The Knights of the Black Earth (45 page)

As usual—it was
Rowan.

The ensign’s face
hardened; so did her voice.

“Navy Four Four
Lima Three. I repeat:
Do not dock!
We are on red-alert status. We cannot
allow you to dock. We can activate a tractor beam, hold you in place for the
duration—”

“Cut
communication,” Xris ordered.

The screen went
dark. Xris hoped NOROF would figure they were having power problems as well. “Back
off. The last thing we need is a blasted tractor beam grabbing hold of us! What’d
the sensor scan pick up? Anything we can use?”

“Hang on a minute.”

While Harry was
studying the scan, Xris stared out the viewscreen at NOROF—which looked exactly
like a large and shining metal ball covered with spikes. Each spike was, in
actuality, a docking arm. Ships arriving at the facility would maneuver to
connect to the end of one of the arms. Once attached, the arm would lower the
vessel to the main body of the station, if major overhaul or rebuild was
required. Minor repairs could be effected while the ship was attached to the
arm.

Xris counted
twenty vessels of various types docked at the facility—a light load,
considering that each NOROF could accommodate well over one hundred at a time.
As he watched, the docking clamps on all of the arms retracted and the arms
began to pull back telescopically into the station. NOROF was serious.

“Shit!” Xris
swore. All he could see were frigates, and they wouldn’t be of any use
whatsoever. He looked at the chronometer.
^r
I\venty-four hours. It
had taken them half an SMT day to find this place, another half day to reach
it. This time tomorrow, unless they stopped the assassins, the young king might
be dead.

“I thought you
told me there were two drop ships docked here,” he said over his shoulder to
Rowan.

“There are,
according to the parts requisitions I found,” she maintained. “They
specifically listed two drop ships, located at this site. One is an LST-208 and
the other—”

“Got it!” Harry
announced triumphantly. “Sensors are picking up two drop ships, both on the
other side of the facility. One’s an LST-208 and the other is a 209.”

“Let’s take a
look.”

Harry was dubious.
“Are you sure, Xris? They might suspect what we’re after.”

“Hijacking a drop
ship? Not likely. They’ll figure we’re hanging around sulking, trying to make
them feel guilty. Take it slow. Don’t make it look obvious. Oh, and go back on
the comm. Whine a little.”

Harry whined. The
NOROF ensign was overly patient, as if dealing with a child having a temper
tantrum. The Schiavona glided, apparently aimlessly, around to the far side of
NOROF where they worked on the larger vessels.

And there were the
two drop ships. One was obviously in dry dock. It had been lowered to the main
portion of the facility. Covered with scaffolding, the drop ship looked like a
bug caught in a steel web. But the other . . .

Harry, whining and
sulking, once again ended communications.

“That’s our ship,”
he announced. “The LST-209—there, on the docking arms. Sensors indicate the
engines are still operational. It doesn’t look like they’ve started any major
work. My guess is that the ship’s being prepped for overhaul.”

“Bring it up on visual,”
Xris ordered.

Harry brought it
up, adding magnification. The drop ship filled the screen.

“It sure is a
weird-looking son of a bitch. Sort of like a grasshopper holding on to a pie
plate. I’ve seen ‘em before but I’ve never flown on one. You, Xris?”

Xris shook his
head. “The major has, though. This was his idea. Jamil! Come take a look at
this!”

Jamil came
clattering down the stairs, stood behind the pilot’s chair. “I served on
several when I was in Special Forces. The drop ship’s actually two separate
units. That part you call the grasshopper”—he pointed—”is the command module.
Where the cargo hold would be on a normal ship is the landing module. They cut
the cargo hold out, leaving the supports and ductwork that connects the engines
at the rear of the command module to the bridge. The ‘legs’ hold the landing
module on during flight. When we orbit the planet, the landing module
disconnects, drops to the planet’s surface.”

“The landing
module has no maneuvering controls, no way to fly itself, huh?” Harry asked,
regarding the drop ship with interest.

