Alien Bounty (12 page)

A few things
had
changed since he and Bloody Mary had faced each other in the center of the room. The bar was kitty corner from where it had been, a new holo tank took up a large part of one wall, and the layer of grease that covered everything was even thicker.

Conversation stopped and every head turned as they entered. Not too surprising since they were the most exciting thing to happen all day.

McCade was careful to maintain his submissive posture as Reba pushed him toward the center of the room and swaggered along behind. Watching from the corners of his eyes he saw the bar was about half full. It wasn't difficult to sort them into groups.

The pirates sat by themselves toward one corner. There were eight of them, nine if you counted the woman passed out on the floor. Their table was loaded with empties. They seemed dazed as if the two strangers were apparitions only half seen and partially understood.

Unless they were short on personnel McCade figured there were two or three additional crew members still aboard the DE.

The male pirates watched Reba with a certain amount of interest, but no one jumped to their feet and called her name, so none of them knew her. Good. They had a story prepared just in case, but McCade didn't want to use it.

The freighter's crew sat on the far side of the room. They were as far away from the pirates as they could get and still be in the same bar. McCade didn't blame them. It's a wise sheep who stays as far away from the wolves as possible.

There were four of them. The captain was a solid-looking black woman in her forties. To her right sat a youngish-looking woman with the flashes of a power engineer on her nonreg cap. Next to her sat a brutish-looking Cellite and a beat-up android. The latter was sucking an electronic cocktail via a wall outlet. Like the pirates they'd left one or two people aboard their ship.

There was a scattering of other people in the room as well, an older man and a boy who might have been a match with the tug, plus the usual assortment of drifters.

One of these was a man of indeterminate age with flat dead eyes, expensive clothes, and a blaster with custom grips. Just as the pirates looked like what
they
were, the gambler looked like what
he
was. His eyes drifted across McCade and came to rest on Reba. A smile touched his lips.

"Greetings. At the risk of sounding trite, what brings someone like you to a place like this?"

Reba smiled. "Gravity, the need for a number four power board, and a powerful thirst."

The gambler nodded understandingly. "Would you care to join me? I don't bite."

Reba looked around as if considering her other options.

It's perfect, McCade said to himself, don't overact.

McCade heaved an internal sigh of relief as she grabbed a chair and shoved him toward another. "Sure, as long as you don't mind gark breath here. He gets into trouble if I leave him aboard ship alone. Isn't that right, gark breath?"

Reba kicked McCade just as he tried to sit down. He fell and the pirates laughed.

McCade swore under his breath as he picked himself up and claimed a chair.

"What was that, gark breath?"

"Nothing," McCade mumbled.

"Good," Reba said, turning toward the gambler. "Now where were we?"

"Just getting acquainted," the gambler replied smoothly. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Does a Zerk monkey like fava fruit? You bet your ass you can."

The gambler summoned one of the saloon's two staff members, a slovenly woman who doubled as Spin's only prostitute, and ordered drinks. After accepting two glasses of black brew, the gambler paid and offered Reba a toast.

"To quick money and just enough time to spend it."

"Amen."

Both upended their glasses. Reba choked, coughed, and came up grinning. "I don't know what that was, but I'll bet you could run my ship on it."

"They call it a Tail Spin," the gambler answered as a deck of cards appeared in his hands.

Reba eyed the cards and licked her lips. A nice touch, McCade thought admiringly. Not only was Reba keeping her word, she was doing it with a certain amount of class.

The gambler saw her hungry look and smiled. The cards jumped from one hand to the other and back again. "Do you play?"

"Sometimes," Reba answered with just the right amount of hesitation. "Not very well though. Would you be interested in a friendly game of Flash?"

The cards made a graceful arc as they rippled through the air to patter down in front of her. The gambler smiled. "Deal."

Reba was good. Maybe
too
good since she was winning instead of losing.

