Book One In The Mag Force 7 Series The Nights Of The Black Earth CHAPTER 1 Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. Sun Tzu, The Art of War Shortly after they landed on Laskar, the four men went out and bought a car. They paid cash for it, so Friendly Burl, the friendliest vehic dealer in Laskar, was not fussy about such details as Who are you really? and Where have you come from? Besides, he thought he already knew the answer. Four gray and faceless suits; probably on an illicit holiday; an escape from boss, sig-others, kids. "You guys planning on being in Laskar long?" asked Friendly Bud of Burl's Friendly Vehics. Two of the men carried briefcases; none of them carried luggage. "No," said one of the suits, handing over the requisite number of golden eagles. The manner and tone in which the man said that single word sucked the "friendly" out of Burl and caused him to revise his original estimate. These were not stressed-out execs. He began immediately and somewhat nervously to count his money. Finding it correct, he relaxed. "Salesmen, huh?" Bud ventured. He winked knowingly. "Or maybe not selling but dealing?" The men did not answer. They put their briefcases in the Car. Unusual. Like everything and everyone else in the sin-soaked city of Laskar, rental cars tended to lead brief, albeit exciting lives. Consequently, rental dealers demanded a hefty amount of plastic up front. Insurance, they called it. It cost a bit more to buy a vehic on Laskar, but the purchaser was generally glad to pay extra for the convenience and the peace of mind. Upon leaving the city, the car could always be resold--for scrap metal, if nothing else. And paying in cash left no trail. By now, Burl was really curious. He had a lot of friends and some of them in the city would be very interested in knowing if competition was about to move in. "You fellers ever been to Laskar before?" Burl asked, eyeing the briefcases. "No," replied the same suit who had paid for the car. He was staring in the direction of the city, squinting against Laskar's garish green sun. "Then you sure don't wanna lose your way drivin' around town," Bud offered casually. "If you'll tell me where you're going, I can give you directions." He waited hopefully. No response. He tried again. "I got a compu-map I can install in halfa-jiffy. No trouble. Just tell me where you're headed and I'll program it--" "No," said the suit. The four men climbed into the car--an ordinary, midsize hover, nothing special, nothing fancy--and drove it off the lot. Two rode in the front, two in the back. Friendly Burl saw them off the lot, gave them a friendly wave, then hurried inside to contact a few "friends." Friendly Burl's was conveniently located near the public spaceport, on the outskirts of the city. Finding the way to the city was easy--the only highway ran past the spaceport. One man drove. The man seated in the front next to the driver navigated. The two in the back removed needle-guns from their inside suit jacket pockets, kept watch out the windows. "All going according to plan, Knight Commander." The hover's driver spoke into a small handheld voice-recorder. The hover reached the entrance to the highway. Here a decision was required. Turn to the left and there, silhouetted against the green sky, were the high-rise whorehouses, the glitzy casinos, the holodomes of planet Laskar's major claim to fame, the city Laskar. Turn to the right and there were cactus and weird rock formations and eventually, a long distance away, the box-shaped barracks, the half-moon hangars, the sand-blasted tarmac of the Royal Naval Base. Glancing up and down the highway, the driver said, "How far is Snaga Ohme's from here?" "Straight across country. About fifty kilometers," was the reply. Those fifty kilometers brought one to the palatial mansion and vast estate of the late Snaga Ohme, former weapons purveyor to the galaxy's rich and warlike. Several years previous, the wealthy Adonian had died, leaving his extensive and complicated financial affairs in complete disorder. To give him credit, Ohme had not expected to be murdered. Always pleased to be able to help one of its citizens, the military had assisted Ohme's creditors by immediately seizing control of the Adonian's estate, including all weapons, designs for weapons, and prototypes of new weapons that the late Snaga Ohme had invented. "Is Knight Officer Fuqua still inside the Ohme estate?" "Yes, sir. But according to his latest report, his unit is due to transfer out anytime now. He'll have to leave with the unit, of course." The driver nodded. "He has served his purpose. I doubt if we could learn anything more from him. We will proceed to Laskar." Arriving at the intersection, the hovercar turned left. Laskar was not a planned