The Knights of the Black Earth (49 page)

“So what is this?”
Xris asked, wondering what he’d said to upset her.

“A spectral
analysis of the power source of the negative wave device,” she returned, her
voice cool.

“But we don’t know
what the power source is,” Jamil protested.

“We don’t need to,
do we, Dr. Quong?”

The Doc smiled,
nodded complacently. “I will explain. Because of the power band the device
uses, it emits a bizarre wave pattern that can be picked up
if
you know
what you’re looking for. If not, you’d never notice it. That wave pattern is,
effectively, the signature of the negative wave device. Once the knights turn
it on, that signature will show up on our monitor. We set it to locate the
source, and we have them.”

“There will be a
time lapse while they bring the machine up to full power in order to activate
the device,” Rowan added. “Unfortunately, we can’t be sure how long that will
take, but hopefully enough to enable us to find them and stop them.”

Harry, completely
lost, scratched his head. “What’s to keep us from blowing up some microwave
pizza joint?”

“That would be one
well-cooked pizza,” Rowan told him, smiling. She was obviously growing fond of
Harry. “No other microwave on the planet—on any planet, for that matter—would
be this powerful or have quite this same configuration.”

“So we drop out of
the skies and go looking for a giant microwave,” Tycho’s translator squawked. “What
then?”

Xris shrugged. “I
can’t say. Sorry, guys. I know you’re used to having it all laid out in
advance, but there are too damn many variables here.”

“Including the
fact that the good guys are going to be shooting at
us,
thinking
we’re
the bad guys,” Jamil grumbled.

Xris had no reply
to that.

“Hell of a way to
run an outfit.” Jamil continued his bitching. “And speaking of getting shot at,
I’ve checked out the so-called armored vehicle.” He glared at Rowan. “I thought
you said it was a PVC-48 Devastator.”

“I did. At least,
that’s what the computer files indicate.”

“Well, the
computer made a mistake.” Jamil was grim. “It’s a PVC-2S, and this must be the
first one they ever built. That tank’s older than I am. I trained on one! They
must have been hauling it to a museum.”

“Probably fixing
the tank up for some special mission,” Rowan suggested. “Maybe inside Corasia,
behind enemy lines. The Army doesn’t like sending new armored vehicles onto
enemy-held planets, in case the Corasians capture the tanks and learn from the
new technology.”

“What’s the tank’s
condition?” Xris asked, unperturbed. A former Army major, Jamil could have been
given the very latest in technological wonders and would still have complained
about it for days.

“Not bad,” Jamil
conceded grumpily. “If you don’t count the fact that something’s leaking all
over the deck, probably because the tank’s engine hasn’t been tuned up since
the fall of the monarchy twenty some-odd years ago. The engine is a solid-fuel
job, they get clogged up real easy. Which is why no one’s using solid-fuel
engines anymore, not even the Corasians.

“The
Devastator—and I use the term loosely—does have a forty-thousand-bhp engine
driving the tracks and blower motors for hover operations. But the
air-cushioning unit has been shot to pieces. The tracks are caked with some
sort of gunk that’s been left to harden and
might
come off if we took a
thurmaplasma torch to it.”

Jamil paused to
draw breath. “Now for the good news. The tank’s gun is in great shape—a
seven-cm particle cannon.”

“That
is
good.” Xris nodded.

“Yeah. The bad
news is we can’t fire it. But it sure will look impressive. The power link from
the gun to the engine is completely rotted away. Or maybe mice ate it. The
magnetic repeller shields seem to be working, though.” Jamil appeared almost
disappointed. “And the armor’s intact. At least anyone shooting at
us
will have a tough time penetrating our defenses.”

“The tank sounds
good enough for our purposes. Have Doc give you a hand with the wiring. We’re
going to need that gun. Now, anyone got any questions?”

Several hands went
up.

Xris amended. “That
I can answer.”

All but one hand
went down.

“Yes, Raoul?” Xris
sighed.

“I am uncertain
what to wear. These daytime affairs are so difficult. It is a formal occasion,
but one feels such an ass wearing black-tie before moonrise. I was wondering if
you thought it would be correct for me to don my—”

“Raoul”—Xris
attempted several times to interrupt, finally succeeded—”this is immaterial.
You didn’t bring any clothes.”

