Illegal Aliens (26 page)
“You would have to ask Avantor,” Keller replied sternly, and this time nobody volunteered to do so. There were lots of easier ways to get seriously hurt, such as playing catch with a greased bottle of nitroglycerine in a munitions factory during a lightning storm.
“Place us in a parking orbit about the asteroid, Mister Soukup,” the captain directed. “But with plenty of room to move if we have to leave in a hurry.”
“Aye, sir.”
Keeping a hand on his console, Buckley swiveled about. “Skipper, may I recommend we go to Yellow alert?”
Captain Keller smiled tolerantly. He had once been a chief petty officer, too. “I was just going to do that, Buck. Ensign Lilliuokalani, yellow alert.”
Throughout the ship, the command was relayed. Then Keller gave a bone-cracking yawn that was copied by the several members of the bridge crew. “And for God's sake, have the galley get some coffee in here!”
* * *
Sitting significantly alone in the middle of the Launch Bay #2 was a slim, flat-bottomed plane whose gleaming white hull was made of seamless Deflector Plating. In bold lettering, the name
Leonov
was stenciled on her round bow.
Seemingly unaffected by the sophisticated beauty of the craft, the Bloody Deckers stomped on board the shuttle. Ready for treachery, the Marines did not relax until the hatch of the vessel was tightly dogged shut and the air evacuated from the launch bay.
Under normal conditions, the craft held enough seats for a crew of three and ten passengers, but the extraneous chairs had been removed, and ribbed plastic cargo trunks installed to take their place.
Like kids at a birthday party, the gang tore into the trunks. Aside from translators, medical kits, food packs and other such useless stuff, the convicts found three laser pistols, with shoulder holsters. Groans greeted the familiar sight of the woven metal force shield belts, but cheers meet the unexpected prize of bulletproof vests.
The promised guns proved to be Uzi machine pistols equipped with acoustical silencers. The gang worked the bolts and checked the clips with experienced hands. These highly illegal weapons were what had earned them the right to claim Central Park as their turf. Uzis and the Bloody Deckers were old friends. The new AK-74 assault rifles were very nice, but much too big to hide under a leather jacket.
Chisel squealed with delight at the sight of the knife collection, and plunged his hands into the box, unconcerned by the razor sharp steel. Hammer let the boy grab the Bowie knife sitting prominently on top and chose a standard switchblade for himself. Drill took two Japanese butterfly knives and Chisel appropriated everything remaining. When finished, his pockets, boots and sleeves bulged with edged death, and his body weight was increased by twenty percent.
Smiling contentedly, the bucktoothed lad smoothed out his clinking clothes. This was the first time he had been properly dressed in a month.
Insatiable as always, Drill began roaming about the vessel searching for cigarettes. He started with the cockpit. It was as far as he got. “H-hey, chief!” the locksmith called, his voice wavering.
Feeling more like a man now that he had a gun in his hand, Hammer ambled on over and froze in his tracks. There, welded to the front of the dashboard, with no attempt made at subterfuge, was a really huge mucking metal egg plainly labeled as a bomb.
“These guys play for keeps,” the ganglord whispered in sincere admiration.
“YES, WE DO,” a feminine voice said from a speaker under the control panel. “NOW PLEASE STRAP YOURSELVES IN. WE ARE BEGINNING FINAL APPROACH AND WILL LAUNCH SOON.”
“Then what?” Hammer asked. The street punk hated to do what he was told, but was not stupid enough to disobey.
“WE WILL LAND THE SHUTTLE AT THE APPROPRIATE SPOT AND TURN THE MISSION OVER TO YOU.”
The Bloody Deckers nodded. Great, that's when they could make their escape.
“WE WILL BE KEEPING A CONSTANT AUDIO AND VIDEO SURVEILLANCE ON YOU VIA OUR SCANNERS,” continued the voice. “BUT YOU WILL BE AUTONOMOUS. WE WILL INTERVENE ONLY WHEN YOU SHOUT FOR HELP. IF YOU DO, THEN STAND BACK.” There was a pause. “AND WE MEAN THAT LITERALLY. STAND BACK.”
