The Knights of the Black Earth (55 page)

Xris couldn’t
move.

Harry had been
firing at the hand, now shifted his aim to the grenade. His fourth volley hit
it.

Both men cringed,
waiting for the blast.

The grenade
wobbled to a halt, sat there, blinking ominously.

Figuring he was
about as operational as he was going to get, Xris stood up, tried walking. His
cybernetic leg dragged, out of sync with his good leg.

“You stay here,
Harry,” Xris shouted, loaded two large micro-missiles into his weapons hand. “I’m
going on ahead. Keep me covered!”

“I don’t think so,”
Harry yelled. “You go ahead. I’ll keep you covered.”

“Fine. You do
that.”

Limping awkwardly
down the hall, Xris halted in front of the door, fired the two missiles into
the hotel room, then hugged the floor.

The explosion’s
back blast washed over Xris in a concussive wave. He’d forgotten to turn off
his augmented hearing and for a moment was as deaf as Harry. When bits of
debris quit raining down on top of him, Xris shook the rubble off him, stood
up.

Smoke billowed out
into the corridor. Fire alarms sounded, squawking loudly. The sprinkler systems
activated.

Harry—backing down
the hall, keeping his gun aimed at the fire door—looked up in astonishment as
the water hit him in the face. Arriving at the door, he paused a moment,
motioned inside with a jerk of his head.

“You hear
anything?”

Xris listened.
Flames crackled. Someone moaned. But if anyone was waiting in ambush, they were
being damn quiet about it.

Xris took the
lead. He and Harry burst into the room.

A black form
leaped out at them; metal flashed. The knight— knife in hand—landed on Harry.
The two crashed back onto a bed, rolled from there to the floor.

Xris lost sight of
them. He could hear the two scuffling in the life-and-death struggle, but there
was nothing he could do to help. His attention was focused on the phony
image-intensifier antenna set up out on the balcony.

The bodies of two “crewmen”
lay sprawled beside it. They wore GNN coveralls. Either they were knights
disguised as GNN personnel or the knights had impressed these two poor bastards
into working for them. It didn’t matter much now. Tycho’s aim was true as ever.

But though its
crew was dead, the antenna was still up and running. Xris started toward it to
shut it down, saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Dr. Brisbane
darted out from behind a curtain, a needle-gun aimed straight at his head.

Xris lunged
sideways—or at least that’s what he intended to do. His mechanical leg didn’t
get the message. He tottered, off balance, flailing wildly. The needle struck
him in the shoulder of his good arm. His sight blurred red momentarily, the
pain unbelievable. But the doctor would have been far better advised to aim for
Xris’s mechanical side.

As it was, his
weapons hand was working perfectly. He aimed, fired.

The force of the
blast blew Dr. Brisbane out the door through the balcony’s railing, and over
the edge.

He looked down at
his arm, saw it covered in blood. His commlink squawked, demanding his
attention. It had, he realized dimly, been squawking for quite a long time now.

“Xris, can you
hear me? Xris, dammit! Are you all right?”

It was Rowan. She
sounded frantic, worried.

“I’m okay,” he
said, gritting his teeth against the pain of his wounds. “I’m on the balcony
with the negative wave device. Its operators are dead—”

“But the device is
alive and well!” Rowan was panting, breathless, almost screaming at him. “It’s
almost up to full power. You’ve got to shut it off
now!
Xris! Now!”

Harry was still
fighting. Xris could hear the two men, but he couldn’t take time to help. He
dragged himself to the device, stared at it. Lights were blinking; his
augmented hearing was picking up an annoying whining sound. Frantically he
searched, but couldn’t find anything that vaguely resembled a switch.

“Turn it off!”
Rowan yelled.

“How?” Xris yelled
back.

A pause. He could
hear her consulting with Quong. Xris ground his teeth. Hurry . . . hurry .. .

Quong sounded
troubled. “The switch should be plainly visible.”

“You come look for
it, then!”

Pain jabbed him.
Xris sucked in his breath. Hurry, damn it! ...

Rowan was back. “My
guess is that the device is being controlled from a remote unit. Which could be
hidden anywhere—”

“Oh, the hell with
it!”

