Knights Of The Black Earth

by Margaret Weis

  He had heard of people scared speechless, but this was the first time in his life he'd ever encountered that phenomenon. No one said a word, not even a bad one. Most sat in various frozen poses, white-knuckled hands clutching the arms of the chairs, sweat beaded on their faces, eyes wide and staring. Two, however, appeared to have enjoyed the ride.

  Jamil swiveled around to face them. "We've landed," he announced. His handsome face was grinning; he rubbed his hands. "God! I miss my days in the Army sometimes. I'd forgotten what a rush that was!"

  Apparently Raoul agreed with him. The Loti was lying back limp in his chair. He looked up at Xris with lustrous eyes.

  "Wow!" Raoul whispered dreamily.

  But Xris had to help Tycho stand. The alien was in a deplorable state, shaking so badly he could barely get up out of his chair.

  "Not healthy for a sharpshooter," Xris said. "Doc, can you give him something to calm him down?"

  "What do you suggest?" Quong demanded coldly. "A golden-beaded handbag or a string of pearls? I have both in my medical kit."

  "Ah. Right. I forgot." Xris started to take out a twist, noticed his own hand was far from steady. He went to check on Rowan.

  She was up and out of her chair, tottering but walking. She was headed, naturally, for the computer. She gave Xris a wan smile. "Now you know why I joined the Navy," she said faintly. Quong came to assist her. He sat beside her at his own console, and they began to coordinate their search for the telltale negative wave signature.

  Xris glanced at the chronometer. They had arrived earlier than planned, earlier than the appointed time--according to the knights' own countdown. But their unexpected and dramatic appearance might jolt the knights into action. Certainly Xris hoped it had jolted the Royal Guard.

  "Jamil, fire up the PVC Devastator. Hopefully we won't need to use it. We can just blast the negative wave device to hell and back with the launch module's lascannon. Tycho, go up in the turret, check the cannon out. Make sure it wasn't damaged in the landing."

  Tycho groaned, nodded, and--hanging on to the railing for support---dragged himself up to the gun emplacement located on top.

  "Harry, anything on the screens? What's going on out there? And where did we land anyway?"

  Xris had originally cursed the fact that the drop ship had no windows, only outside cams and vidscreens. He had since had reason to bless the foresight of the designer. He could only imagine what that harrowing, plummeting descent in the Elevator from Hell would have been like if they'd been forced to view the sights along the way.

  Harry switched on an array of vidscreens. The cams provided three-hundred-sixty-degree coverage of the terrain outside the drop ship.

  Xris looked out over what appeared to be--at first, startled glance--a veritable sea of gleaming metal.

  "We've landed in a parking lot," Harry announced.

  Xris recalled the sound of screeching metal, the uneven, bumpy touchdown. A few hovercar owners were going to be extremely unhappy when they returned to the pancakes that had once been their vehicles. "Any activity?"

  "Choppers circling, but not getting too close. Probably won't. We have surface-to-air missiles."

  "Yeah, well, they've got air-to-surface missiles."

  "I don't think they're going to be keen on using them. Look at this."

  Harry adjusted a camera angle, pointed to a vidscreen. A few thousand spectators stared back, pointing and exclaiming and jostling for position in order to get a better view. They were alarmed and panicked now, but soon curiosity and the safety-in-numbers kind of euphoric courage that sweeps over a crowd would set in. The drop ship might survive a direct missile attack; it had already survived entry into the planet's atmosphere. But it might fall to a mob.

  "Fire a few tracers over their heads. Well over their heads. Just enough to make them keep their distance," ordered Xris.

  Tycho fired off the lascannon. Most of the people in the crowd flung themselves flat on the ground. The local police force had arrived on the scene, began doing what they could to clear people out of the area. At least, no one would be firing rockets at the drop ship anytime soon--not with the possibility of injuring untold numbers of innocent civilians.

  "Can you see the king?" Xris asked.

  Harry shifted camera angles.

  "That must be the dignitaries' platform. There's the Royal Flag. I'll zoom in."

  They had an excellent view of the backs of the Royal Guard. Xris detected what might have been a flash of red-golden hair in the midst of the ring of steel. And there was the Royal Limo jet.

