Margaret Weis - Mag Force 7 - The Knights Of The Black Earth

Book One In The Mag Force 7 Series

The Nights Of The Black Earth

CHAPTER 1

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely

mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the

director of the opponent's fate.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Shortly after they landed on Laskar, the four men went out and bought a

car. They paid cash for it, so Friendly Burl, the friendliest vehic dealer in

Laskar, was not fussy about such details as Who are you really? and Where have

you come from? Besides, he thought he already knew the answer. Four gray and

faceless suits; probably on an illicit holiday; an escape from boss,

sig-others, kids.

"You guys planning on being in Laskar long?" asked Friendly Bud of Burl's

Friendly Vehics.

Two of the men carried briefcases; none of them carried luggage.

"No," said one of the suits, handing over the requisite number of golden

eagles.

The manner and tone in which the man said that single word sucked the

"friendly" out of Burl and caused him to revise his original estimate. These

were not stressed-out execs. He began immediately and somewhat nervously to

count his money. Finding it correct, he relaxed.

"Salesmen, huh?" Bud ventured. He winked knowingly. "Or maybe not selling

but dealing?" The men did not answer. They put their briefcases in the Car.

Unusual. Like everything and everyone else in the sin-soaked city of Laskar,

rental cars tended to lead brief, albeit exciting lives. Consequently, rental

dealers demanded a hefty amount of plastic up front. Insurance, they called

it.

It cost a bit more to buy a vehic on Laskar, but the purchaser was

generally glad to pay extra for the convenience and the peace of mind. Upon

leaving the city, the car could always be resold--for scrap metal, if nothing

else. And paying in cash left no trail.

By now, Burl was really curious. He had a lot of friends and some of them

in the city would be very interested in knowing if competition was about to

move in.

"You fellers ever been to Laskar before?" Burl asked, eyeing the

briefcases.

"No," replied the same suit who had paid for the car. He was staring in

the direction of the city, squinting against Laskar's garish green sun.

"Then you sure don't wanna lose your way drivin' around town," Bud offered

casually. "If you'll tell me where you're going, I can give you directions."

He waited hopefully. No response.

He tried again. "I got a compu-map I can install in halfa-jiffy. No

trouble. Just tell me where you're headed and I'll program it--"

"No," said the suit.

The four men climbed into the car--an ordinary, midsize hover, nothing

special, nothing fancy--and drove it off the lot. Two rode in the front, two

in the back. Friendly Burl saw them off the lot, gave them a friendly wave,

then hurried inside to contact a few "friends."

Friendly Burl's was conveniently located near the public spaceport, on the

outskirts of the city. Finding the way to the city was easy--the only highway

ran past the spaceport.

One man drove. The man seated in the front next to the driver navigated.

The two in the back removed needle-guns from their inside suit jacket pockets,

kept watch out the windows.

"All going according to plan, Knight Commander." The hover's driver spoke

into a small handheld voice-recorder.

The hover reached the entrance to the highway. Here a decision was

required. Turn to the left and there, silhouetted against the green sky, were

the high-rise whorehouses, the glitzy casinos, the holodomes of planet

Laskar's major claim to fame, the city Laskar. Turn to the right and there

were cactus and weird rock formations and eventually, a long distance away,

the box-shaped barracks, the half-moon hangars, the sand-blasted tarmac of the

Royal Naval Base.

Glancing up and down the highway, the driver said, "How far is Snaga

Ohme's from here?"

"Straight across country. About fifty kilometers," was the reply.

Those fifty kilometers brought one to the palatial mansion and vast estate

of the late Snaga Ohme, former weapons purveyor to the galaxy's rich and

warlike. Several years previous, the wealthy Adonian had died, leaving his

extensive and complicated financial affairs in complete disorder. To give him

credit, Ohme had not expected to be murdered.

