Robot Blues (14 page)

“No.” Tess laughed.
“The colonel was called away to attend a court martial. General Hanson sent his
aide, a major named VanDerGard. He arrived in a special spaceplane.”

An alarm went off
on Xris’s cybernetic arm, LED lights flashed, a beep sounded, informing him
that his nervous system was about to go berserk. He wasn’t surprised. The shock
had literally rocked him backward on his feet.

“Colonel Jatanski?
My
Colonel Jatanski?” Xris was convinced she must be mistaken. “Tall,
good-looking black human ...”

“I know Colonel
Jatanski,” Tess assured him. “He is
very
good-looking, isn’t he? But a
bit arrogant for my tastes.” She was regarding Xris with concern. “Shouldn’t
you do something about that?” She pointed at his arm. The alarm was still
beeping.

Xris muttered a
curse, rolled up his sleeve. Distracted as he was over the news about Jamil,
part of him was thinking it was a damn shame that this attractive woman would
now find out he was a cyborg. He braced himself for the look of revulsion, the
struggle to remain polite, the sudden recollection that she had to wash her
hair tonight.

He was wearing his
flesh foam and pastiskin hand. Made from molds of his own good right hand, the
fake hand looked, reacted, even felt just like a real hand. It was warm to the
touch; had hair, veins, cuticles, and fingernails. For a bit extra, you could
add on warts. A fleshfoam, plastiskin, and duramuscle arm went along with the
hand. Most cyborgs always wore such “pretty” limbs.

Not Xris. He
usually made no secret of his cybernetics, flaunted the steel and wire arm and
compartmented metal leg for all the galaxy to see, dared anyone to pity him.
Dr. Quong had informed Xris that he did this in order to cover his own
insecurity and deep-seated anger at the fate which had turned him in to half
man, half machine. He used the blatant display of his cybernetic limbs to repel
people at the outset, rather than have to deal with them and their reactions.

Sure. Fine. Xris
admitted this to himself, but the knowledge didn’t make it easier to see pity
in a woman’s eyes.

He opened the
compartment, made the adjustment that would inject the needed chemical into his
bloodstream to correct the imbalance, which was affecting his electronics
system. This done, he started to pull his sleeve down. Tess’s hand on his
mechanical arm halted him. Her touch startled him, almost into forgetting about
Jamil.

No revulsion or
pity in her eyes. They were bright with interest.

“How fascinating!
What did you do there? Correct a chemical imbalance? I’ve read about limbs with
the ability to do this, but I’ve never seen one this sophisticated.”

“Of course not,”
he retorted. “Who goes around feeling a guy’s phony arm?”

Tess flushed,
snatched back her hand. “I’m sorry, Xris. I wasn’t thinking. Not very tactful
of me, was it?” She sighed, smile ruefully. “ ‘Aim and Fire.’ That’s my
nickname on base and it’s not for my weapons proficiency. I’m always shooting
off my mouth before I think. It’s just that the study of cybernetics was my
minor in college. I’m interested in the latest developments in the field. I’m
sorry if I offended you—”

“No, no, not at
all,” Xris assured her. Now it was his turn to be embarrassed. “It’s my fault.
I’m oversensitive. I have to admit that, well, it’s refreshing to find someone
who takes such a practical view of my . . . uh . . . alteration.”

He finished
rolling down his sleeve. “This would be the ideal time for me to say ‘I’d love
to show you the rest of my body parts’ but I really should find out what
happened to Jatanski. He left the base, you say? To attend a court-martial
proceeding?”

“Yes, I was
standing at the bar when the major came for him. Everyone heard. Some
lieutenant colonel under Jatanski’s command got caught stealing government
property. You probably know him. Sorry, but I can’t remember the name. He and the
colonel must have been pretty close, because the news really caught Jatanski
off guard. He looked about as shaken as you did there, for a moment.”

“I’ll bet he did,”
Xris muttered to himself. Then he said, “He left the base?”

“About twenty
minutes ago. You’re on your own tonight, Captain.”

“On my own,” Xris
repeated. He was trying to shift his brain out of neutral, where it appeared to
have gotten stuck. Jamil ... Jatanski ... court-martial ... General Hanson ...
Jamil gone. A major ... escorted him off the base ... special plane ...

