The Knights of the Black Earth (54 page)

Once he was there,
the cop clung to the glacis plate of the speeding, rocking tank, practically
eyeball to eyeball with Xris in the turret. The cop brought up his handheld
lasgun, aimed it directly at Xris. The blast, which would reflect off the
shields, was liable to do more damage to the cop than it would to the cyborg.

Xris swiveled the
lascannon around sharply, brushed off the cop as if he’d been a candidate for
Olicien Pest Control services. Looking through the rearview cam, the last Xris
saw of the cop, he was lying dazed on the pavement, muzzily shaking his head
but otherwise unhurt.

The PVC rolled
without further obstructions—at least that it couldn’t climb over—up to the
hotel. Fortunately, someone’d had sense enough to evacuate the area. Terrified
guests were being herded out of the main entrance. A line of cops kept them
moving—an easy task when the PVC roared into plain view.

“Head for that
door on the building’s north side!” Xris yelled to Jamil.

He piloted the PVC
up to a side door marked
authorized
personnel only
. The Devastator lumbered to a stop.

Xris bailed out of
the turret, met Jamil coming from the driver’s side, joined Tycho and Harry
crouched in the tank’s cramped interior.

“Tycho, you and
Harry rush the door. Jamil guard their flank. I’ll cover you all from here.
Right. Got it? Go.”

Xris hit the
controls that opened the hatch; then he climbed back up into the turret.

Harry jumped out,
his beam rifle swinging in an arc.

A man appeared,
coming around the back corner of the building. Harry fired a burst in the air.
The man leaped about a foot, turned, and fled.

Tycho and Jamil
jumped out immediately behind Harry. Tycho ran for the door, while Harry covered
him. Flattening himself against the side of the building to the door’s right,
Tycho motioned for Harry to join him.

Jamil kept Harry
covered. Xris watched the rear.

Harry dashed over,
took up a position flat against the wall to the left of the door. Jamil
followed.

A ‘copter flew in.
Xris fired a blast from the lascannon, warning it off. A lascannon could bring
down a ‘copter. It veered away, but didn’t go far.

Harry tried the
hotel door. Locked.

Jamil attached a
magnetic explosive charge. Everyone turned away, shielding themselves from the
blast. The heavy steel door blew inward, hung crazily on its hinges.

Jamil motioned.
Xris abandoned the turret. Thrusting a twist in his mouth, he ran a last-minute
check on his weapons hand and his system status LEDs. The lights glimmered
comfortingly green.

Xris dove out the
hatch, broke into a run, and raced across the short distance that separated the
PVC from the side of the building.

A kick from his
steel leg knocked the door off its hinges. Xris burst inside, hit the floor,
and rolled. His enhanced vision scanned the dark interior of the hallway for
heat sources. None. He jumped to his feet.

He stood in a
bleak and sterile corridor. A fire door at the end was marked
first floor
. Concrete stairs, with an
iron railing, led upward. Xris adjusted his augmented hearing, listened
closely. No sounds from above.

He waved. Harry
and Jamil ran past him to the base of the stairs.

“Second-floor
landing,” Harry reported. “More stairs from there, going up at a thirty-degree
angle.”

Typical fire
escape. Xris gave Harry the signal to continue. The big man started climbing. A
blast from a beam rifle blew out a section of wall to his left, caused him to
beat a hasty retreat.

“That ain’t the
nightly news,” Harry said, brushing chips of concrete out of his hair.

Xris sucked on the
twist. He hadn’t doubted it. Not really. Not after seeing Dr. Brisbane. But it
was nice to be certain. He waved Harry on.

The big man took a
stun grenade from his field webbing pouch, tapped the arming code, and tossed
the grenade up the stairs to the first-floor landing. He ducked; everyone
ducked, eyes squinched tightly shut, hands over their ears.

A cracking sound
split the air in the corridor. Before it had died away, Harry raced up the
stairs, taking them two at a time. Jamil advanced, stood guard at the bottom.

Xris grabbed
Tycho, drew him back to the doorway.

