The Knights of the Black Earth (8 page)

Following their
map, they circled the entire facility, moving no faster than a crawl, stopping
only when they found cover. A few security lights lit the outside of the
building, but they were poorly placed, left large areas in deep shadow. About
one-third of the lights had burned out and had not been replaced. The factory
appeared to have been hastily constructed of the crude local brick and looked
low-tech for a munitions plant, but there was no need for better. They weren’t
producing missiles for the Warlord’s naval vessels, just small arms charges,
grenades, and handheld rockets for the damn technologically illiterate
Corasians.

Nearing the back
end of the facility, close to the loading dock,

Xris entered the warm,
oozing water of the swamp. Behind him, he heard a splash and Ito’s soft,
disgusted grunt. The two agents crawled along the squishy bottom, propelling
themselves forward by grabbing on to whatever was growing down there. This was
the fastest method of traversing a swamp, though not the most pleasant. Try
walking and you’d end up either sunk to your knees in muck or hopelessly
tangled.

The trick was not
to think real hard about what it was you were using for handholds. Once Xris
grabbed what he thought was grass, only to feel it wriggle and slide out of his
hand. The shiver up his spine made ripples in the water and he knew—from the
sound of soft swearing—that Ito had encountered something similar.

But once again,
Xris gave Armstrong credit. This approach— through the swamp—was the best and
closest they could make. The swamp extended to within several meters of the
chain-link fence. And Armstrong had been right about the fence, although Xris
wouldn’t have called it “ordinary.” The fence was far simpler. No sensing
devices, no magnetic anomaly detectors, no defense systems, no nothing. It was
a plain hardware-store chain-link fence.

Xris touched Ito’s
arm, cautioned him to stay put. Xris slithered out of the swamp. Reaching
relatively dry land, he belly-crawled up to the fence. He pulled out his boot
knife, stood it handle-down on the ground, and then released it, letting the
metal blade fall onto the fence.

No spark.
Armstrong was right about that, too. The fence wasn’t electrified.

Xris pulled out his
night-vision goggles, took a long, careful look. Nothing moved anywhere in the
facility. Retrieving his knife, Xris slipped back into the water. He and Ito
spent an hour watching the loading dock and saw no signs of life except for
something that might have been a cat slinking from one shadow to another. By
now, the gas giant was on the rise again; Xris could see things swimming
through the swamp. From Ito’s muffled curse, he could see them, too. The two
returned to their spaceplane.

Once inside, they
peeled off their wet clothes. Ito wrinkled his nose, held his mud-covered
coveralls at arm’s length. “Man, that swamp stinks! And to think we’ve got to
go back tonight. I swear, Xris, I saw a snake three meters long and as thick
around as your leg. All that crap about it being more scared of me than me of
it ... hah! The damn thing floated right in front of me, stared at me with its
little snaky eyes.”

“It didn’t bite
you, did it?” Xris asked, grinning, scraping muck off his face.

“No,” Ito
retorted, “but probably because it had just chowed down on a warthog or
whatever kind of pork they grow around here. I’ll be glad to get this job over.
And if you think I’m bad, wait till Mr. Finicky white-lab-coat Rowan sets foot
in that slimy soup.”

“Maybe slogging
around in muck’ll take his mind off that female. I’ll see if I can’t find a
nice fat cephalopod to drop down his back.”

They changed into
denims, spread out their equipment to dry in the hot sun. Xris routed the
spaceplane’s sensors through his computer, set the sensors to pick up any
movement in the vicinity. The two went to sleep.

A light on the
portable comm unit started to flash, accompanied by a beeping sound. Xris was
immediately awake. He rose from the spaceplane’s bunk, and slid his feet into
his boots. He looked at the clock. 2700, Standard Military Time. Right on
schedule.

He shook Ito, who
could sleep through an artillery barrage. “The
Vigilance
is in orbit.”

Ito fumbled his
way out of his bunk. Xris sat down at the commlink. The channel was clear, and he
entered the decryption code into the comm unit to begin to receive encoded
messages. Earphones in place, he tested the link.

“Sunray, this is
Delta One. How do you read me, over?”

