The Knights of the Black Earth (7 page)

Ito grinned,
relieved. He began to examine a map of TISor 13 that Armstrong had brought up
on the large vidscreen.

Dalin came in, sat
down next to Xris.

“I’m sorry,” Rowan
said abruptly. “But everything’s going to be okay now. It’s all . . . taken
care of.”

“What is? Look,
Dalin, if you need cash, I’ve got a few extra credits in my account—”

“No, no,” Rowan
said hastily, with a bleak smile. “It’s all arranged. I can’t explain now. When
this job’s done, I’m going to be all right. I promise, Xris. Don’t worry. It’s
going to be all right.”

He looked at Xris
anxiously, either begging him to drop the subject or desperately eager to talk.
Xris couldn’t tell which, and whatever he might have said in return never got
said because at that moment Armstrong started talking.

Turning to the
wall-mounted vidscreen, he called up a map of the munitions factory and
surrounding areas.

“I’ve prepared some
briefing notes; you can go over them at your convenience. I’ll cover everything
first, and then you can ask questions.”

Using a red-light
laser indicator, Armstrong pointed out a gray area near the munitions plant. “You’ll
make your approach from here. This swamp is the only easy point of access. The
water and assorted plant life provide excellent cover right up to within three
meters of the fence that surrounds the facility.”

“Swamp!” Ito
repeated, horrified. “Assorted plant life! What does that mean? And what about
assorted animal life?”

Armstrong was
soothing. “I’ve checked it out. According to our biometeorological research
scientists, there’s nothing
too
dangerous in the swamp.”

“How the hell do
they know? Have they been there?”

“No, but studies
on swamps on planets with the same type of atmosphere and temperature would
seem to indicate that the flora is standard for warm, wet environments. Nothing
worse than skunk plants and plenty of vines. They don’t think any of the vines
are sentient.”

“Don’t
think
they’re sentient,” Xris kidded, nudging Ito under the table with his foot.

Ito paled.

“You shouldn’t
have to worry about the fauna, either,” Armstrong continued. “Primarily your
standard water lizards and tubor snakes and they don’t like anything bigger
than they are.”

“Snakes ...” Ito
repeated in a whisper.

“Tubor snakes. Not
poisonous. You’ll be provided with the standard snakebite kit, just in case. To
continue”—Armstrong hastened on, ignoring Ito’s garbled protest—”you’ll enter
the swamp here and move to this point, closest to the fence. You’ll exit the
swamp, cut open the fence, and enter the vehicle loading dock—”

Xris grunted. “After
we set off every sensor in the place, not to mention being fried by the
electronic fence.”

Armstrong shook
his head. “Remember, Agent, this is a legal operation for the Hung. They have
all the necessary permits; the community’s even given them tax breaks. It’s not
against the law to produce and sell small arms and ammunition. And you can be
certain that if said arms are making their way to Corasia, the Hung have it all
very well disguised. No, gentlemen, you won’t find any electric fences or force
fields or fancy sensor belts. The Hung don’t want to make the good folks of
TISor 13 suspicious. Our preliminary reports indicate that this fence is
chain-link. Its main function is to keep out the swamp creatures.”

“What swamp
creatures?” Ito demanded loudly.

Armstrong, with a
wry grin, only shook his head.

“You won’t find
any ‘live’ guards, either. The plant employees live in a trailer park some
eight kilometers from the facility. An automated system keeps watch at night,
one of those with its own investigating ‘bot. You know the kind—the ‘bot can
put out a small fire or report a major one. Kills large rodents, that sort of
thing.”

“Rodents.” Ito
shuddered.

“You’ll have to
disable the ‘bot, if it locates you. As I said, you’ll enter here, via the
loading dock.” Armstrong pointed. “That will put you inside the shipping
warehouse. Proceed through the chemical storage room—here—and into the main
assembly area. From here, you will make your way to the central control
office—marked on this map with a circle. Your briefing packages contain copies
of all of these maps. The main computer is located in the control office.

