The Knights of the Black Earth (22 page)

“You’ve got the
hypno-spray—”

“Yeah, right. Some
iron-guts Marine lets me waltz up and shove an aerosol can in his face! Right!”
Harry was bitter.

“You’ll think of
something,” Xris said curtly.

Unstrapping
himself, he headed back to the rear cargo bay to double-check the equipment.
The others exchanged glances. Discussion over. Quong shook his head.

“Pilot Luck,” said
the computer, “we are coming up on the Lanes. Would you care to review my
calculations for the jump to hyperspace?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
Glumly, Harry returned to his duties.

The spaceplane
made the jump. The team members were, for the most part, silent. Xris had not
returned from the rear cargo bay area. They could see him, an indistinct shadow
brightened by occasional glints of ambient light off metal. They could all
smell the rank tobacco smoke. They all concluded—rightly—that he wanted to be
left alone.

Quong remained
near the Little One. The empath had not regained consciousness. The doctor took
the opportunity to examine his comatose patient. Speaking into a handheld
recorder, he entered all his newly discovered information on the physiology of
a Tongan.

Jamil found a cot,
stretched out for a nap.

Harry, hunched
morosely in the pilot’s seat, was playing games with the computer.

Tycho came
forward, tossed a vid cassette in Harry’s lap. “Here, I found this when I was
back at the bug place. I figured I’d give it to Raoul, but it looks like maybe
you could use it.”

Harry picked up
the vid, glanced at the title and groaned.

Fleas: The
Immortal Enemy.

When the speed of
rushing water reaches the point where it can move boulders, this is momentum.

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

“Pilot Luck, we
are entering the one-light-year exclusion zone around the RFComSec space
station. I have already obtained preliminary clearance through flight
operations, but security would like to speak to the person in charge. They have
scanned us,” the computer added with maddening complacency, “and they have some
questions.”

Harry glanced at Xris,
seated in the copilot’s chair.

“Relax. I expected
as much.” Xris leaned forward. “Put me through.”

The computer
complied and the next voice they heard was RFComSec.

“Olicien Two Five
Niner, this is Approach Control. Are you receiving me?”

Xris spoke calmly.
“This is Olicien Two Five Niner. We are on approach to your station on our
regularly scheduled pest extermination visit. We’ve given you the security
passwords and clearances. Is there a problem, Approach Control?”

“No, Olicien Two
Five Niner. All that’s fine. But according to our scans, you’re not the regular
crew, plus you’re short-handed. There’s normally seven.”

“Approach Control,
the regular crew has been stranded on Clinius. They were doing a job on that
planet when their ship was struck by lightning. Fried the electrical circuitry.
My crew was the only crew with the requisite clearances to act as replacements
for this one trip.”

Xris chewed on a
twist. If Approach Control was the least bit suspicious and tried to check up
on them through Olicien, this trip was going to be a short one. But he was
counting on the fact that this sort of incident couldn’t be all that unusual.
In twenty years of flea eradication, there must have been times when the
regular crew didn’t show. Damn it, it wasn’t that big a deal!

Let it go right,
Xris pleaded silently with Fate. You owe me this one. Let it go—

“Olicien Two Five
Niner, you are cleared to Shuttle Bay One.”

Harry exhaled
loudly. “You know the procedure, XP-28. Take us in.”

Quong came forward
into the cockpit, a subcutaneous inserter in his hand. “Gentlemen, it is time
for me to insert the communicators.”

Harry grimaced,
rubbed the back of his neck. “Jeez, I hate those damn things! It hurts like
hell going in and I always end up with a rash. I think I’m allergic. Why can’t
we just use our regular commlinks?”

“Because the real
exterminators wouldn’t have sophisticated equipment like that,” Xris answered. “We
didn’t find any type of communication devices in the equipment they had ready
to load on board. It’s likely they just use the station’s internal
communication system. Make sure, when you talk into these, that no one hears
you.”

“I know. I know,”
Harry grumbled. “But won’t they hear us anyway? I mean, with all the fancy
scanning equipment they’ve got on board, aren’t they likely to pick up our
signal?”

