“Yes, sir?”
“I want you to do some searching through the files. Pinpoint it to the last six months of Regis’ reign.”
“Yes, sir.” The response was unemotional, for the being Winton talked to was not quite human. It didn’t really care what Winton demanded of it, as long as it could perform.
Chillingly, neither did Winton. “What I want you to locate are some frozen slides. They won’t be under biogenetics, though. I have them hidden under this code.” And he told the machine generated image the code. “Let me know when you’ve located them. I want to pick them up.”
“Yes, sir.” The transmission ended. The screen went dead again and Winton sat back once more. His impassive expression slowly curdled into a feral one.
Chapter Four
Jack felt the sun’s hot rays tattoo his back. Behind him, the lines of the regiments flashed in full battle armor. Only he stood unarmed. Bared, as it were, to the worlds watching him.
He drilled automatically, putting every ounce of strength and grace he had into his movements, aware that the more powerful suits behind him were literally at his heels—that anything his human frame could do, the suits could do quicker and more powerfully. One misstep, and he would be ground into the dust of the parade fields, an inconsequential mix of flesh, blood and sweat.
The live crowd sensed his imminent danger. At the beginning of the drill, he’d brought them to their feet, straining to watch, some looking at the monitors for close-ups rather than at the grounds below, jostling each other, their oohs and aahs as one. Jack knew that Amber stood in the grandstand, but did not let himself think about it. The events of last night had shaken her far more than she let on. If she watched now, she did so apprehensively, and he had no room for fear in his thoughts. Not now.
The lines came to a halt as their commander called out, “At ease.” As the thuds of the armor going into the rest position filled the air, the Owner of the Purple looked down from his platform where he and Emperor Pepys stood. Jack felt the commander’s eyes upon him.
They had planned this drill, for the worlds watching them, as well as for the emperor who’d newly resurrected their regiments. It was more than a drill. It was more like a lesson in mortality.
Jack snapped off a salute, pivoted hard left, and marched forward to where his armor hung from its equipment rack on the sidelines. He felt camera relays on his every move. With movements so quick and efficient it would be difficult to follow even later, with the tapes slowed down, he took the suit down and began to put it on.
It was a risky maneuver, in that certain weaknesses of the suit—its seams and other aspects—were momentarily revealed. However, both Jack and the Owner of the Purple felt that Jack’s expertise would not give away too many of the secrets. He stood, moments later, helmeted and alone, isolated, within the armor.
The crowd gasped, so quickly had he suited up. Then a ripple of applause buffeted him.
It would have been even quicker, Jack thought, as he returned to his place, had the suit still been alive.
Once, the armor, inhabited by the regenerating soul of a berserker warrior, would have quickened under his grazing touch. As the circuitry came to life, so also would have the mind and thought-touch of a being so alien to Jack’s mind that it was both a curse and a blessing to share communion with it. Still, Jack had become accustomed to it… one of the many scars he’d carried away from the Sand Wars.
Now Bogie was dead.
Amber said no. That Bogie was dormant, in hiding, traumatized by the events of Lasertown.
Jack was not sure. He only knew that his armor had lapsed back into what it had been manufactured as, no more, no less, and that he sorely missed the abrasive, cruel, combative, and somewhat addictive contact of the berserker. *Hi, boss, we kill today?*
Even though he had faced the possibility of the day when the berserker would have overcome and devoured his host, so that he might fully live. The infestation was a parasite, mindless to the ultimate condition of its host. Jack had had it under control, bonded with it and crippled without it. He was not a killer without Bogie augmenting him. He’d ordered another suit without telling Amber what he’d done. It only made sense, but it also made him uneasy. Had Bogie even been a Milot berserker? Jack had no way of knowing for sure. He remembered a moment in Lasertown when, like Lot’s wife at the destruction of her city, he’d turned back to look at the destruction of an enigmatic archaeological site and seen the mummified remains of an incredible beast… and Bogie, through his eyes, had seen it as well. Had been jolted into silence by the vision after communicating to Jack that he felt a part of that beast. As crude and terrifying as the known was, the unknown was worse—because whatever that mummified beast had been, it was also possibly dangerous enough to send Thraks fleeing across space from their own territory. So if he did not face the infestation of a berserker in his suit, what he might face could be undeniably worse.
