The Knights of the Black Earth (40 page)

I know what they’re
after!
She was telling him silently. Her dark eyes gleamed. She cast a look
at the computer and then her gaze became pleading.
But I need more time!

He could hear her
as clearly as if she’d spoken out loud. And he felt the same familiar rush of frustration
and irritation that he’d had in the old days, working together. Not only did
Rowan expect him to get her out of this—to get them all out of this—but she
wanted him to buy her time on the computer as well! And all with a gun to her
head!

The medic had
decided on a course of action. He began dragging Rowan backward toward the bed,
where he could get a clear view of Quong and the Little One.

“You there. You
two. Move out in front of me where I can see you.” The medic tightened his
choking grip on Rowan, motioned with the lasgun.

Rowan had gone a
shade paler; she was gasping for breath. Her eyes were enormous in her white
face and their gaze never left Xris. She was slowly suffocating.

Quong lifted the
Little One from the bed. The empath went limp in the doctor’s grasp. Quong set
the Little One gently on the floor, stood protectively near him.

“Move this way.
Over by the tin man,” the medic ordered, waving the lasgun. “You. Cyborg.” He
turned to Xris. “Shut your battery down.”

“Rescue-one.”
Jamil was back on the comm. “I’ve sealed off the corridors, but they’re using
manual overrides to open the blast doors. It’ll take them a while, but not
long. You’ve got five in your immediate vicinity. There were seven, but two of
them left, probably to get a cutting torch. What’s it like at your end?”

“Hostage
situation. I can’t talk,” Xris returned.

“Shut up!” the
medic yelled. “And shut down.
You’ve
got five seconds before I start
shooting body parts. Hers!”

Panic began to
rise, to bubble up inside Xris, creep out of his pores in a cold sweat. His
worst nightmare, his only nightmare, his constant, continuous nightmare was
shutting down. With his battery turned off, he was helpless, the cybernetic
parts of himself died, froze. Weighted down with the heavy hunks of wire and
steel, he couldn’t move. He could barely keep himself alive—if you wanted to
call it alive. The artificial heart would continue to pump, but the blood would
flow to paralyzed, unfeeling limbs.

“Five ... four ...”
The medic was counting.

And behind the
medic, the corpse of Raoul was slowly sitting up.

For a stunned
moment, Xris wondered if his battery pack
had
shut down. His heart
lurched and then reality hit him. Raoul was
not
dead. He’d never
been
dead! He’d been lying in the bed—God and the Loti only knew why—with the sheet
pulled over his head!

All of this went
through Xris’s mind in a flash, just as he realized he’d been staring too
fixedly in Raoul’s direction. The medic had noticed his gaze, started to look
around.

Raoul was on his
hands and knees, crawling to the end of the bed. He held an injector in his
hand.

“There’s obviously
been a mistake,” Xris said loudly, and took a step forward. “Let me talk to Dr.
Brisbane.”

“Dr. Brisbane gave
us permission to come down here,” Quong added. He, too, had seen Raoul. The
doctor took a step forward.

Alarmed, feeling
threatened, the medic shifted the lasgun from Rowan, aimed at Xris, and fired.

Raoul leaped on
the man from behind, plunged the injector into the medic’s back.

The burst caught
Xris in the left arm, spun him around, knocked him to the floor. His electrical
system went berserk; three fingers on his weapons hand shorted out. Tiny jolts
of electricity slivered through his body and then the automatic relays kicked
in and closed down the damaged circuits, rerouted the power.

Xris rolled over,
fighting to catch his breath, waiting for his heartbeat to stabilize. There was
one thing he could still do. He raised his lasgun, which he carried always in
his good hand— mainly because of situations like this. He didn’t aim at the
medic, who was writhing on the floor, in a tangle with Rowan. Taking careful
aim, Xris shot out the security cam.

Quong was bending
over the medic, who had gone suddenly limp.

“Dead,” the doctor
reported.

Quong turned to
Rowan.

She was on her
feet, waved the doctor away. “I’m all right. Go see about Xris.”

“I’m okay, Doc.”
Xris picked himself up. He was out of breath and dizzy, but that would pass. “Some
circuits fried. Nothing major.” He touched the comm. “Rescue-two, this is Rescue-one.
All secure down here. What’s going on outside our door?”

