The Knights of the Black Earth (52 page)

Tycho groaned,
nodded, and—hanging on to the railing for support—dragged himself up to the gun
emplacement located on top.

“Harry, anything
on the screens? What’s going on out there? And where did we land anyway?”

Xris had
originally cursed the fact that the drop ship had no windows, only outside cams
and vidscreens. He had since had reason to bless the foresight of the designer.
He could only imagine what that harrowing, plummeting descent in the Elevator
from Hell would have been like if they’d been forced to view the sights along
the way.

Harry switched on
an array of vidscreens. The cams provided three-hundred-sixty-degree coverage
of the terrain outside the drop ship.

Xris looked out
over what appeared to be—at first, startled glance—a veritable sea of gleaming
metal.

“We’ve landed in a
parking lot,” Harry announced.

Xris recalled the
sound of screeching metal, the uneven, bumpy touchdown. A few hovercar owners
were going to be extremely unhappy when they returned to the pancakes that had
once been their vehicles.

“Any activity?”

“Choppers
circling, but not getting too close. Probably won’t. We have surface-to-air
missiles.”

“Yeah, well, they’ve
got air-to-surface missiles.”

“I don’t think
they’re going to be keen on using them. Look at this.”

Harry adjusted a
camera angle, pointed to a vidscreen. A few thousand spectators stared back,
pointing and exclaiming and jostling for position in order to get a better
view. They were alarmed and panicked now, but soon curiosity and the
safety-in-numbers kind of euphoric courage that sweeps over a crowd would set
in. The drop ship might survive a direct missile attack; it had already
survived entry into the planet’s atmosphere. But it might fall to a mob.

“Fire a few
tracers over their heads. Well over their heads. Just enough to make them keep
their distance,” ordered Xris.

Tycho fired off
the lascannon. Most of the people in the crowd flung themselves flat on the
ground. The local police force had arrived on the scene, began doing what they
could to clear people out of the area. At least, no one would be firing rockets
at the drop ship anytime soon—not with the possibility of injuring untold
numbers of innocent civilians.

“Can you see the
king?” Xris asked.

Harry shifted
camera angles.

“That must be the
dignitaries’ platform. There’s the Royal Flag. I’ll zoom in.”

They had an
excellent view of the backs of the Royal Guard. Xris detected what might have been
a flash of red-golden hair in the midst of the ring of steel. And there was the
Royal Limojet.

“Looks like the
king’s safe, for the time being,” Xris reported to the rest of the team. “They’re
hustling him and the queen into the Royal Limo.”

“Good!” Rowan
breathed in relief. “They shouldn’t have to take him far to get him out of
range.” She looked up at Xris, smiled shakily. “I’d say mission accompl—”

“They’re not
moving,” Harry reported, frowning.

The king and queen
were seated safely in the limo, the Royal Guard had taken their places on the
outside, the crowd had been hastily cleared from the area, but the limojet wasn’t
going anywhere.

Xris took a look. “He’s
right. They’re not moving.”

“Maybe they’re
waiting to see what we do,” Harry suggested.

Xris snorted. “That
is
not
standard procedure. When you’re guarding dignitaries and there’s
some type of danger, you get them the hell out of there. You don’t wait around
for the shooting to start.”

Harry was studying
his instruments. “It looks like— Yeah, I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“Engine trouble.
The limo won’t start. They’re running diagnostics on it now, but—”

“They won’t find
the cause,” Rowan interrupted, excited. “It’s the negative waves. I’m picking
up the signature. The knights have turned the device on. The waves must be
causing the engine to malfunction!”

“At least that
limo’s shielded, armor-plated. A lascannon couldn’t take the king out once he’s
inside.”

“No armor, no
shields will protect him,” Quong said. “The negative waves will pass through unaffected.”

“Damn!”
Frustrated, Xris turned back to the screen. “The knights are in range. We’re
too late to save the king. But maybe we can even the score.”

“We are not
finished yet, my friend,” Quong returned. “The signature is very, very weak.
The knights haven’t brought the device up to full power. But Major Rowan is
correct in her assessment of the negative waves damaging the limo. As you can
see here by the spectrum analysis, the microwaves—weak as they are—have been
able to cause interference with the power coupling lattice of the limojet’s
engines.”