“Move around to
the front of the building. Take a few potshots at the third-floor balcony. I
want the knights to have to worry about a frontal assault as well as one from
the rear. You probably can’t get a clear shot at the negative wave device
because of the shielding around it, but you can take out anyone standing
nearby. Hit them with a few iridium jacket rounds. That should make ‘em back
off, at least till we get there. Understand?” He looked at the alien worriedly.
Sometimes Tycho’s translator did odd things.

Apparently this
time the message got through.

“Clearest thing
since sliced bread!” Tycho responded.

Xris took half a
second to assimilate that one, but was reassured by the sight of the alien
loping off to take up his position.

Xris turned just
in time to hear Harry yell from the second-floor landing, “Number two!”

He was tossing
another stun grenade, probably onto the third floor. Jamil, at the foot of the
stairs, gave an alarmed shout. Xris started forward; the blast nearly knocked
him off his feet.

Something had gone
wrong. The grenade had exploded too close.

Laser fire blasted
the staircase. Sparks cascaded over the railing. Harry came stumbling down,
wobbling drunkenly, his face contorted in pain. Staggering, he missed the last
step. Xris caught the big man as he fell, propped him up.

“Jamil! Cover us!”

Jamil was already
dashing up the stairs, firing as he went.

“What happened?”
Xris yelled at Harry. “Are you hurt?”

“What?”

Blood trickled out
from both Harry’s ears. The big man sucked in a pain-filled breath, leaned back
against the wall.

“Stay here!” Xris
yelled as loudly as he could. He took the twist out of his mouth, motioned with
it to emphasize his words.

“No, thanks, Xris,”
Harry mumbled, looking dazedly at the twist. “I don’t smoke.”

“I said stay—”
Xris shook his head. “Never mind.”

Damn difficult to
hear, when your eardrums have been shattered. He patted the big man on the
chest, then raced up the stairs.

Crouched in a
corner of the landing, Jamil was trading shots with an unseen enemy.

Xris aimed his
weapons hand, fired a heat-seeking micro-missile. It arced upward in a slow
spiral. He and Jamil ducked. The explosion rocked the stairwell, filled it with
acrid smoke. Xris thought he heard a scream. For the moment, the laser fire
from that direction ceased.

“What happened to
Harry?” Xris asked.

“He threw a stun
grenade up and one of those bastards caught it, threw it right back down! In
all my days in the Army,” Jamil added, waiting for the beam rifle to cycle
through before firing, “I’ve only known a few people with guts and discipline
enough to try that trick, and most of them ended up minus a hand. These are the
same well-trained bastards we faced on the
Canis Major.”

He fired his beam
rifle. A burst of return laser fire took out a section of the step on which he
was standing. He moved.

“Well trained,
well armed. They have the high ground and they know we’re coming.” Xris peered
upward, through the smoke. “Tycho’s keeping them busy out front. Harry’s down
for the count. I’ve only got two more of those slow missiles. Can’t use the
fast ones in tight corners; they’re liable to blow us up before they do the
enemy.” Xris chomped down savagely on the twist. “Any suggestions?”

“Yeah,” said
Jamil. “Give me a high-explosive frag grenade. I’ll clean those knights out of
the stairway.”

Xris shook his
head. He knew what Jamil had in mind. “I’ll do it.”

“Like hell. Half
of you weighs in at a quarter ton. You can’t move that fast. Besides, I’m a
trained professional.” Jamil grinned. “Hand it over.”

Xris took the
grenade from his field webbing, gave it to Jamil.

He tapped the
arming button, but didn’t throw it.

Xris automatically
began counting, “Five, four . . .”

Jamil dashed up
the stairs, grenade in one hand, firing his beam rifle with the other.

“... three, two .
..”

Laser blasts and
iridium bullets spattered around him. Right when Xris counted “one!” Jamil
tossed the grenade, hunkered down.

The stairwell
exploded. A scorching wave of hot plasma hit Xris. He shielded his face with
his arm. The sounds of gunfire from above abrupdy ceased.

Xris was up and
running.

Jamil should have
been, but he wasn’t. Xris found the major sprawled on the shattered stairs,
lying beneath the twisted wreckage of what had once been an iron railing.

Lasgun in hand,
dividing his attention between the landing above and his fallen comrade, Xris
lifted the red-hot iron with his metal hand, tossed it clattering down the
stairwell. He rolled his friend over.

