The Knights of the Black Earth (38 page)

Harry cut in. “We’re
going to be in violation of a helluva lot more safety regulations unless you
shut down your engines
now
and prepare for boarding.”

Momentary silence,
then a human voice replaced the digitized one. “This is the captain speaking.
You are in flagrant violation of intergalactic law. Our vessel has no weapons.”

“We do,” Harry
returned. “You can either shut down your engines now or we’ll shut ‘em down for
you.”

More silence.
Then, “Due to modulation frequency wave interference, your last message did not
come through—”

“Fire on them,”
ordered Xris from his place in the copilot’s seat. “Don’t hit anything vital.
Just show them we mean business.”

“You hear that,
Tycho?” Harry asked over the comm. The alien was ensconced in the Schiavona’s
gun turret, located in a bubble above the cockpit.

Tycho’s answer was
a well-aimed precision blast from the lascannon that took out a condenser coil
on the ship’s stern.

“You’ve lost the
air-conditioning,” Harry said cheerfully. “The next shot, you lose the air.”

“It’s this way,
Canis Major,”
Xris added, “you have no weapons. We do. You have no shields.
We do. You’re holding a friend of ours hostage on board your vessel. We intend
to get him back. Shut your engines down and prepare for boarders.”

The
Canis Major
had no response.

“But they’ve done
it,” Harry reported, studying his instrumentation. “They’ve shut down their
main engines. They’re dead in space. Computer, how long before they can start
up again?”

“Main engine
startup on a Verdi-class requires six hours to recycle.”

“They won’t be
going anywhere soon,” Harry said in satisfaction.

“We have shut down
our engines,” came the captain’s grim-sounding voice. “We have no choice. We
consider this a criminal action. We feel obliged to inform you that we have
activated our automatic distress signal. All vessels in our vicinity are
required by law to respond.”

Xris glanced at
Rowan.

“We know we don’t
have to worry about the Royal Navy,” she said. “They’re under orders
not
to respond to distress signals. But a civilian vessel could and probably would.
At least, they’d come take a look.”

“How long?” Xris
asked.

She shrugged. “This
is a busy sector. A lot of traffic. But I didn’t see anything in the vicinity
when I was tracking this ship, so I’d guess we have at least an hour.”

“It shouldn’t last
that long. Not with a bunch of professors on board. Take us in for docking,
Harry. Can everyone hear me?”

Xris stood up,
climbed the ladder to the living quarters. The cockpit of a long-range
Schiavona fighter-bomber is located below the spaceplane’s main deck area,
separated by a metal railing, accessible down a four-runged steel ladder.
Designed for interplanetary flights—unlike its short-range counterpart, which
is used mainly for ship-to-ship or ship-to-planet operations—the standard
long-range Schiavona is self-sustaining. It provides adequate, if not
particularly luxurious, living facilities for a two-man crew on a longer
flight, short-term accommodations for a larger number of people on a brief
haul.

The Schiavona on
this run was extremely crowded. In addition to the extra people, they had to
stow their gear on board. This included a small arsenal of weapons, Royal Naval
uniforms (in case they were caught, they planned to bluff their way out), food,
tools, and Quong’s box of medical supplies. Xris had been forced into a slight
altercation with the Little One. The cyborg caught the empath attempting to lug
an overlarge suitcase on board.

“What’s this?”
Xris had demanded.

The Little One had
opened the suitcase, proudly revealed its contents: seven silk scarves, a
half-dozen frothy lace-covered blouses, ten pairs of high-heeled pumps in
various shades, multicolored spandex unitards, and a flashy gold ensemble
adorned with sequins and bangles.

“No,” Xris had
said. “Absolutely not. Raoul will have to get along without his wardrobe.”

The Little One had
gesticulated wildly, flinging his small hands in the air and jumping up and
down.

Xris had remained
adamant. The suitcase was left behind.

“You hear me,
Tycho?” Xris said now over the comm to the gunner’s turret.

“Loud and clear,
boss.”

Rowan, the Little
One, Jamil, and Quong sat in small fold-down chairs bolted to the bulkheads.
They gave Xris their full attention.