It was the gambler's deal. He'd just lost a long series of small pots, and although he kept his face professionally blank, McCade could see the sheen of perspiration that glossed his forehead. The gambler had upped the ante in hopes of recouping his losses. But would it work? If not, he'd lose his entire stake. A stake he'd need to buy his way off Spin. It was just a theory, but a theory that fit the situation like a glove, and would explain the gambler's anxiety. An extended stay on Spin would be less than pleasant.

The cards made a gentle slapping sound as they hit the surface of the table. Before long there were ten cards facedown in front of each player. Reba looked up. "Dealer flashes first."

The gambler inclined his head slightly. Long white fingers lifted the cards one at a time and showed or "flashed" them at Reba. She had approximately one second to see and memorize each card before the gambler flipped it over and tucked it into his hand.

Then it was Reba's turn. She held each card up for a full three or four seconds before hiding it away. But the gambler was
still
losing in spite of that advantage. Maybe Reba had a better memory than he did, or maybe she just outclassed him, but whatever the reason things were
not
going according to plan.

McCade shifted his weight from one side to the other. He wanted to yell, "Lose damn it, lose!" but bit his lip instead.

Now both players were taking turns replacing up to five of their ten cards in an effort to build a full system. A full system included twin stars, six planets, a comet, and one moon. But a full system was pretty rare, so lesser hands usually won.

So when Reba said, "Read 'em and weep, a full system takes the pot," McCade groaned in disgust.

The gambler managed to smile as Reba raked in the pot, but McCade could see the perspiration running down his neck. Chances were the gambler was close to tapped out. If so, he'd pull out pretty soon.

And the gambler was just about to say something when the pirate saved the day.

The pirate was young, no more than twenty-five, and walked across the room with a drunken swagger. He wore a slug gun low on his right hip, like someone who fancies himself a quick-draw artist and worries about what other people think.

From McCade's point of view the pirate was a godsend, just what he'd hoped for in the first place and failed to get.

"Any chance of dealing myself in?"

The gambler spoke quickly. "It's all right with me if the lady has no objection." Maybe another player would change his luck and reduce the magnitude of his losses.

Reba made a show of thinking the proposition over as she tossed off her latest Tail Spin.

Finally, when McCade thought she'd pushed it too far and the pirate would leave in disgust, she gestured toward an empty chair. "Sure, why not. Let's see the color of your money."

The pirate fumbled around in a pocket for a moment before dragging out a wad big enough to choke an Envo Beast. He slapped it down on the table, called for a drink, and shuffled the cards.

Reba's luck took a turn for the worse a few minutes later. The pirate won, and continued to win, until the gambler's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Was she throwing the game? But that wouldn't make any sense. Why cheat to lose? Besides, he was winning, and so long as that continued he'd keep his mouth shut.

An hour passed, and as it did Reba became increasingly careless, forgetting which cards her opponents had and making a series of stupid mistakes.

The others put it down to her heavy drinking, and McCade would have too, except he'd seen her surreptitiously pour them into the semiliquid slush that covered the floor.

Finally it was over and Reba's money was nearly gone. A large pot occupied the center of the greasy table and Reba burped as she threw down her remaining credits. "Well, thaz it, gentlemen. Outside of gark breath over there, and juz enough to cover a number four power board, I'm broke."

The pirate looked down at his hand and up to Reba. His bloodshot eyes gleamed with anticipation. "Fine. Throw in gark breath and I'll show you what I've got."

A frown creased Reba's forehead as though she was trying to understand the pirate's proposal and, finding that hard to do, was pretending to think it over.

The gambler had decided something was fishy. He didn't know what and didn't care. He was slightly ahead and wanted to stay that way. He spread the fingers on both hands. "It's getting too rich for me. I fold."

Reba tried to focus bleary eyes on his face. She nodded heavily. "Zur, just when things get interestin' you bail out. Well, not me. I hereby add gark breath to the pot. Read 'em and weep."

Though not overly thrilled about the name "gark breath," McCade was happy that things were finally moving in the right direction. He watched Reba and the pirate spread their cards out on the table.

