The Lost King (25 page)

They walked over to the
security fence surrounding the tarmac. Dixter stepped into a pool of
light. He looked tired; his eyes blinked with the burning that comes
from lack of sleep.

"Tusk, we picked
up a Priority Code One signal from the Warlord's flagship. They've
issued a Class A seize and apprehend for you. They have your
description, including a vid— your old military I.D.—
and
your plane's description down to the last carbon streak and rivet.'

Tusk's shoulders
hunched. "So they
did
make me when we left Syrac."

"It gets worse,
I'm afraid. There's a price on your head, my friend. Ten thousand
golden eagles."

Tusk, staring at him,
gasped.

"Ten thousand!
Damn! For that kind of money I'd turn myself in!"

Dixter smiled wearily.
Dion glanced at them in confusion, only partially understanding,
biting his tongue to keep from interrupting.

"What about the
kid?"

"Nothing. You at
least achieved that much, Tusk—you and Platus. My guess is that
Sagan either doesn't know he's with you or he has no idea what the
boy looks like and can't put out a description."

Tusk nodded in gloomy
satisfaction.

"You still want me
on this job, sir?" he asked calmly. "Or is this my pink
slip?"

"No, I need you.
You're not flying your plane and there's no reason for you to leave
the TRUC. When you arrive at the tanker, let Rian handle the docking
and do all the talking. They know her, after all. You stay on board,
out of sight of the vid sensors. Keep your helmet on, your mouth
shut. They may have—probably do have—voice prints. You
should feel flattered. Sagan's spent a lot of time and money on you."

"And what happens
when I get back, sir?" Tusk didn't seem to appreciate the
compliment. "I can't just sit here, for God's sake!"

"I'll work on
that. Leave it to me," Dixter said reassuringly.

"As if you don't
have enough to think about, sir," the mercenary said ruefully.
He ran his hand through his wiry black hair, tugged at the silver
earring.

"Don't worry,
Tusk. Concentrate on this job for now." Dixter clapped him on
the back—a gesture Dion had come to recognize as one of
dismissal. "Good flying. Give Nola Rian my regards."

"Yeah. I mean,
yes, sir." Tusk, not appearing happy, turned to find Dion
standing in front of him.

The mercenary started
and instantly manufactured a smile. He apparently hadn't been aware
of Dion's presence and he cast a reproachful glance at Dixter. "You
here, kid? You ought to be in bed."

"I just wanted to
say"—Dion couldn't untangle the skein of words that
twisted in his mind—"good flying," he finished
lamely. He held out his hand.

Tusk smiled. Taking the
boy's hand, he gripped it firmly, then—consigning Dion to
Dixter with a glance—the pilot loped off, climbed into the
hoverjeep, and disappeared into the night.

"What does that
mean, sir?" Dion asked. "A Class A seize and apprehend?"

Dixter stood unmoving,
staring fixedly into the darkness. A flare of blinding light and a
fiery, deafening roar as one of the fighters took off prevented the
general from answering. He waited until all three planes were
airborne, following their progress aloft with his eyes until they
were nothing but flaming dots in the heavens before he spoke.

"It's used only
for the most dangerous class of criminals— those who are
considered a serious threat to the Republic. There were only a few
names on that list, and now Tusk's has joined them."

"What names, sir?"

Dixter turned shrewd,
narrowed eyes on him. "You know them, Dion. You don't have to
ask me. Danha Tusca, Anatole Stavros, Platus Morianna, Maigrey
Morianna—"

"Who?" Dion
stared at the general. "Who did you say—"

Dixter, obviously sorry
to have spoken, didn't reply. Turning to leave, he stepped out of the
light and Dion could no longer see his face. "There's only one
name you have to worry about, young man, that of Mendaharin Tusca."
Dixter's voice came out of the night and was soft and bitter as the
darkness. "Because all the others are dead."

Put the pedal to the
metal!

Trucker slang, circa
1970.

"Where've you
been?" Nola pounced on him. "We're thirty minutes behind
schedule!"

"The general had
some last-minute instructions," Tusk replied.

