The Knights of the Black Earth (21 page)

“Xris?” Harry was
getting nervous. “You better hurry. That doorman’s been raising hell about our parking
in a no-park zone. What’s going on? Is the little fellow dead?”

“Beats the hell
out of me,” Xris said, baffled. “At first I thought his face was smashed in.
Now I’m beginning to think he was just born this way.”

Kneeling beside
the body, Xris put his hand on what he presumed was the neck. He thought he
could feel a pulse, but if so, it was faint and thready.

He glanced swiftly
around the bathroom, looking for a towel to stanch the bleeding, saw an object
on the counter.

His lips
tightened. He changed his mind about the towel. Shoving the lasgun into its
holster, he went back to the bedroom, yanked a blanket off the bed, returned to
the bathroom. He worked swiftly, trying to be gentle, but aware that time was
ticking away.

Time for the job.
Time for the Little One’s life.

He wrapped the
small, bloodied body in the blanket, lifted it easily in his arms. Making
certain the blanket covered every part of the Little One, Xris carried the
empath out of the hotel room. He took the stairs again, figuring the odds of
meeting anyone on the fire escape were slim.

“Harry, I’m coming
out. I’ve got the Little One with me. See if you can distract that doorman.”

“No need to worry,
Xris,” Harry returned. “I think he’s gone to get the cops.”

Xris made it down
the stairs and out the door, practically knocked over a couple entering the
building. They looked at him and his burden in startled surprise.

“Sick kid,” Xris
said, barreling past them.

Harry was waiting
outside the van. He had the back doors open. Xris laid the Little One inside,
then jumped in himself. Harry had already returned to the driver’s seat. The
van lifted into the air, soared down the block just as the doorman, in company
with a traffic cop, rounded the corner.

“So what’s
happened?” Harry glanced back worriedly at the blanket-covered body. “Is the
Little One dead? Where’s Raoul?”

“I don’t think the
little fellow’s dead, but he’s not all that alive, either. We’ll take him back
to Quong. If anyone can fix him up, it’ll be the Doc. As for Raoul ...” Xris
paused, then said, “I found his makeup kit on the bathroom sink.”

Harry gave a low
whistle, shook his head.

“The room was a
mess, like there’d been a fight,” Xris continued. “All his clothes are still
there.”

“Raoul wouldn’t go
to his own funeral without his makeup kit,” Harry observed, glanced sideways at
Xris. “Except in this case, maybe?”

“I don’t think he’s
dead.” Xris drew the blanket closer around the Little One, tucked it in. “We’d
have found Raoul in the same condition as the Little One. The Loti’s been
snatched. Someone kidnapped Raoul.”

Harry was silent a
moment, pondering. Then he said, in all seriousness, “But, Xris . .. who would
want
him?”

It is a bad plan
that admits of no modification.

Publilius Syrus,
Maxims,
469

Who in the
universe would want Raoul?

“A good question,”
Xris admitted.

“You think it’s
got something to do with this job?”

The thought had
already occurred to Xris. He’d discarded the notion before he was halfway out
the hotel room.

“Not logical. The people
at Olicien sure as hell didn’t expect us, did they?”

Harry neatly
maneuvered his way around a lumbering truck. “Nope. They were
real
surprised.”

“And if the Royal
Navy was on to us—say Wiedermann went crazy and tipped them off—they’d be after
me.
Raoul’s made a lot of enemies over the years, but most of those would
want him dead. Why take him alive?”

“Information,”
Harry guessed. “About us.”

Xris shook his
head. “You ever try to get information from a Loti? Half of it you
can’t
believe and the other half you don’t
want
to believe. But that’s not the
problem.”

“Yeah.” Harry
grunted. “The job.”

The job. What to
do without Raoul and the Little One? Raoul, the charmer, the talker. Raoul, who
was supposed to distract the security guard at RFComSec, then shoot him full of
dope to keep him from sounding the alarm. And the Little One, who was supposed
to read the guard’s mind, alert Raoul to possible danger.

Xris glanced down
at the small body. Blood was starting to soak through the blanket. If the
Little One survived, he wasn’t going to be reading anyone’s mind today. And who
would he communicate with if he did? The Little One never “talked” to anyone
except Raoul.

