Lasertown Blues Read online

  Jack’s attention snapped back to the commander. “He said it was his job. I think that’s specific enough.”

  “We won’t be able to trace him back.”

  “No,” Jack answered briefly.

  Amber shot him a glowing smile, and pointedly got up and sat down next to the window overlooking the parade grounds. She’d let him know when the action started.

  He looked back to his friend, once a free mercenary opponent, then a companion, and now a superior officer. “That’s where they made their mistake… African Twos are deadly assassins, but they also let their egos get in the way. I might have thought Daku was just trying to eliminate competition for the Guard until he told me otherwise.”

  “Then… why today? Why not a training accident during Basic? We’ve lost several volunteers.”

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe he was hoping to get a suit out of it. You’re going to be screening against potential smugglers among the wash outs today anyhow. Maybe Daku wasn’t against turning a buck any way he could. Battle armor would be worth a lot to a freebooter.”

  The Purple smiled. “And besides… you’re good in a suit. He might not have had the opportunity before today.”

  “There’s that.” Jack relaxed into his chair. The Purple knew how it was with battle armor—he owned his own, a mauve-colored suit that was even more of a relic than Jack’s. Like his own soldier of fortune origins, the purple suit’s history was lost in the mists of war. He thought about the man who’d tried to kill him. “If Daku had been another mercenary, his employers might have been worried about connections with you or me.”

  “There’s that, too,” the Purple said. The smile thinned. “Mercenaries don’t hit other mercenaries. We face off often enough doing work, as it is.

  In the underworld where the two of them had met, employment for private wars and aggravations was the work they did—and it was a foregone conclusion that the mercenary who protected your back today might well be facing you over a rifle tomorrow.

  Purple said quietly, “The word at the bar is that it was a righteous shoot. You won’t even be questioned. Tapes show what happened. Pepys has already reviewed them and dismissed any charges.”

  He’d forgotten how dry his mouth could get. “That’s good.” He needed the Guard. Even the Purple had no idea of who he really was, where he’d really come from—or what he really wanted. Only Amber had been let that far into his soul.

  “Jack,” Amber said softly. “Almost everyone is assembled down there.”

  The Purple tapped his fingers again and checked his watch. “It’s about time.” He looked at the young woman. “It’s a good thing Jack kept you hidden from the other recruits, or Daku might have gone through you first.”

  “If he’d tried,” Amber retorted, “he’d have been dead that much sooner.”

  The Purple’s silver-black eyebrows arched. “Jack, as her guardian, I think you should watch yourself. Daku could have been hired by her former pimp.”

  Amber started. “Rolf wasn’t a pimp!”

  “Svengali, then. We both know that Rolf’s connections are many. He didn’t like giving you up, Amber, and despite the order from the Emperor, isn’t likely to let you go.”

  “He didn’t have any choice.”

  “No, but I’ve been led to believe he had quite a stake in Amber, though neither of you have seen fit to let me know what it was.”

  Amber would not look at Jack, and Jack wasn’t going to betray her here. She was deeply ashamed that her former guardian had subverted her psychic talents into the ability to kill. She’d been trained subliminally to be an assassin—but neither she nor Jack knew who Rolf’s targets had been, and she had no intention of ever being used in such a way.

  Jack stirred. He was more concerned about enemies buried deeply in the Emperor’s organization. He already had one name and a face: Commander Winton, the man who had ordered entire battalions to be abandoned on the surface of Milos. “Daku could have been hired by someone trying to track us down. It’s part of the charm of being a bodyguard—no wrist chips for the master system. We operate outside the computer records and there’s bound to be more than one of us with a colorful past.”

  “Yes that’s a distinct possibility. There are no records of you—or your suit.” The Purple smiled again, that thin elegant smile. “I have a similar problem.” He swung his chair about abruptly, looking down at the grounds as Amber made a sound. “You’re going to be late. I suggest you hurry.”