Immediately,
Armstrong was on the net. “Delta One, this is Sunray. You will proceed to the
facility and begin your entry. Assume Blackjack situation—all control is
exercised from this station. Do you understand, Delta One?”

Ito paused in
midyawn, gave Xris a puzzled look. Xris shook his head, annoyed. He didn’t know
what was going on, either.

“Sunray, this is
Delta One. Confirm that we are to begin our entry. We haven’t linked up with
Javelin yet. Has something gone wrong?”

Javelin was Rowan’s
comm call sign.

“Delta One, this
is Sunray. You will immediately begin your entry. If Javelin doesn’t arrive, do
not wait. Do not execute any action without first clearing it with this
station. Is that clear, Delta One?”

“Very clear,
Sunray. Delta One, out.” Xris sat back, glared, frustrated, at the commlink.

“I don’t like
this,” Ito said.

“Me, either. We
should wait for Rowan.” Xris scratched irritably at a red welt on his arm; one
of the local insects had bitten him. “Unless that computer system is dirt easy,
there isn’t much you or I can do to break in.”

“What do we do?”

“Hell, there’s nothing
we can do! You heard Armstrong. We must assume Blackjack. No arguments, no
questions.” Xris kicked the console with the toe of his boot.

Ito was silent a
moment, then said quietly, “You think it’s Rowan, don’t you? Something’s
happened.”

“I don’t know what
to think!” Xris stood up, stomped around the small plane. Then he stopped,
glared at nothing. “No, damn it. Whatever personal problems Rowan’s got, he
wouldn’t let them get in the way of his job.”

“You said it
yourself—he’s been acting pretty strange.”

Xris didn’t
respond. He moved back over to stand in front of the comm unit. His fingers
itched to touch the controls, call up Armstrong, demand an
explanation—Blackjack or no Blackjack.

Not that Armstrong
would tell him anything. The controller wasn’t there in order to satisfy Xris’s
curiosity. The controller was in charge of the mission, and what he said went.
Xris would only get himself into something deeper and darker than that damn
swamp if he started disobeying orders again. Amadi wouldn’t go easy on Xris
this time. Xris would be stuck behind some desk somewhere. Besides—Xris’s
common sense took hold—if Armstrong was trying to grapple with an emergency,
Xris might jeopardize the whole mission by attempting to reestablish contact.

“Maybe something’s
gone wrong with the shuttle,” Ito said, reassuring. “That’s a new type Rowan’s
flying in, you know.”

Xris snorted. “Rowan’s
as experienced on flight systems as either of us. Maybe more.”

“So what do we do?”
Ito asked again.

“You heard the
man.” Xris went outside the plane, grabbed his coveralls, and started to dress.
“Rowan’s probably on his way. We’ll link up outside the munitions facility.”

Ten minutes later,
both were ready, their equipment strapped on. They put on earpiece headsets and
keyed their data transmission to pass through the commlink on the spaceplane,
enabling them to keep in touch with their orbital command vessel. The sky
glowed an eerie orange. The gas giant was just setting. They headed for the
swamp.

They slogged along
side by side. No sign of Rowan. No word from the controller. Judging by Ito’s
tightly drawn lips and lowering brows, he was thinking the same thing as his
partner.

Suddenly Ito came
to a halt.

“This isn’t right,
Xris. We deserve some sort of explanation.”

Xris looked up at
the sky, instinctively and inanely searching for Rowan in the heavens.

“You know as well
as I do that as far as the bureau’s concerned, we don’t deserve a damn thing
outside of our paycheck. But,” he added grimly, “you can bet I’m going to have
a whole lot of questions to ask once we get aboard
Vigilance.
And the
faster we do this, the faster we’re back.”

The night was much
darker than it had been on their first trip to the facility. They could
actually see the stars—a rare sight on TISor 13 and one that occurred only when
one of the other moons was in position to completely block the light of the
planet. The eclipse was one of the reasons Armstrong had chosen this date for
their incursion.

The two agents
stayed closer together this time, but moved faster. They had been over the
ground once already and knew where they were going. Every fifty meters they
hunkered down, pulled out their night-vision goggles, and scanned the area. The
factory loomed ahead of them. They skirted the trees on the perimeter, heading for
the building’s back end.