Xris didn’t bother
to look. He wouldn’t know a spectrum analysis if it smacked him in the face. “Good.
That gives us a chance. Get a fix on the damn device and Tycho’ll take it out
with the lascannon.”

Rowan stared
intently at her screen, made some rapid calculations, chewed on her lip. “My
fix on the position is—”

Whatever she said
next was lost in a thundering, thumping blast. The engines of the PVC-28
Devastator fired, backfired, misfired, and finally—after a strangled
cough—rumbled contentedly. A cloud of black, choking smoke filled the vehicle
bay and began to seep into the rest of the drop ship. Raoul, who was
inexplicably changing his clothes, bleated in indignation and waved a frantic
hand.

“This gunk is
ruining my outfit!” he wailed.

The tank’s engines
cycled over from deafening roar to a head-splitting hum that caused Xris to
hastily shut down his augmented hearing. Even so, the irritating whine made him
grit his teeth.

“Here are the
coordinates!” Rowan shouted at him. “I’ve fed them into the computer! You
should be able to bring it up on the screen!”

Xris went back to
the screens. Harry had his large finger planted on one of them.

“There,” he said,
and he shook his head. “That’s it. Got to be.”

“You’ve made a
mistake.” Xris turned back. “Rowan, reenter your data.”

“No mistake, Xris,”
Quong confirmed. “That’s it.”

Xris looked back,
took out a twist, clamped his teeth down on it hard. The negative wave device
was located right smack in the center of an enormous forty-story luxury hotel
that was standing right smack on the highway leading up to the temple. The
hotel, the area around the hotel, the highway leading to and from the hotel
were jammed with people.

“Third-floor
balcony,” Harry said.

A blast from the
lascannon would blow up the device . ..

The front of the
hotel ...

And about five or
six hundred men, women, and children, who would never know what hit them.

“Tycho, get down
here!” Xris said, frustrated. “Harry, goddam it, I need a closer look!”

Harry was already
ordering the computer to zoom in on the coordinates.

“Holy shit!” he
said reverently and in disbelief. He turned around, his eyes wide. “Xris, that
can’t
be right! That’s . . . that’s the GNN nightly news!”

Yet the numbers
Rowan had brought up were flashing complacently beneath the picture, assuring
him that this was, indeed, the location of the negative wave device.

A mobile unit of
Galactic Network News.

“Doc, get over
here. There’s all sorts of equipment stuck out there on that third-floor
balcony. You have any idea which of those things might be the device? If any?”

Quong took a close
look. Harry obligingly shifted camera angles, bringing each machine into close
proximity. Xris, conscious of a wave of gardenia perfume roiling over him,
sensed the presence of Raoul loitering nearby. The Loti glittered in gold, from
head to toe.

“I am now suitably
dressed for the occasion,” Raoul announced happily.

Xris grunted.

Quong squinted,
pursed his lips. He calmly placed his finger on the screen. “That’s it.”

Simultaneously
Raoul gasped, pointed a painted fingernail at the screen. “Her! That’s her!”

“Son of a bitch!”
Xris murmured. “Our friend from
Canis Major,
Dr. Brisbane. Quite a
coincidence, her being here. And you say that’s the device, Doc? The machine to
her right? It looks like an ordinary vid antenna. A bit longer, maybe. How do
you know that’s it?”

Quong gave a
rapid-fire explanation. “Such pieces of equipment are known as image enhancers.
They are used to transmit and receive high-band radio waves. They act like
radar, work with the vidcam and a computer to enhance the picture of the
object, make it look clear and sharp, even on the outer fringes of the galaxy.
Now, as you will note, there are ten image enhancers on that balcony. Nine of
the enhancers are pointed at us, as they should be.
We
are the big news
at the moment. But look—look at this one! It is pointed at the limojet.” Quong
straightened. “At the king.”

Xris was
unconvinced. “Yeah, so? They’d be likely to keep one on the king, wouldn’t
they?”

“Of course! That
is why this device is such excellent cover for them. But look at this, my
friend—shielding! Why would a news crew put shielding around an image enhancer?
I tell you, Xris,” Quong said stubbornly,
“that
is the device.”