  “I’ll do that.” Jack got to his feet. He saluted sharply. “With your permission, sir.”

  “Go on. I’ll keep Amber up here with me, if you don’t mind.”

  Storm grinned. “I have little to say about it. Just make sure she doesn’t mind.” He closed the observation office door on Purple’s dry chuckle, feeling uneasy. He and the officer had discussed Amber’s role in his life and he didn’t like leaving her alone with Purple. He shrugged. Amber could handle herself.

  Amber swung around to look at the silver-haired man who ran the Emperor’s personal guard. Jack felt a loyalty to this man, won fairly in combat situations they’d seen as mercenaries against, and then with, one another. She didn’t feel the same loyalty. She kept her street wariness honed like a fine blade. It helped her to survive.

  She crossed her legs. “I know this isn’t social.”

  “No. And it has nothing to do with today’s events, exactly. What happened to Jack today didn’t help any, but it clarified the situation a little.”

  Amber felt a sudden chill across her bare arms. She chafed them in response. “What is it? I don’t like what you’ve done to him. He has a whole new mindset.”

  “It’s you. Your relationship with Jack is a liability he can’t afford if he makes the Guard, and we’ll both be damn surprised if he doesn’t. These last weeks have been spent fine-tuning Jack back into what he used to be—an unstoppable weapon that only needs to be pointed in the right direction. He hasn’t time to foster you.”

  Amber gave a wry smile, one that never quite reached the coldness of her golden brown eyes.

  “You mean I’m a chink in his battle armor, so to speak.”

  The Purple smiled back. “Well put. Yes. He’s going to have to ask you to let him move on. There’re separate quarters for the Guard… you’ll be left in his old quarters, no problem there. And you’ll be provided for.”

  She stopped rubbing her arms and simply held herself, bracing herself for the impact of the commander’s words. She looked at him. “Suppose I don’t want to be left alone.”

  The Purple looked away. He stood up and moved to the window, watching the recruits down below. “Jack may make a mistake he can’t afford by keeping you.”

  The iciness seemed to have reached her chest. Amber swallowed tightly. “I’ll stay behind if he asks me—but he won’t. Jack needs me in ways you couldn’t even begin to imagine.” She clenched her teeth, on the brink of telling this arrogant bastard some of the basis for their being together… such as her being the only one who could control his maneater of a suit. But she stopped herself.

  The commander did not turn back around. He merely said, “But you will let me go.”

  “If he asks. Which he won’t.” Amber jabbed at a small pool of wetness that insisted on leaking from one eye. “Now let’s just shut up and see if he makes the Guard, all right?”

  The silver-haired man crossed his arms and said nothing further.

  ***

  Jack wished he could dismiss the prickle of unease that ran up his spine as he took the elevator down to the parade grounds. Chillingly, he’d noted that the Purple hadn’t asked who could have been behind the attack or why if it wasn’t because of Amber. It was the sort of question you didn’t ask another mercenary. It was axiomatic in the business that you made a few enemies.

  The elevator shussed open in front of him. Jack rubbed the scar of his missing finger thoughtfully. The tale of his service as a veteran in the Sand Wars—a war which had been lost
when it should have been won—and the knowledge of the cover-ups surrounding it, and his own survival, when all others had died, made him a liability. Which was why Jack kept his mouth shut. It seemed healthier that way.

  The sun blasted him as soon as he set foot on the parade ground sands. A gritty brown sand, unique to Malthen, it clung to his boots and wafted every time he took a step. If he had a credit for every grain of it he’d ever brushed out of his suit’s circuits—

  A murmur rose on the crowded grounds. “Here come the equipment racks!”

  Jack felt his own heart drum. The suits were being brought back in. What would he find? Had his own armor survived the testing? Had the uniqueness of his equipment been discovered—or destroyed—by the procedure? Jack’s lips went dry.