  "Looks like the king's safe, for the time being," Xris reported to the rest of the team. "They're hustling him and the queen into the Royal Limo."

  "Good!" Rowan breathed in relief. ''They shouldn't have to take him far to get him out of range." She looked up at Xris, smiled shakily. "I'd say mission accompl--"

  "They're not moving," Harry reported, frowning.

  The king and queen were seated safely in the limo, the Royal Guard had taken their places on the outside, the crowd had been hastily cleared from the area, but the limojet wasn't going anywhere.

  Xris took a look. "He's right. They're not moving."

  "Maybe they're waiting to see what we do," Harry suggested.

  Xris snorted. "That is not standard procedure. When you're guarding dignitaries and there's some type of danger, you get them the hell out of there. You don't wait around for the shooting to start."

  Harry was studying his instruments. "It looks like-- Yeah, I'll be damned." "What?"

  "Engine trouble. The limo won't start. They're running diagnostics on it now, but--"

  "They won't find the cause," Rowan interrupted, excited. "It's the negative waves. I'm picking up the signature. The knights have turned the device on. The waves must be causing the engine to malfunction!"

  "At least that limo's shielded, annor-plated. A lascannon couldn't take the king out once he's inside."

  "No armor, no shields will protect him," Quong said. ''The negative waves will pass through unaffected."

  "Damn !" Frustrated, Xris turned back to the screen. "The knights are in range. We're too late to save the king. But maybe we can even the score."

  "We are not finished yet, my friend," Quong returned. "The signature is very, very weak. The knights haven't brought the device up to full power. But Major Rowan is correct in her assessment of the negative waves damaging the limo. As you can see here by the spectrum analysis, the microwaves--weak as they are--have been able to cause interference with the power coupling lattice of the limojet's engines."

  Xfis didn't bother to look. He wouldn't know a spectrum analysis if it smacked him in the face. "Good. That gives us a chance. Get a fix on the damn device and Tycho'll take it out with the lascannon."

  Rowan stared intently at her screen, made some rapid calculations, chewed on her lip. "My fix on the position is--"

  Whatever she said next was lost in a thundering, thumping blast. The engines of the PVC-28 Devastator fired, backfired, misfired, and finally--after a strangled cough-rumbled contentedly. A cloud of black, choking smoke filled the vehicle bay and began to seep into the rest of the drop ship. Raoul, who was inexplicably changing his clothes, bleated in indignation and waved a frantic hand. ''This gunk is ruining my outfit!" he wailed.

  The tank's engines cycled over from deafening roar to a head-splitting hum that caused Xris to hastily shut down his augmented heating. Even so, the irritating whine made him grit his teeth.

  "Here are the coordinates!" Rowan shouted at him. "I've fed them into the computer! You should be able to bring it up on the screen!"

  Xris went back to the screens. Harry had his large finger planted on one of them.

  "There," he said, and he shook his head. "That's it. Got to be."

  "You've made a mistake." Xris turned back. "Rowan, reenter your data."

  "No mistake, Xris," Quong confirmed. ''That's it."

  Xris looked back, took out a twist, clamped his teeth
down on it hard. The negative wave device was located fight smack in the center of an enormous forty-story luxury hotel that was standing right smack on the highway leading up to the temple. The hotel, the area around the hotel, the highway leading to and from the hotel were jammed with people.

  "Third-floor balcony," Harry said.

  A blast from the lascannon would blow up the device ...

  The front of the hotel ...

  And about five or six hundred men, women, and children, who would never know what hit them.

  "Tycho, get down here!" Xris said, frustrated. "Harry, goddam it, I need a closer look!"

  Harry was already ordering the computer to zoom in on the coordinates.

  "Holy shit!" he said reverently and in disbelief. He turned around, his eyes wide. "Xris, that can't be right! That's ... that's the GNN nightly news!"

  Yet the numbers Rowan had brought up were flashing complacently beneath the picture, assuring him that this was, indeed, the location of the negative wave device. A mobile unit of Galactic Network News.

  "Doc, get over here. There's all sorts of equipment stuck out there on that third-floor balcony. You have any idea which of those things might be the device7 If any?"