“Rowan will gain
control of the computer system, establish a ground-space link to the
Vigilance,
and upload the entire memory core. We estimate transmission time
at around eight minutes. Once you’re finished, return the system to its
original state and exit via the same route you entered. You should clear the
compound by oh-three-twenty hours. You will then proceed to the
Vigilance’s
shuttle and return to orbit. We’ll analyze the data and decide on a course of
action. Any questions?”

Ito cleared his
throat. “About those snakes .. .”

Laughter, even
from Rowan. The meeting broke up. Xris offered to stand drinks. Ito said yes,
just a minute, began anxiously searching through his briefing papers for the
bioresearcher’s report. Armstrong declined politely. Gathering his material, he
left the briefing room. Rowan said sure, he’d join them in a moment. He’d just
thought of a question he needed to ask Armstrong.

Xris dragged Ito
away from the snake report. They took the lift to the top floor, to the
employees’ private lounge. They had their drink and then another. Ito finally
went home. Xris waited a long time before he admitted to himself that Rowan
wasn’t coming.

The transport run
to TISor 4 was dull. Ito and Xris had played businessmen on a marketing trip
before and were very polished at it. They were good, so good that it was
beginning to bore them. They didn’t talk much. Xris divided his time between
scanning his briefing notes and worrying about Rowan. Ito read a book titled
Poisonous
Reptiles Indigenous to Class 4 Moons.
Arriving at space dock, they
transferred to a planet-bound shuttle and headed for the commerce sector of the
capital city of Greenlock.

Since there was
only one city on TISor 4, calling it a capital was a bit grandiose. Greenlock
did act as the capital for all of TISor’s moons, though, so no one questioned
its self-styled importance. The planet TISor was uninhabitable, a huge orange
gas giant. Circling it were twenty-two moons, five of which had atmosphere and
were warm enough to support life. Only TISor 4 was heavily populated. According
to Armstrong’s report, the other moons catered to a few low-budget resorts,
several struggling factories, and lots of signs posted on lots of tracts of
barren land boasting that they were “scheduled for future development.” TISor
13 was the ideal location for a Hung factory. No one gave a damn what they
produced or who they sold it to, as long as they provided jobs and forked over
tax credits.

Xris and Ito
checked into an old hotel on the end of what passed for the local social strip
and waited until morning. Not much happened on TISor 4 at night, and the people
liked it that way. The bars were quiet drinking holes, the entertainment
industry was zero to nonexistent. Neither man felt much like being entertained.
Xris called Marjorie. Ito checked in with Armstrong. The plan was still a go.
No changes.

Armstrong had
reserved a short-hop spaceplane for them. The courtesy hovervan from the rental
agency arrived to pick them up early the next day. Xris and Ito showed their
commercial pilot’s licenses to a sleepy clerk, who barely glanced at them.

“Slot D,” she
said, yawning and handing over the codes needed to initiate the computer
sequence that would fire the plane’s engines. “I hope it starts,” she added in
a tone which indicated she’d be amazed as hell if it did.

They walked out
onto the concrete tarmac and located their spaceplane—a shabby WR model in
desperate need of a paint job. The plane had short wings, a small cockpit, and
was unarmed. The central cargo area was only three meters long, but all in all
the craft was exactly what they wanted. It certainly wouldn’t draw anyone’s
attention, arouse anyone’s suspicions.

“A good choice,”
Xris said, giving the outside a careful examination. “I’ve got to give
Armstrong credit: He seems to know his stuff.”

“Does that mean we
get to keep him, Daddy? Huh? Please, please?” Ito begged, tugging on the sleeve
of Xris’s flight suit.

“Sure, son,” Xris
answered magnanimously. “But you’ve got to feed him and clean up after him.” He
grinned. “I’ll stow the gear. You check the nav computer and see if it has any
idea where TISor 13 is located.”

Xris boarded the
plane through the drop-down hatch that he trusted wouldn’t drop down when they
were deep in space. Ito checked the computer, began shaking his head and
muttering to himself.

“Nothing much
here, Xris. It provides the normal approach vectors, climate and weather
reports—probably outdated—and a directory of inhabitants. I’m running the
inhabitants against our known Hung member list, but I don’t expect to find
anything.”