Always pleased to be able to help one of its citizens, the military had

assisted Ohme's creditors by immediately seizing control of the Adonian's

estate, including all weapons, designs for weapons, and prototypes of new

weapons that the late Snaga Ohme had invented. "Is Knight Officer Fuqua still

inside the Ohme estate?" "Yes, sir. But according to his latest report, his

unit is due to transfer out anytime now. He'll have to leave with the unit, of

course."

The driver nodded. "He has served his purpose. I doubt if we could learn

anything more from him. We will proceed to Laskar."

Arriving at the intersection, the hovercar turned left.

Laskar was not a planned community. Its streets had not been laid out

according to any grand design. Rather, its buildings had sprung up like

fungus, sprouting wherever the spores happened to fall. Buildings rarely faced

each other, or fronted a street, but stood sideways to one another, like two

hookers working the same block, who pretend to ignore each other yet keep a

watchful eye on the competition. Consequently, the streets had been laid out

around the buildings, which resulted in a great many serpentine roads,

innumerable alleys, dead ends (aptly named), cul-de-sacs, and streets that had

started out going somewhere only to end up lost and confused in the center of

a very bad nowhere.

The four men were driving to one of the worst nowheres in Laskar.

Which was why there were four of them. And the needleguns.

The navigator guided them unerringly through the maze of gambling dens,

liquor bars, drug-bars, cyber-bars, bloodbars. They drove past the live sex,

semi-live sex, semiconscious sex joints. They ignored the hookers of every

age, race, sex, gender, and planetary origin. They paid scant attention to the

occasional cop-shop--fortified bunkers from which the cops rarely emerged and

then only to collect protection money that provided the citizens of Laskar

protection against nobody but the cops.

"Travel down Painted Eye half a kilometer, sir. Turn north onto Snake

Road. Brownstone walk-up. Number 757. Our man is on the top floor. Apartment

9e."

No unnecessary talk between them. No names. The two men in the back were

deferential to the two in the front, especially the driver. The two in back

never spoke unless spoken to and then answered respectfully in as concise a

manner as possible.

The driver, who was the leader, followed instructions, swerving sharply to

avoid hitting a woman with an Adam's apple and a low-cut dress, revealing a

hairy chest, who swore at them in a gravelly voice and gave the car a few

savage kicks with her high heels as the hover skimmed past.

The driver pulled up in front of 757. He, the man in front, and one of the

men in back got out of the car. The leader carried a briefcase. The second man

had his hands free. The third man thrust his needle-gun into his suit coat

pocket. The fourth man remained seated in the car. His needle-gun had been

replaced by a beam rifle assembled from his briefcase. The rifle lay across

his knees.

The leader stood on the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk, .gazing

intently at the building, studying it carefully. It was nine stories high,

made of brick formed from the local stone, which meant that it was

sandy-colored and, in the heat of the late afternoon, took on a slightly

greenish cast from Laskar's oddly colored sun. (The sun was not green.

According to scientists, something in the atmosphere was, which gave the sun

its strained-pea tinge. The natives were proud of their green sun, however,

and disputed the scientific claim.)

Whether the green was in the sun or the sky, the sickly tint did nothing

to improve the building's appearance, but rather gave it an unwholesome look.

All the windows on the lower floor were boarded up, with graffiti scrawled

across them. Here and there, on upper floors, TO m~T signs had been plastered

onto cracked glass--the spots of white looked like an outbreak of the pox.

People on the sidewalk brushed past the men without a glance. The citizens

of Laskar had their own problems to pursue, the tourists had their own

pleasures, and none of them gave a damn about anyone else. A couple of

boredlooking women in see-through plastic skirts sidled over to the driver

and, in a few well-chosen words, described a possible evening's entertainment.

The leader didn't even bother to answer and, with a shrug, the women sauntered

off.

Several of the locals, lounging on the pavement, grinned and laughed, eyed

the car with the expert air of those who know the current market value for

that particular model, stripped down.

The leader paid no attention to them, either.

"Cover the back exit," he ordered the man with the needle-gun.

"Yes, sir."