“The odds are
against it.” Jamil joined them in the cockpit. “Remember, the arrival of the
exterminators on RFComSec is a common occurrence. People are used to it; they’re
complacent. They won’t be looking for trouble and unless you’re scanning
specifically for this type of transmission, you won’t find it.”

“It’s a chance we’ll
have to take. Which means we keep communication down to the bare minimum. High
urgency/need-to-know only. Besides”—Xris patted Harry on the knee—”you’re going
to keep the guard so enthralled with your scintillating conversation that he
wouldn’t notice a direct hit from a plasma cannon.”

“Yeah.” Harry
snorted. He flinched when Quong placed the cold metal inserter on his skin
behind his ear, yelped when the device went in. “It’s the sound I hate. Thump!
Like it hits bone or something.”

“It’s all in your
head,” Quong said, and laughed loudly at his own joke.

He was the only
one. Harry didn’t get it. Xris didn’t hear it. He was staring fixedly at the
space station.

“Xris ...”

He glanced around.
“What? Did you say something, Doc?”

“I’ll need to make
adjustments to your receiver to put you on the same frequency,” Quong repeated
patiently. He’d said the same thing three times now.

Xris tilted his
head. The Doc depressed a tiny button in back of the cyborg’s left ear, opened
a small panel. Using minuscule, delicate tools, Quong made the necessary
adjustments.

“Okay, boss. Give
it a try.”

“Right, listen up.
Does everybody hear me?”

Harry nodded,
grumbled. “Yeah. It tickles. I hate that damn tickle.”

Tycho’s voice
reverberated in Xris’s ear. “Check.”

Jamil came in
next.

Quong confirmed
his with a quick nod. He snapped shut the panel.

“What do you want
me to do with the Little One?”

“Leave him here.
He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

“Yes, but that
wasn’t what I meant. Surely someone on that station is going to ask why only
five of us show up for work when they’ve scanned six life-forms on board.”

Xris swore to
himself and at himself. I should have considered that, already made plans. I’m
slipping. Too emotionally involved. Yeah, I’m emotionally involved!

He made a pretense
of running a systems check on his cybernetic arm.

“Good thinking,
Doc. Bandage up the little guy’s face real good. Hide the bloodstained raincoat
and hat. Cover him with a blanket. I’ll feed them a line if they ask.”

Quong departed.
The others stood around, staring at him.

Concerned.

Xris glanced at
them irritably. “You guys got nothing better to do?”

They filtered out.

“Coming up on the
thousand-kilometer marker, Pilot Luck,” the computer reported.

The
thousand-kilometer marker was a small navigational buoy placed in the approach
lane to guide incoming vessels. Acting as guide was apparently not its only
function, however. Strobe lights began to flash.

“We are being
scanned, Pilot Luck,” XP-28 informed them.

“I thought we’d
already been scanned,” Harry protested.

“They’re looking
for weapons,” Xris said briefly.

“Well, they won’t
find any on board this plane,” Harry stated with an accusatory glance at Xris. “They’re
all stacked neatly in that bloody hangar back at Olicien.”

Xris smiled,
shrugged. Leaving the weapons behind had been— and obviously still was—a sore
point. When he’d first mentioned that the team would have to enter the facility
weaponless (“Naked!” Tycho said indignantly), Xris was afraid he’d have to
either call off the project or find a different team. Harry had balked, Tycho
and Jamil had argued vehemently. Even Quong, who generally obeyed orders with
cold-blooded mechanical precision, had expressed doubts.

“If everything
goes according to plan,” Xris had argued patiently, “we won’t need weapons. I
don’t want to take the chance of an innocent person getting hurt. We’ll be long
gone before anyone ever figures out something’s wrong. We stroll in, stroll
out. An hour after we’ve left, Dalin Rowan drops dead. Cause: unknown.”

This part of the
plan had not met with general enthusiasm.

“And if something
does
go wrong?” Jamil had asked.

“The station is crawling
with armed Marines,” Xris had replied lightly. “You won’t have any trouble
finding weapons.”

“We just can’t
shoot anyone,” Jamil had said glumly.

“Right.”

The cargo plane
flew slowly past the marker.