* * *
“Understand?” Lilliuokalani asked into a microphone. The Deckers murmured vague assents from a speaker on her console. “Acknowledged then,
Ramariez
out.” She released the thumb switch and returned the microphone to her console.
“Ready to go, sir,” the ensign reported.
Keller crumpled his drained coffee cup and stuffed its Styrofoam corpse into the disposal slot in the arm of his chair. “Take them out, Mr. Soukup.”
“Aye, sir,” the woman said, plugging a miniature joy stick into her console and then flipping a switch. Watching the computer graphics on her tracking monitor, the ensign thumbed the button on top of the joy stick and the shuttle launched.
Under the adroit control of the expert pilot, the shuttlecraft maneuvered out the landing bay, the thick hullmetal doors silently closing once it was past. Little more than passengers for the journey, the street gang watched in total fascination as their ship jetted through the black velvet of space and gracefully entered the mouth of a dark cave on the pointed end of the asteroid.
In contrast to the rough exterior of the giant asteroid, the tunnel they were in was a smooth tube with a gravel floor and a high, vaulted ceiling. Seven different colored light bars, like grandiose fluorescent tubes, lined the entire length of the roof and pulsed in computer binary to guide the ship in.
Slow and careful, the
Leonov
moved through an awe-inspiring parking lot of assorted shuttlecrafts: balls, cubes, and pyramids everywhere. Most were made of white metal, but some appeared to be ceramic, a couple glass, and one in the back was obviously constructed of riveted wood. A big blue ship they passed was shaped like a clam, another like a football helmet. There was a four-story tall baseball bat covered with tiny windows in which fish swam by, a Christmas tree ornament perfectly balanced on its tear drop tail, and even a good old fashioned flying saucer with a sign on top consisting of a broken triangle bisected by a sine wave. Only Trell knew that to be the sad universal symbol of
FOR SALE, BY OWNER.
Probably an unlucky gambler who had lost everything at the VisPar tables. That was how his own parent had gotten so deeply into debt.
* * *
On the main viewscreen, Captain Keller noted creatures moving freely about the ships and was surprised to see they were not wearing spacesuits of any kind.
“Is that landing area pressurized?” he asked.
“Affirmative, sir,” Ensign Hamlisch replied, already running arpeggios over the touch controls of his scanner console. “Some kind of low energy force screen covers the mouth of the tunnel and keeps the atmosphere in.”
“Interesting. Chief, start calculations on a jamming field to neutralize that screen.”
Buckley smiled at the prospect. “Aye, aye, sir!”
* * *
Finding a vacant berth between a corkscrew and a doorstop, Ensign Soukup landed the shuttle and prudently shut off the engines. As the whine of the ion thrusters died away, the gang climbed out of their seats and grouped in front of the airlock. They hesitated before exiting, so Ensign Soukup cycled open both doors simultaneously from her console.
“GET MOVING,” the voice ordered.
The Bloody Deckers glanced at each other and shrugged. What the hell, if this sissy sounding Ramariez guy wanted them dead, there sure were easier ways to do it than marooning them here.
“Come on,” Hammer said, slapping his friends on the shoulders. “Let's go kick some alien butt, Decker style!”
Lacing their courage with bravado, the gang shouted their name like a war chant and exited the shuttle.
Disdaining to use the automatically extending stairs, the youths hopped to the ground, the gravel crunching beneath their Army boots.
Looking around, the Deckers spotted a slow-moving conveyor belt running down in the middle of the parking lot, going from the distant mouth of the tunnel to a nearby rock wall. The Deckers smiled. They knew about these people-mover things from robbing folks at airports. Hitching up their pants, the gang boldly stepped on the corrugated strip, and they were whisked away through a blossoming interface into the heart of the asteroid.
Bright lights and noise were the first things the gang registered, but as their big-city trained reflexes took effect, they soon were able to discern an incredible hodgepodge of the town laid out before them. As far as they could see, there were buildings and structures of every conceivable description: from ramshackle igloos and ivory towers, to steel skyscrapers and brick outhouses. Almost every one had an electric neon sign of some sort. Indeed, a couple of the more garish buildings were neon signs and had tiny wooden houses hanging out front.