community. Its streets had not been laid out according to any grand design. Rather, its buildings had sprung up like fungus, sprouting wherever the spores happened to fall. Buildings rarely faced each other, or fronted a street, but stood sideways to one another, like two hookers working the same block, who pretend to ignore each other yet keep a watchful eye on the competition. Consequently, the streets had been laid out around the buildings, which resulted in a great many serpentine roads, innumerable alleys, dead ends (aptly named), cul-de-sacs, and streets that had started out going somewhere only to end up lost and confused in the center of a very bad nowhere. The four men were driving to one of the worst nowheres in Laskar. Which was why there were four of them. And the needleguns. The navigator guided them unerringly through the maze of gambling dens, liquor bars, drug-bars, cyber-bars, bloodbars. They drove past the live sex, semi-live sex, semiconscious sex joints. They ignored the hookers of every age, race, sex, gender, and planetary origin. They paid scant attention to the occasional cop-shop--fortified bunkers from which the cops rarely emerged and then only to collect protection money that provided the citizens of Laskar protection against nobody but the cops. "Travel down Painted Eye half a kilometer, sir. Turn north onto Snake Road. Brownstone walk-up. Number 757. Our man is on the top floor. Apartment 9e." No unnecessary talk between them. No names. The two men in the back were deferential to the two in the front, especially the driver. The two in back never spoke unless spoken to and then answered respectfully in as concise a manner as possible. The driver, who was the leader, followed instructions, swerving sharply to avoid hitting a woman with an Adam's apple and a low-cut dress, revealing a hairy chest, who swore at them in a gravelly voice and gave the car a few savage kicks with her high heels as the hover skimmed past. The driver pulled up in front of 757. He, the man in front, and one of the men in back got out of the car. The leader carried a briefcase. The second man had his hands free. The third man thrust his needle-gun into his suit coat pocket. The fourth man remained seated in the car. His needle-gun had been replaced by a beam rifle assembled from his briefcase. The rifle lay across his knees. The leader stood on the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk, .gazing intently at the building, studying it carefully. It was nine stories high, made of brick formed from the local stone, which meant that it was sandy-colored and, in the heat of the late afternoon, took on a slightly greenish cast from Laskar's oddly colored sun. (The sun was not green. According to scientists, something in the atmosphere was, which gave the sun its strained-pea tinge. The natives were proud of their green sun, however, and disputed the scientific claim.) Whether the green was in the sun or the sky, the sickly tint did nothing to improve the building's appearance, but rather gave it an unwholesome look. All the windows on the lower floor were boarded up, with graffiti scrawled across them. Here and there, on upper floors, TO m~T signs had been plastered onto cracked glass--the spots of white looked like an outbreak of the pox. People on the sidewalk brushed past the men without a glance. The citizens of Laskar had their own problems to pursue, the tourists had their own pleasures, and none of them gave a damn about anyone else. A couple of boredlooking women in see-through plastic skirts sidled over to the driver and, in a few well-chosen words, described a possible evening's entertainment. The leader didn't even bother to answer and, with a shrug, the women sauntered off. Several of the locals, lounging on the pavement, grinned and laughed, eyed the car with the expert air of those who know the current market value for that particular model, stripped down. The leader paid no attention to them, either. "Cover the back exit," he ordered the man with the needle-gun. "Yes, sir." The man with the needle-gun took off down a dark and grim-looking alleyway that smelled of body waste and garbage. A hand reached out--palm up--from a bundle of rags and cardboard as the man passed. A voice mumbled something unintelligible. The man with the gun kept walking. The beggar threw an empty jump-juice bottle at him. The bottle smashed into the pavement at the man's feet. He crunched calmly over the broken glass, continued into the noisome dark of the alleyway. He might have been less comfortable in his dangerous surroundings had he not been wearing full body armor beneath his nondescript suit. The two men in front gave the third time to get into position. When a...
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