  Quong took a close look. Harry obligingly shifted camera angles, bringing each machine into close proximity. Xris, conscious of a wave of gardenia perfume roiling over him, sensed the presence of Raoul loitering nearby. The Loti glittered in gold, from head to toe.

  "I am now suitably dressed for the occasion," Raoul announced happily. Xris grunted.

  Quong squinted, pursed his lips. He calmly placed his finger on the screen. "That's it."

  Simultaneously Raoul gasped, pointed a painted fingernail at the screen. "Her! That's her?"

  "Son of a bitch!" Xris murmured. "Our friend from Canis Major, Dr. Brisbane. Quite a coincidence, her being here. And you say that's the device, Doc? The machine to her right? It looks like an ordinary vid antenna. A bit longer, maybe. How do you know that's it?"

  Quong gave a rapid-fire explanation. "Such pieces of equipment are known as image enhancers. They are used to transmit and receive high-band radio waves. They act like radar, work with the vidcam and a computer to enhance the picture of the object, make it look clear and sharp, even on the outer fringes of the galaxy. Now, as you will note, there are ten image enhancers on that balcony. Nine of the enhancers are pointed at us, as they should be. We are the big news at the moment. But look--look at this one! It is pointed at the limojet." Quong straightened. "At the king."

  Xris was unconvinced. "Yeah, so? They'd be likely to keep one on the king, wouldn't they?"

  "Of course? That is why this device is such excellent cover for them. But look at this, my friend--shielding! Why would a news crew put shielding around an image enhancer? I tell you, Xris," Quong said stubbornly, "that is the device."

  "And that's the woman with no mouth!" Raoul's painted nails were digging painfully into Xris's good arm. "The female who was going to kill me?"

  Galactic Network News--a front for the Knights of Terra Nera? It didn't make sense on the surface. And yet, in a way, in the subconscious depths of Xris's mind, it was beginning to.

  "How long have we got before the device is fully operational?" "Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes," Rowan answered. Xris considered. "We can't blow it up from here, not without blowing up half of Ceres as well. We're going to have to go inside the hotel to take them out. Harry, you and Tycho join Jamil in the PVC. Tycho, bring your sniper rifle. Quong, you and Rowan--"

  "Just a nfinute." Rowan stopped him. "We might be able to interrupt the device's signals by sending out radio waves on the same band--according to my calculations ....Dr. Quong, what do you think?"

  Quong studied the screen. "A possibility. We don't know the right modulation, so we couldn't shut the device down completely, but we might be able to force them to boost more power, which would take time."

  Xris shook his head. "Out of the question. Marines will storm this drop ship in a matter of minutes. You stay here and you won't be boosting anything."

  "But you'll need longer than fifteen minutes to reach the device," Rowan argued. "Look at this, Doctor."

  They huddled over the computer, talking excitedly. Xris didn't understand a word, but he realized that in order to get them to leave, he'd have to physically assault both of them. Besides, if they could jam it, buy him more time...

  He rested his hand on Rowan's shoulder, touched the Doc on the arm. "All right. You stay. But listen to me. When the Marines show up, you surrender. That's an order. No heroics."

  "That was always my plan," Quong said gravely, not taking his eyes from the screen.

  Rowan looked up at Xris. She was smiling, but her eyes were shadowed. "Don't worry about us. You take care of yourself. And the others."

  "Sure thing," he said easily, then added, more somberly, "Once again, I'm sorry about all this."

  "I'm not," she answered. For a brief instant, her hand rested on his good hand. Then she turned back to the computer.

  Xris straightened. Raoul, a vision in gold sequins and bangles, fluttered excitedly around him.

  "What about me, Xris Cyborg? Do I get to surrender to the Marines, too?"

  "I know that's always been a fantasy of yours, but not this time." Xris took hold of the Adonian by a bracelet-covered, bejeweled arm, headed in the direction of the rumbling PVC. "Grab your purse. You and the Little One are coming with me."

  CHAPTER 38

  Thus, at first you are like a maiden, so the enemy opens his door....

  Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  "What the devil is the delay, Captain?" The Lord Admiral angrily confronted Cato. "Get His Majesty the hell out of here!"