  He had to make the Guard. It was his only way to survive in the Triad system without going back to being a free mercenary. And it was where he had to be to ask the questions he needed to ask. It was the place he had to be to hunt down Winton and find out the truth about the Sand Wars. It was the best way he could curry favor and win aid for his plans to revitalize Claron. His hand balled into a fist. He would find the answers he wanted. Or die trying. And he didn’t forget that he nearly had, less than an hour ago. He pushed his way to the rack with the other volunteers.

  The white armor hung there, catching the rays of the sun, and projecting the reflection with an aura of its own. It was a little sleeker than the newer models, the Flexalinks were of a different alloy, and the helmet hanging on the meathook above it had more face plate. It also carried repaired crimps and, on the chest, a duller paint hid the insignia he’d painted there… oh, some twenty years ago. When he wasn’t much younger physically than he was now.

  Jack grabbed a gauntlet and pulled the suit closer.

  *Hi, boss.*

  The sentience within the suit greeted him, and Jack let out his breath in a ragged sigh. Whatever tests the armor had undergone, the microscopic being determinedly regenerating itself inside Jack’s suit still lived.

  He wasn’t sure how he greeted that knowledge. The nightmare of Milos haunted him every time he wore the suit… but it had become a drug he couldn’t do without when making war. The Milots had salted the suits of the Knights with a parasite. It infested the men who wore the suits on a long-term basis, and eventually cannibalized them, and then finally burst out of the shell of the armor itself—a full blown, lizard berserker warrior unafraid of death. The Milots had thought the berserkers could save them when the Knights could not. They’d been wrong on all counts.

  And they’d created part of the nightmare which had led the Dominion to abandon their troops on Milos. The infected men and suits had been scourged, by leaving them to the Thraks. Only a minor effort to pick up the troops had been made, to save face, and with the knowledge that the pullout was doomed to be stopped by the Thrakian warships ringing the planet. Whoever had calculated that eventuality had been dead right—except for one troopship which had made it through, even though it was vitally damaged.

  Jack knew only that the parasite wasn’t in him. Amber sensed it, could single out the growing soul. It was in the suit. But when he wore the suit, it enhanced his already considerable abilities. It invaded him. It made him invincible.

  And he needed that to extract the revenge he sought.

  “Hi, Bogie,” he whispered back mentally. “Rough time?”

  *Th’ worst. Where’s Amber? I lost her.*

  “She was helping me out.” Jack paused as Garner, the recruit next to him, grinned.

  “Glad to get the old suit back, huh, Storm.”

  Garner pulled his rack close. “You have to work miracles with that junk to keep up with us.”

  Jack shrugged off the volunteer’s sneer.

  “Cut it out, Garner,” a voice said at Jack’s back. “And, obsolete or not, that suit can power walk circles around you.”

  “Maybe. Ask him what happened to the guy who went out for a beer with him this morning, eh?”

  Jack backed out of the skirmish, dragging the rack behind him, thinking of the suit that had trailed him across the galaxy. It was old enough to have been left him by his father. As far as his fellow recruits—and even the Purple—were concerned, it had been.

  Garner wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He followed after, still leering. “You know what they say about you? They call you Silent Jack. You’re no team player. Yeah, that’s it. You always know more than you say. A helluva lot more.”

  Jack met the narrowed gaze of the other. “We’re down to count zero on this one, Garner. If you’d wanted to eliminate me from the finals, you had your chance. Now I suggest you stay clear of me.”

  A breeze must have shaken the suit on its rack because the right gauntlet lifted and wavered on its own. Garner’s face whitened and he pivoted away. Jack grabbed for the gauntlet.

  *Lemme at him, boss.*

  “Forget it, Bogie.” But Jack’s stomach muscles went tight. He was losing control of the suit—and Bogie was gaining the ability to animate himself. The psychic safeguards Amber had put up were giving way—and Jack knew that his life was on the line now, every time he climbed into the battle armor.