The man with the needle-gun took off down a dark and grim-looking alleyway

that smelled of body waste and garbage. A hand reached out--palm up--from a

bundle of rags and cardboard as the man passed. A voice mumbled something

unintelligible.

The man with the gun kept walking.

The beggar threw an empty jump-juice bottle at him. The bottle smashed

into the pavement at the man's feet. He crunched calmly over the broken glass,

continued into the noisome dark of the alleyway. He might have been less

comfortable in his dangerous surroundings had he not been wearing full body

armor beneath his nondescript suit.

The two men in front gave the third time to get into position. When a

barely heard beep on a commlink informed them that he was ready, the two men

mounted splintered and broken stairs--unquestionably the most dangerous

obstacle they'd faced yet. Shoving open a rickety door, they walked inside the

vestibule.

The leader took another careful look around.

"Security cam?"

"Temporarily out of order, sir," was the answer.

The leader examined the entry door.

"It's locked, sir. Modern system. The owner doesn't want any homesteaders.

We could blow it .... "

The leader shook his head. He shifted the briefcase to his left hand,

reached up, pressed the buzzer for 9e. No response.

He pressed it again, this time held it longer.

No response.

He glanced at his subordinate.

"Bosk's inside, sir. He never leaves until after dark. But he'll be

reluctant to answer the door. He's in debt. Local moneylender."

The leader raised an eyebrow. He pressed the button again, spoke into the

intercom. "Bosk. You don't know me. I'm here on business. It could be worth

your while to let me inside. I've got an offer to make you." Still no

response.

The leader hit the button again. Leaning down to the intercom, he spoke

two words clearly and distinctly. "Negative waves."

He stepped back, waited for as long as it might take a man to get up out

of a chair, cross a small room.

There came a click on the lock of the entry door.

The leader and his subordinate entered, shut the door behind them. The

leader again took a careful look around.

"You wait down here," he said.

His subordinate took up a position in a shadowy corner beneath the

staircase. From here, he could see, but not be readily seen. Outside, the

locals approached the car, backed off hurriedly when they saw the beam rifle.

Folding his arms across his chest, the subordinate settled himself to

wait.

The leader began to climb nine flights of stairs.

CHAPTER 2

Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain . . .

Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Bosk stood unsteadily by the door, staring at the intercom as if it could

answer his questions. He was a little drunk. Bosk was always a little drunk

these days. It eased his pain, cut the fear. He was always a little afraid

these days, as well.

The intercom had no answers for him. The room seemed to heave a bit, and

so Bosk--knowing that it would be a long wait while his guest climbed nine

flights of stairs-stumbled back over and plunked himself down in his

dilapidated recliner.

Directly across the room from him, the vid was blaring loudly. James M.

Warden, personable television personality, was conducting an interview with

His Royal Majesty, Dion Staff ire.

Bosk gulped a swig of jump-juice from a cracked glass, focused blearily on

the screen.

The young king was answering a question about the late Warlord Derek

Sagan.

"He was not perfect. No man is perfect," His Majesty was saying gravely.

"He made mistakes."

"I beg your pardon, Your Majesty," James M. Warden respectfully

contradicted, "but some might consider the word mistakes inappropriate for

what many consider to be heinous crimes."

"Try murder!" Bosk yelled loudly at the screen.

His Majesty was shaking his head, almost as if he'd heard Bosk's comment.

"Lord Sagan was a warrior. He acted out of his own warrior code, which, as you

know, is a harsh one. But he held to that code with honor. He took part in the

revolution because he believed that the government under my late uncle's rule

was corrupt and ineffective. That it was about to collapse into anarchy, which

would have put all the people in the galaxy in the gravest danger.

"When Lord Sagan discovered that the new government under President Peter

Robes was every bit as corrupt as the old, the Warlord concluded that he--one

of the few surviving members of the Blood Royal had the right to try to seize

control. Circumstances, the Creator, Fate--call it what you will--intervened.

Lord Sagan's ambitious and, some might say, his despotic plans failed."

