Ghost Legion (6 page)

Having known Tusk nearly as long as he'd known the general, Bennett
appeared to have his doubts, but he left on his assignment. Dixter
wasn't feeling any too confident himself. He was already starting to
contemplate, with a certain amount of enjoyment (if he didn't count
the space travel, which he detested), flying to Vangelis to talk to
Tusk in person, when Bennett returned.

"I managed to reach the computer, my lord. Tusca is not
available at the moment. It appears that he is ... um ...
babysitting. The computer promised to have him contact you when he
puts in an appearance. I gather he is expected at any moment, my
lord."

"Good. Thank you, Bennett. Let me know when that call comes
through."

"Yes, my lord. Is there anything else, my lord?"

Dixter sighed. There was something else, but he didn't know whether
to do it now or wait until he had more information. He decided he'd
better do it now.

"Set up an appointment for me with His Majesty."

"Very good, my lord. Knowing His Majesty's busy schedule, I
probably cannot arrange a meeting sooner than tomorrow. Will that be
suitable, or should I say it is an emergency?"

"No, that'll be suitable." Dixter was relieved.

It wasn't an emergency, not really. Some sort of weird probe had
penetrated their security, had walked off with the space-rotation
bomb hidden in the late Snaga Ohme's vault, and by now probably knew
that the bomb they had stolen was nothing more than an interesting
paperweight. His elaborate entrapment scheme had partly failed,
partly succeeded. He knew now, for certain, that someone was after
the bomb. He also knew that there was a breach in the navy's own
security.

Keeping the operation under as much secrecy as it would have been for
real, he'd used Xris's commandos to transport a fake space-rotation
bomb to a new, supposedly more secure location. As he'd figured, the
information that the bomb had been moved had been leaked. Someone had
known where it was and how to go after it. But his plans for catching
the informant and his or her cohorts had failed.

Or had it?

"Ghost Legion," he muttered.

Bennett had returned and was hovering again. "The meeting with
His Majesty is scheduled for tomorrow, 0800. And now, my lord, about
that jacket—"

"Screw the damn jacket!" snarled Dixter. He reached for the
printouts, knocked over the coffee cup, spilled coffee on his pants.

What beckoning ghost .. . invites my step ...

Alexander Pope,
Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady

Tusk climbed, hand over hand, up the ladder that led to the
Scimitar's hatch. He stopped once about halfway up to adjust the
child carrier he wore strapped to his back and to admonish the small
child inside.

"Remember, be quiet and don't touch anything. Grandpa XJ doesn't
like it."

The child nodded solemnly, wide-eyed at the prospect of treading on
sacred and forbidden ground. It was not often he was allowed inside
the Scimitar. The bright lights and myriad buttons and dials—some
of them actually on his level—were too great a temptation for
two and a half. Then there was the disembodied voice, the awful and
mysterious Grandpa XJ, who was the god of the Scimitar, who had power
over light and air and a certain sealed compartment beneath the
plastileather sofa.

Tusk reached the hatch located on the top of the spaceplane, and
pounded on it. "Open up, XJ. It's me."

The hatch whirred open with a suddenness that surprised Tusk, who had
been expecting an argument or at least a barrage of sarcastic remarks
from the computer. Flashing one last warning glance at the toddler,
Tusk crawled through the hatch and descended into the spaceplane.

Those who had flown in this plane three years earlier—His
Majesty among them, as proclaimed by an engraved plaque bolted to the
bulkheads (Link's idea)—would not have recognized it now. Once
a fighting warbird, the Scimitar had undergone a remarkable and
expensive transformation, was now (as Nola put it) a cockatoo.

The bubble on top, which had once been the gun turret was the
"observation dome." Only one passenger could sit up there
and "observe" at a time, and that was a rather tight fit
due to the fact that the gun was still in place, though Tusk had
built a cabinet around it and it now masqueraded as a drink holder.
But the observation dome was popular with travelers and was one of
the spaceplane's selling points.

The sleeping area—once a repository for tools and mags and
vids, coils of wire, empty bottles of jump-juice, and a couple of
hammocks suspended from the overhead—was now "homey and
inviting" as Link termed it, though Tusk thought privately it
looked like the waiting room in a dentist's office.