The two stood eyeing
each other grimly, then Nola, lips pulled tight, hit a button and the
TRUC's heavy door heaved itself shut with a rumble that shook the
gigantic vehicle. Tusk, when viewing the thing from the outside, had
come to the conclusion that it looked like a squat, rectangular
warehouse some joker had decided to levitate.

"Follow me,"
Nola ordered, leading the way down a metal-lined corridor.

Tusk did so, noting
that the puffy flight suit she was wearing did nothing for her
figure. He didn't like short women, anyway. He couldn't stand
brunettes. Tall willowy blondes— especially blondes who had
more sense than to drive TRUCs for a living-—were more his
style. Gloomily, he stared around him, oppressed by the sense of
several hundred tons of metal-encased rock riding on his tail.

The cabin they entered
was tiny, meant for brief journeys into space and back. Brusquely,
Tusk shoved the woman aside to get a look. Two people would have been
a tight fit under normal circumstances, and the huge lascannon
mounted in the center further restricted movement. Reaching up a hand
to scratch one's head would be a task that called for serious
precalculation.

"It's designed for
function, not speed," Nola snapped, shoving Tusk aside in turn
with a deft hip and shoulder movement that slammed him face-first
into a bank of toggle switches.

"Function!"
Tusk snorted. "I know that's something I always look for when
some S.O.B.'s shooting torpedoes at me!"

He regretted his
statement as soon as he said it. He couldn't see her face—her
back was turned to him—but he heard the woman catch her breath,
saw the hand clutching the back of the pilot's seat tremble. With
difficulty, Tusk wormed his way around to face her.

"Look, Rian. I—"

"Get your helmet
on!" She slid away from him. "We're thirty-five minutes
behind schedule."

Wondering how he got
himself into this and deciding to blame it all on XJ, Tusk pulled on
his helmet, snapped the chin strap with a vicious click. He took a
few moments to inspect the lascannon, not because he needed to, but
because the delay was obviously irritating Nola Rian. The cannon was
a newer model than the ones with which he was familiar, but he noted
and highly approved all the changes in design and smiled in grim
satisfaction. At least something was going right!

Leaning back in his
seat, Tusk watched the woman's hands move skillfully over the
instrument panel. He had only the vaguest idea of what she was doing.
The TRUCs were anti-grav driven vehicles, and though Tusk knew
something about them on principle he had never operated one.

Glancing out the thick
steelglass windscreen, he saw the crew scrambling to clear the area
as Nola gave a thumb's up to indicate they were ready to go. A
rumbling—barely heard through the TRUC's thick metal
shields—indicated that the overhead doors to the silo where the
monstrous vehicles were housed were slowly sliding open. Nola
activated the anti-grav field and slowly and silently the ungainly
monster rose up into the air. Absorbed in the remarkable and
unexpected beauty of seeing the ground fall slowly away from him,
instead of blasting up off it like a bolt of perverse lightning
striking out at heaven, Tusk was startled to feel an ice-cold touch
on his hand.

Turning, alarmed,
expecting a crisis, he discovered Nola reaching out to him, not an
easy task considering the lascannon mounted between them. Her eyes,
seen through the visor of the helmet, were pretty eyes—sparkling
green, wide, with a fringe of brown eyelashes beneath pertly slanting
dark brown eyebrows.

"Tusk—"
she swallowed, seeming to have difficulty finding the moisture in her
mouth necessary to talk, "I just wanted to say that I'm
sorry—about being such a . . . such a bitch—"

"Hey, no. You
weren't—"

"I was," she
said feelingly. "Last night and this morning both. And you
didn't do anything to deserve it— Well, maybe that crack about
not looking like a TRUC driver. But I'm sensitive about that. I was
fat when I was a kid and they used to call me TRUC. Maybe it's one
reason I took up driving them. Now I'm babbling. First a bitch, then
a babbler. The truth is, Tusk, I'm scared. So scared it took all my
bitchiness this morning to keep me running to the head and throwing
up."

"Rian, hush, take
it easy," Tusk said, catching hold of her hand and squeezing it.
"Jeez, your fingers are like ice. Hell, you got a right to be
scared. I'd be worried about you if you weren't!"