Raoul cast a glance
from lowered eyelids at the Little One. The single eye visible beneath the
fedora winked at him.

Xris recalled the
altercation he and the empath had had over the suitcase. He glanced around,
half expecting to see it.

“Actually, I did,”
Raoul murmured, cheeks flushed. “Or rather, the Little One acted in my behalf.
The box you assume contains medical supplies ...”

“What?” Quong
yelped. “My medical kit! You brought
clothes
instead?”

The Doc was on his
feet. Yanking open the metal box—painted white with a red cross and marked
medi-kit
—Quong stared, dumbfounded,
at, among other items of apparel, a mass of red silk petticoat and a pink
feather boa, which slithered out of the box like a long-incarcerated snake.

“Why do we need
medical supplies? We hardly any of us ever get sick.” Raoul was defensive.

“I think one of us
is about to,” Xris commented, grinning, and followed Jamil to check out the
PVC.

An hour later,
Xris came up to the bridge. He found Rowan alone, seated at the computer.

“Harry wanted to
get something to eat. I told him I’d keep watch.” She barely glanced at him;
her voice was cool, impersonal. “How’d it go with the armored vehicle?”

Xris sat down,
fished a twist out of his pocket. “It
may
hold together long enough to
get the job done. Or it may blow up with all of us inside.”

Having said that,
he sat in silence. Rowan refused to look at him. “What’s eating you?” he asked
finally.

She stopped
working. Her hands rested on the keyboard. Suddenly she turned, faced him. “Damn
it, Xris, why—”

She stopped,
swallowed.

“Why what?” he
asked, perplexed.

“Oh, nothing.
Never mind.” She had turned away from him again, began moodily tapping at a key
on the console. “You know the king personally, don’t you? I remember watching
you in the vids during the ceremonies. It gave me a strange feeling, seeing you
like that. What’s he like?”

I wonder, Xris
thought, staring at Rowan, what you started to say. Aloud, he answered, “Yeah,
I know King Dion. What’s he like? That’s hard to answer. Someone—I forget
who—described him as a comet. He’s ice and fire and you get burned if you get
too close. But once you meet him, you can’t forget him. He captures you and you
get pulled along behind. I never told anyone this before,” Xris added casually,
watching Rowan, “but I saw him perform a miracle.”

Rowan glanced up
at him. “Really?”

“Cross my heart—or
maybe I should say battery pack. Anyway, it was when I was working for Lady
Maigrey, helping His Majesty escape from the Corasians—among others. One of
Dion’s friends—a man called Tusk—was with Dion. Tusk got shot up pretty bad.
Belly wound, sucking chest wound. About as critical as I’ve seen. Anyway, I
managed to rescue him, get him back on board his own spaceplane.

“His wife was
there. Great gal. Name’s Nola. She was a soldier. She knew how badly Tusk was
hurt. I had a dose—a hefty dose—of painkiller. Enough to kill the pain in this
world, ease him into the next. I was going to use it, when Dion boarded the
spaceplane.

“Nola asked him to
save her husband. Hell, I thought she was crazy with grief, but no. And what I
saw next, I’m still not sure I believe. Dion took hold of Tusk’s hands and he
started talking to him, real soft, and ... and Tusk got better.”

Rowan was looking
at him oddly.

“What do you mean?”
she asked finally. “Tusk ‘got better.’ Did his wounds heal that instant?”

“No.” Xris shook
his head. “It wasn’t a change you could see. It was more of a change you could
feel. All I know is that Tusk lived when he should have died. And Dion Starfire
was the man who did it. That’s what he’s like.”

“Why are you
telling me this, Xris?”

“I don’t know.
Maybe because Fve been thinking about it a lot lately. Maybe because his wife
reminded me of my wife. Maybe because I always wondered if Tusk felt the same
way about being healed that I sometimes feel. That it might have been better to
have died.”

Rowan lowered her
head. Her hand on the keyboard clenched into a tight fist.

“What is it you’re
not
telling me?” Xris asked.

“Not now, Xris,” she
murmured. “Not now.”