The weapons storage compartments were plastileather settees. The deck
had been carpeted (used). A large-screen vid provided entertainment
for the space-weary traveler. Link would have added an artificial
fireplace, for "ambiance," but Tusk had threatened to throw
him out the airlock if he did. The only improvement of which Tusk
thoroughly approved was the new wet bar. He took care to keep it well
stocked, much to XJ's ire. The computer ceased to grumble, however,
after discovering how much profit they made off liquor sales.

Unfortunately, that was the only area in which they were showing a
profit. Business was good. The swift-flying shuttle was popular with
those who either needed to be somewhere in a hurry or wanted to get
there without customs and immigration taking notice of them on
arrival. Such people were willing to spend extra to obtain one or the
other convenience, or both. With careful money management and sound
investments, "Tusk's Link to the Stars" (as Nola had
cleverly dubbed it) could have made its two owner-operators
comfortable, if not wealthy.

But Link's idea of a sound investment was a hot tip on a horse in the
seventh. Tusk's notion of money management was to spend what he had
when he had it and to save it when he didn't. Nola could have handled
the accounting, but she was working full time, trying to raise a
toddler, and pregnant again. XJ-27 yammered and raved and ranted
about their bleak financial state, but unless the customer paid with
credit, the computer could rarely get its microchips on the money.
And most of their customers paid in cash, to leave no record of the
transaction.

Some children are frightened by the bogeyman or ghosts or the monster
that lives in the closet. Young John was terrified of the dark and
ghoulish nemesis known in the Tusca household as the Collection
Agent.

Reaching the dentist-office level of the Scimitar, Tusk slid his arms
out of the straps of the backpack child carrier lowered his son
silently and stealthily to the deck, and put his finger to his lips.

"XJ," called Tusk, trying to sound nonchalant. "There
been any calls for me?"

"One. It was— What's that?"

"What's what?" Tusk asked innocently. Winking at his son,
the pilot walked over to the bar, began to clang bottles together
loudly. "We're low on scotch.. .."

"Someone else is breathing," stated XJ irascibly. "And
I detect the distinct smell of wet diaper. You've brought that brat
of yours in here!"

Young John sat on the deck, thumb in his mouth, waiting patiently to
make his move. The son of a starpilot and a former TRUC driver turned
guerrilla fighter, John Tusca knew the value of a diversion and was
waiting until the shooting started.

Tusk was about to deny the charge, then changed his mind. "It's
only for an hour or so. Nola's got a doctor's appointment and we
couldn't get a sitter. And he's not wet. He's potty trained now. At
least most of the time. Who called?"

"I'm not saying," the computer snapped. "This is not
Ding-dong School. Remove the little twerp and we'll discuss
business."

"Damn it, XJ! My kid's not a 'twerp' or a 'brat.' He's my son—a
person, just like me—"

"Now
there's
a recommendation!" XJ gave a mechanical
snort.

"—and he needs to be treated with respect!" Tusk
finished loudly. "You're gonna give him an inferiority complex
or something, talking about him like that. Babies can understand a
lot more than we think they can. Now, who the devil called? Was it
important?"

"Extremely. Urgent, in fact. And I admit the brat makes more
sense than you do, most of the time, but he doesn't belong on my
plane. He touches my buttons," XJ complained peevishly.

"I'll touch your buttons!" Tusk stalked over to the railing
that separated the bridge from the plastileather-and-used-carpet
lounge area and peered down into the cockpit. "What do you mean,
your
plane? We're partners—you and me and Link And damn
it, XJ, if a client called and we miss a run because you're—"

"A run?" XJ sputtered. "How're you going to make a run
with junior there? 'Sorry, folks, we can't make the jump to
lightspeed. It gives the baby hiccups. I was never so humiliated!
It's a wonder I didn't short out."

