The Knights of the Black Earth (42 page)

Xris was
thoughtful. “But why? As far as I know, the only Blood Royal Snaga Ohme ever
had long-term dealings with was Warlord Derek Sagan. There was no love lost
between those two. In fact, the Warlord once hired me to do a spy job on the
weapons dealer. Derek Sagan had given Ohme the plans for the space-rotation
bomb and the Warlord wanted to make damn sure Ohme wasn’t trying to
double-cross him. Of course, Sagan didn’t tell me all that. No one knew about
the bomb then. But Ohme appeared to be dealing fairly with the Warlord at that
time.”

“Because Ohme was
plotting to murder Derek Sagan!” Rowan said. She pointed to the computer
printout. “That’s in this file. Ohme planned to murder Sagan by using some sort
of weapon that would only kill Blood Royal. React with the micromachines in
their bodies.”

“Is that possible,
Doc?” Xris asked.

“Certainly,” Quong
replied. “What was it Raoul said? ‘Explode.’ There are millions of
micromachines in the bloodstream of the Blood Royal. If Ohme had found a way to
cause them all to explode . . .”

He regarded Raoul
with interest. “Ohme
must
have injected you with those micromachines!
Otherwise how could these people have found them in your bloodstream? You’re
positive Snaga Ohme
never
gave you any type of injections?”

“Positive,” said
Raoul.

Quong frowned,
perplexed.

Xris shook his head.
“Look, this theory is all very interesting, Doc, but it
is
just a theory
and—”

“Unless you count
the collagen treatments,” Raoul added offhandedly.

“What collagen
treatments?” Quong and Rowan both spoke simultaneously.

“I took them to
erase wrinkles. I was developing a few around my eyes. Very few, and they’re
not noticeable now, due to this new cream I’m using. It is an extract of the—”

Quong was
triumphant. “Ohme
did
give him injections! He claimed they were collagen
treatments for wrinkles!”

“What else did he
do?” Rowan demanded.

“Nothing”—Raoul
looked slightly dazed—”that I can remember.”

“Damn it—” Xris
was losing patience.

Rowan reached out,
laid a hand on his arm, his good arm. Her touch was cool, oddly soothing.

“Perhaps Ohme had
you test out a new machine at the same time,” she suggested to Raoul.

“Why, yes. Now
that you mention it, my late employer Snaga Ohme had just recently purchased a
new tanning bed. He offered to let me try it out. He said it would assist the
collagen treatments to eradicate the wrinkles.”

Quong and Rowan
exchanged knowing glances, nodded.

“Did the wrinkles
go away?” the doctor asked.

“No.” Raoul was
aggrieved. “Now that I think of it, they did not. And not only did the wrinkles
not
go away, I didn’t get a tan and I developed the most terrible skin
condition. Huge purplish splotches—like these bruises, only worse—broke out on
my face and arms. No amount of makeup would hide them. I was unfit to be seen
in public. I took to my bed for a week.”

“That’s it,” stated
Quong, looking around at the team. “The collagen treatments were, in reality,
micromachines being injected into Raoul’s bloodstream. Then Ohme put the Loti
in this ‘tanning bed’ that was, in reality, a device designed to blow up the
micromachines. If Raoul had been injected with a significant number of
micromachines, he’d be dead. All of them would have burst at once, like bubbles
in champagne, causing massive hemorrhaging. Death would be rapid and extremely
painful. As it was, the small number of micromachines that did explode caused
only minor damage—the bruising on the arms and the face.”

“Xris,” said Rowan
excitedly, clutching his hand, “do you realize what this means?”

He looked at her.
She flushed, removed her hand from his arm.

“I see where you’re
headed. But you two can’t be serious! This is .. . ludicrous!”

“Look at how it
fits,” Rowan argued. “Snaga Ohme invented this machine in order to kill Derek
Sagan. But Fate intervenes. Snaga Ohme dies before he has a chance to use the
machine. Then Derek Sagan dies. All the Blood Royal are dead.”

“Except one,”
Quong added.

“One,” Rowan
repeated. “And while Ohme may be dead, his machine could be very much alive.”

“Which means—”
Quong began.

“I know!” Raoul
cried, ecstatic at having figured it all out. “I know! Bubbles in the blood!”
He was pleasurably horrified. “They’re going to carbonate the king!”

