Knights Of The Black Earth

by Margaret Weis

When the shuttle was one thousand meters off the aft of the ship, the chief bid Rowan good-bye and good luck.

  "Sunray, this is Javelin." He reported in. "The shuttle is under my control, and I am beginning my descent. Please feed the coordinates of the ground ops and the cipher key for tactical conununications into my nav computer."

  "Javelin, stand by to receive ground ops coordinates and cipher key."

  Again, routine procedure. The cipher key was the codes that would be used by the team during the operation. For security reasons, the codes were changed on a daily basis and were issued to the operatives immediately prior to the job. Xris and Ito would have already received the day's codes.

  "Roger, Sunray. Receiving ground ops data now. Thanks. Javelin out."

  The shuttle turned in a graceful arc and headed for the thirteenth moon's surface. Upon entering the moon's atmosphere, the shuttle encountered upper-level turbulence, began to buck and rock--a most unconffortable and unnerving experience. But at least now the moon's gravitational pull was compensating for the shuttle's lack of gravity. Rowan sank back down in his seat and felt better.

  The descent was a long and boring process. He had nothing to do. The computer would handle the entry until the shuttle had dropped to the moon's stratosphere, at which point he would take over. Rowan sat back and played tourist, admiring the spectacular view of the gas giant and its many moons. He kept his nfind as empty as the darkness around him, refusing to let anything intrude on the job at hand. He was looking forward to seeing Xris and Ito, though. They'd be a bit leery of him, but a handshake, a nod, a smile, and his friends would know he was back on track. "Entering the stratosphere," the computer reported. "Taking over manual control," Rowan informed the computer, and began to line up with his projected bearing of descent. He turned to the left. The shuttle did not.

  Rowan checked his instruments. They registered the correct turn, but the shuttle was flying in the same direction, at the same angle of ingress.

  "Computer, release flight control to me."

  "Flight control is already in pilot's control."

  "Computer, your systems registered a turn, but the shuttle has not turned. Explain."

  "Flight and navigation computers have registered a turn of forty-one degrees. Your new bearing is twenty-one degrees, angle of descent thirty-one degrees, speed of ..."

  Rowan didn't need to hear his speed, which was rapidly increasing. What the hell was wrong?

  Nothing--according to the computer.

  "Computer, bring up maintenance routine two-one--flight controls."

  A text message flashed across the display console: Access denied.

  Rowan swore. The shuttle was now nearing dangerous velocity. The hull temperature was rising due to friction with the moon's atmosphere.

  "Computer, how long until impact with the moon's surface?"

  "Four minutes thirty-one seconds."

  The hull temperature indicator continued to rise.

  "How long until hull has lost integrity?"

  "Two minutes three seconds."

  Rowan activated the comm. "Sunray, this is Javelin. Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! My nav computer is out and I can't bring up the maintenance routines in order to correct it. Manual is out. Please advise."

  No response. Only static. The comm was working; no one was home.

  "Dam it, Sunray! Mayday! Mayday! Where the hell are you?"

  The static on the line was now being drowned out by the rumble of the shuttle's hull, creaking with the stress of its accelerating descent.

  I've been locked out of all of the maintenance routines on the onboard computer. The chief's voice echoed in Rowan's mind.

  Sabotage. Deliberate sabotage. That was the only explanation. Someone wanted him dead.

  Rowan took a deep breath. He didn't fight the instinct to panic; rather, he put panic to good use, as he'd been trained--keep calm, use the adrenal rush to aid your thought process. Unstrapping himself from the webbing, he left the cockpit and headed for the rear compartment, grabbing his backpack on the way.

  "Computer, give me a time check every twenty seconds until hull degradation."

  He searched for, quickly located the access panel to the maintenance computer.

  "One minute forty seconds until hull degradation."

  The bolts were hand-fasteners, meant to come off quickly in case of emergency--such as this. He yanked the panel free. The computer was a sealed unit, but it had a small display screen and test points, allowing access for repairs.

  "One minute twenty seconds until hull degradation."