“Okay, this is the
plan. When we dock, they’ll open the airlock—”

“What if they don’t?”
Harry demanded from the cockpit. He liked to have every eventuality covered.

“They will, or you’ll
shoot something else off. I’m leaving you inside the plane.”

Harry nodded
complacently.

“We’ll take
control of the bridge. Jamil and Tycho will remain on the bridge. The Little
One and I will go look for Raoul. Doc, you’ll come with us, in case he needs
medical attention.” Xris looked at the Little One. “Raoul’s alive, right?”

The Little One
nodded vigorously.

“And you can find
him on board that ship? Even if they’ve hidden him away somewhere?”

The Little One
nodded again, clenched two fists and brought them together.

“All right, then—”

“What about me?”
Rowan asked.

“You stay on board
with Harry. I want you to monitor— What the devil is wrong with him now?”

The Little One had
begun by wringing his hands and shaking his head. He ended by flinging himself
onto Rowan, clutching at her and tugging at her uniform.

“I believe he
wants me to go with him,” Rowan said.

“Out of the
question.”

“I don’t mind,
Xris.”

“Damn it, I do!
Technically speaking, you’re my prisoner—”

“Technically
speaking,” Rowan interrupted, smiling, “I’m your friend.”

Xris ignored that.
“—and I don’t want you—”

The Little One
became frenzied. He pulled on Rowan’s uniform with such violence that he ripped
an epaulet from her shoulder.

“He should not be
exciting himself like this.” Quong was on his feet, attempting to soothe his
patient.

“He wants me to
go!” Rowan pleaded.

“Then he can get
over it.” Xris was adamant.

The computer came
on. “Docking in ten, nine, eight—”

“You better sit
down and strap in!” Harry warned. “This is a forced docking maneuver. They’re
not helping us one damn bit.”

The Little One
refused to be pried loose from Rowan. Clinging to her, he peered at Xris from
under the brim of the fedora.

“I promise I won’t
try to escape,” Rowan said.

“At this point, it
might be better if she did,” Jamil muttered under his breath to Quong.

But Xris heard. “All
right, then! Go on board,” he snarled. “The whole fuckin’ universe can go on
board, for all I care.”

He slid down the
ladder, back into the cockpit, sat in his chair and strapped himself in. Grimly
silent, he stared out the viewscreen.

The computer’s
mindless voice broke the uncomfortable stillness.

“Five, four,
three—”

“Oh, shut up,”
Harry muttered, and killed the audio.

The landing was a
rough one.

The hatch whirred.
Xris pushed it open, pulled himself cautiously up and out. He took a good look
around, but—as Harry had reported from sensor readings—the airlock was
pressurized and empty. Xris, perched on top of the spaceplane, looked down,
motioned the others to join him.

Jamil came next.
He slid down the Schiavona’s outside ladder to the deck of the
Canis Major
Research I,
aimed his beam rifle on the door to the airlock. Tycho
followed, carrying his special sniper rifle. The alien joined Jamil.

There was a brief
delay. Xris peered impatiently down into the hatch. The Little One was slowly
climbing upward, tripping over his raincoat.

“Hurry!” Xris
ordered. He was a target-shoot up here.

The Little One
received a boost from behind from Quong, almost flew out of the hatch. Xris
caught hold of the empath, steadied him, started him creeping across the hull
over to the ladder. The doctor eased himself out next. Once on top of the
Schiavona, he reached down to receive a beam rifle and his medical gear handed
up to him by Rowan. She came last, moving easily and expertly. She carried a
lasgun in a shoulder holster.

Xris eyed the
weapon.

She caught his
glance, flushed. “I can leave it—”

He shook his head,
motioned her to hurry.

“We’re out, Harry,”
he said into the comm. “Leave the hatch open and keep the engines running.”

“Right, boss.”

Xris climbed down,
joined the others. He nodded to Jamil, who hit the controls. He and Tycho burst
through the door, weapons raised, expecting resistance.

All they
encountered were two extremely angry and indignant academic types in white lab
coats, who fired nothing more lethal than a barrage of protests.

“What is the
meaning of this? We are a research vessel! We have nothing on board—”

“Hands in the air,”
Jamil ordered.