  One of his last coherent memories of the Sand Wars was seeing a suit split open… a creature burst forth from the cadaverous remains of someone who’d been a friend and a soldier under Jack’s command…

  “Gentlemen… FALL IN!”

  The ranks of recruits swelled across the parade ground, doubled by the equipment racks at their sides. Battle armor gleamed and reflected the sun’s glory, dwarfing the men next to their suits. The D.I. rode a portable cherry picker, just to oversee them. His stony jaw locked as the men came to attention in formation.

  There was no need to ask for silence. Here and there was a metallic clang as battle armor swayed in the wind and hit the equipment rack holding it.

  Jack put one hand out to his rack, more to steady himself than his suit. Even that close a touch brought Bogie’s mental voice into his thoughts.

  *What’s up, Boss?*

  “Not now.”

  A sulky withdrawal replaced the eagerness. Jack resisted the temptation to look back, and up, to the booth overlooking the grounds, to Amber. What had happened to her control over Bogie’s sentience? Unless Bogie was just growing too strong for her to influence…

  “Gentlemen. As I call your name, fall out. Leave your suits behind on the rack. You will be issued a paycheck in the locker room.”

  The hair on the back of Jack’s neck crawled, in spite of himself. In a silence as cold as the cryogenic sleep that had dominated nearly half his life, he waited for his name to be called and never heard it.

  The men left behind in a field of battle armor stirred unbelievingly as the DJ.’s voice faltered. Then the tyrant of their basic training cleared his throat.

  “The rest of you raise your right hands and repeat after me: I hereby swear loyalty in all manner of life and thought to the Emperor Pepys as a member of the Dominion Knights and his personal bodyguard…”

  Jack raised his right hand and lied with every word he spoke echoing across the parade grounds.

  Chapter Three

  Amber’s face was pale. “What do you mean, I’m not going with you?”

  “I’ll be in the barracks. I don’t even know what rank I’m going to be assigned yet. The barracks is no place for you. The Purple agrees with me—it’s better for you to stay here. You’re still on palace grounds and you’ll have all the same privileges you did before—”

  “I’ll be alone.”

  “No, you won’t. Whenever I’m off duty, I’ll be here, or you’ll be there. And this way, you’ll have the time to go back to school and the privacy to study.”

  She bit her lower lip. “I don’t want to go back to school.”

  “You’ve got to. If you’re ever going to be anything more than the thief Rolf tried to turn you into—

  “Assassin. Not thief. Don’t forget it.”

  Jack
met her eyes and saw the hurt welling up in them. “I haven’t forgotten it. But he doesn’t control you any more.”

  “No.” She balled her slender hands up. “Jack, I want to go with you and Bogie. I don’t want to be alone—”

  “You’re too young.”

  “Too young for what? I’ve seen more on Malthen’s streets than you ever—why, shee-it! You’re just a farm boy!”

  Jack felt the corner of his mouth pull, in spite of himself. She was right, of course, unfailingly. He was just a farm boy from Dorman’s Stand who’d become a Dominion Knight and then a ranger and then a mercenary—and he wouldn’t have survived Malthen without her savvy. He brushed a tawny strand of hair from her face. That face. Capable of looking as young as a twelve year old and as old as his mother. But it wasn’t the face that bothered him. And he didn’t know how to tell her.

  “Look at it this way. You’ve graduated from my protection service.”

  “But what if I don’t want to?” She rubbed a knuckle quickly across her eyes. “And what about Bogie! Who’s going to keep him in line? What’s to keep him from eating you up and spitting out your bones?”

  Jack felt uneasy now. He shook his head, saying, “I don’t know. But he’s strong enough now to break out from your repression. If he’s that strong—I’ll either have to take my chances or…”

  “Or what?”

  Jack shrugged. He picked up his duffel.

  Amber stomped her foot. “Don’t you walk out of here!”

  He turned back. His head tilted to one side as he considered her. “Or what?”

  “Or—or—dammit, how should I know! Jack, someone’s trying to kill you!”