  Rowan opened the backpack and dumped its contents on the deck. Grabbing his small handheld computer, he attached leads to the test points, toggled the control switch from voice to keyboard access, typed in a command.

  The maintenance computer remained blank for several seconds, then read: Manual mode. Enter command. "One minute until hull degradation."

  Rowan took a few seconds to think. He had to assume that all high-level commands had been frozen out by the saboteur. It was unlikely, however, that his killer would have bothered---or maybe even thought about--freezing out lowlevel commands. "Let's try 'self-test,' "Rowan said, typing in the commands. The computer started running its diagnostics procedure-which could take far longer than Rowan had left to live. He stopped it.

  "Reboot from backup," he ordered.

  The system hesitated, and then restarted.

  "Forty seconds until hull degradation."

  The maintenance computer began loading its programming from stored backups.

  Rowan cursed the time that it took. He switched the computer to voice mode.

  "Maintenance computer, do you hear me?"

  No response.

  "Maintenance computer! Wake the hell up!"

  He'd done all he could. A strange thought crossed his mind. Only a few days before, he had seriously thought about killing himself. Now he was fighting desperately to survive. It was as if God was teaching him a lesson.

  "Twenty seconds until hull degradation."

  "Come on, damn it!" Rowan swore beneath his breath. Sweat poured off his body. It was hotter than hell in the shuttlecraft.

  And then the maintenance computer's display area lit up. "Successful reboot."

  Rowan could have kissed it. "Maintenance computer, respond!"

  "Maintenance here. What's the problem?" Even the voice was different from the voice of the flight computer. These shuttle designers thought of everything.

  "Maintenance computer, the flight computer has malfunctioned. Pilot authorizes you to take over flight control now!"

  "Maintenance computer here. I have now taken over flight control."

  Rowan sighed in relief. "Reduce shuttle speed to full stop and reduce rate of descent to ten meters per second!"

  Main engines cut. Forward breaking thrusters fired. Inertial dampeners kicked in. Everything in the compartment lurched forward. Rowan and all of his equipment slid across the deck to the foot of the forward compartment bulkhead.

  Bruised and battered, he regained his feet, staggered across the listing deck to the console. The timer had stopped.

  "Good work, maintenance," Rowan said, hoping his thudding heartbeat would return to normal sometime soon. "Restore all onboard computers to their original backup programs and inform me when that is complete."

  Rowan switched to the comm. "Sunray, this is Javelin. Do you read? Over." No response.

  He sat and thought. Someone had tried to kill him by locking him out of the computer. The chief said the computer was fine when she checked it on the ground. Which meant that the killer had tampered with the computer after the chief had checked it. Which meant the killer was on board Vigilance. And either the killer had silenced Armstrong or else ...

  Good God! Xris and Ito!

  Whoever tried to kill me wouldn't be likely to stop there, Rowan realized. The only reason to kill me is to halt this mission!

  He had to warn them, tried the frequency he'd been g
iven.

  "Delta One, this is Javelin. Come in, Delta One."

  Nothing. No response.

  Rowan tried again and again until at last he was trying only out of sheer frustration. Either he'd been given the wrong cipher--Xris and Ito wouldn't respond to anything except the correct daily codes--or Rowan had been given the wrong coordinates. Or maybe both. It was all starting to fit together ....

  "Pilot, navigation and flight computers have been restored."

  "Thank you, maintenance. Return control back to the primary computers and maintain surveillance of all computer activity. Tell me if any other nonstandard code shows up."

  The restart of the nav computer had wiped its short-term memory. The landing coordinates on TISor 13 were no longer displayed. The sensor array still held a fix on the mother ship, however. Rowan had two choices. He go could on--not being certain where to land or what to do after he landed. Or he could return to Vigilance. From there, he could obtain the correct frequencies and check the cipher codes, get in touch with Xris.

  And, hopefully, find the bastard who'd done this. He headed back to the ship--as fast as the shuttle would fly.

  Vigilance came into view, silhouetted against TISor's sun. Lights were on, everything looked normal.