The street was nothing more than a branching path of raw asteroid stone that meandered through block after block of architectural anarchy, twisting and turning like a snake on drugs.
And the people . . . !
The streets were filled to overflowing with a mixture of circus and zoo, combined with a Grade B Horror flick and a fancy dress masquerade thrown in for flavor. As true city dwellers, the pedestrians marched where they liked, when they felt like it, and paid no attention to each other, even when they collided, which was often. Street vendors hawked bizarre goods on every bustling corner. Pungent steam rose from vents in the street, fogging the air. Cryptic alien billboards dotted the rooftops. Somewhere, angelic choirs could be heard singing, throbbing drums pounded from a rattan doorway, flutes and a trombones battled for supremacy inside a paisley tent and modulated screams came out of a concrete pillbox with iron bars on the windows. In the distance, there came an explosion and a tall spire of crystal noisily crashed out of sight. Nobody seemed to notice. It was a hundred New Year's Eves rolled into one, augmented by a small war and amplified through the fevered brain of a colorblind madman.
“I like it,” Drill said with a broad grin.
Basking in the open air, Hammer agreed. The place was okay. It was sort of like that movie about the android hunter. And better yet, not a cop was in sight.
As the gang stepped off the moving strip, an octopus on a wheeled cart shot out of a mirrored alleyway and tried to pick Chisel's pocket. Unconcerned, the boy stabbed the offending tentacle with a stiletto, almost slicing the tip off and continued strolling, leaving the howling creature spurting blood. The gang member had not been the least bit bothered by the antisocial act. It sort of made him feel at home, like he was in Manhattan again.
“GRAVITY HERE IS LESS THAN EARTH STANDARD,” a tiny voice said from their jumpsuit collars. “YOUR COORDINATION WILL BE OFF, THUS YOUR MACHINE GUNS WILL SHOOT HIGH. PLEASE TAKE THAT INTO ACCOUNT.”
“Thanks, mom,” Hammer muttered, wishing he could lower the volume on that pain in the ass permanently. The only thing he hated worse than a busybody, were people who talked during movies. Their blood always ruined the taste of his popcorn.
“So what's the plan, boss man?” Drill asked, in the rhyming cant of the deceased traitor Crowbar. “We split up, scout the territory and then meet back here later?”
The ganglord scowled. “Screw that. We stay together. I got a feeling this place is more dangerous than an honest cop.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Drill grinned, then he noticed something amiss. “Hey! Where’d pinhead get to?”
Upon hearing his name, Chisel reappeared from the crowd. “I found it!” the boy shouted, excitedly pointing to the other side of a five way intersection.
Drill craned his neck over the milling throng to see, and Hammer pushed an old, blind, crippled dogoid into the gutter for a better view. On top of a quonset hut were two statues locked in mortal combat. The ganglord nodded. Yep, that was the place they wanted, The Twin Choron Inn.
Prior to boarding, Trell had told them the story about how a drunk pair of the stone giants had gotten into a wrestling match one night. Equally matched, they had stood motionless on the roof for three solar revolutions, before they finally got sober, then bored, and went home. But by then, so many patrons of the bar used them to identify the place the management was forced to erect a statue of the beings to replace the absentees. The sculptor had done a fine job with the photographs supplied to her, and in fact some of the less observant customers to this day did not know that it wasn't the siblings still up there.
Acting totally cool, the Bloody Deckers pushed their way through the milling crowd and strutted into the bar.
Oddly enough, aside from the customers, the place pretty much resembled an ordinary tavern. There were tables and chairs scattered about the hall, sawdust on the floor, dartboards and astronomical holographs adorned the walls. A ten-meter counter spanned the rear of the hut and behind the plastic counter stood a fibrous, orange humanoid in a knit leather waistcoat. The bartender was chewing on a green stick and using a cloth rag to clean a glass decanter.