He didn’t really
need to ask. He could hear the hissing of the plasma cutting torch, see a
charred spot start to form around the door controls.

“Seven men on Deck
Eight, your level,” Jamil reported. “They’ve got a torch and they’re cutting
their way through the door. Someone tried to shut down my view, but I was able
to block the attempt. Rescue-three is on his way under my guidance. He’s on
Deck Six, but he’s going to run into a few delays. They’re still playing with
the manual overrides. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Are they
attacking the spaceplane?”

“Harry reports all
clear. They’re only interested in you, my friend. Out.”

Xris tuned in
Tycho, picked up the sound of laser blasts. “Rescue-three, can you hear me?”

“Barely!” Tycho
shouted. There was a pause, then the whine of the iridium sniper rifle. A
blast. “Three down! One to go! I tell you something, boss”—the alien’s tone was
grim—”these guys sure as hell aren’t college professors!”

No, they sure as
hell weren’t.

Quong was beside
Xris, inspecting the damage.

“I’m okay, Doc.
Nothing you can do about this now. You go cover the door. Tycho’s coming down
to get us out, but he may be delayed. He’s facing resistance.”

Quong, who could
hear for himself in his own comm, nodded. Rowan could hear, too, but she was
back at the computer, working feverishly. Xris limped over, stood behind her.

“What have you
got?”

“I’m not sure,”
she murmured, her gaze on the screen, her brow furrowed. “I’m establishing a link
between our plane’s computer and this one. Hopefully, I can do it without them
finding out—at least not right away.” She looked up at him. “I need time, Xris.”

“We’re not going
anywhere real soon,” he said wryly. “How long?”

“Ten minutes?”

“Five,” he
modified, and hoped he meant it.

She grimaced,
shook her head, and went back to work.

Xris turned to
Raoul. The Little One had his arms around his friend’s legs, hugging him. Raoul
was patting the empath on the shoulder.

“I don’t suppose
it would do any good to ask you what’s going on?”

Raoul’s eyes were
glazed, unfocused. “I am afraid not, Xris Cyborg. They did terrible things to
me. They were going to kill me. That deadly drug”—the eyes sharpened, their
gaze rested on the injector lying near the body—”was meant for me.”

“You don’t know
who these people are?”

Raoul shook his
head, the eyes once more vacant, vacuous. “I have no idea. They did terrible
things. They made me wear this... .” His hands plucked at the hospital gown.

Xris was struck
with sudden inspiration.
“That’s
why you were lying under the sheet!”

“Of course.” Raoul
lifted his plucked eyebrows, astonished that Xris hadn’t arrived at this
conclusion earlier. “You don’t imagine I could let anyone see me like this.”
His hands fluttered in disgust. “In this ... thing! And with no makeup!”

The charred arc
was halfway around the door controls. Rowan, her teeth clamped down on her
lower lip, was concentrating on her work. It would take a bomb blast to get her
to leave now.

“Rescue-one, this
is Rescue-three. I’m on Deck Seven, moving your way.” That was Tycho, and the
next moment Jamil was on.

“Rescue-one, this
is Rescue-two. They’ve broken through the door controls on Deck Three and there’s
nothing more I can do to stop them. You’re going to have about twenty armed
soldiers on you.”

“Five more
minutes,” Rowan begged.

Raoul was plucking
at Xris’s sleeve. “I have to go back to my room, change my clothes. It’s just
down the hall—”

Xris caught
himself about to laugh. He took a twist, thrust it in his mouth, bit down on
it.

“Rescue-three, let
me know when you’re in position on Deck Eight.”

“Coming up on you
now, Rescue-one,” Tycho responded. “Targets in sight.”

“Right. Quong,
grenade. Everyone—take cover!”

Quong took a
thurmaplasma grenade from his belt, placed it in front of the door, set the
timer, and ran like hell. He dove behind a steel cabinet. Raoul quit
complaining about his wearing apparel, grabbed the Little One. The two of them
hit the floor and scuttled underneath the bed.

Xris was on his way
to finding his own cover when he noticed that Rowan hadn’t moved. She was still
sitting at the damn computer.

He jumped for her,
took her down, chair and all, just as the door blew.