  Cato saluted, looked grim. "We're trying, my lord. The limojet is experiencing engine difficulty. It might be a faulty fuel line."

  "Faulty fuel line, my ass!" Dixter swore. "Has that engine ever been known to fail?" "No, my lord."

  "Damn odd it should fail now, don't you think, Captain?"

  "I understand your meaning, Admiral. We're doing all we can." "Transfer the king to another vehicle. Use my car. Call in the hovercraft."

  "I've done that, my lord." Cato was carefully patient. "But in those instances, the king and queen would have to leave the limojet. At least inside there, they're safe." The captain looked over at the drop ship. "The limojet's shields could withstand a hit even from those lascannons."

  Dixter stared at the drop ship, then cast a swift look around. It was all chaos: milling, panicked crowds; sweating police attempting to contain the mob; confused, bewildered dignitaries; and infuriated Baroness DiLuna; shoving, determined media. The Royal Guard provided an island of calm. Drawn up in a cordon surrounding the Royal Limo, the guardsmen and women were protecting the already wellprotected vehicle with their own bodies. And there was the mysterious, potentially deadly drop ship squatting squarely in the middle of a hotel parking lot.

  Naval hovercraft converged on the scene; the sky was dotted with them, the air filled with their buzzing whine. But they only circled the drop ship.

  "Why haven't they fired on it, my lord?" Cato carded the battle into the enemy camp, so to speak.

  Dixter, realizing this, offered a brief apology. "Sorry, Captain. You know your job. And--unfortunately, at times like this--I know mine. That drop ship is designed to withstand enemy attack from the ground or the air. The shielding is damn near impenetrable. You can drop bombs on it all day long and maybe put a dent in the damn thing.

  "Oh, sure," he added, in response to Cato's frown, "we could destroy it with a few plasma missiles, which would also fuse together in one gigantic metal lump every single civilian vehic in that parking lot. Not to mention the civilians themselves."

  "Yes, my lord." Cato rubbed his smooth-shaven chin.

  "Besides"--Dixter spoke softly, almost to himself--'Tm not certain we should do anything to that drop ship."

  "Sir?" Cato was clearly appalled.

  "Just
a hunch, Captain. Just a hunch. And of course we'll do something." Dixter was soothing. "Just as soon as we figure out what."

  "Good God, my lord! Look!"

  One side of the drop ship opened wide. A hulking machine--large and massive and mottled gray-green in color--lurched out. The thing was belching great quantifies of black smoke. People in the vicinity began shrieking in terror.

  "Analyze that gas," Cato ordered over the comm. "Could be poisoned," he added for Dixter's benefit.

  The Lord Admiral said nothing, just shook his head.

  The answer came back sounding slightly puzzled. "Chemical analysis reads ... exhaust fumes, Captain."

  "I'll be damned. That's an old PVC-28 Devastator," Dixter said, squinting into the sunlight.

  "And it's headed this way, my lord. Civilian casualties or no, we've got to---"

  "No, it's not." Dixter pointed. "It's turned. It's heading for the ... hotel?"

  Both men watched, bemused, as the PVC crunched and mangled its way over the vehics in the parking lot, firing bursts of tracer fire to clear people from its path. It smashed through a retaining wall, rolled down a culvert, disappeared for several long moments--when it must have come to a halt. Then it surged up the other side and trundled on, continuing its relentless drive toward the Ceres Towers.

  Dixter was on the comm. "Commander, alert the local police to immediately evacuate that hotel and seal off the surrounding area."

  "Damnedest thing I ever saw," Cato remarked. "At least the king and queen appear to be safe enough."

  "Captain," said the Lord Admiral grimly, his gaze fixed intently on the PVC, "I have a hunch about this, too. Do whatever it takes to get that damn limo going!"

  The PVC clanked and thundered its way down the side of the culvert. Xris rode in the gun turret; Jamil steered from down below. Harry and Quong, Raoul and the Little One were jammed shoulder to shoulder in the middle. The insides smelled oddly of gardenia and burning oil. When the Devastator reached the culvert's bottom, Xris ordered Jamil to stop.