Xris reached in
his pocket, pulled out a twist, and lit it. The statement that there were no
weapons on board wasn’t quite accurate. Tycho had brought along the duonamic
sights. Xris was armed. His weapons hand and its assorted devices were packed
into his leg compartment. Shielded, of course, but a truly sophisticated
scanner might just pick them up. . ..

Olicien Two Five
Niner set off no alarms.

RFComSec rotated
like a pinwheel in space. The central hub, bristling with communications
antennae, transmitters, receivers, was brightly lit. Four arms extended from
the hub to an outer ring. This ring—the living area for the three thousand
residents of RFComSec—was dark by comparison. Only a few sporadic tiny specs of
light, shining through windows, glittered against the darkness.

“Cutting engines,”
the computer announced. “We will coast in until the magnetic tractor beams lock
on.”

A slight jolt
indicated that this had occurred.

“Olicien Two Five
Niner,” came a voice, “you are now under station control.”

Soon, Xris told
himself, almost shaking with excitement. In maybe thirty minutes or less, I’D
be face-to-face with Dalin Rowan.

He could swear
that he could see Ito’s face floating in front of him.

At the hub’s
center, a door one hundred meters wide and fifty meters tall began to open. The
spaceplane glided into the aperture. The plane’s metallic skin shimmered with
the reflected energy of the atmospheric integrity force field, which maintained
the atmosphere inside the station during the time shuttle bay doors were open.
Once the craft was inside, control personnel guided the spaceplane slowly to
the middle of the bay, rotated it, and set it down.

Looking out the
plane’s viewscreen, Xris read, in Standard Military, the words:
Unsecured.
Quarantine.

“Damn!” he
muttered, blowing smoke. “Quarantine! We’ve been scanned. Why the hell are we
being quarantined?”

“Maybe they’re
looking for bugs?” Harry chortled. He prodded the cyborg. “That’s a joke.”

“Computer, is this
standard procedure?” Xris snapped, in no mood for humor.

“Yes, sir. We
normally enter this area. The plane and its cargo are checked by security. The
equipment is scanned here, then the plane is moved over to the loading dock. It’s
routine.”

Routine! Xris
stared at the yellow markings, at the steel doors that were now rumbling shut.
Ito’s face disappeared.

I should have
asked about the routine, Xris told himself. The one member of the flight crew
who has been here—probably a hundred times or more—is the XP-28 flight
computer. I should have taken the time during the flight to find out from the
computer exactly what the landing procedure was. It’s what I would have done on
any other job. Another error in judgment.

“Go on back, tell
the rest what’s going on, and see if they need help with the equipment,” Xris
told Harry. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Harry hesitated,
then said softly, “Sure, Xris.” He unstrapped his harness and left.

“So far, I’ve been
lucky,” Xris said aloud to nobody. “The next mistake I make could be the last
mistake I make.”

He unclipped the
shoulder harnesses holding him into the copilot’s chair, stood up, and moved
back to the cargo area.

“Don’t worry.
There won’t be another,” he said to himself—and to the memory of Mashahiro Ito.

The team was
assembled, all wearing their yellow coveralls with the large black beetle and
olicien pest control
emblazoned on the
back. The Little One, his extraordinarily ugly and battered face concealed by
bandages, slept soundly on the cot. Quong had bun-died the empath in bulky
blankets to conceal his small stature. The bloodstained fedora and the raincoat
had been safely stowed away in a locked compartment.

“Everyone know
what he has to do?” Xris glanced around.

They all replied
in the affirmative. Calm. They were all confident, self-possessed, calm. Xris
envied them.

“This is it, then,”
he continued. “Harry, go back to the cockpit. Take the plane to the loading
dock, then head up to central security ops and start shmoozing about fleas.
Computer, open the cargo bay hatch.”

The hatch opened.
The loading ramp descended to the deck of the shuttle bay. A Marine lieutenant,
backed up by a detail of six armed soldiers, was there waiting for them. The
ramp thudded into place. The lieutenant motioned for the pest control team to
join him. They all clumped down the ramp.

“Who’s in charge?”
the lieutenant asked.

“I am,” Xris said,
stepping forward. He extended his good hand. “Aaron Schwartz.”