“Holmes!” I cried.
“I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at! We are only just in time to
prevent some subtle and horrible crime.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Speckled Band

“And, according to
the files, they’re going to go through with the assassination in sixty hours.
Less than that now, of course. That has to be what this means.” Rowan exhibited
the printout, read it aloud.

“ ‘Synchronize
chronometers to Zulu Time—now. Mission go/ nogo will be transmitted in
sixty-six hours. Mission completion, barring nogo, will occur by eighty-one
hours. You have your orders.’ “

Raoul nodded his
head. “I heard them say that.”

Xris regarded him
skeptically.

“I did,” Raoul
protested. “I remember quite clearly. That dreadful female was, after all,
coming at me with an injector full of poison at the time. Such an occurrence
does tend to stimulate the cerebral cortex. The message about Zulus and
nogos—whatever
they
are— came over the loudspeaker. Then the ugly man
came in and said that God was with them and that dreadful woman asked him why
and he said because . .. because ...”

Raoul’s lashes
fluttered.

Xris, exasperated,
sucked in a breath, but Raoul waved his hand.

“No, no. Just a
moment. It’s coming back to me. I have it! No one could stop them, because the
Royal Navy was effectively paralyzed!”

Xris looked
swiftly at Rowan. She stared fixedly at him.

“My God,” she
murmured.

“You can say that
again! Son of a bitch!” Throwing down his twist, stepping on it, Xris stalked
over to stare gloomily out the Schiavona’s viewscreen at the stars.

“What the devil do
we do now?” Jamil asked.

“Your guess is as
good as mine,” Xris said grimly. “Anyone got any bright ideas?”

Tycho, who had
absentmindedly allowed himself to turn the gray color of the metal bulkheads,
shook his head.

Quong might not
have heard the question. He had placed his hands on his knees, was gazing at a
point in the center of the deck.

Pleased with the
response, though he had no idea what caused it, Raoul pattered on. “The Royal
Navy. Something about the military has big problems and those dreadful people
intended to take advantage of the situation.”

“Did they say
anything else?” Xris asked.

Raoul’s brow
furrowed in thought, something he never would have permitted—furrowing was bad
for the complexion—but the situation appeared grave. At this point, the Little
One nudged him with an elbow. They held one of their silent conversations and
Raoul’s brow cleared. He assisted the dewrinkling process by smoothing his skin
with his hand while he talked.

“Yes, that is
correct. My friend reminds me that the dreadful woman mentioned something to
the effect that the number of hours stated didn’t give them a great deal of
time. The ugly man replied that the ‘device’ was completed. They merely had to
transport it to the location and set it up. And then he said that my
termination order was canceled. But I don’t see how—”

The Little One
climbed up beside his friend and shook his arm. Raoul listened to the unspoken
voice. His eyes widened; his gaze went to Xris.

“Dear, dear,” he
said. “I’m beginning to understand. We
do
have a problem, don’t we?”

“Well,
I
don’t understand.” Harry was bewildered. “You guys always do this to me! What’s
going on?”

“Just this,” said
Xris, turning around. “If something does happen to the king,
we’re
the
ones who’re going to be blamed for it.”

“Huh?” Harry was
baffled. “Why?”

“It will look as
if we kidnapped Rowan in order to disrupt the communications of the Royal Navy
in order to assassinate the king.”

“Oh,” said Harry. “Gotcha.”
The news sank in. “Wow!”

“But we’re still
not sure that’s what they intend,” Jamil argued. “Who are these people? What is
their motivation? How did they get hold of the plans for Snaga Ohme’s machine?
And are they really serious about this?”

“They’re serious,
all right,” Rowan said, studying the computer printout. She looked at Raoul. “Did
you know someone called Bosk?”

“Oh, yes.” Raoul
and the Little One exchanged glances and nods. Raoul sniffed. “We never liked
Bosk, personally. He thought far too highly of himself. Everyone knew his hair
wasn’t his own. And what he did have, he bleached. Yet, for some reason, our
late employer, Snaga Ohme, took a fancy to the man.”

“Bosk was in Ohme’s
confidence,” Rowan continued.

“His confidence,
his bed, you name it.” Raoul flipped his own long hair languidly over one
shoulder.

“And if anyone in
that household knew Ohme’s secrets, it would be Bosk.”