King Starfire's hand clenched. The famous Starfire blue eyes were lit from

within by a radiance that looked well on the vidscreens. The red-golden lion's

mane of hair framed a face that was youthful, handsome, earnest, intense. His

godlike looks, his vibrant personality--all were rapidly making a reluctant

deity of a very mortal young man.

"But I tell you, Mr. Warden, and I tell my people that I would not be here

now, I would not be wearing this crown, the galaxy would not be at peace

today, if it were not for the sacrifices of Lord Derek Sagan. He attempted to

correct the great wrongs he had done and, in so doing, gave his life that

others might live. He is one of the greatest men I have ever known. I will

always honor his memory."

Bosk tossed the remainder of the jump-juice at the vidscreen. "Here's that

for his fuckin' memory." The juice trickled down the screen, soaked into the

threadbare carpet which covered the floor of the shabby studio apartment.

A crisp knock sounded on the door.

Lurching to his feet, Bosk went to answer it. On his way, he made a detour

to the bottle, poured himself another drink. Reaching the door, he peeped out

the one-way peephole, saw a man dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. The

man didn't look threatening. He didn't look anything. He had one of those

faces you meet and five minutes later you can't recall ever having been

introduced to him before. Bosk was more interested in the briefcase. It is

said that Adonians can smell money.

Bosk's nose twitched. He opened the door.

"Yeah?" he said, looking first at the briefcase, then finally lifting his

gaze to meet the stranger's. "What's the deal?"

"I don't believe it would be wise for us to conduct our business in the

hallway," the stranger said. He wasn't even breathing hard after the long

climb. He smiled in a pleasant and disarming manner. "Your neighbors don't

need to know your affairs, do they?"

Bosk followed the stranger's glance, saw Mrs. Kasper standing in her

half-open door. He glared at her.

"I heard a knock," she said defensively. "Thought it might be for me." She

sniffed. "Another of your 'clients'?"

"Nosy old bitch!" Bosk retorted. He opened his own door wider. "C'mon in,

then."

The stranger entered. Bosk shut the door, took a look out the peephole to

make sure Mrs. Kasper had gone back into her apartment. She had a bad habit of

loitering in the hall, listening outside closed doors. Sure enough.

Bosk flung the door open, nearly knocking Mrs. Kasper down.

"Care to join us?" He leered.

Disgusted, she flounced back inside her apartment and slammed her door.

Bosk shut his door again, turned around to face his guest. The stranger

was tall, well-built, handsome if you went for older guys with hair graying at

the temples, which Bosk did not. The clothes were expensive but not

ostentatious. Snaga Ohme would have approved the choice of colors: muted blues

and grays. The face was a mask. The lines and wrinkles had been trained to

betray nothing of the thoughts within. The eyes were one-way mirrors. Bosk

looked in, saw himself reflected back.

Having once been close to some of the most powerful people in the galaxy,

Bosk recognized and appreciated the quiet air of control and authority this

man exuded, like a fine cologne that never overwhelms, never cloys the senses.

"I assume that you are the Adonian known as Bosk?" The stranger was

polite.

"I'm an Adonian and my name's Bosk. That answer your questions?"

"Not all of them." The stranger continued to be polite. "Were you once in

the employ of the late Snaga Ohme, former weapons dealer?"

Bosk swallowed. "I wasn't in his 'employ,' mister! I was his goddamn

friend! His best friend. He trusted me, more'n anyone. He trusted me. I knew

... all his secrets."

Bosk brushed his hand across his eyes, wiped his nose with his fingers.

Adonians are a sensitive race, who have a tendency to get maudlin when they're

drunk. "I was his confidant. Me. Not those other fops, those pretty

boys--fawn'lng and preening. And the women. They were the worst. But he loved

me. He loved me."

Bosk drained the glassful of jump-juice.

The stranger nodded. "Yes, that is consistent with my information. Snaga

Ohme told you all his secrets. He even told you about his project code-named

Negative Waves."