Jack sighed, imperceptibly. The holo screening rippled in response to his movement. “Target grid on,” he said, and the pattern played across his vision. What would happen next, he’d discussed briefly with Amber. He saluted again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, viewers,” the Purple said, his amplified voice carrying magnificently across the grounds. Jack adjusted his audio slightly. “You have been watching a demonstration of the movement of the human form and how the battle armored soldier translates it. Now we would like to demonstrate to you the full power of a Dominion Knight.”
Jack drew in his breath. He could feel his body trembling slightly. Adrenaline rush, he thought. The gauntlets pulsed at his wrists. He felt a slight tingling. It unnerved him momentarily. Bogie, fighting him silently for control? He reached out, searching for that alien other side of himself. Come out, come out, wherever you are! He had no time for a second thought.
The next maneuver pitted him against the entire field at his back.
They had choreographed it somewhat, but not entirely, for the Owner of the Purple wanted a spontaneous show of skill and battle tactics. Jack had a few tricks up his sleeves for the mêlée he had not wanted to reveal. The shop had, overnight, reset the suits to demonstration power. Hits would be scored by laser light rather than laser weaponry. No one would die here today, though a few suits were likely to be crimped.
As the Purple gave the signal, Jack threw the first choreographed maneuver out the window. He was supposed to pivot, roll and fire, sending the first line of offense down.
He hit power vault, went to the side and took out the first four lines right-handedly as they milled in confusion. Obediently, they went down and stayed down as their suits registered a hit.
His left wrist tingled. Jack frowned. He finished the roll as he hit and took out the back two lines, again right-handedly. The suit responded sluggishly, as if he were a man who’d had a stroke. The left side was down. Was Bogie fighting him for control as he had in the past? Only now he refused to acknowledge Jack’s presence? His skin crawled. The soft chamois patch at his back, designed to catch sweat and to keep the weight of a field pack from gouging him, fluttered against his bare shoulders. Bogie could ultimately be deadly. Or was there something else happening?
Already, he’d put down more than half the emperor’s new bodyguard. It wasn’t their fault. They’d practiced something different. In the confusion, he’d gotten far more of them than was humanly possible. That, at least, had gone to plan.
His side tracking screen showed a wing flank taking the initiative. Automatically, he turned and fired a light rocket, packed with little more than a show of sparks. As it detonated in the wing’s midst, the soldiers obligingly went down, but Jack took no time to register it.
Using the wall of already downed suits, he was flanking the lines himself, firing single shots as he went. Still one-handed.
As he kneeled to a stop and took a breath, he nailed down what it was that bothered him.
The gauntlets tingled to signal the wearer that they were up to power.
They shouldn’t have been. His right wrist sent no such signal.
His left did.
Someone had not decommissioned his left gauntlet.
The troops facing him were sitting targets, dead targets, the moment he used the firepower in his left hand. Subconsciously, he’d known what was wrong and limited his use of weaponry.
Jesus, Emperor, your new hero’s a nice guy, but can you explain why he slaughtered hundreds of unarmed men during your little demonstration?
Yeah. Right. Bogie—let go!
Jack hit the power vault again, letting two rushes of lines collide with each other. A hit was a hit, and the majority of those two lines went down.
Over his own breathing, he could hear the crowd reaction. Which was little. They were shocked, he knew, by the inability of the soldiers to capture or down him.
They were also more than a little frightened by the skill of the one Knight being pursued.
As invincible as the troops seemed, one skillful soldier could still penetrate the defenses and head inexorably for the emperor, as single-mindedly as any assassin.
Jack came down, running, jumping still suits as if they did not exist, headed for the emperor’s platform. Behind him, the remaining two hundred troops rushed after.