The blast knocked
out the lower section of the door, plus anyone standing near it. Xris, peering
through the smoke and flame, could see bodies on the deck. But there must have
been someone up and moving around because the next moment he heard the whine of
Tycho’s gun.

“Move out,
Rescue-one,” Tycho called over the comm. “I’ve got you covered.”

Quong, at a sign
from Xris, made his advance. Cautiously, weapon raised, he looked out the door.

Rowan was on her
knees, back at the computer.

“We’re in,” she
reported triumphantly. She touched a key. The screen cleared, then filled with
text. “And, hopefully, they won’t find out for a while.”

Scrambling to her
feet, she wiped away a trickle of blood from a cut on her scalp. “We’ve got to
hurry,” she said to Xris impatiently. “I want to get back to the plane and log
on.”

Xris grunted,
hauled Raoul and the Little One out from under the bed.

“My clothes are in
my room, which is down the hall to your right, about six or seven doors—” Raoul
began.

“Never mind your
clothes. Get moving.”

Raoul came to a
dead stop, regarded Xris with a cold stare. “If you think that I am going out
in public, wearing
this ..
.” Words failed him.

“Damn it!” said
Xris through teeth clenched over the twist in his mouth. He gave Raoul a shove
that sent him staggering. “There are people out there shooting at us! Now get
going!”

Raoul recovered
himself, drew himself up with dignity. “May I remind you, Xris Cyborg, that
people are generally always shooting at us. That is no excuse for not appearing
at our best.”

“Hurry, Xris!”
Rowan was shouting at him from the door. Quong had stepped outside, was
motioning for them to come.

Xris was on the
comm to Jamil. “Rescue-two, what’s our status?”

“You’re safe where
you are for the moment, Rescue-one, but you’re going to run into a major
roadblock in front of the spaceplane. Sorry, Rescue-one. Nothing I could do.
They were laying for us.”

Laying for us. An
ambush. A bunch of professors. Why? What the devil was going on?

“How many?”

“Thirty,
thirty-five. Forty. Armed to the teeth.”

Xris shut his
eyes, tried to think. He hadn’t switched off the comm and in the background he
could hear the distress signal. And he remembered that, too—a freighter, coming
to investigate. Just one more damn problem. A small problem, compared to the
fact that there were forty or so armed and well-trained soldiers standing
between his team and their only way off this mother of a ship. He could either
go out and meet them and try to blast his way through or wait here until they
came to get him, and try to blast his way out. Lousy odds, either way. He was
going to lose some people, some damn good people. It—

The distress
signal ...

Only way off ...

The plan was
there, bursting inside his head with dazzling clarity. Elation, excitement
tingled through him like a powerful narcotic. He lived for moments like this.

The problem was
how to explain it. It was unlikely that their transmissions were being
monitored, but Xris wasn’t putting anything past this bunch.

He was on the comm
to Jamil. “Rescue-two, leave your post. At my signal, we’re getting out of
here. But before you go, turn out the lights and lock up the house. Then follow
the signs. You got that, Rescue-two?”

A pause. In the
background, the distress signal. Then Jamil said quietly, “I’ve got it,
Rescue-one. Waiting your signal.”

Xris shut down the
transmission, glowered at Raoul. “You coming with us or not?”

Raoul fluttered
his eyelids demurely. He always knew when Xris’d had enough. “I’m coming.”

The Adonian
stepped daintily over the bits of burning wreckage, making futile attempts to
pull his gown shut in back. At length, shrugging, he gave up. Pausing, he took
a look at his reflection in the carbon-streaked metal wall.

“Oh, well.” Raoul
shrugged. “Fortunately, I have a nice tight ass.”

“You better move
your nice tight ass or it’s going to get shot off,” Xris said grimly. Grabbing
hold of the Little One, the cyborg lifted the empath over the ruins and the
bodies, plunked him down on the floor near Quong. “Keep an eye on these two.
And
Rowan,” he told the Doc.

Quong nodded.

Tycho stood at the
end of a corridor littered with bodies. Seven humans. All of them, Xris noted,
were wearing black uniforms decorated with silver insignia. He didn’t recognize
either the uniforms or the insignia, but that didn’t count for much. Every
planet, country, city, city-state, corporation, and radical fringe group had
its own paramilitary force. These guys just happened to be better than most.
They’d fooled him completely.