“It has inertial
nullifiers,” Jamil responded, adding with a grin, “That’s so you don’t end up
as space mush plastered on the ceiling when you land. Even so, it’s pretty
rough. We call the ride down the ‘elevator to hell.’ The landing module’s
intended for ground-based deployment. Like I told Xris earlier, the landing
module normally houses a mission command bunker and a bay holding small armored
attack vehicles. Our Special Forces unit was moving on the ground less than
five minutes after touchdown. Once the mission is complete, the blast rockets
under the landing module fire, lift the module into orbit. We rendezvous with
the command module, reattach.”

Harry was giving
the drop ship the once-over. “Not much in the way of weapons. Why’s that? You
Army guys working in favor of gun control?”

“The command
module has special intruder shields,” Jamil said. “A destroyer could blow up a
ship that size with one lascannon tied behind its back, to quote friend Tycho. And
generally, when you’re on a special mission, you don’t want to alert the local
bad guys to your arrival. Once in space, these shields go up, and the drop ship
is—to all intents and purposes—invisible. Of course, if anyone actively goes
looking for it, they’ll find it. But you’ve got to know it’s there first.

“The landing
module is armed to the teeth, though. Once on the ground, you want a good
firebase for operations. See over there? That’s the lasgun turret and below it
is the vehicle bay door. This thing is a fortress once it hits dirt.”

“Sounds perfect,”
Tycho said, leaning over the rail, peering down into the cockpit. “Now how do
you suggest we get hold of it? They won’t even let us dock.”

Xris took out a
twist, thrust it in his mouth. They were no longer in visual contact with
NOROF, and besides, he was going to give them a lot more to worry about than
the fact that a Naval officer was caught smoking on duty.

“Harry, can you
land the Schiavona on top of the command module?”

“Shit, I could
land this thing on Tycho’s head if you wanted me to.”

“Maybe next time.
The facility doesn’t have any guns; all we have to worry about is that damn
tractor beam locking on to us.”

“They have to
catch us first. I can do it, Xris, but it’ll be a wild ride.”

“Oh, dear God!”
Tycho rolled his eyes. “I hate it when he says that!”

“Strap yourselves
in good,” Xris warned, and gave Harry the go-ahead.

Harry permitted
the computer to return, ordered it to go into combat mode but advised it to
leave the shields down until further orders. The computer began rerouting and
shutting off some systems, activating others. The interior lights dimmed to
emergency status only; the supply of cool air was cut off, replaced by
circulating air. It would soon grow moderately warm in the living quarters.
Power to onboard amenities was cut. No showers, no hot food, no flushing the
head. Tycho and Jamil climbed into the gun turrets. A bombardier wasn’t needed;
they’d opt for speed over heavy weaponry.

When each person
reported ready, Harry nodded his head slowly, placed his big hands on the
controls. On his face, an expression of intense concentration—which Xris had
come to associate with these times—replaced the slightly foolish and
occasionally goofy look Harry generally wore. Almost like an idiot savant,
Harry was good at only one thing—flying. But he was supremely good at that, one
of the best pilots Xris had ever known.

Harry melded with
the plane in some strange way, as if it were just another body part. Weird to
watch and see in action, scary to be along for the ride, but worth it at the
end. Or so Xris hoped.

“I’m taking over
manual control,” Harry said, and even his voice sounded different—confident,
deeper. “When I give the signal, computer, activate shields. Brace yourselves,”
he added for the benefit of everyone on board. “This is going to be one mother
of a dive.
Now!”

Shields came on.
NOROF, picking this up on their sensors, wouldn’t be overly concerned. They’d
probably be relieved, in fact, figuring that this nuisance of a Schiavona had
managed to repair itself and would now fly away and leave NOROF in peace. They
were going to be in for a shock.

The Schiavona
rocketed through space, traveling far too fast near a solid, massive object
such as the orbital platform. The highly unpleasant sensation of negative Gs
dropped the stomach down around the bowels, jumped the heart into the throat.
The plane hurtled forward. The orbital platform seemed to be rushing at them.
It grew and swelled at an alarming rate.

Slow down, Harry,
Xris found himself ordering mentally. You’ve got to slow down! We’ll crash! We’re
going to crash!