"I've flown
through cosmic dust storms and never lost either my nerve or my
cargo," Nola continued, gripping Tusk's hand tightly. "These
TRUCs could fly through the side of a mountain and come out intact.
But cosmic storms don't shoot at you—"

"You're gonna do
fine, Rian. And everything's gonna be all right." Tusk hoped the
helmet obscured the expression on his face. "They wouldn't dare
shoot at us. Think of the repercussions. Reporters crawling all over
them."

The green eyes crinkled
in the corners. "Uh-huh. There's always the chance that whoever
got that fancy new torpedo boat is planning to use it as a prop for
filming a war vid. Right?"

Before Tusk, somewhat
taken aback by her perspicacity, could think up an answer, the woman
had turned her attention to steering or whatever one did to maneuver
the vehicle, if one maneuvered it at all.

"And if it isn't a
breach of discipline, vou could call me Nola."

"N-no. Not a
breach, Ria— Nola ..."

Lord! Now who was
babbling? Tusk sought refuge in plugging his helmet into the TRUC's
crude, antiquated communications system.

"Twenty-six
minutes to rendezvous," Nola reported. "No, the other
channel. That one's mine to my ground crew and later to the
freighter. This one links us—you and me—that's what we're
talking over now. Just leave it alone. This one is yours to the
fighters and it's clear. I made sure of that. You've got to flick the
switch every time from sending to receiving. I know. It's a damn
nuisance but the bastards running the company wouldn't spend the
money to upgrade. Marek would have. Whatever we said we needed, he
bought. No questions asked. Trusted us to know our end of the
business best."

"So now you're up
here, risking your life for him."

Tusk experimentally
flipped switches, hoping he wouldn't forget in the tenseness of
battle and end up talking to himself.

"Not just for him,
for all of us workers," Nola corrected. "You picking
anything up from your friends yet?"

"No. We won't
until we reach the point."

Nola nodded, but didn't
answer him. She was conferring with her crew below, and making
adjustments to her instruments. It was amazing, Tusk thought, how
fast they were actually moving. He could see the curvature of the
planet's surface and one of its small moons peeping over the edge.

"Rendezvous . . .
now," Nola said, peering out through the windscreen.

And there they were,
all three. Tusk breathed a small sigh. One fear down. A couple
hundred more to go.

"Hey, Tusk."
The voice crackled in his ear.

"Yeah, Link, I'm
here," Tusk answered without enthusiasm.

"Oh, Tusk, where
are you? The flamin' speed of that thing hasn't caused you to black
out, has it?"

"Flip the switch!"
shot Nola out of the corner of her mouth, her hand motioning.

Swearing roundly,
having forgotten as he'd known he would, Tusk switched from receiving
to sending.

"I'm here.
Everything okay from our end. What about yours?"

"Picking up
company, old buddy. You see 'em?"

"Just on my radar.
Yeah, that's what I said—radar. We're talking dark ages. And
this damn windshield's so thick I won't be able to see them until
they're on my—" He glanced at Nola and stuttered, "uh
. . . right in front of me. And I'm not your 'old buddy.' What have
we got?"

Looking at the radar
screen, he could see four blips, one considerably larger than the
rest, and he guessed the answer.

"Visual sighting,"
Mirna reported. "Three needle-nose fighters. No modifications.
One torpedo boat. Whewww!" she whistled in awe. "New model.
Got those new hypermissiles."

Nola, who was
apparently monitoring Tusk's transmissions as well as her own,
glanced at him and raised an eyebrow.

Tusk hesitated, then
decided, what the hell. Might as well let her know the worst.

"They move faster
than light," Tusk said, staring out the screen, trying to get a
fix on his enemies, trying to keep from looking directly at Nola.
"You never see what hits you."

Nola's tongue flicked
twice over her lips, before she could ask casually, "Where the
devil did they get something like that?"

"Beats me.
Dixter'd like to know, too, from the looks of it. But don't worry.
They're not about to blow their prize up."

"Maybe the Warlord
sent it."

"Naw! The Congress
wouldn't bother outfitting a small-time government like this one with
prototype torpedo boats. Lots cheaper to step in and take over. Look,
Nola"—he wanted to pat her hand reassuringly, but the hand
was busy—"don't think about the missiles. Let me take care
of that boat. You just keep this thing moving, no matter what. From
what I've heard, you can do that better than anyone around."