What caught the Deckers’ attention, though, was the strange elaborate machine that filled the entire back section of the hut, reaching from floor to ceiling and wall-to-wall. The Rube Goldberg contraption was made of plastic struts, brass kettles, ceramic barrels, glass beakers, wooden vats and a hundred zillion metal pipes, some dripping with frost and others glowing red hot. The gang had no damn idea what the thing could be.
Surveying the room for seats, Hammer spotted two at the counter, but they were on opposite sides of an albino grizzly bear who was drinking with both clawed paws. The ganglord smiled and reviewed the opening scenes from a dozen Westerns, for just the right approach. Yep, got it.
After a hurried set of whispered instructions, Hammer approached the hulking monster from the left, with Drill and Chisel flanking him.
“Hey, whitey!” Hammer called in the most insulting tone he could muster.
Mildly curious, the bear paused in his drinking and rotated a monstrous head to see whom the creature was addressing. Surely the little brown thing was not talking to him!
“You’re sitting in my favorite chair, dustbunny,” Hammer snarled, rapidly clarifying the situation. “Now move your moth eaten butt, or my den gets a new rug!”
With a ferocious roar, the huge grizzly turned and reached for the neutral disrupter pistol slung at its hip. But a hail of high velocity, steel jacketed, 9mm bullets from three machine pistols lifted the unsuspecting alien from the chair and slammed it against the plastic wall, the impact sending cracks as far as the front door. Laser beams then sliced off his treetrunk-thick arms, and a knife thudded between his startled eyes. With a mighty groan, the hirsute goliath slumped to the floor, trembled and went still.
As the smoke cleared, the Deckers waited for reprisals, but everybody else in the tavern returned to their drinking and talking. What the Void, they each thought, the creep probably deserved it. He had.
* * *
However, onboard the
Ramariez
, the bridge crew was aghast.
“I’ve never seen anything to rival it,” Soukup gasped, even paler than usual.
Ensign Lilliuokalani could barely speak. “They killed a fellow sentient just to obtain the chair!”
“Good grouping, though,” Buckley noted professionally.
“It was murder,” Hamlisch declared in righteous outrage. “Cold blooded murder.”
“No, it was perfect,” Prof. Rajavur corrected, walking from the closing elevator.
Pressing a button to swivel his chair, Captain Keller turned to greet the man. “I agree, Mr. Ambassador. They have properly established themselves as people not to be trifled with, and nobody will suspect them of ulterior motives.”
The diplomat crossed the room. “Yes, and only the Deckers could have done it in so definite a manner,” the diplomat said, taking the guest chair located next to the Sanitation console. “I only wonder why they didn't toss a grenade into the place?”
“Didn't give them any, sir,” Lt. Jones said simply.
Rajavur nodded. “That explains it.”
* * *
As the humans claimed their seats, over in a corner of the hut a group of bullyboys stopped ascertaining the potential of the new humanoids and returned to their hand of VisPar, the toughest, deadliest gambling game in existence. It involved: cards, dice, a roulette wheel, random number generators, post-hypnotic suggestions and high explosives.
“Hey! Let's have some service here!” Drill yelled, pounding on the counter top.
Since it was safe again, the bartender stuffed a fresh mint stick into its slit of a mouth and scurried into view. The lumpy orange creature reminded the gang somewhat of a kitchen sponge.
“Peace!” the Oolian cried, lifting four pewter mugs brimming with foam in each hand. “Will arrive soon. Only have eight arms.”
A gelatinous blob laughed uproariously at the old joke, showing how truly drunk she was, and then emptied a beaker on top of her head to nosily suck the milky white liquid in through a group of tiny mouths that ringed the base of her throat.
In a practiced motion, the sponge mopped the excess liquid that landed on the counter top with his hands, absorbing the spilled beverage and metabolizing the alcohol. In an establishment as filled with sloppy drunks as The Twin Chorons, the bartender was starting to get fat from overeating.
“Yo,” Hammer said in a friendly greeting.
The sponge removed the breath stick from its mouth. “This is a respectable joint, creature,” it stated in a serious tone.