“And that’s the
woman with no mouth!” Raoul’s painted nails were digging painfully into Xris’s
good arm. “The female who was going to kill me!”

Galactic Network
News—a front for the Knights of Terra Nera? It didn’t make sense on the
surface. And yet, in a way, in the subconscious depths of Xris’s mind, it was
beginning to.

“How long have we
got before the device is fully operational?”

“Fifteen, maybe
twenty minutes,” Rowan answered.

Xris considered. “We
can’t blow it up from here, not without blowing up half of Ceres as well. We’re
going to have to go inside the hotel to take them out. Harry, you and Tycho
join Jamil in the PVC. Tycho, bring your sniper rifle. Quong, you and Rowan—”

“Just a minute.”
Rowan stopped him. “We
might
be able to interrupt the device’s signals
by sending out radio waves on the same band—according to my calculations. ...
Dr. Quong, what do you think?”

Quong studied the
screen. “A possibility. We don’t know the right modulation, so we couldn’t shut
the device down completely, but we might be able to force them to boost more
power, which would take time.”

Xris shook his
head. “Out of the question. Marines will storm this drop ship in a matter of
minutes. You stay here and you won’t be boosting anything.”

“But you’ll need
longer than fifteen minutes to reach the device,” Rowan argued. “Look at this,
Doctor.”

They huddled over
the computer, talking excitedly. Xris didn’t understand a word, but he realized
that in order to get them to leave, he’d have to physically assault both of
them. Besides, if they
could
jam it, buy him more time ...

He rested his hand
on Rowan’s shoulder, touched the Doc on the arm. “All right. You stay. But
listen to me. When the Marines show up, you surrender. That’s an order. No
heroics.”

“That was always
my plan,” Quong said gravely, not taking his eyes from the screen.

Rowan looked up at
Xris. She was smiling, but her eyes were shadowed. “Don’t worry about us. You
take care of yourself. And the others.”

“Sure thing,” he
said easily, then added, more somberly, “Once again, I’m sorry about all this.”

“I’m not,” she
answered. For a brief instant, her hand rested on his good hand. Then she
turned back to the computer.

Xris straightened.
Raoul, a vision in gold sequins and bangles, fluttered excitedly around him.

“What about me,
Xris Cyborg? Do I get to surrender to the Marines, too?”

“I know that’s
always been a fantasy of yours, but not this time.” Xris took hold of the
Adonian by a bracelet-covered, bejeweled arm, headed in the direction of the
rumbling PVC. “Grab your purse. You and the Little One are coming with me.”

Thus, at first you are like a maiden, so the enemy opens
his door. . . .

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

“What the devil is
the delay, Captain?” The Lord Admiral angrily confronted Cato. “Get His Majesty
the hell out of here!”

Cato saluted,
looked grim. “We’re trying, my lord. The limojet is experiencing engine
difficulty. It might be a faulty fuel line.”

“Faulty fuel line,
my ass!” Dixter swore. “Has that engine ever been known to fail?”

“No, my lord.”

“Damn odd it
should fail now, don’t you think, Captain?”

“I understand your
meaning, Admiral. We’re doing all we can.”

“Transfer the king
to another vehicle. Use my car. Call in the hovercraft.”

“I’ve done that,
my lord.” Cato was carefully patient. “But in those instances, the king and
queen would have to leave the limojet. At least inside there, they’re safe.”
The captain looked over at the drop ship. “The limojet’s shields could
withstand a hit even from those lascannons.”

Dixter stared at
the drop ship, then cast a swift look around. It was all chaos: milling,
panicked crowds; sweating police attempting to contain the mob; confused,
bewildered dignitaries; and infuriated Baroness DiLuna; shoving, determined
media. The Royal Guard provided an island of calm. Drawn up in a cordon
surrounding the Royal Limo, the guardsmen and women were protecting the already
well-protected vehicle with their own bodies. And there was the mysterious,
potentially deadly drop ship squatting squarely in the middle of a hotel parking
lot.

Naval hovercraft
converged on the scene; the sky was dotted with them, the air filled with their
buzzing whine. But they only circled the drop ship.