“This is a
piratical act. We have your spaceplane’s number and—”

“He said, hands in
the air.” Tycho emphasized the statement with a menacing motion of his sniper
rifle.

Xris took up a
position where he could keep an eye on the corridor.

“I protest—”

The two, still
talking, reluctantly raised their hands over their heads.

Jamil grabbed one,
Tycho the other. They shoved both professors facefirst into the bulkheads.
Quong patted them down expertly for weapons, reported them both clean.

One of the
professors, a woman, turned her head. “I am Dr. Brisbane, leader of the
research team. We have nothing on board that would be in the least valuable to
you scum. We have activated a distress signal. Help will be arriving any moment
now. I suggest—”

She broke off,
stared in amazement at the sight of the Little One, who came barreling through
the door, tugging Rowan along behind. The empath would have dragged Rowan off
down the corridor if Xris hadn’t stopped them.

“Take it easy,” he
said quietly, resting his good hand on the Little One’s shoulder.

The Little One
apparently understood—either Xris’s words or his thoughts—for the empath calmed
down, though he kept casting longing glances at the corridor. Xris studied the
professors in their immaculate coats. The female doctor was tall, stern-faced,
gray-haired. The other—a male—was tubby and pink-faced. Neither looked the
least bit sinister, only upset and frightened and—in the woman’s case—mad
enough to chew off the cyborg’s steel hand. She started in again, yammering
about pirates.

Xris decided to
continue the hard-line approach, see where it got him.

“Shut up!” His
metal-edged voice cut off all further protests.

He fixed his
attention on the female doctor. “Listen to me, sister, and no one will get
hurt. We’re not pirates. We have reason to believe that you are holding a
friend of ours hostage on board this vessel. His name is Raoul. He’s an
Adonian. Release him, turn him over to us, and we’ll fly away and leave you to
your books.”

He expected
evasions, denials, more protests. What he got instead were baffled looks,
disbelief, and incomprehension. He might have been speaking Tycho’s language,
without benefit of the translator.

“You’re accusing
us—
us
—of ... of kidnapping?” Dr. Brisbane was so angry she was
spluttering.

Her tubby cohort
actually giggled, then blushed red at the doctor’s baleful gaze.

“Gentlemen—” the
tubby one began meekly.

“Don’t dignify
them with that term,” Brisbane snapped.

The tubby one
blushed again. “We’re a research vessel, studying the effects of vented gas
plasma discharge from junk-drive engines on various species, flora and fauna.
We’ve never kidnapped anyone. I believe you’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Xris was beginning
to think so. If that was true, he was certainly on a roll. It was Rowan who’d
dreamed all this up. Dog stars! If she ... If this was a trick . ..

Xris clamped his
teeth down on a twist.

Nothing to do now
but play it out.

“Then I guess you
won’t mind us searching your ship,” he said, watching them closely to see their
reaction.

And there was the
break, the crack. Not much. If he hadn’t been so damned keyed up and on edge,
he might have missed it—Tubby’s eyes slid sideways.

Brisbane was good.
She had scared but indignant down to an art form. Absolutely no reason for them
to search her vessel, upset her staff. Risk contaminating the experiments, loss
of months of valuable research . . .

Tubby, receiving
his cue, now joined in. But that’s just what his sideways glance had been. He
was asking for his cue.

Xris gave the team
the go-ahead.

Jamil grabbed
Tubby by the collar, shoved a lasgun in his back. Tycho took charge of
Brisbane.

“Take us to the
bridge,” Jamil ordered. “We promise not to step on the flowers. And keep your
hands where I can see them and your eyes straight ahead or you’ll be
fertilizing your ‘flora and fauna.’ March.”

The procession
moved down the corridor: Jamil and Tycho and the prisoners in front; Quong,
Rowan, and the Little One right behind; Xris bringing up the rear, watching
their backs. They met no one on the way. Apparently everyone else on board the
vessel had been warned to keep out of sight.

They continued
down the corridor leading from the airlock, until they came to an intersection.
Their corridor went on ahead, another branched off to the right. Dr.
Brisbane—her jaw clamped—indicated the right turn. At this, they nearly lost
the Little One. He came to a dead stop, pointed frantically straight ahead.