  "Shuttlecraft to Vigilance. Come in, Vigilance."

  No response from the bridge.

  Why wasn't he surprised? His heart rate had slowed; now it was sinking.

  The shuttle bay was open, but no friendly tractor beams reached out to guide him inside.

  He nudged the shuttle forward slowly, crept into the shuttle bay.

  The other shuttle was gone.

  Rowan landed the craft on the deck. The chief was not at her post in the control room. None of the crew was around, at least that Rowan could see from the cockpit. No one to shut the shuttle bay doors. He snuggled into his vacuum suit.

  Rowan exited the shuttle and moved to the airlock, a 38-decawatt lasgun in his hand. Entering the airlock, which separated the shuttle bay from the main portion of the ship, he hit the button to cycle the atmosphere.

  Nothing. A red warning light flashed insistently. No air on the other side of the airlock.

  Rowan pulled the override handle and opened the door leading to the ship's internal compartments. The warning light had been right. No air. Finding a comm panel, he tried to raise the bridge.

  No response. He hit the emergency button on the panel, setting off alarms all over the ship. He could hear no sound in the vacuum, but the alert lights flashed red. This part of the ship was in hard vacuum, and the emergency alarm had not been activated. He kept going.

  Entering the shuttle bay control room, Rowan found someone--the crew chief. Dead. Her hands were clasped to her throat, her eyes bulged, her lips were blue; she'd died of asphyxiation.

  Rowan shut the shuttle bay doors and exited the control room. Moving down the corridor, he found more bodies. Everyone was dead, all suffocated.

  A terrible accident? Possibly, but Rowan didn't think so. Ships were equipped with all kinds of fail-safe devices to prevent just this sort of tragedy from occurring. Someone had overridden them, deliberately bled the air from the ship.

  He entered the bridge. The scene was almost the same-almost. Everyone was dead. But these people had been shot to death, lasgun blasts to the chest and head.

  Captain Bolton sat in her command chair, a look of surprise frozen on her face. There was a hole in her chest--a lasgun blast at short range. The blood had started to ran, but had frozen in midstream.

  If there had been any doubt in Rowan's mind, he was convinced now. Murder and sabotage. Someone wanted this operation to fail and had gone to terrible lengths to achieve that goal.

  And Xris and Ito were on the ground, with no idea that they could be walking into a deadly trap.

  Unless somehow Armstrong had managed to warn them ....

  Rowan started to hit the pad to open the door to the controller's station, then stopped. A green light on the panel indicated that there was atmosphere on the other side of the door. He pushed the override button, held on fast to a nearby console with one hand, his lasgun with the other.

  The door slid open. The rush of air nearly blew him off his feet. When he could move, he darted inside, more than half expecting--or hoping--to find Armstrong's bloody body slumped over the control panel. Armstrong wasn't there.

  Rowan entered and shut the door. Air immediately began to pump into the small room, restoring pressure.

  The controllet's workstation was set to automatic mode. Rowan sat down at the computer, attempted to bring up the communications log.

  A message flashed across the screen: Access denied.

  Again, all high-level commands were frozen out.

  Rowan slammed his fist down hard. He didn't have time for this! And then, as the air and the pressure inside the room began to return to normal, he could hear Armstrong's voice.

  "This is Sunray. Proceed. Out."

  A recording. A goddam recording!

  Rowan ran back to the bridge. Dragging a body from the chair, he sat down at the comm workstation and pulled up the automatic communications log.

  There it was. Thank God! All the comm parameters had been stored in the ship's log.

  "Computer, restore the last communications parameters set by the mission controller, and set up transmitter two to use these same parameters."

  Rowan couldn't shut down the controller's computer, but he could talk on the same frequency, using the day's codes.

  "All Deltas! Joker's Wild! For God's sake, get out of there! Joker's Wild! Joker's Wild!"

  He waited to hear Xris's voice, demanding angrily to know what the hell was going on.

  Silence. The silence was sickening.

  "Maybe they didn't hear," he said to himself, and sent the message two more times. He was going to send it a fourth when he forced himself to stop.

