted the briefcase to his left hand, reached up, pressed the buzzer for 9e. No response.

  He pressed it again, this time held it longer.

  No response.

  He glanced at his subordinate.

  "Bosk's inside, sir. He never leaves until after dark. But he'll be reluctant to answer the door. He's in debt. Local moneylender."

  The leader raised an eyebrow. He pressed the button again, spoke into the intercom. "Bosk. You don't know me. I'm here on business. It could be worth your while to let me inside. I've got an offer to make you." Still no response.

  The leader hit the button again. Leaning down to the intercom, he spoke two words clearly and distinctly. "Negative waves."

  He stepped back, waited for as long as it might take a man to get up out of a chair, cross a small room.

  There came a click on the lock of the entry door.

  The leader and his subordinate entered, shut the door behind them. The leader again took a careful look around.

  "You wait down here," he said.

  His subordinate took up a position in a shadowy corner beneath the staircase. From here, he could see, but not be readily seen. Outside, the locals approached the car, backed off hurriedly when they saw the beam rifle.

  Folding his arms across his chest, the subordinate settled himself to wait.

  The leader began to climb nine flights of stairs.

  CHAPTER 2

  Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain . . .

  Sir Walter Scott,

  The Lay of the Last Minstrel

  Bosk stood unsteadily by the door, staring at the intercom as if it could answer his questions. He was a little drunk. Bosk was always a little drunk these days. It eased his pain, cut the fear. He was always a little afraid these days, as well.

  The intercom had no answers for him. The room seemed to heave a bit, and so Bosk--knowing that it would be a long wait while his guest climbed nine flights of stairs-stumbled back over and plunked himself down in his dilapidated recliner.

  Directly across the room from him, the vid was blaring loudly. James M. Warden, personable television personality, was conducting an interview with His Royal Majesty, Dion Staff ire.

  Bosk gulped a swig of jump-juice from a cracked glass, focused blearily on the screen.

  The young king was answering a question about the late Warlord Derek Sagan.

  "He was not perfect. No man is perfect," His Majesty was saying gravely. "He made mistakes."

  "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty," James M. Warden respectfully contradicted, "but some might consider the word mistakes inappropriate for what many consider to be heinous crimes."

  "Try murder!" Bosk yelled loudly at the screen.

  His Majesty was shaking his head, almost as if he'd heard Bosk's comment. "Lord Sagan was a warrior. He acted out of his own warrior code, which, as you know, is a harsh one. But he held to that code with honor. He took part in the revolution because he believed that the government under my late uncle's rule was corrupt and ineffective. That it was about to collapse into anarchy, which would have put all the people in the galaxy in the gravest danger.

  "When Lord Sagan discovered that the new government under President Peter Robes was every bit as corrupt as the old, the Warlord concluded that he--one of the few surviving members of the Blood Royal had the right to try to seize control. Circumstances, the Creator, Fate--call it what you will--intervened. Lord Sagan's ambitious and, some might say, his despotic plans failed."

  King Starfire's hand clenched. The famous Starfire blue eyes were lit from within by a radiance that looked well on the vidscreens. The red-golden lion's mane of hair framed a face that was youthful, handsome, earnest, intense. His godlike looks, his vibrant personality--all were rapidly making a reluctant deity of a very mortal young man.

  "But I tell you, Mr. Warden, and I tell my people that I would not be here now, I would not be wearing this crown, the galaxy would not be at peace today, if it were not for the sacrifices of Lord Derek Sagan. He attempted to correct the great wrongs he had done and, in so doing, gave his life that others might live. He is one of the greatest men I have ever known. I will always honor his memory."

  Bosk tossed the remainder of the jump-juice at the vidscreen. "Here's that for his fuckin' memory." The juice trickled down the screen, soaked into the threadbare carpet which covered the floor of the shabby studio apartment.

  A crisp knock sounded on the door.

  Lurching to his feet, Bosk went to answer it. On his way, he made a detour to the bottle, poured h
imself another drink. Reaching the door, he peeped out the one-way peephole, saw a man dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. The man didn't look threatening. He didn't look anything. He had one of those faces you meet and five minutes later you can't recall ever having been introduced to him before. Bosk was more interested in the briefcase. It is said that Adonians can smell money.

  Bosk's nose twitched. He opened the door.

  "Yeah?" he said, looking first at the briefcase, then finally lifting his gaze to meet the stranger's. "What's the deal?"

  "I don't believe it would be wise for us to conduct our business in the hallway," the stranger said. He wasn't even breathing hard after the long climb. He smiled in a pleasant and disarming manner. "Your neighbors don't need to know your affairs, do they?"

  Bosk followed the stranger's glance, saw Mrs. Kasper standing in her half-open door. He glared at her.

  "I heard a knock," she said defensively. "Thought it might be for me." She sniffed. "Another of your 'clients'?"

  "Nosy old bitch!" Bosk retorted. He opened his own door wider. "C'mon in, then."

  The stranger entered. Bosk shut the door, took a look out the peephole to make sure Mrs. Kasper had gone back into her apartment. She had a bad habit of loitering in the hall, listening outside closed doors. Sure enough.

  Bosk flung the door open, nearly knocking Mrs. Kasper down.

  "Care to join us?" He leered.

  Disgusted, she flounced back inside her apartment and slammed her door.

  Bosk shut his door again, turned around to face his guest. The stranger was tall, well-built, handsome if you went for older guys with hair graying at the temples, which Bosk did not. The clothes were expensive but not ostentatious. Snaga Ohme would have approved the choice of colors: muted blues and grays. The face was a mask. The lines and wrinkles had been trained to betray nothing of the thoughts within. The eyes were one-way mirrors. Bosk looked in, saw himself reflected back.

  Having once been close to some of the most powerful people in the galaxy, Bosk recognized and appreciated the quiet air of control and authority this man exuded, like a fine cologne that never overwhelms, never cloys the senses.