“Yeah?”
“Fact. You must pay us a fee for the damages and to remove the dead body.”
“Fair enough,” Hammer laughed and he tossed a single gray coin on the counter.
That almost gave the bartender an air tube spasm. Keeping the coin in plain sight, he laid it on a glowing sensor pad embedded in the simulated wood counter top. The analysis took only seconds. By the Prime Builder, it was chemically pure metal. Top grade Thulium.
“I can not make change for this, honorable sir,” the creature said respectfully.
Hammer waved the matter off and told him to credit his account and keep a gold for himself. The Deckers were supposed to make a splash, and that sounded like a good way to do it. Nothing attracts attention more than violence and money.
“What will you have, gentle being?” the happy sponge asked, a week's salary richer. He had always liked humanoids, especially hairless brown bipeds.
“Whiskey,” the ganglord replied.
He waited and the bartender did the same.
“Well?” Hammer barked.
“Place your hand on the sensor plate so the drink will match your biological profile,” the Oolian patiently explained. “What? Have you never been in a bar before?”
“Not as nice a place as this,” Hammer lied, playing it smooth. It never paid to annoy the bartender. He might spit in your drink, then you would have to kill him and the bouncer would throw you out of the bar. Like, seriously inconvenient.
Complying with the request, Hammer laid his hand on the glowing square. At his touch, the machine behind the bar began to make whirring noises and started to rebuild itself, pipes reconnecting into a new configuration. It rattled and whined a bit, then a lid flipped aside and out floated a shot glass full of amber liquid.
Snagging the glass in mid-air, Hammer took a sip, and then downed the rest in a gulp.
“Goddamn, that's the best damn whiskey I ever had,” Hammer sighed. “Gimme another.”
More than ready to comply, the bartender did as requested. With an entire thul in his account, this humanoid could drink vintage Zish for the whole night and not dent his credit.
“Got anything pink?” Drill asked, a faint tingle stirring within him at the mere mention of the word.
The sponge gave his race's equivalent of a wink, and from under the counter produced a plastic atomizer. Experimentally, the locksmith depressed the bulb and out came a fine spray of reddish fluid. The next two squeezes were directed towards his face. Ah, that was more like it!
Chisel pressed his hand hard against the sensor plate. “I wanna Coney Island Special.”
With those words, the always reliable, never defeated, alpha class, Drink Master Supreme, underwent the usual alteration, paused, and then did it again, and then again. Pipes connected and disconnected at an alarming rate, some bent themselves into condenser coils, others retracted, while yet others crackled with static electricity and tried to twist themselves into the fourth dimension. Kettles began to spin. Multicolored flames spurted at irregular intervals. Ice formed on support beams, melted and reformed. The alien device shook, groaned, whined, burped and trembled. A crowd had gathered by then, and bets flew as to whether or not the Drink Master had finally met its match.
Deep inside the machine, a laser battle seemed to take place. A steel pipe shattered, the broken bits sprinkling to the floor. Steam erupted from the top coil, blasting tiles off the ceiling. Then in a hushed silence, the door flipped open and out floated a frosted steel mug, filled with an extra thick, chocolate milk shake. No straw.
As the crowd watched, Chisel took a sip and nodded in approval. No whip cream, but not bad.
With a sad ratcheting sound, the Drink Master spat out a gob of whip cream and a maraschino cherry onto the counter. The Oolian stared at it in horror and ran to get a rag.
While chuckling at the antics, Drill noticed three doors in the background marked EMITTERS, OOZERS and SQUIRTERS. Sagely, he deduced those must be the bathrooms and decided that no matter how much he drank tonight he could hold it until they returned to the shuttle.
At the other end of the bar, inspired by the toothy humanoid, a spider in a spacesuit requested a dead fly with a straw in its head. At a table across the room, a fly in chainmail ordered a spider with a straw in its head. Hatefully, the two beings stared at each other and sipped with a vengeance. Chisel snorted contemptuously at both of the creatures, and took a healthy gulp of his milk shake. Only wimps used straws.