  There was nothing more that he could do. He sat in the chair, glaring at the orange gas giant floating serenely in space--in bitter frustration. They'd been betrayed, and there was no question in Rowan's mind who was responsible. The frustration and his fear for Xris and Ito gnawed at him. He had to do something. He activated the ship's emergency distress signal, which would beam out into space, requesting help from the nearest vessel. Then Rowan returned to the rear of the ship.

  Before entering the shuttle bay, he stopped at the weapons storage locker, picked up a plasma rifle with scope, and a box of thurmaplasma grenades. Stowing the weapons in the cargo compartment of the shuttle, he flew the shuttle back out, again under his own control.

  Now, how to find Xris and Ito?

  Rowan accessed the Vigilance's sensor computer, got a fix for the last transmission from the surface of the moon, entered the coordinates into the nay computer. Then there was nothing to do but wait. The shuttle trip this time was not a lot more pleasant than his last. His own life wasn't in danger, but apprehension and fear twisted his insides, made the waiting unendurable.

  He tried to tell himself that everything would be all right. Maybe--please dear God!--Xris had decided to flout the controller's authority, go off on his own. Neither he nor Ito would want to enter that factory without the third member of the team, without Rowan.

  'Tll find Xris hip-deep in some swamp, madder than hell, ready to take on the entire agency. And Ito yammering about snakes. But I'll find them," Rowan repeated. "I'll find them alive."

  The flight took two hours, seemed like two hundred. He reached the location, overflew it by about one hundred meters. He didn't immediately land.

  There was no need. He had his answer.

  The factory was a pile of twisted, smoldering steel. Fires still burned. As he watched, a small blast took out a far corner. Thick smoke smudged the morning sky.

  No fire trucks. No one around to put out the blaze or rescue any casualties.

  "Probably paid off," Rowan said bitterly. "Or called to the other side of town. Or maybe this jerk-water place doesn'
t even have a fire department."

  He landed the shuttle inside the fence line, set off his own emergency beacon. He was going to need help. He hoped like hell he was going to need help.

  He was still wearing the vacuum suit, which would protect him from the heat, though not from falling beams, radiation leaks, or exploding ammunition. He put on the helmet, took it back off, and detached the breathing apparatus. He would need to be able to hear, if someone called for help.

  He'd need to be able to answer.

  Strapping the oxygen tank to his belt, he put the mask to his face, emerged from the shuttle, and looked swiftly around.

  He saw the hole in the fence. He damn near cried in fury and frustration.

  "They went in," he said softly. "They went in! And now you know it's hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. No one inside that place could have survived. And you know that Xris and Ito went inside."

  Dogged, refusing to listen to himself, Rowan took a deep gulp of oxygen and plunged into the inferno.

  CHAPTER 21

  Forsake not an old friend...

  Ecclesiastes,

  Chapter 9, Verse 19, Apocrypha

  "I never did find Ito," Rowan said. She spoke quietly, telling the story in monotone, never once looking at Xris, but staring into the past with dark and pain-filled eyes. Her face was pale, drawn, and haggard.

  If she's lying, she's doing a damn good job, Xris thought. But then, we were all of us trained to lie.

  "I found you," she continued, and for the first time since she'd started speaking, she shifted her gaze to him. "I don't know how. Those who believe in God would say an angel led me." She smiled that sad, lopsided smile.

  Xris snorted. He'd been sitting on the edge of the console during her narrative, and he was startled to discover that his flesh-and-blood leg had gone to sleep. Grunting, he stood up, tried to restore the circulation.

  "You expect me to believe that?"

  "I guess not," she said, shrugging. "But it's true. I did find you in that hellhole. Accident. Coincidence. Logical reasoning. Angels. Who can say? Maybe they're all one and the same anyway.

  "I was standing somewhere near what had once been an outer wall, yelling for you, yelling for Ito. I caught a glimpse of movement. It was your hand poking out of the rubble. You were lying under some sort of heavy worktable. The table protected you from the blast. It saved your life .... That was about all it saved."