Shrapnel and
splinters of iron had raked Jamil’s left arm, tearing through body armor into
flesh and muscle. He was burned, but not badly, mostly on the top of his head.
But he was covered in blood. A quick check revealed that at least no main
arteries had been severed, his pulse was strong. He groaned. His eyes flickered
opened, rolled, then shut again.

A head encased in
a shining black helmet appeared over the railing. Light glinted off the barrel
of a needle-gun.

Xris fired his
lasgun, must have hit, for he heard a cry and a foul curse. The head
disappeared.

Fishing out a
pressure bandage, Xris ripped it open. He slid the bandage up Jamil’s arm,
positioned it over the worst of the wounds, hit the activator. The bandage
inflated, applying the correct amount of pressure to stop the bleeding, formed
a seal over the wound.

The helmeted head
was back. Xris traded his lasgun for Jamil’s beam rifle, fired it, then sent up
another of his slow missiles.

“Catch that, you
son of a bitch!” he shouted.

The knight didn’t
take Xris up on his offer, but the soldier did have guts enough to fire a round
before seeking cover.

Another blast.
Xris was on the move, his metal leg kicking aside fragments of concrete and
railing. He reached the landing between the second and third floors, finally
had a clear view of what he was up against. Black-suited bodies lay in front of
the fire door.

Xris started up
the stairs. Two more black-suited figures appeared. He had no more doubts.
These were the knights, trained soldiers and assassins. And fanatics.

Xris hunkered
down, fired, missed, fired again. The best thing he could do was keep moving,
keep shooting. Smoke filled the stairwell. He would be a difficult target for
the knights to see, while Xris’s heat-seeking vision could pick them out
perfectly.

Two knights stood
guarding the door, backs against the wall. Obviously they had orders to stop
Xris or die in the attempt.

“Glad to oblige,”
Xris told them.

Lying prone on the
stairs, he opened up with the beam rifle, swept it from left to right and back
again. He caught one man across the midriff; his rifle flew from his hands,
arced over the broken railing, went clanging down the stairs. The other knight
vanished; Xris couldn’t see what happened to him. Probably hit, maybe
retreated.

“Waiting for me
inside that damn door,” Xris muttered. He spit out what remained of the sodden
mass that had been the twist, picked himself up, and made a mad dash for the
half-closed door.

He put his metal
shoulder to it, burst the door open, beam rifle blasting as he ran.

He was in a
carpeted corridor of a luxury hotel. He took cover in a nearby doorway, ceased
firing long enough to take a quick look around. Doors to rooms to his left and
right. Most were closed. One, about six meters down the hall, was open. The
corridor looked empty.

Xris took a step
forward.

A knight popped up
out of nowhere, directly in front of the cyborg. Xris had no time to think. He
just prayed and shot.

The blast struck
the knight at point-blank range. The body literally dissolved in a charred and
bloody mass at Xris’s feet.

A man with good
reflexes and two good legs could have avoided falling over the corpse. Xris’s
entire system had to readjust itself, however: neurocomputer responding to
electronic impulses from the brain; mechanical side of the body trying to
coordinate with the physical. He was struggling to retain his balance when a
bullet struck him from behind.

The bullet lodged
in metal, not in flesh, but that didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of
difference. The impact knocked Xris’s cybernetic leg from under him; shorted
out all kinds of complicated electronic circuitry.

He knew, as he
fell, that he was dead. Sprawled on the floor, his electronics going wild, he
had no way to defend himself. The next shot would blow apart his head or tear
open his chest....

He heard the shot,
was startled not to feel it slam into him.

Training and
experience made up for the frantic microsecond of panic. He had managed to hang
on to the beam rifle. Rolling to his left, he lifted his weapon, prepared to
fire, stopped himself just in time.

Harry stood in the
doorway, lasgun in hand. A dead knight lay on the floor in front of him.

“Thanks!” Xris
shouted.

“Huh?” Harry
returned. “Did you say somethin’?”

Xris pulled
himself to a crouching position, began to assess the damage. LEDs flashed red.
He did what he could to jury-rig himself, was making final adjustments when he
heard Harry shout.

Xris looked up
quickly. A black-gloved hand flicked out of the open door down the corridor. A
grenade rolled toward them.