The Knights of the Black Earth (19 page)

The tall alien
nodded. He was already beginning to alter skin color, was now a mottled brown
to match the brown bushes and scrub trees that dotted the barren hillside.

Xris and Quong
gathered up their equipment, started walking down the slope. They headed for a
creek that ran at an angle between the small hill and the spaceplane. The two
splashed into the shallow water, proceeded upstream toward the tarmac and the
spaceplane.

Xris stopped every
few meters or so, scanned the area. He had lost sight of Tycho, but that wasn’t
unusual. The alien was probably hunkered down in the brush. He’d be the exact
color of the hillside itself by now.

Xris turned his
attention to the van, which was just pulling into the parking lot of the
Olicien facility. Harry and Jamil both climbed out, straightened their ties.
Briefcases in hand, they entered the main door of the building.

0855.

Quong halted, took
off his backpack. He removed a collapsible metallic dish, placed it on the
ground on the edge of the creek bank, aimed the dish at the vidnet antenna on
top of the Olicien building. Using a spectrum analyzer, he scanned the
communication airwaves for the frequencies in use, downloaded the information
into the dish.

Looking back at
the analyzer, he said, “All blocked.”

0901.

Xris removed a
grenade from his leg compartment, set its delay for six SMT hours, activated
the detonation mechanism, and placed the grenade beside the metallic dish. He
made it a practice to always take out the garbage.

Xris spoke into
the commlink.

“Tycho, this is
Xris, do you read me?”

“I read you loud
and clear. I am in position. There are four targets on the tarmac in front of
you.”

“I see them. I’m
going to give them five minutes. With luck they’ll move to the far side of the
plane. If not, you’ll have to take them out.”

“Understood.”

Xris didn’t want to
have to cross the tarmac in full sight of God, the giant plastic beetle, and
the crew of the spaceplane. He didn’t want a bunch of comatose bodies littering
the ground, either. The sight of fellow crewmen dropping over was almost
certain to cause someone to panic and then all hell would break loose.

“Come on,” he said
to the crewmen under his breath. “Leave, damn it.”

Almost as if
obeying his order, three men walked around to the far side of the plane. A
fourth remained, however, working on a maintenance panel on the winglet.

“Go along, kid,”
Xris told him. “Go follow after your buddies.”

Quong stood beside
him, squinting against the sunlight, unable to see anything more than the plane
itself.

“Oh-nine-oh-five,
Xris.”

The doc was
holding a short-barreled autogun. It could fire two hundred bursts per second
and was known as a “corridor broom” for its capability of making a clean sweep
of any small area. It had no stun capabilities, but it was Doc’s favorite
weapon. Xris could trust Quong not to use it unless there was absolutely no
other way out. And that wasn’t going to happen.

Xris was feeling
lucky.

The mechanic shut
the panel. Bending down, he picked up his tool kit, started walking away.

“Xris!” Tycho was
back. “Go for it! I’ve got you covered!”

Xris began running
across the tarmac. Running was not an easy task for the cyborg, and one he
generally tried to avoid. The metal part of his body worked faster and better
than the physical; the flesh-and-blood half seemed a drag on the artificial.
Consequently, his run was awkward and ungainly. He felt uncomfortable,
unstable, and off balance. In the back of his mind lurked the fear that he
might stumble and fall and something vital inside him would short out. He had
visions of himself lying helpless on the tarmac.

Not today, said a
voice. Today’s the day. After all these years, it’s finally coming together.

Xris relaxed, let
the physical part of his body glide into synch with the metal, and loped across
the landing strip. Quong was at his left, keeping pace easily. The middle-aged
doctor wasn’t even breathing hard.

The spaceplane
stood on a tripod landing system. The plane was a new model based on an old
design dating back to the dawn of spaceflight, but over the centuries no one
had come up with anything as reliable and efficient. Two wings swept back from
the fuselage, forming the delta-wing configuration necessary for in-atmosphere
travel. It was big enough to accommodate passengers and cargo, was equipped
with shields and reinforced superstructure to withstand the rigors of
hyperspace.

Xris gestured.
Quong headed for the nose of the spaceplane. Xris ran to the tail section.