“Yes. Not a doubt.
He
was the one who could have used the collagen treatments,” Raoul added in
an undertone to the Little One.

“Bosk is dead,
Xris,” Rowan said. She handed him the printout. “They murdered him to get the
plans for the device. It’s all right here.”

It was: a detailed
report on the murder of the wretched Bosk, related in a completely
professional, detached manner that chilled the blood.

I shot the
subject through the head,
read one portion.
I then proceeded to cut out
the subject’s eyeball. Holding it to the scanner, I was thus able to obtain the
necessary files.

Yes, there was no
doubt these people were serious. They’d murdered once. And, judging by the
beating they’d given the Little One and the threats they’d made to kill Raoul,
they were prepared to murder again. Xris read through the rest of the material.
It was disjointed, incomplete, the downloading of the files having been
interrupted by the
Canis Major’s
unexpected jump to hyperspace. But he
was finding enough to make him start to believe that the young king’s life was
truly in danger.

Xris had been one
of the envied few invited to attend the coronation. Dion Starfire, the
embodiment of hope for a war-torn galaxy, kneeling at the foot of the
archbishop, pledging himself to serve the people, to dedicate his life to that
service.

And Xris
remembered another time—a time tinged with smoke, hot with fire, soaked in
blood. The time he’d seen Dion Starfire work a miracle.

And then there was
the king’s wife, the beautiful Astarte.

Xris shook his
head irritably. He was spending far too much time these days tromping down
memory lane.

“But who are these
people?” Jamil sounded irritated. “I’ve asked twice now.”

“The Knights of
the Terra Nera,” Xris read, flipping through the printout.

“Sounds pretty
hokey to me,” Jamil observed.

“Nothing on them,”
Xris said. “I wonder—”

“I can still get
into the bureau’s files,” Rowan offered.

Xris regarded her
silently. She flushed beneath his gaze.

“I needed to keep
track of the Hung,” she said defensively. “What they were doing. Who was in
prison. Who was out.”

“I take it the
bureau doesn’t know you’re rifling through their secret files?”

She shook her
head.

“Go ahead, then.
See what you can dig up on these knights—if anything.”

Rowan went down to
the bridge. A moment later, he heard her conversing with the computer.

“I’ll . . . just
go along with her. See if she needs some help,” Harry added, blushing.

“Damn!” Xris took
out another twist. He stared at it gloomily, thrust it back into the case—the
case the king had given to him. “If only I could get hold of Dixter!”

“Maybe we’re
worried about nothing,” Jamil argued. “With the Navy on alert, expecting
revolution, the Royal Guard will certainly be taking extra precautions to
protect the king.”

“Unfortunately,
they won’t be able to protect him against this type of device,” Quong pointed
out. “Since it must use an energy beam to explode the micromachines, the device
doesn’t have to
look
like a weapon. It could look as innocent as . . .”
he paused, shrugged, “a microwave oven.”

“That’s sort of
what the damn thing is,” Xris said, scanning the file. “Here”—he tossed the
file to Quong—”see if it makes sense to you. It reads like a lot of scientific
voodoo to me.”

Quong read. The
more he read, the graver his expression. “It is not voodoo, Xris.” He looked
up. “They’re talking about building a phase-modulated maser with a tungsten
core guide in the ten-point-two-hundred-twenty-eight-gigahertz-band
transmitter. If they have truly developed such a device, it will do exactly
what Snaga Ohme intended it to do. It will kill anyone with micromachines in
the bloodstream. It will kill the king.”

“How? Explain in
words of three syllables or less.”

Quong gathered his
thoughts. “I said it could look like a microwave oven. That is basically how it
works. A microwave oven resonates water molecules when tuned to the correct
frequency. This device—they call it a negative wave device—both transmits and
pulses energy waves. These waves are designed to cause the crystal power
lattice of each micromachine in the king’s body to resonate. The resonation
causes the lattice to become unstable, the pulsing causes the lattice to
shatter. The process takes just over a minute.

“At that time, all
of the micromachines in King Dion’s body will explode. The explosions will
perforate every vein and organ, causing the young man to bleed to death. The
pain would be excruciating, a terrible way to die. No matter how quickly
medical help arrived, no one could save him. Once the explosions go off, there
is no way possible to repair such massive damage.