As they crossed the line where Jack had used the suits as a wall, from one side of the ground to the other, the air mines he’d planted started to go off. Another forty or so suits went down. He shook violently within his armor, fighting for control. He knew the alien menaced him. He knew that Bogie was stalking him within the armor they both claimed as their own. He was running out of time!
Against the rules of the mêlée, he decided to go for the emperor now. It was not necessary to stop all five hundred or so ranged against him. A real assassin would not. He would merely take his opening and go for it.
And so Jack power vaulted and hit the platform halfway up, even as a lone suit came barreling desperately toward him, to stop the inevitable.
It was a beautiful, acrobatic, graceful jump. Jack did not know the soldier personally, but he saw the winged crest on the black chest and made a note to look him up. Daring and resourcefulness combined was hard to find.
Unfortunately, Jack took him down in midair. He then scaled the platform unmenaced, gauntlets in firing position. He lowered them and wrenched his helmet off. It took a second, winded as he was, and then he kneeled before the emperor. Now the audible gasps, the shock of the watching crowd reached him.
Pepys, pale and freckled, his red hair waving on the breeze, looked down at him. Jack met the expression in his electric green eyes, and for a moment was afraid of what he saw there.
Then the fey and smallish emperor smiled and said, “For your skill, I honor you. Ask of me what you will.”
“An audience, your highness. Grant me an audience.”
Pepys’ lips thinned and whitened. Then he forced a smile. “Done.” He raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Knight who defended the Lasertown colony in the name of the Triad Throne and the Dominion. Rise and be recognized.”
Jack got to his feet and turned around. The crowd roared, filling his hearing and his soul.
His commander moved to his shoulder. Purple tilted his head ever so slightly. “What the hell happened down there,” he whispered. “I didn’t tell you to do it with one hand tied behind your back.”
“Someone,” Jack answered, while smiling to the cameras, “forgot to decommission my left gauntlet. You’re lucky I didn’t fry five hundred of the emperor’s best.” He didn’t mention Bogie. Only Amber knew of Bogie.
“Jesus,” the commander said. He straightened. “Thank god it was you.”
They both smiled impassively and waved in acknowledgment of the ovation as the rest of the Guard got to their feet, un-helmeted and let forth with their own cheers, but the usually tanned complexion of the commander had gone a little pale.
“Well, Jack,” Pepys said, in the cool of the palace, his hair still wavering as though filled with a static electricity of its own. “You have what you want, though you may regret it.”
Out from under the scrutiny of the live cameras, Jack nonetheless felt ill at ease. He had not been allowed to unsuit, and he carried his helmet under his arm like an extra head. Amber had joined them, a quiet, pale Amber dressed in a sober blue gown. The Owner of the Purple had excused himself long enough to set up a detail from among the Knights Jack had left standing and operable.
“Emperor?” Startled, Jack looked at the man.
Pepys showed his age in the slight sagging of his always ironic smile, and the flabbiness under the arms that wiry men sometimes get, for he hadn’t much muscle anyway. “We haven’t had time to talk since you returned. I want to impress upon you and remind you that, although I’ve publicly and privately said otherwise, you were shanghaied. I have covered for your actions by claiming you worked undercover for me, but I will remind you also that your actions were not for my benefit. You did as you did for your own purposes.”
Their gazes stayed locked.
The emperor smiled mildly. “I will not so freely accept your behavior next time. There are consequences and effects to every action. I have you here now so that you can view a few of them.”
“And then I want you to take a short leave, so that you can settle your personal affairs, for once you return,” the emperor’s voice deepened and he said, so that Jack alone could hear, “your ass is mine. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Jack got out. Amber stirred at his side and he knew she recognized the tone of his voice which the emperor, who did not know him nearly as well, did not. Amber knew that he lied.
She laid a slender hand on the suit gauntlet. He shifted his weight and looked down at her, but she was watching the entrance to the grand hall impassively, so impassively that she might not have had a thought in her pretty head.