"Would you forget that? He was real little then. Nola'll be back
any minute. Now, who called? Was it Lovason? He said he might have an
important drop to make later on in the week—" "No, it
was not Lovason. And why'd you have to go and get pregnant again
anyway? Jeez, don't you two ever do anything except—"

This diversion was better than expected. Young John made his move.
Keeping low, so as not to draw fire, crawling on belly, elbows, and
knees, he made it all the way across the deck to one of the settees.
Then there came a lull in the firing. John pulled himself upright,
sat with his back against the settee, had his thumb in his mouth by
the time his father glanced around. "John, where— Oh,
there you are. Don't mess with that." John regarded his father
with the expression of blank and baffled innocence that is a small
child's first line of defense.

"Okay, there's a good boy. He's not bothering anything, XJ, so
don't get your circuits in a knot. As for why we got pregnant again,
if it's any of your goddam business, which it isn't, Nola's not
getting any younger, and the doctor said if we wanted—" A
panel in the bottom of the settee slid open. Young John reached in
his hand. His pudgy fingers found the cookie, wrapped around it,
conveyed it to his mouth. He munched on it silently, under the cover
of friendly fire.

"Don't give me that," XJ was saying. "I think you two
just screwed up, no pun intended. And how you expect to feed another
mouth, when you've got creditors lined up from here to Hell's
Outpost, not to mention the fact that they've canceled your medical
insurance—"

"Canceled the insurance?" Tusk gaped. "When? How?"
"Stop jabbering. The insurance company likes to be paid. They're
funny that way."

Tusk groaned. "Was that due this month? I thought—"
"No, you didn't That's your problem. Besides, it was due two
months ago. And if you think I'm—" XJ stopped in
mid-sentence. The computer's tone altered. "Yes, my lord. Yes,
good talking to you again, my lord. He's here now, my lord. Just this
moment stepped in. Please hold for a second, my lord, and I'll put
him right on."

"Who is it?" Tusk asked, sliding down the ladder into the
cockpit. "My lord who?"

He cast one worried glance over his shoulder at the baby, but young
John was leaning with his back against a settee, staring at nothing
with the grave intensity of two years. His mother would have noticed
that he was far too quiet and well-behaved to be up to anything good.
His father congratulated himself on how adept he was at
child-rearing. He couldn't understand why Nola always complained
about John getting into things he wasn't supposed to. Tusk never had
that problem.

He sat down in the pilot's seat to take the incoming call.

Young John reached back into the secret compartment, took two
cookies.

"General Dixter," said XJ, sounding subdued. "Pardon
me,
Sir
John Dixter. On the viewscreen."

"General Dix—" Tusk made a strangled sound. "Was
he the one—? You didn't tell—? Sir!"

The Lord of the Admiralty appeared on the screen, gorgeous and almost
unrecognizable in white uniform, decorated with stars, rows of
gleaming medals, gold braid on the shoulder, all of which made him
look imposing, severe, and unfamiliar. This was not the general Tusk
had served under during his years as a mercenary, not the man who'd
sat in that hot trailer in the middle of the desert, drinking
Laskarian brandy and talking about a king's child, born on a night of
fire and blood.

"General! Sir!" Tusk jumped to his feet, saluted. He was
acutely aware of his own sweat-soaked fatigues.

"He's addressed as 'my lord,' fool!" XJ intoned in a low
audio that, nevertheless, carried quite well.

"I—I mean m-my lord," Tusk stammered.

Dixter smiled, the same warm and generous smile Tusk remembered, the
smile that always had something a little sad about it. "Belay
that, Tusk. We've known each other too long for that."

Now Tusk saw the cheese pastry stain on the Lord of the Admiralty's
lapel, the coffee stain on the right elbow. Tusk relaxed, grinned,
and sat down.

"Good to see you, sir," he said.

"It's good to see you, Tusk. Damn good." Dixter himself
appeared to relax; the brown eyes in their maze of wrinkles warmed.
"How's Nola?"

"Fine, sir. She'll be along any minute. You can say hello.

Well, no, you can't. I forgot. She can't squeeze through the hatch.
We're . . . er . . . expecting again."

"Are you? Congratulations! And how's my godson?"

"Growing like a weed, sir. I can get him, if you'd like—"

"No, you don't!" snapped XJ. "Don't bring that rug rat
down into my cockpit!"

"Oh, stow it!" Tusk started to stand up again, always proud
to show off his son.