The four crewmen
were bunched together, gathered around a large maintenance ‘bot, cheerfully
discussing something being displayed on a computer screen. None of them was
armed; not surprising.

This was all so
easy. So damn easy.

Xris rounded the
plane’s tail, eased to a walk. He raised his weapons hand, aimed.

“Good morning,
friends.” Xris shouted above the conversation to make himself heard. “If you
all keep very still, no one will get hurt.”

At the sound of a
strange voice, four heads jerked around. One of the men, who recognized Xris
from their talk yesterday, grinned as if he thought this was a joke. The grin
slid from his face when he got a good look at Xris’s arm, noticed the metal
projectiles that had replaced the cyborg’s left hand.

Quong appeared
from around the plane’s nose, the autogun leveled.

The crewmen began
to yammer. Typical Aurigans, they wanted to discuss the matter. A motion from
Xris’s metal hand silenced them. They raised their arms in the air.

Quong kept the men
covered. Xris hurried to the hangar, looked inside. The hangar was extremely
dark, especially after the brightness of the sunlit tarmac. His natural eye
went temporarily blind, but his artificial eye instantly refocused and adjusted
filters.

Only one man was
in the hangar, and he was seated before a small computer, shouting commands at
it. In addition, some sort of machine with a loose bearing was making a deafening
racket. The man hadn’t heard anything that had gone on outside, apparently.
Xris walked right up to him, poked the hard steel of his weapons hand into the
base of the man’s skull.

“Don’t say a word,”
Xris ordered. “Move your fingers away from the keyboard. Now.”

It was possible
the computer was tied to a central system inside Olicien. A verbal or typed
warning could sound the alarm. The mechanic was too shaken by the sudden feel
of cold steel on his flesh to do anything, however. He went rigid with fear.
Xris eventually gave up trying to get the mechanic to raise his hands. The poor
guy couldn’t move.

Xris motioned. “Bring
‘em inside.”

The other four
crewmen marched into the hangar, their hands on top of their heads. Quong
dragged the fifth man out of the chair, added him to the group, and herded them
into the center of the hangar.

Xris was back on
the comm. “Tycho, this is Xris. All is secure. Move in.”

“I’m on my way.”

Xris left Quong on
guard duty, went back outside. He touched a control on his arm. A door on the
side of his mechanical leg popped open, revealing a holding rack for tools and
weapons. Xris detached his weapons hand, placed it in the correct slot, and
replaced it with a tool hand. The compartment door closed.

Making some minor
adjustments, Xris walked to the maintenance ‘bot, read the message on the
monitor:
Maintenance check complete. All systems within operational
parameters.

“Couldn’t have
timed it better if I’d tried!” Xris gloated, and actually laughed.

He looked out over
the tarmac, searching for Tycho. A flash of sun off the barrel of the beam
rifle was the only clue to the alien’s location. Tycho’s skin had turned black,
in order to blend in with the tarmac.

0910. Smooth. Very
smooth.

Xris moved to the
loading doors located on the other side of the spaceplane. They were sealed
shut, locked. He found the security keypad, studied it. The numbered and
ominously glowing pad was designed to allow access only to those who had
authorized fingerprints and punched in the correct code. An alarm would sound
if anyone else so much as breathed on the wrong key.

Xris touched a
control on his mechanical hand. A durasteel cutting drill extruded from the
center digit. He activated the drill, plunged the whirling bit into the “9”
button on the keypad. The drill cut through wires and into a metal plate
behind. Sparks flew. The keypad went dark. He held his breath.

No siren howled.
Slowly, the hatch began to rise.

Tycho appeared at
Xris’s side, seeming to materialize out of the tarmac itself.

“Nice work, boss.”

“It’s a standard
Morubundi K-33 Keypad. Any teenager with a screwdriver could have taken it out.
Navy probably required them to install some sort of security system and Olicien
bought the cheapest on the market.”

“You can’t blame
them,” said Tycho. “What are the odds that something like this would happen to
them?”

“I guess this is
just their lucky day,” Xris said, grinning.

He headed back
into the hangar, rejoined Quong and his prisoners, who were now slumbering
peacefully on the cement floor. Quong exhibited a can of hypno-spray. Xris
nodded.