There was a long silence.

Reba was the first to frown, followed by the pirate, followed by McCade himself. He couldn't see the cards from where he sat, but something was wrong.

While Reba
should
be frowning, the pirate
should
be jubilant, and he wasn't. Suddenly McCade understood. Reba had won! The miserable so and so had won the pot! All that work, all that hobbling around in shackles, all of it a waste of time!

And that's when Reba did the only thing she could. She swayed in her chair, held a dramatic hand up to her forehead, and fell over backward. Her chair hit the floor with a tremendous crash.

Conversation stopped, heads turned, but things were back to normal a few seconds later. No big deal, just another drunk hitting the floor. A somewhat routine occurrence in that or any other rim world bar.

The gambler looked at the pirate. The pirate looked at the gambler. They grinned. "Fifty-fifty?" the gambler asked.

"Done," the pirate agreed. And the two men wasted little time splitting the pot. With that accomplished they turned to McCade.

"You have a ship and I don't," the gambler said thoughtfully. "Give me a hundred credits and gark breath is yours."

McCade knew that fifty percent of a prime slave was worth more than a hundred credits and so did the pirate. "Agreed. One hundred credits it is."

The pirate counted out a hundred credits, stepped over Reba's prostrate body, and jerked McCade to his feet. McCade cringed, thanked the pirate for hitting him, and shuffled toward the lock.

Meanwhile the rest of the pirates were headed for the lock as well. Two were busy trying to out belch each other, while the rest bumped into furniture and cracked crude jokes.

McCade felt his new owner give him a push, and heard him say, "Hurry up, gark breath, we're headed home."

McCade did his best to snivel. "And where would that be, master?"

"Why the Rock, gark breath, the Rock. Where else would members of the Brotherhood go?"

McCade spent the first part of the trip locked up in a small storage compartment with a broken-down maintenance bot. McCade ignored the robot at first, but eventually the loneliness wore him down, and he tried to make conversation.

"Hi there. What's a nice robot like you doing in a place like this?"

There was a whir of servos as the robot turned its bulbous head. "I have a defective logic board. I am awaiting repair."

McCade nodded sympathetically. "That's a tough break. Say, you're a maintenance bot, aren't you?"

"That is correct."

"Well, if you're a maintenance bot, and you need maintenance, why not fix yourself?"

Time passed during which the robot made no reply. Finally, just as McCade was about to drift off to sleep, the robot spoke.

"I apologize for my delayed response. At first I couldn't understand why you would ask me such a question. Then I realized that you were stored in here for the same reason I was. When did your logic board burn out?"

McCade smiled in spite of himself. "I think it was the moment when I allowed Swanson-Pierce to rescue me from Molaria."

"Oh," the robot replied, and lapsed into silence.

Time passed and eventually, after much boot-licking, McCade was allowed to perform menial chores under the watchful eye of his owner.

His owner was an up-and-coming young pirate who went by the name of Ace, but was actually named Harold, and who lived in fear that his friends might discover his terrible secret.

But it wasn't Ace's friends who discovered the secret, it was McCade. There he was, cleaning up the pirate's filthy cabin, when he came across a stash of letters. They all started out with "Dear Harold," and were signed, "Love, Mommy."

Thus armed McCade blackmailed his owner into some extra food and the occasional cigar. When you're a slave the small comforts mean a lot.

Meanwhile, Ace took very little interest in McCade's past, accepting his lies with bored indifference, eager to sell him and drink up the profits.

This attitude suited McCade to a T, so he made himself the model slave, always cooperative and eager to please.

This strategy worked so well that after a while the crew began to take him for granted and allowed him a certain amount of freedom.

As a result he was in the control room as the ship approached the first weapons platform. The weapons platforms were located approximately one light out from the Rock and constituted its first line of defense. They were heavily armed, completely automated, and capable of identifying friendly ships via a code printed into each vessel's atomic structure. If you had the code, you could pass; if not, boom!