He hung around for
a while, but Rowan didn’t say anything more. She went back to the computer,
went back inside her machine. Finally he left, climbed back down into the
launch module to see if he could help Quong and Jamil fix the PVC.

Either that or
help Raoul decide between the red silk or the gold outfit with the sequins.

Twelve hours to
go.

So a skillful
military operation should be like a swift snake that counters with its tail
when someone strikes at the head, counters with its head when someone strikes
at its tail, and counters with both head and tail when someone strikes at its
middle.

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

The drop ship,
intruder shields up, entered into orbit around Ceres, slid silently and
invisibly into place amidst the space traffic. They were thankful for the
shields. Numerous Royal Naval vessels were in the vicinity and, though
Operation Macbeth was still in effect, the sight of a special force ship
dropping by—”No pun intended,” Quong had chorded—the king’s ceremony might have
been enough to make a destroyer’s captain seriously consider disobeying orders
and opening up communications—or the big guns.

“We’re over the
drop site,” Harry reported, studying his instruments. “Right on target. We
should land about a kilometer from the temple. That should let us pick up the
signal from the negative wave device, find it, destroy it.”

“I’m entering the
signature in the launch module’s computers,” Rowan added, heading below. “I’m
going down to make final transfer now.”

“Good. Very good.”

All was going
well. About time, too.

Xris took a final
glance at the other ships of the Royal Fleet silently maintaining their
positions. All of them watching, wary, mistrustful. But none of them was
actively looking for him.

“Operation Macbeth’s
been a pain up to now,” he remarked to the rest of the team, who had gathered
in the launch module below. “It’s about time it worked
for
us for a
change.”

“Don’t say such a
thing, my friend!” Quong remonstrated, looking grave. “You will jinx us.”

“Doc, you’re a
scientist. You know there’s no such thing as a jinx.” Jamil winked, grinned at
the others. This was a long-standing joke.

Quong shook his
head. “I know that it is not wise to flaunt good fortune. It is said that the
gods never like to see mortal man too happy. It gives him delusions of godhood
and so they are always tempted to strike him down.
Hubris,
the Greeks
called it.”

“Hubris. I smoked
some of that once,” Raoul remarked.

Jamil laughed
loudly. Quong frowned, offended. Xris opened his mouth, prepared to say
something to avert a quarrel.

Harry, above on
the bridge of the command module, said it for him. “Oh, shit!”

Xris scrambled
awkwardly back up the ladder. “What? What’s the matter?”

Harry pointed at a
flashing red light on his console as he might have pointed at a poisonous
snake. “Someone out there’s spotted us.”

“That’s not
possible. We’ve got the damn intruder shields up. How did they find us?”

“They must be
scanning the area, probably on account of the king being here. I thought I
heard something ping against—”

“Rowan, get up
here!” Xris called down below.

“They found us!
Maybe Doc’s got a point about that jinx,” Tycho observed.

“Balls!” Jamil
sounded angry. “The only jinx we have on board is the Doc talking about jinxes!”

Rowan pulled
herself up the ladder onto the deck. “What’s wrong?”

The commlink spoke
in answer.

“Navy Lima Sierra
Tango Two Zero Niner. This is Ceres Military District Command, relayed through
the dreadnought
Jeanne d’Arc.
Operation Macbeth is ended. I say again:
Operation Macbeth is ended. Stand-down code is Rubicon Three Five Hadrian Niner
Alpha Two. Prepare to issue your stand-down code in two Standard Military
minutes. I say again: Prepare to issue your stand-down code in two Standard
Military minutes.
Jeanne d’Arc
out.”

“What’s our
stand-down code?” Xris looked at Rowan.

She bit her lip. “Beats
me.”

He glared at her. “Hell,
you probably wrote the damn thing.”

“I probably did.”
She was unperturbed. “But each ship has its own code. It’s given to every
captain along with his sealed orders.”

“Would he enter it
into the computer?”

Rowan shrugged.
She was already seated at the keyboard. “Captains aren’t supposed to. Some do,
of course. The sealed orders are required to be kept in a vault in the captain’s
quarters. But,” she added, as Xris was already headed in that direction, “he
would have undoubtedly taken them with him when he left the ship to be
overhauled.”