He knew better, of course. They both knew that, even if the emperor had not given him leave to track down his captor, he would have found a way to do it. They both knew that, emperor of the Triad Throne aside, Pepys was only a pathway to what Jack really desired to do. What she had done, she did merely to distract Pepys’ hawklike attention… for Jack was not as seasoned a liar as the emperor was. She knew that Jack might give away his intention by his expression.
Pepys watched him closely. “Your highness,” Jack said. “You have not had the facts from me.”
“I have examined the records and talked to, among others, St. Colin of the Blue Wheel. Do you accuse a religious man, a saint among his peers, of lying?”
“No, sir. I hold St. Colin in high esteem, but—”
“But what?”
“I saw what I saw.”
“Yes.” Pepys tapped his finger on the arm of his chair. “I am mindful of that. Then tell me what you saw.”
“Here? Now?”
“You asked for audience and I granted it.”
The emperor had him. Had him, and knew it. Jack would not speak of high risk security in the open, though electronic shields were placed throughout the hall to prevent illicit recording, for Pepys had granted an exclusive to Scott Randolph to cover the throne room this day. This was not the time or the place. The emperor, for some reason, did not want to know. Or perhaps he knew already. Jack’s blood iced.
“I saw Thraks threatening the dome and acted accordingly,” he said, falling back on the cover they’d given him. To hell with it, he thought. Let Pepys go down to ruin the same way the old emperor did. The way I would have if Amber had not saved my ass…
As though knowing he thought of her, Amber said, “Who’s that coming in?”
There was a commotion at the front of the hall where guests were squeezing in through the bottleneck Security had set up. He thought he recognized the dark blue robes of the Walker leader known as St. Colin, a childhood friend of Pepys and now a rival in empires, but the figure was jostled back even as ambassadorial guards stalked in.
“Tho
se are consequences,” Jack said bitterly, even as the com system announced, “Ambassador Dhurl of the Thrakian League.” He swallowed against the gorge rising in his throat as the minister of a hated enemy swept into the audience room. At his side, Amber sucked in her breath.
A Thraks in full dress was, Jack had to admit, an impressive sight. A diplomatic Thraks wasn’t quite as impressive as a warrior Thraks with laser rifle blazing, but nearly. And murderous, he decided, upon viewing the faceted eyes of the being striding down upon them.
Slope-backed, equally at ease on fours or upright, a Thraks was a cross between a hyena and a cockroach. Jack had satisfying memories of crunching quite a few underneath his armored boots during the Sand Wars… if any memory of the Sand Wars could be called satisfying. This diplomat was dressed Terran-fashion, out of a knowledge of human sensibilities. It tended to humanize him more and take away from the alien insect-likeness of his outer chitin. Nothing, however, could disguise the mobile chitin-plates of his face, plates which moved into masklike expressions.
Jack could not feel the pressure of Amber’s hand on his arm, but he looked down and saw her fingers pinched white around the knuckles. Gently, he laid his gauntlet over her hand.
Thraks were not a pretty sight under the best of circumstances and certainly not when in as intense an emotional state as this one. Randolph’s camera crew focused on a tight shot. Pepys’ protocol advisor stepped close to the emperor and Jack overheard the wizened, gray-haired man whisper, “We’ve got trouble. The mask signifies honor that has been damaged, and redress needed, as well as social representation of the highest order.”
Pepys looked from his aged counselor to Jack. “In other words,” Pepys said dryly. “They want Jack’s hide.”
“Something like that, yes. But…” and the counselor paused. “I doubt they expect to get it. Otherwise, he would request a private audience.”
“Ahh.” Pepys blinked and turned his catlike stare away from Jack.
The Ambassador from the Thrakian League came to a halt a respectful distance from the Triad Throne. He presented a bow, very sketchily, Jack thought and realized the ambassador was communicating the fact that he considered himself an equal to, or even above, the man he was now addressing. From the careful lack of expression on the emperor’s face, it was evident Pepys had just realized the same thing.
Celestial Hit List Page 3