"Maybe, maybe not." Bosk eyed the stranger warily. "You want a drink?"

"No, thank you. Mind if I sit down?"

"Suit yourself." Bosk wandered back to the bottle.

The stranger walked across the small room. Bosk watched him out of the

corner of his eye. The stranger's movements were fluid, controlled. He was in

excellent physical condition, with a hard-muscled body, good reflexes.

Pity he's not twenty years younger, Bosk thought.

The stranger pulled up a battered metal fold-out chair-one of the few

articles of furniture in the apartment. In front of the chair was a computer.

A highly sophisticated and expensive personal computer, it looked considerably

out of place in the poverty-stricken surroundings. The stranger seated himself

in the chair, regarded the computer with admiration.

"That's a fine setup, Bosk. Probably worth the price of this whole

apartment building."

"I'd sell myself first," Bosk said sullenly. He had sold himself first,

but that was beside the point. He hunched back down in the recliner. "Snaga

Ohme gave that computer to me. It's one of the best, the fastest in the whole

damn galaxy."

A photograph of Snaga Ohme--bronze, beautiful, as were most

Adonians--stood in an honored place beside the crystalline storage lattice.

The stranger nodded, smiled in sympathy, placed the briefcase on his

knees, and waited for Bosk to resume talking. But Bosk's attention had been

recaptured by the vidscreen. The king was speaking again, this time about the

long-expected and widely anticipated birth of the royal heir.

"Fuckin' bastard," muttered Bosk. "I hate the fuckin' bastard. Him and

that fuckin' Derek Sagan. Wasn't for that fuckin' Derek Sagan, he'd be alive

today."

A glance at the photograph of Snaga Ohme clarified the pronoun.

"Tell me about Derek Sagan, Bosk," the stranger suggested.

Bosk tore his gaze from the vid. "Why d'you wanna know about Derek Sagan?"

"Because he was the reason for the Negative Waves project, wasn't he,

Bosk?"

Bosk hesitated, regarded the stranger suspiciously. But the Adonian had

had far too much to drink to make the mental effort to play games, keep

secrets. Besides, what did it matter anyway? Ohme was dead. And when his life

had ended, so had Bosk's. He didn't even have revenge to keep him going

anymore. So he nodded.

"Yeah. Sagan was. I don't care who knows it. If His Majesty sent you--"

"His Majesty didn't send me, Bosk." The stranger leaned back comfortably

in the chair. "His Majesty doesn't give a damn about you, and you know it.

Nobody gives a damn, do they, Bosk?"

"You do, apparently," Bosk said with a cunning not even the jump-juice

could completely drown.

"I do, Bosk." The stranger opened the briefcase. "I care a lot."

Bosk stared. The briefcase was filled with plastic chips-black plastic

chips, stamped in gold, arranged in neat stacks.

Bosk rose slowly to his feet to get a better look, half afraid that the

liquor might be playing tricks on his mind. It had been almost four years

since the night Snaga Ohme had been murdered. Four years since the night

Warlord Derek Sagan had seized control of the dead man's mansion and its

wealth. That night, as Sagan's army marched in the front, Bosk had exited the

mansion via the secret tunnels in the back.

During these intervening four years, Bosk had never seen one black chip

stamped in gold, much less ... how many were in that briefcase?... He took a

conservative guess on the number of chips in each stack, counted the number of

stacks across, counted the number of stacks down, did some muddled

multiplication, and drew in a shivering breath.

"Twenty thousand, Bosk," said the stranger. "It's all yours. Today."

Bosk found his chair with the backs of his legs, sat down rather suddenly.

Life up till now had been an endless lineup of jump-juice bottles, selling his

favors in cheap bars and bathhouses, and dodging the local collection agency.

"I could go back to Adonia," he said, staring at the black chips.

"You could leave tonight, Bosk," said the stranger.

Bosk licked dry lips, took another drink, gulped it the wrong way,

coughed. "What do you want?"