But he didn’t
order aloud and Harry didn’t slow down. He wouldn’t have heard Xris anyway.
Harry was thinking, feeling, reacting, responding only to his plane.

The orbital platform
was coming at them so fast that objects on it were now clearly visible, or
would have been if they hadn’t merged into a dizzying blur because of the dive.

The computer
warned of approaching impact.

Harry flew on.
Heat vectors, rising from the platform, began to buffet the plane. It bounded
from side to side, lurched wildly up and down. Cries and howls echoed
throughout the plane as the team members made involuntary and painful contact
with certain hard objects. Xris managed to turn his head, which was plastered
against the back of the chair, looked up into the living quarters.

Rowan, white to
the lips, was staring with wide eyes at the viewscreen, at certain death.
Quong, seated beside her, had shut his eyes, his lips moving either in prayer,
a mantra, cursing Harry, or maybe all three.

The computer
announced imminent collision.

Xris decided that
shutting his eyes was a wonderful idea. He heard a crunching sound, wondered
vaguely what it was, paid it no attention. He would discover, later, that he had
gripped the chair arm so hard, his cybernetic hand had crushed the metal.

Through a dry
throat, with a dry tongue, he managed to croak, “Harry, stop—”

Harry had been, in
actuality, slowing their rate of descent, a fact that wasn’t immediately
obvious—they had drawn so close to the platform that the proximity made it
appear as if they were going faster. At the instant when it seemed to Xris that
he could count the number of rivets in the deck plates, Harry brought the
spaceplane out of the dive.

They were flying
among the docking arms, weaving in and out, dodging through a forest of girders
and cranes and metal scaffolding. The Schiavona flipped and rolled and sailed
up and slid down and went around and over and slipped in between such tight
cracks that Xris was certain he could have gone back and found that they’d left
paint streaks from their hull on the platform’s steel beams.

The grasshopper
body of the LST loomed ahead of them. Xris again opened his mouth. Harry, with
a look on his face of wondrous satisfaction, eased back on the controls. The
spaceplane changed instantly from a darting demon to a delicate dancer. It
floated, glided, and finally set down on top of the command module with a very
slight, very gentle bump.

Xris breathed.

“I think I peed my
pants,” came the plaintive bleat of Tycho’s translator.

When on surrounded
ground, plot. When on deadly ground, fight.

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

“I’ll give
everybody time to catch your breath and throw up, if I you have to,” Xris said,
unstrapping himself.

He reached into
the storage compartment in his steel leg. After that wild and unnerving ride,
he wouldn’t have been surprised to pull out his stomach. Instead, he replaced
his steel hand with his weapons hand, issued orders.

“Jamil, Tycho,
Doc, you’re with me. Harry, program the Schiavona for a return flight and send
it back to Olefsky. Rowan, help Harry on the computer. Raoul, you and the
Little One sit tight and wait for further orders. Everyone got that?”

Everyone did, with
the possible exception of Raoul, who had lost an earring during landing and was
searching through the seat cushions for it.

Xris left his
chair, headed for the airlock. The Schiavona had two airlocks, one located on
the deck and one up above, in between the gun turrets. Harry had set the plane
down on top of the command module and so Xris went to the lower deck airlock.
He waited until he heard the magnets clamp on, then tapped the control to
override the safeties. He found himself staring—not at another hatch, but at
solid durasteel hull plating.

“What the— Harry,
you missed the hatch!”

“There isn’t one,”
Harry said serenely, still on an exhilarated high. “Didn’t I mention that?”

“How the hell are
we supposed to get on board the damn drop ship?” Xris demanded.

“Spacewalk,” Harry
advised.

Tycho scoffed. “We’d
be target practice out there, like sitting ducks in a barrel.”

“Cut through the
plating,” Harry suggested after a moment’s profound thought.

“Great!” Xris
fumed. “So we fly merrily around the galaxy in a drop ship with a goddam hole
in it!”

“Calm down, Xris,”
Rowan said crisply. She managed a strained smile; she was still pale and shaky.
“We’re in an overhaul-and-rebuild facility. We’ll cut through the plating, then
patch it back up. Most of these ships are designed to assist in repairs. If I
can get to the computer, I can—”