None of this made
a damn bit of sense!

“Odd that Jatanski
didn’t tell me he was leaving,” Xris said. “Or take me with him, for that
matter.”

“He wanted to talk
to you, but the major said there wasn’t time. And Jatanski couldn’t very well
take you along, because you’re giving the speech tomorrow.”

Xris stared. “I
am? Did Jatanski say that?”

“No, it— Oh, here’s
the messenger. Now you’ll have ail the answers,” Tess said.

Xris wished he
could be that confident. A corporal rounded the corner. Tess waved, shouted.
The corporal hurried over, saluted. The man was slightly out of breath.

“Captain! I’ve
been looking all over for you, sir. I have a message from Colonel Jatanski.”

The corporal
delivered the message: Colonel Jatanski had been escorted off base by a Major
VanDerGard, taken to General Hanson’s flagship,
King James II,
to serve
as officer in the court-martial of one Lieutenant Colonel Katchan. Xris only
half listened, spent the time attempting to regain his composure, while trying
to figure out what the hell was going on. His first thought was that Jamil was
trying to put one over on him. If so, by God ...

Xris abandoned
that line of thinking quickly. He and Jamil might goof off on occasion, but
Jamil was far too professional—and too mercenary—to do anything to imperil
their high-paying job.

“... carry on in
the colonel’s absence,” the corporal was saying.

Xris started
listening again.

“That’s what the
captain was telling me,” he said, interrupting. “What are my exact orders, Corporal?”

“You are to carry
on in the colonel’s absence.”

“Who issued those
orders? Colonel Jatanski? Sorry for making such a fuss,” Xris added, “but the
colonel’s a real stickler for detail. And this speech is his pet project. I
wouldn’t want to screw up.”

“He’s really keen
on the subject, isn’t he?” Tess commented. “I could see Jatanski wasn’t pleased
about leaving. But it was General Hanson who issued your orders. Hanson said
that you were quite familiar with the subject material and were capable of
handling the assignment on your own. Jatanski argued some, but he didn’t get
very far.”

“The
general ..
.
issued my orders ...” Xris was balfled. This was getting stranger by the
minute. “That I was to handle the assignment on my own?”

“That’s true, sir,”
the corporal added. He held out an envelope. “Here it is in writing.”

Xris took the
disk, stared at it as if he could somehow suck whatever message it contained
right off the plastic.

“Is there anything
else for the captain, Corporal?” Tess asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Captain
Kergonan, you are to go to Colonel Jatanski’s quarters and pack up his things.
The colonel didn’t have time.”

“Very well.
Corporal, I’ll do that,” Xris said, and remembered to add, “Dismissed.”

He stood holding
the computer disk. “Maybe I better take a look at these orders now.”

“Sure thing. They
have ‘Sarge’ machines over in the rec hall. We’re not too far from there. I’ll
be glad to drive you. You have your ID card with you, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

Jamil had
impressed on Xris that he carry his military ID card wherever he went. They
each had one—part of the Mag Force 7 supply of phony IDs, fake passports,
falsified visas, and a wide variety of forged citizenship papers, letters of
transit, and birth certificates. Darlene had entered all the necessary
information into the computer, provided them each with an alias and an ID card
to match.

ID cards were the
lifeblood of every soldier. Put your card into a slot in a machine and you
could issue orders, bank your paycheck, make a phone call home, request a
transfer, award someone a medal, send a column of tanks halfway across a
continent. Due to restricted access, certain computers on the base only handled
certain ID cards, with the exception of “Sarge.”

Sarge machines
could deal with almost every aspect of military life. So dubbed because they
were big and ugly, irascible and ill-tempered, Sarge machines ruled a soldier’s
life. Frustratingly unpredictable, Sarge had been known to spit the card in the
owner’s face, to return the wrong card to the card owner (all the while
maintaining that Sarge was right and it was the owner who didn’t know himself),
or simply swallow the card and refuse to disgorge it. Sarge had been physically
assaulted on more than one occasion by frustrated victims.

“I’m not keeping
you from anything, am I?” Xris asked Tess, on their walk to the recreation
center.

