The Knights of the Black Earth Read online

  “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—fawning 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 all 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.”

  Bosk opened his mouth, suddenly closed it again. He shrugged, surly now, and deciding to be uncooperative. Who was this bastard? Coming here with all his damn stupid questions. And how the hell did he know so much? What was going on?

  Standing up, a bit unsteadily, Bosk stalked over, grabbed the bottle, stalked back, and poured himself a drink. He flopped down in the chair, reached for the remote, turned on the vid. James M.

  Warden was resurrected. He was still interviewing His Majesty the King. Her Majesty the Queen had joined them.

  The mental hand that had been tugging at Bosk’s brain gave him a sudden sharp jab that made him flinch, literally. He saw it all now. Everything became suddenly clear, as clear as it could be through a liquor-soaked haze.

  You juice-head, he swore at himself. You damn near let him walk off with this for a measly twenty thou. It’s worth ten times— hell, make that a hundred times—more!

  Bosk stared hard at the vidscreen, his brain flopping around, wondering how best to appear completely unconscious of the fact that he’d scammed the whole scheme and that it was big, really big, and that he was going to make a bloody fortune off it.

  I can’t let on that I know, though, was his next thought, which of course made him wonder if he’d already given himself away. He slid a glance over to the stranger, slid it back quickly. The stranger was staring at the screen, too, but with the abstracted gaze of one who is using a visual aid to enhance far-removed thoughts.

  Bosk breathed easier. Noticing his hand was clenched around the glass so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, he forced himself to relax. He started to take a drink, then thought better of it, then was afraid that not taking a drink might seem suspicious. He brought the glass to his lips, set it down again untasted, and wondered uneasily how to bring the conversation around to where he wanted it.

  At that moment, James M. Warden broke for a message from his sponsor.

  Bosk cleared his throat. “What I meant to say is that the theory behind the device was sound. Ohme knew it would work. There was no reason to doubt it. It’s all in there.” Bosk gazed fondly at the computer.

  “You ended up with the design,” said the stranger.

  “I ended up with it,” Bosk said softly. “It was my chance, you see. My chance to get even. The night Ohme was murdered, all hell broke loose. Sagan’s troops had the goddamn place surrounded. In the confusion, I raided Ohme’s own personal computer. I downloaded, then destroyed, all the files on the Negative Waves project. I’m the only person alive who’s got them.”

  Bosk added the last with emphasis. He was watching the vidscreen with a smile on his face, felt emboldened enough to repeat himself. “I’m the only one.”

  The stranger nodded. “Yes, so I understand. You searched for backers to finance the project. But with the government collapsed and the new king taking over, no one was interested in spending a fortune on a weapon with such limited potential.”

  “Sagan was still alive,” Bosk muttered.

  “True, Warlord Sagan was still alive and had enemies. But by the time they might have been willing to invest, Derek Sagan had managed to get himself killed. He was the last of the Blood Royal—the only people Ohme’s device was designed to destroy. The demand for your product went right down the toilet.”

  “Not the last of the Blood Royal,” Bosk said, with a sly glance at the vidscreen. “Sagan wasn’t the last. The king. Dion Starfire. He’s the last”

  The stranger was nonplussed. “There could be others.”

  “Sure, sure.” Bosk staggered to his feet His unsteady hand knocked his glass to the floor. “What do you take me for? A brain-rotted old queen, too juiced to know who I’m climbing in bed with? This is big. Really big. Bigger than twenty thousand fuckin’ eagles. I’ll go back to Adonia. I’ll go back in style. No more hanging around the Laskar bars, letting guys like you in your expensive suits think you’re doin’ me some big honor by rubbing your ass against mine, then throwin’ me out the next morning like I was too filthy to live. You need me, damn it You need me and I want my share or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll what, Bosk?” asked the stranger calmly.

  Bosk realized too late that he’d gone too far. Fear knotted his belly, sent the gastric juices surging up, bile-bitter and burning, into his throat His jaws ached; saliva flooded his mouth. He was afraid he might vomit.

  He swallowed several times. Sweat, cold and clammy, chilled on his body, made him shiver.

  “I’ll find other buyers.” He decided to bluff it out.

  The stranger considered, said gravely, “Very well, Bosk. We’ll meet your price. Just think of this as a down payment.” He patted the briefcase.

  Bosk didn’t like it. The guy had given in far too quickly. Still, the Adonian reflected, I have got him by the short hairs.

  “You’ll need a technical adviser.” Bosk slurred his words. The shivering fear caused a tremor in his right leg. He clamped his hand over his leg, to stop the muscle jerking. “There’s a lot of data ... I left out . . . not in . . . the files.”

  “Bound to be,” the stranger agreed. He stood up from the folding chair. Placing the briefcase on the table next to the picture of Snaga Ohme, the stranger smiled, indicated the computer screen. “Bring up the files. I want to see what I’m buying.”

  Bosk hesitated. “It’ll take a while to get the material all in order. Big files, scattered. I’m not all that organized.”

  “I understand completely. I just want to take a look before I go. Scan it, get a feel for the project. That’s all. I think that’s only fair, considering my initial investment. Then, when you have the data compiled, I’ll be back to pick it up. At that time, I’ll bring the rest of your payment. Besides,” the stranger added with a slight lift of his shoulders, “I’d like to know the project’s really in that computer of yours.”

  “It’s in there,” Bosk said, gloating. “And it’ll work.” He stumbled over to the chair, sat down in front of the computer.

  Bosk placed his hands on the input keypads. After a second’s wait, the screen began to glow. A red light flashed; the log-on script for Bosk came up on the screen. He had yet to hit any keys. Once the sequence was complete, the menu appeared.

  Bosk cast a cunning glance at the stranger. “Why don’t you go take a look at the view. Or maybe you should check to make sure no
one’s stolen your car.”

  The stranger smiled to indicate he understood completely. Leaving the vicinity of the computer, he strode nonchalantly over to the window and peered out through the grime to the street below.

  Once the stranger’s back was turned, Bosk accessed a file titled “Classical Literature through the Ages”—guaranteed to be a snorer. Opening that, he selected the choice: “Idylls of the King.”

  The computer responded by demanding a retina scan.

  Bosk moved his face closer to the screen, flinched as the scanning beam swiftly crossed his eyeball ten thousand times.

  The word “verified” appeared on the screen, followed by a display that did not appear to be, on first glance, classical literature.

  “All right,” Bosk said after several minutes had elapsed, silent minutes punctuated by the clicking sounds of the Adonian’s fingers on the keyboard and muted voice commands to the computer’s audio interpreter.

  He gestured at the screen. “There it is. Negative Waves. I’ve brought up the outline of the initial concept, plus the preliminary diagrams of what the weapon should look like when it’s completed. I figure that should be enough to convince you that what I’ve got is the real thing.”

  The stranger left the window. Hands clasped behind his back, he strode over to the computer. He bent down to see the screen, leaning over Bosk, who had remained seated. The stranger studied the text intently.

  “Scroll on further,” he said, making no move to touch the keyboard.

  Bosk obediently, and proudly, did so. He, too, was reading the text, written in Snaga Ohme’s precise, organized, meticulous style. The concept was sound. It would work. Bosk raised his hand, rever-endy touched the computer screen.

  “Genius,” he murmured.

  “Indeed,” said the stranger, and he sounded impressed.

  Bosk heard the stranger straighten. The Adonian turned around, grinning in elation, prepared to name what he considered his absolute minimum price for the files and his knowledge concerning them, and found a handheld lasgun within ten centimeters of the bridge of his nose.

  Terror surged. He opened his mouth to beg . . . scream. ...