Balancing himself
on his good leg, Xris swung his mechanical leg like a club. His metal foot
connected with the machine.

The device smashed
against the balcony. Sparks flew. Xris fired a blast from his lasgun at the generator.
It blew apart. The whining sound the antenna had been making ceased.

“That’s it!” Rowan
was jubilant. “You’ve done it!”

Xris nodded, too
tired and hurting to answer.

Harry came out
onto the balcony, wiping blood from his hands on the front of his shirt. He had
a cut down one side of his face; one eye was starting to swell shut. He looked
with satisfaction at the wreckage of the device.

“Nice job,” he
said.

Xris nodded again,
pulled out a twist, almost dropped it from his shaking hand.

“You okay?” Harry
asked worriedly.

“Yeah,” Xris lied.
“You?”

“No, thanks,”
Harry returned loudly. “I don’t smoke. What’s Tycho up to?”

Good question.
Xris hit the comm. “Tycho? You read me?”

No response.

“Tycho?”

Not even a
crackle.

A cold feeling
spread from Xris’s stomach up his spine, nudged aside the pain. It was, he
realized suddenly, too damn quiet down on the ground. Motioning Harry to move
back, Xris took a cautious look over the balcony.

What was left of
Dr. Brisbane was lying on the ground. Tycho stood in the center of a ring of
gun barrels, all pointed at him. He was surrounded by soldiers. Xris didn’t
recognize the uniforms or the insignias. It didn’t matter anyway.

Pivoting on his
mechanical leg, he stumped across the balcony.

“We’re going to
have company,” he announced to Harry.

“Huh?” Harry
cupped his hand over his ear.

Xris grabbed hold
of the big man’s arm, pulled him into the room.

“Xris!” Rowan’s
voice was frantic, halted Xris where he stood. “We’re reading
another
signature! I repeat,
another
signature! It appeared practically the
moment the main device went down. It’s weaker than the first, but that doesn’t
matter. According to our readings, this device is located in the immediate
vicinity of the king!”

Xris shook his
head, sighed. These guys were good. Damn good.

“Okay, Rowan, you
and Quong—”

“No good, Xris, I’m
afraid,” the doctor’s voice chimed in, steady, calm. “We’re not going anywhere.
We’re surrounded.”

Xris heard ominous
sounds, knew what was coming.

“Yeah,” he said. “I
know the feeling.”

Heavily armed
soldiers, their faces concealed behind helmets, surged into the hotel room.
They wore some sort of markings on their body armor, but Xris was too dazed and
exhausted to make any sense of them. The soldiers leveled beam rifles at him.

He raised his
hands in the air. Somehow, he had to raise Raoul, warn him, tell him what to
do.

He spoke into the
comm. “Raoul—”

One of the
soldiers slugged Xris in the mouth with the butt end of his rifle.

“Shut down your
communications.”

Harry looked to
Xris for orders.

Xris shook his
head, shrugged.

The soldiers
clamped restrainers on Harry’s wrists, fit two more around his ankles.

The captain of the
troop—the one who had hit him—aimed his weapon at Xris.

“Now shut yourself
down, cyborg.”

No use arguing.
Xris didn’t bother to tell them he lacked the energy to fight anyhow.

“Take it slow,”
the captain warned. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Xris reached for
his battery pack, touched a button. The LED lights on his arm went out; the
entire left side of his body went dead. He could no longer maintain his
balance, flopped, helpless, onto a bed.

The captain
regarded him with a look of pity.

Xris closed his
eyes, reminded himself to slug that son-of-a-bitch captain one day. Right now,
though, he had other things to do.

He focused his
thoughts. Pictured in his mind a raincoat and a battered fedora. . . .

Assassiner c’est
le plus court chemin.

Assassination is
the quickest way.

Moliere,
Le Sicillien,
Scene 12

“Well, my friend,”
said Raoul, looking up at the temple looming over him, “we are here. And now we
are supposed to alert someone to His Majesty’s danger and advise them that they
should remove him from the vehicle.”

The Little One
shook his head gloomily.

“You are right, my
friend. That will not be easy.”