Xris swore softly
to himself. He should abort the job right now. End it. Give it up. Call it off.
The Olicien people would think it was a bungled robbery, leave it at that.
Breaking into RFComSec was too dangerous without Raoul and the Little One.

Too dangerous.

And yet, Xris said
to himself, when will I have this chance again?

Olicien would be
on their guard after this. Plus the Royal Navy —eternally paranoid—would
undoubtedly conclude that this “robbery” had something to do with their
top-secret space station. They’d tighten security until not even His Majesty
could get on base without being strip-searched. What’s worse, the Navy might
start asking questions. . . .

Xris took out a
twist, absently chewed on it, stared out the van’s window. He was seeing not
the Olicien Pest Control factory, which was looming ahead, but another factory.
A factory in a swamp. A factory that had become a tomb.

A tomb for the
living, as well as the dead.

For though they
termed him “alive,” the living Xris, the Xris he had been, was buried in the
rubble alongside what remained of Ito.

The van glided to
a halt, set down on the tarmac. The rest of the team surged out of the hangar.
Xris shoved open the doors.

“Doc!” he called. “Take
a look at the Little One. Harry, start the plane up. The rest of you get on
board; Doc and I’ll be along in a second. Someone’s kidnapped Raoul. We’ll have
to go without him.”

Harry came around
to the back end of the van. Doc was already inside, examining the Little One.
Tycho and Jamil looked at Harry, looked at each other, looked at Xris.

“We
are
going,” Xris said, his voice tight. “We’ve gone too far to stop now.”

The others nodded,
left. Xris couldn’t tell whether they agreed with him or were simply too well
disciplined to argue.

Not that it
mattered.

He turned back to
the van.

“Holy Master!” he
heard Quong say, and the man sounded awed.

“Well, Doc? How is
he?” Xris tried to curb his impatience to be gone.

Quong turned. His
almond-shaped eyes were wide; his mouth gaped.

“Xris, did you
know? He”—the Doc gestured at the Little One—”he is a Tongan! I’ve never seen
one before, but I’d stake my professional career on it.”

“I don’t care if
he’s Derek Sagan’s grandmother,” Xris said acidly. “Is he alive?”

“Yes, but—”

“Can you help him?”

“I
think
so.” Quong sounded dubious. “I don’t know that much about Tongan physiology. No
human in our profession does. You see, no one’s ever had a living specimen to
study. Or a dead one, for that matter. No human has ever been allowed on the
planet and, so far as I know, not a single Tongan has been permitted
off-planet. This is a rare opportunity—”

“Save it for your
thesis!” Xris snapped. “Let’s get him onto the plane!”

“Certainly, Xris.”
Quong was calm, efficient. And he was once again eyeing Xris with concern. “If
you could carry him. Be careful. Try to support the head. .. .”

Xris reached down,
lifted the Little One in his arms, and stalked off to the spaceplane.

“Good morning,
XP-28.” Harry eased himself into the pilot’s chair in the spaceplane’s cockpit.
“My name is Harry Luck. I’m the new pilot. You might want to adjust your voice
activation to my verbal patterns.”

“Good morning,
Pilot Luck. Please enter your Olicien authorization number to transfer pilot
functions.”

Harry took the
code card Jamil had obtained in the Olicien offices, slid the card into the
console. A series of letters and numbers appeared on the computer screen,
flashed on and off. Then came the word:
Proceed.

“Pilot Luck,” said
the computer. “Welcome aboard. You must be a new employee. According to my
bioscans, the entire cleaning crew is new. One of your people is injured. Why
is this person being brought on board? I recommend that he be left on the
ground for treatment.”

Xris arrived in
the cockpit, pointed grimly to the plane’s chronometer. 1030. They were already
behind schedule by thirty minutes.

“I have received
and duly noted your recommendation, XP-28,” Harry said calmly. “One of our
people is a doctor. He’s treating our friend now. But thank you for your
concern. I’m uploading the flight plan, approach vectors, and the authenticity
codes for the flight to the space station. Oh, and we’re running a bit late.
Bypass the fuel conservation program, if you have to, in order to reach
RFComSec on time.”

The computer
hummed to itself a moment, then said, a bit stiffly, “Yes, Pilot Luck. I
suppose you will be taking manual control now?”