She glanced at him
sidelong, smiled. “It can wait,” she said.

The two entered
the rec hall, which was busy this time of night.

Tess indicated the
Sarge machines. Xris pulled out his phony ID, hesitated. These orders from the
unknown General Hanson might be some sort of trap. Put this card in the machine
and the MPs come running. But then, why go to all that trouble? Hanson could
already have had both him and Jamil sitting behind a force field, decked out in
wrist and ankle disrupters.

All live of the
Sarge machines were in use. Xris had to stand in line while a private on a
vidphone call was assuring his mother that he was eating right and getting
enough sleep, and yes, they’d had to shave his head, but his hair would grow
back, and no, they hadn’t let him keep a lock of it to send home. When the
private finished, Xris excused himself to Tess, who walked away a discreet
distance.

Xris swiped the
card, punched in his password, and waited, tense, nervous.

The message came
up on the screen.

Captain
Kergonan,

You are hereby
ordered to carry out your assignment as given.

Irma Hanson,
General, Commander Zetan Military Sector, Authentication
Lima-Two-Five-Niner-Tango.

Xris typed in the
authentication code. It came back, a curt
Verified.
The order was
straight from General Hanson, all right.

Xris waited
hopefully a moment, but nothing more appeared, no clue of any sort as to what
was going on, with the single exception that the words “as given” were
emphasized, were illuminated in red on the screen. He stood staring at Sarge,
wondering what the devil to do now.

A Major
VanDerGard—unknown—an aide for General Hanson—also unknown—had nabbed Jamil
and, instead of nabbing Xris, too, the unknown general had given written orders
for Xris to carry out the job! Carry on with the assignment
as given.
And that in itself was odd. The general did
not
say, “Carry on with the
speech.”

Carry on with the
assignment.

That could mean
nothing more than make the speech, but Xris had the distinct impression that
whoever had gone to this much trouble hadn’t done it for the sheer pleasure of
hearing him drone on about “Foreign Object Damage to Spaceplane Engines.” The
assignment they wanted him to carry out was the job he’d accepted: to steal an
antique robot.

Why?

The why didn’t
matter. Because now it was a hostage situation. They’d taken Jamil hostage in
order to force Xris to bring them some old moth-eaten ‘bot in exchange. Who
were
they
? People with money, power, connections. Some rival
archaeologist? Xris pictured academic types dressing up in uniform,
impersonating Army majors, complete with military pilot and a stolen military
spaceplane.

That would be a
job worthy of Mag Force 7. Not the local Space and Aeronautics Society.

What about the
Hung? That was much more likely and the thought gave Xris a few very bad
moments. Maybe they’d taken Jamil to use as a hostage to get to Darlene. The
Hung had the money and the influence to be able to pull something like this off,
though it wasn’t like them to risk incurring the wrath of an organization as
big and powerful as the Royal Military.

Still that theory
made more sense. And if so ...

No, by God, there
was the damn robot again. What would the Hung want with the robot? And this
General Hanson had said explicitly that Xris was to carry on with the
assignment
as given,
which meant steal the robot.

He’d come back
around full circle and he had to admit he was rotating completely in the dark.

The only thing he
knew for sure was that someone had Jamil. Xris had to assume that Jamil’s life
was therefore in danger, and if they wanted the robot in exchange, Xris wasn’t
about to argue. It meant letting down a customer, but the team came first.
Especially—

“Xris! Xris?” Tess’s
voice and the touch her hand on his good arm jolted him out of his troubled
reverie. “If you’re finished, there’s someone waiting.”

Xris hadn’t
realized he’d been standing, doing nothing, in front of the machine. He
apologized to the lieutenant who was next in line, turned and headed toward the
entrance.

Steal the robot.
Right. But—now that Jamil was gone—how was Xris going to get off base without
orders? He supposed he’d have to risk cutting the fence.

“You seem really
upset.” Tess interrupted his thoughts. “What’s the matter? It’s only a speech,
isn’t it?”

Xris was making
too much out of what must seem to her a trivial incident. He shrugged, managed
a weak smile. “Stage fright. I’ve had it ever since I was a kid. I passed out
during show-and-tell in kindergarten.”