The chariot had
set them down on the temple steps, away from the crush of the panicking crowd
below, but not much closer to their goal. Up here, they were just two more
dignitaries. And the dignitaries were actually causing more trouble than the
mobs, for the dignitaries not only needed to be protected, but reassured,
coddled, mollified, soothed, and/or placated. The various governors and
parliamentarians and vid stars, mingled with priests and priestesses, all
lunged about aimlessly, bumping into one another like ships caught in an
asteroid field, never going where they were told, always ending up where they
weren’t wanted.

The king and
queen, ensconced in the Royal Limo, surrounded by armed guards and now by a
gathering contingent of media, remained as far from Raoul as any star in the
firmament.

“I could attempt
to speak to the Royal Guard, but I have grave doubts that they will believe me,”
Raoul continued. “In fact, my warning them about the danger to the king would
look extremely suspicious. The real Adonian ambassador would be worried about
only one thing at a time like this—saving himself.”

The Little One
scanned the crowd from beneath the rim of the fedora. He jabbed one small
finger in the direction of the Royal Guard.

Raoul lifted a
plucked eyebrow. “Ah, yes. Captain Cato. True, he would undoubtedly recognize
us in connection with our erstwhile employment with our erstwhile employer,
Snaga Ohme. I have the distinct feeling, however, that such recognition would
result in our being immediately incarcerated.”

The Little One,
standing on one foot, weighed the force of this argument and was evidently
inclined to agree. He crossed his small arms over his chest and shook his head.

“The king and
queen know us and have reason to feel kindly toward us,” Raoul continued. “But
to reach Their Majesties, we have to penetrate the ranks of the Royal Guard,
who do not know us and who have no reason to feel anything whatsoever about us
except that we are, perhaps, better dressed than most people here. Still, we
must do what we can. I—”

The Little One
began hopping up and down, pointing frantically.

Raoul peered
through the crowd. He grabbed the Little One’s hand in excitement. “General
Dixter! I mean—Lord Admiral Dixter. He knows us! And he actually
likes
us!”

Raoul pulled his
handkerchief from his handbag, began to wave it in the air. “General Dixter!
Yoo-hoo! I mean Lord Admiral Dixter! Xris sent us! We—”

The Little One
whipped around, trod hard on Raoul’s foot.

Raoul clapped his
hand over his mouth, but it was too late. Dixter had heard the Adonian’s shrill
cry—as had everyone in the immediate vicinity. And he had heard the name Xris.

“I forgot—we are
wanted men!” Raoul also forgot to lower his voice, causing several people near
him to stare at him in horror and begin pointing at him.

Dixter was saying
something to two of the Royal Guard, who started toward Raoul, shoving their
way through the crowd, politely but firmly elbowing people out of their way.

“You’re right!”
Raoul gasped. “They undoubtedly think
we’re
the assassins! In which
case,” he added gravely, “I deem it unlikely that they will honor our request
to speak to the king.”

The Little One
pulled Raoul to one side, tugging him underneath the maze of scaffolding on
which the dignitaries’ platform had been built. People surged around them.
Raoul tried his best to blend in with the crowd—not an easy feat, considering
that he outshone the sun.

He heard his name,
recognized Dixter’s voice. “Don’t leave! You’re not in any danger!”

Raoul paused, half
turned, and saw the Royal Guard drawing their lasguns.

A drawn lasgun—in
Raoul’s mind—constituted danger. He ducked under a piece of royal purple
bunting.

The guns caught
the dignitaries’ attention, as well. They swirled away from the guard like
leaves in a storm. The news media, catching sight of the action, immediately
dashed after the Royal Guard. Even James M. Warden, news anchor for GNN, who
had been in a heated discussion with Captain Cato, paused, turned to see what
was going on. Warden said something to his cameraman, who lifted the vidcam,
focused in on the Royal Guard and Lord Admiral Dixter.

Glancing through a
dangling drape, Raoul caught a glimpse of the expression on Dixter’s
face—helpless, frustrated.

Raoul knew just
how the man felt. “How will we ever get to the king now?” he asked his small
companion.

The Little One had
some idea in mind, perhaps, for he dragged Raoul out from under the opposite
end of the scaffolding and plunged back into the crowd. Raoul tripped mincingly
along behind his friend, keeping up a running stream of apologies.