The Knights of the Black Earth (15 page)

“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!”

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.

Raoul suddenly
looked up from his work. His eyes met Xris’s and their gaze was steady,
intense, not the dreamy, unfocused gaze of the Loti. Raoul smiled, a secret,
knowing smile for just the two of them. And he did know—he knew the truth, knew
everything about Dalin Rowan/Darlene Mohini. The Little One, who was also a
telepath as well as an empath (“It comes with age among his people,” Raoul had
once explained), had peered out from under the brim of the fedora and seen
right inside Xris. Hell, the Little One probably knew more about what Xris was
thinking and feeling than Xris did himself. And in some strange and
inexplicable manner the Little One had transferred his knowledge to Raoul.

Was Raoul for
real? Xris wondered, not for the first time, as he returned Raoul’s smile with
a reluctant, grudging half smile of his own. The lipstick, the clothes, the
nail polish; the foppish behavior, the affected mannerisms. Certainly they were
typically Adonian. So very typically Adonian that it was almost
too
typically Adonian. It was too real . . . surreal. And the drugs. Was Raoul a
true Loti? Or was that, too, some sort of charade? In emergencies, he could
react with split-second timing, something no true Loti could accomplish. He was
inventive, creative, a genius with chemicals—traits the pleasure-seeking,
indolent Loti did not possess. Yet the unfocused eyes, the dilated pupils, the
blissful, unperturbed, most assuredly drug-induced euphoria were all
typical—again, to the point of being atypical.

But if his was an
act—why? What was the purpose?

Xris could almost
suppose that Raoul, behind those painted, drug-drenched eyes, was laughing at
them all. . . .

“Yes, Xris Cyborg?”
Raoul’s eyelids fluttered lazily. “What is wrong? Not the mascara!”

“Your hair’s
blocking part of the space station,” Xris said, pointing.

“I beg your
pardon.” Raoul flipped his hair over his shoulder and, breathing a sigh of
relief to know that his mascara wasn’t smudged, continued with his nails.

Xris shoved aside
a vial of nail polish remover that was sitting in a docking bay, and began. “What
you are looking at is a holographic image of RFComSec. In case you can’t
translate the acronym, RFComSec stands for Royal Fleet Communications Security
Establishment.”

Harry gave a low
whistle.

“Yeah, I know,”
Xris said. “For obvious reasons, it wouldn’t be a good idea for any of you to
know how I managed to obtain this layout. So don’t even bother. Or,” he added
for Raoul’s benefit, “if you know, keep your mouth shut.”

Raoul glanced up,
smiled, returned to more important work.

Xris continued. “Inside
this space station is where the Royal Navy formulates the codes and ciphers
that keep their secrets secret. It’s also where they work at decoding other
people’s secrets. Security is as tight as Raoul’s buns.”

The Adonian nodded
his head to indicate he appreciated the compliment.

“The space station
sits squarely in the middle of nowhere. It’s near one of the Lanes, but most
hyperspace traffic zips right past, never realizing the station’s there. No
inhabited star systems within a couple of hundred light-years. RFComSec is
heavily shielded and completely self-sufficient, except for one small detail,
which I’ll go into later. This large complex in the center here”—he indicated
the hub of what looked like a gigantic wheel—”is the headquarters, the work
area. These spokes radiating out from it provide housing, shops, gym and
recreation areas, that sort of thing. Our man—”

Raoul lifted his
head.