Tycho set up his
rifle on top of a storage bin, aimed the weapon at the double doors leading
into the Olicien facility. Quong began to strip off the crew’s yellow,
bug-adorned coveralls.

0915. All going
according to plan.

And then his comm
buzzed.

Quong and Tycho
looked up, faintly alarmed. “Xris here,” Xris answered briefly.

“Is this Mr. Borg’s
office? Is that you, Mable?” Harry’s voice. “Uh, put me through to Cy, will
you, sweetheart?”

Someone must be listening
in.

Xris took out a
twist, put it between his lips. “This is Mr. Borg. What’s wrong, Harry?”

“It’s Raoul, Cy.
You heard from him?”

“No, not a word.
What’s the matter?”

“He’s not here,
Cy. Raoul never showed.”

Attack when they
are unprepared, make your move when they do not expect it.

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

“Shit!” said Xris
loudly and with feeling.

The response came
over clearly on Harry’s cel’link. Harry looked at Jamil, who shook his head. It
was not exactly the response likely to come from the chief executive of an
outer space floating platform corporation. Harry looked askance at the Olicien
receptionist, afraid she, too, had heard the expletive.

But the
receptionist had begun talking to Harry and Jamil the moment they entered the
door and hadn’t paused, except to draw breath. She continued to talk now, and
probably hadn’t heard, though she was starting to slow down and was obviously
getting a bit too interested in Harry’s conversation. Jamil distracted her,
asked a question about Raoul that got her started again. Harry moved closer to
the door, tried to see out to the tarmac.

“This is weird,
Xris,” Harry said in a low voice, under cover of Jamil’s conversation. “We’ve
waited for Raoul as long as we can.”

“Did you try his
comm?”

“No response. What’s
really strange, he was supposed to meet one of their people for breakfast at
the hotel. He never showed.”

“Something’s gone
wrong.”

Harry glanced at
his watch. 0918.

“The question is,
boss, do we go ahead?”

“We’ve gone too
far to quit now. Proceed as planned. I’ll try to raise Raoul. Out.”

Harry stared a
moment at the link, then replaced it in his briefcase, snapped the case shut.
Jamil was watching him. Harry nodded once. Jamil flickered his eyelids in
understanding.

“We’d like to meet
with your manager anyway, if we could. Undoubtedly Mr. de Beausoleil will be
here momentarily.”

“Certainly. I’ll
let Mr. Darminderpal and Ms. Kohli know you are here. Too bad about Mr. de
Beausoleil. I’d try calling him again, but our links don’t appear to be working
at the moment. Our commlink company is so impossible. This is the second time
this month. Such a fine-looking young man, and so polite. We had a nice
conversation yesterday. And his funny little friend in the raincoat. Never says
a word, does he?” The receptionist, still talking, gazed curiously at Harry,
who had begun to unpack the “contraption” from its case. “Why, what on Alius—”

“We thought we’d
bring along the device we’re currently using for exterminating the little
critters,” Jamil explained. “This unit just isn’t doing the job for us. We
figured your people should take a look at it.”

Harry fit his arms
into shoulder straps, hoisted a battery pack onto his back. A short length of
hose trailed out the right side of the pack. He attached the hose to a large
metal ring, attached three metal tubes to the ring, forming a triangle.
Finally, he clicked into place a pistol grip with a triggering device. He
flicked a switch. The battery pack hummed. The ring with the tubes began to
rotate.

The receptionist
stared at it, then began to giggle. “Why, you could destroy bugs the size of
the one out there on our front lawn with that thing!”

“Why, yes. Yes, ma’am,
we could,” said Harry gravely.

The “contraption”
was, in reality, a disguised 4.2-megawatt laser pulse cannon with triple
rotating barrels. Specially designed and built by Quong, the cannon could take
out the building, and everyone inside.

“I’m sure Mr.
Darminderpal will be fascinated by it. He has a collection of extermination
devices from all over the galaxy. . ..”

Continuing to talk
to them, the receptionist managed, at the same time, to inform a Ms. Kohli that
she had visitors. This done, the receptionist turned her attention and her
conversation back to the prospective new clients.