"You know," said the stranger. "You tried to sell it a couple of years

ago. Bad timing. No market."

"Negative Waves." Bosk's gaze strayed to the computer.

The stranger nodded, closed the lid of the briefcase. The light seemed to

go out of the room.

"Tell me about the project, Bosk. Tell me everything you can remember."

"Why do you want to know?" "Just to make sure we're talking about the same

project." A mental hand was tugging at the coattails of Bosk's brain, trying

to get his attention. But the jump-juice and the gold-stamped black chips

combined to cause him to shoo it away.

"Yeah, sure," Bosk said. He reached for his glass, discovered it was

empty, started to head for the bottle.

He found the stranger holding on to it. Bosk staggered back, blinked. He

had no clear recollection of seeing the stranger move, yet the man was

standing right in front of him.

"We'll have a drink to celebrate closing the deal," said the stranger,

smiling and holding on to the bottle. "Not before." He walked back to his seat

by the computer.

Bosk was going to get angry and then decided he wasn't. Shrugging, he went

back to his chair. The stranger returned to the folding chair, set the bottle

down next to the computer, beside the picture of Snaga Ohme. On his way past,

the stranger flicked off the vid. Congenial reporter James M. Warden and His

Majesty the King dwindled to insignificant dots, then were gone.

A commentary on life, Bosk thought, staring at the empty screen with

watery eyes.

"Where should I begin?"

"The space-rotation bomb," specified the stranger.

Bosk glared, suspicions returned. "You must be from the king. No one else

knew about that."

"I'm not from the king, Bosk," the stranger said patiently. "Maybe someday

I'll tell you where I am from. But for now, I'd say you're being paid enough

not to be curious. Let me help things along. We know about the space-rotation

bomb. We know how Warlord Sagan came up with the design for it. How he needed

someone to build it. Needed it done quick and quiet, because he was planning

to overthrow the galactic government. And so he went to Snaga Ohme."

"The only man in the universe who could have built that damn bomb," Bosk

said with moist-eyed pride. He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his

hand. "Whoever had that bomb coulda overthrown six billion governments." He

gazed back into the past, shook his head in admiration. "It was sweet. Best

work Ohme ever did. He said so himself. Blow a hole in the fabric of the

universe. Destroy ail life as we know it."

"That was only theorized."

Bosk waved his hand, irritated at the stranger's slowness of thought.

"That's not the point. Blackmail. The threat. Hold it over their heads. Sword

of something-er-other--"

"Damocles," said the stranger.

Bosk shrugged, not interested. He coughed, licked his lips, looked

longingly at the bottle.

The stranger ignored the look. "Ohme built the bomb according to the

Warlord's specifications, using Sagan's financing. But then it occurred to

Ohme that, with this bomb in the Warlord's possession, Derek Sagan might get

a--shall we say--swelled head?"

"Snaga Ohme was the most powerful man in the galaxy," Bosk averred. "The

top weapons dealer and manufacturer alive. No one could touch him. Kings,

warlords, governors, congressmen, corporate leaders--they all came running

when he so much as twitched his pinkie their direction."

"Ohme feared that the Warlord if and when he came to power--might put him

out of business. So Ohme built the negative wave device to kill Derek Sagan."

Bosk shook his head vehemently. "Not kill him."

"Keep Sagan in line, then."

"If he leaned on us, we could lean back." Bosk was defensive. "We were

looking out for our own interests."

"Sagan has the bomb, blackmails the government. Ohme has the negative wave

device, blackmails Sagan."

"It was an ingenious idea. You gotta admit that."

"All predicated on the fact that Sagan was specially genetically designed.

One of the Blood Royal. The device would kill him and him alone, even in a

crowd. Yes, a truly remarkable concept. If it worked .... "

Bosk snorted. "It worked, all right."

"Ohme tested it?" The stranger appeared surprised, intrigued. "We weren't

aware that he'd built a working model."

Margaret Weis - Mag Force 7 - The Knights Of The Black Earth

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