The two slipped
slowly and cautiously into the swamp, avoiding any noise. For the better part
of fifteen minutes, they slid forward on their bellies, crawling through bottom
muck, sliding over fallen trees and rocks.

Xris reached the
tree stump closest to the loading dock fence and pulled out his night-vision
goggles. Inside the compound, nothing moved; he could detect no heat sources
that would indicate a living presence. Something heavy slid across his boot as
he knelt in the water. Ito hissed and drew his lasgun. A snakelike creature,
over ten meters in length, slithered past. It kept going, but Xris noticed that
Ito didn’t put his gun away. Xris knew how his partner felt. It wasn’t the
snakes. Something was wrong.

And still no word
from Rowan.

Ito slid closer.
Xris lifted his headset to hear.

“The more I think
about it, the less sense it makes. We can’t do a damn thing without our
computer expert. Why don’t you call in and request an abort on this one? We’re
allowed to do that much, even under Blackjack.”

Xris toggled the
transmitter switch. “Sunray, this is Delta One. Request permission to abort.
Javelin has not linked up with this call sign yet.”

“This is Sunray.
Proceed. Out.”

The two stared at
each other. Ito shook his head. Cursing under his breath, Xris drew his lasgun,
sloshed out of the swamp, and crawled to the fence. Seeing nothing in the
compound, he motioned Ito forward.

Ito came slowly,
dragging his tool kit bag behind him.

Xris pointed at
the fence. He’d tested it yesterday, but he wasn’t about to trust anything or
anyone, especially now.

Ito pulled out a
signal analyzer.

“It’s not
electrified and it doesn’t have any sensor data flowing through it,” he
reported.

Xris nodded,
sprayed neoprene on the section of the fence that he was going to cut. The
rubber hardened into a black mass on the fence’s metal links. Using laser wire
cutters, he cut a hole in the fence large enough for them to pass through. The
neoprene prevented the laser from building up a resonance within the wire,
possibly setting off a passive sensor somewhere. The rubber also coated the
ends of the wire, keeping it from snagging the agents’ clothing when they
crawled through. In case a quick exit was needed, they didn’t want to worry
about getting hung up on the fence.

Ito slipped
through the hole onto the paved loading area. He ran to the front of a
hovertruck that was backed into the dock, and quickly scanned the area. No
signs of life. He motioned Xris forward.

Xris slid through
the hole in the fence. Once inside the compound, he began inspecting the
hovertruck—a basic container carrier, used to offload space containers from
shuttles and move them to the factory. The power was shut off. The truck rested
on its air-cushion skirts.

After a quick look,
Xris again keyed the comm unit and whispered, “Sunray, this is Delta One. We
are inside the compound and are preparing to enter the facility. Any further
instructions?”

Armstrong’s answer
was immediate and terse. “This is Sunray. Proceed. Out.”

“Sunray, this is
Delta One. The area is deserted. We could hold here until Javelin arrives.”

“This is Sunray.
Proceed. Out.”

Something was
definitely wrong. Xris took a twist out of its waterproof case in his pocket,
stuck the tobacco in his mouth, chewed on it.

“If you decide to
pack it in, I’ll back you up,” Ito said in a low voice.

Xris considered,
but not for very long. He and Ito had come too far to quit now. They’d been
ordered in by their controller, who knew the situation. They didn’t. They’d do
the best they could without Rowan. After all, they only needed evidence of a
probable Hung alliance with the Corasians in order to start an official
investigation. A carelessly written memo might provide that much.

Xris swallowed the
remainder of the soggy twist and nodded gloomily. Ito began to move, heading
for the access door leading into the building. Xris stopped him.

“The door’s
probably got an alarm on it. This truck’s backed in and sealed into the loading
dock. If we go through the cab and cut our way into the cargo container, we
should be able to just walk inside. Plus, it’ll make this look more like a
robbery attempt.”

The door to the
cab of the hovertruck was unlocked. The two climbed in, crawled over the seats.
Ito took out a small cutting laser, opened up a six-inch hole in the back end
of the cab. He peered through it into the trailer portion.

“Empty,” he
reported.

He started to cut
a larger hole, but it soon became apparent that this was going to take too much
time. Using a spreader clamp, Xris quickly widened the aperture to about a
meter.