A few seconds
passed as Ito cross-correlated the data with the list. “Nope, nothing here. I’ll
feed the standard inbound vector to the nav computer to take us in. Once we’re
in the atmosphere, you can fly us to our landing zone.”

The computer made
the necessary course corrections. The plane took off and they settled down to
thirty minutes of unexciting flying. There were no landing authorities on the
moons, so there was no need for radio traffic. And the computer wasn’t the type
that had been programmed to entertain the passengers.

“You hear about
those XJ series computers Warlord Sagan’s developed to put in his new
Scimitars?” Xris asked. “I talked to one of the pilots. The planes are fast and
more maneuverable than a Laskar belly dancer, but Sagan installed this computer
XJ-type that’s got a mind of its own. Actually argues with the pilot if it
doesn’t like what you’re doing. Plus he says the damn thing never shuts up.”

They discussed
computers and the current unstable political situation, with the various
Warlords plotting to fill the power vacuum left by the increasingly ineffective
government of the Galactic Democratic Republic. People were grumbling and starting
to talk about a return to the “good old days” under the Blood Royal. Since all
the Blood Royal were—supposedly—wiped out by the purges during the Revolution,
their return appeared highly unlikely.

The rush of
atmosphere across the spaceplane’s fuselage ended their friendly wrangling.
Xris took over manual control of the spaceplane; Ito started calling out course
corrections. They located the munitions plant, made one high-altitude pass over
it. Xris had connected a small, portable computer to the space sensor array on
the plane. Normally, the sensors were calibrated for use in close navigation in
space. They didn’t have the processing power or the resolution for
high-altitude-to-ground surveillance. The addition of Xris’s computer and the
electromagnetic refracting lens apertures enabled the system to provide a scan
of the area.

Xris shot several
images, destined to be converted to tactical maps. Armstrong had provided maps,
but these were probably outdated by several months. On a warm world, the
terrain changed from season to season. There was no irritation worse—and
sometimes no greater danger—than working with outdated maps.

TISor 13 was an
interesting moon. An orbiting moon rarely rotated on its own axis, but this was
one of them. According to Armstrong, the rotation made it difficult to
determine planet-rise and planet-set without a computer. Most of the night wasn’t
truly dark, being illuminated by the moon’s gas giant mother, which cast an
eerie orange glow over the ground. Only about four hours were dark at any one
time—this would play merry hell with their recon schedule.

Xris hovered the
spaceplane into a dense woods, set it down in a small clearing. Surrounded by
tall ugly gray-mottled trees, spackled with orange spots that were either some
sort of disease or due to the orange light, the plane was easy to camouflage.
It was already the same gray as the trees. Xris and Ito both changed into gray
field coveralls, field webbing, and cloth hats. Xris carried a 44-decawatt
lasgun in a side holster, a 22.3-decawatt lasgun in a shoulder holster, a
synthusteel Eversharp fighting knife in his boot, two thurmite grenades and one
tear gas canister in a pouch on his webbing, and a gas mask.

Ito carried the
regulation 38-decawatt lasgun and a gas mask. His secondary armament consisted
of a knife/fork/spoon set and a Xirconian Army multiknife. He carried no other
weapons, being burdened with the tool kit, which contained wire cutters,
data-link with multiple interchangeable access ports (you never knew what computer
you might have to interface with these days), minishovel, cutting laser,
spreader clamps, and a can of spray neoprene rubber. Night-vision goggles
rounded out both agents’ gear, and then there was Ito’s snakebite kit.

They waited for
relative darkness before commencing. They had plenty of time; no need to hurry.
The
Vigilance
wouldn’t be arriving for another nineteen hours. Once the
orange ball of fire had dropped below the horizon, the two agents moved out
together. Their landing site was about two kilometers from the facility. The
trees near the swamp were shorter and arranged in clumps, but the grass was
long, nearly shoulder height, and had a slimy feel. The grass rippled in the
night breeze like water.

Xris went first,
walking slowly and crouching low to the ground. Ito did the same, some ten
meters to his rear. Neither spoke. Every fifty meters or so, Xris stopped and
pulled out his night-vision goggles and scanned the area. The place was assumed
to be deserted, but Xris’s credo was:
Assume, and get your ass shot off.
He saw nothing, however.