Harry leaned back
comfortably in his chair. “No, no. You handle it.”

The computer’s
screen actually appeared to glow with pleasure.

“It is obvious you
are a true professional, Pilot Luck. Unlike others I could mention. I perceive
no difficulty in making up the time. In fact, I could get us there twenty
minutes
ahead
of schedule.”

“Uh, no,” Harry
said hastily. “They might not be ready for us. We’d only have to sit in the
docking bay and wait.”

“I understand.
Please strap yourselves in. We will be taking off in ten minutes. I’ll be
leaving you now, to begin prelaunch cycle.”

“It’s all yours,”
Harry said complacently.

The computer
busied itself. The hatch sealed shut, lights came on. Life-support began its
comforting hiss.

“Some pilot you
are,” Xris muttered, taking advantage of the delay to change into the bright
yellow coveralls. “Sitting there doing nothing. I thought you hated letting
computers run things.”

Harry shrugged. “In
some cases. In this one, I’ve made the computer my friend.”

“True. I thought
we were in for a fight there.”

“We would have
been, with an old XJ model. Those independent-minded computers were a pain in
the ass. These XP-28s . . .” Harry gave the computer a pat on its console. “You
just have to know how to handle them. Most pilots don’t. They refuse to
relinquish control. Which makes no sense. The computer can handle the mundane
stuff—takeoff, landing, routine flights—more efficiently than any human pilot.
And, as you can see, it gets a real ego boost. I always work this way with an
XP-28. From now on, I can do no wrong.”

Xris grunted and
ripped a seam out of the shoulder. He was far bigger than the last man to wear
this bug outfit.

Harry cast an
admiring glance at the cargo plane’s cadaverous, ugly, utilitarian interior. “This
plane is a beauty, Xris. I don’t suppose we could keep it? I could give it a
new paint job.”

“We’re going to be
in enough trouble already. If anything goes wrong at RFComSec, every ship in
the Navy will be on the alert for this craft. We’ll use it to throw off
pursuit. Once we reach home, we’ll set the plane on autopilot and send it back.”

“A real shame.”
Harry sighed.

Xris took over the
copilot’s seat, swiveled around.

The plane’s
interior was dark, green, and smelled of chemicals and grease. Since the plane’s
main function was to transport cargo on short hops, passenger comfort was not a
priority. There were no windows, except in the cockpit. Large tracks, designed
to wheel heavy equipment on and off, ran from the tail section, down the
center, almost to the cockpit. Passengers and crew sat on metal-frame seats
bolted to the bulkheads or rested in metal-frame cots attached in the same
manner. It was in one of these that Xris had laid the Little One. They had
stowed the bug-’bot (as Tycho called them) maintenance machinery in the rear.
Everyone was now strapped in, ready for takeoff.

“How’s the Little
One, Doc?”

“He’ll live. His
people apparently have remarkably thick skulls. A blow like that would have
pulverized mine. His is cracked, but not seriously. He’s lost a lot of blood
and he’s going to be unconscious for a while, but he’ll wake up with no more
than a nasty headache.”

“Not in the middle
of the raid, I presume?”

“Unlikely. We’ll
be leaving him on board?”

Xris nodded. The
spaceplane lifted off, began rocketing through the atmosphere. The Olicien Pest
Control Company was suddenly a bright yellow patch on the fast-receding ground.
No one spoke until the plane had cleared the planet’s atmosphere, was heading
for the Lanes, where they would make the jump to hyperspace. Star-studded
blackness surrounded them. At that point, the computer switched off the main
thrusters and it was possible to hear again.

Jamil asked the
questions that were on everyone’s mind. “So what’s the change in plan? How do
we manage without the charmer and the empath? Who’s going to keep the guard
occupied?”

“Harry will take
Raoul’s place,” Xris said.

Harry blinked. He
looked as if he’d been hit over the head with a plastisteel pipe. “What? Me?
But—”

“It makes sense,”
Xris continued. “I want you to stick close to the spaceplane so that if
anything does go wrong, you can reach it before all hell breaks loose. As for
the guard, just talk to him, that’s all.”

“But I don’t have
the drug!” Harry protested. “Raoul was supposed to drug the guy!”