Galactic Bounty

by William C. Dietz

  McCade and Van Doren nodded in agreement. A moment later the man with the auto slug thrower stepped out from the protection of the corner and opened up. Laurie jumped up and ran across the intersection with McCade and Van Doren right on her heels. As they ran McCade heard a cry from behind as the slug thrower fell suddenly silent. He was already turning when Laurie's hand reached back to jerk him forward. Without hesitation she led them down corridors, up stairs and through a maintenance tunnel before coming to a halt and motioning them to silence.

  As she carefully peeked around a corner, Van Doren retrieved an energy weapon from a tangle of bodies almost blocking the hall. Three wore uniforms with the words "Planetary Police" woven into the dark fabric. Lying dead a few feet away was a young woman, a girl really, a red band around her head and a snarl of defiance twisting once pretty lips. An empty slug thrower lay inches from her fingertips.

  McCade turned in response to Laurie's touch. "There's two of them, Sam. They're guarding Bridger's room. Chances are his daughter's in there too. I don't see any way to take them except head on."

  McCade risked a quick peek. What he saw confirmed Laurie's report. "I'll take the one on the left, you get the one on the right, okay?"

  "Okay . . . but be careful."

  McCade nodded and checked Mungo's blaster, making sure the safety was off and the charge indicator showed full. Looking up to meet Laurie's eyes, he winked. She winked back. Wordlessly they tensed, and then jumped into the open, instinctively spreading out. Both landed in the combat stance the Academy had drilled into them, feet apart, weapons raised with both hands. Laurie's guard was looking the wrong way and died without seeing who shot him. McCade's man was not only looking the right way, he was damn fast. His first shot blew air into McCade's left ear. His second went into the ceiling, as half his chest disappeared, and he toppled over backward to skid a few feet on the slick floor. Seconds later they were across the hall and through the door of a small anteroom which had evidently been used by the guards. Plates of half-eaten food, ash trays full of cigarette butts, and cheap skin mags littered every surface.

  "There could be more in there," Laurie said, indicating the door to Bridger's room.

  "Right," McCade replied. "Amos . . . cover the hall . . .. Okay, let's open it very slowly." Raising the blaster, he aimed it at the center of the door.

  Laurie picked up a plastic chair and used it to slowly push the door open. Without warning a hand suddenly grabbed the chair and jerked on it, pulling Laurie through the door and into the room. Denied a target McCade rushed through the door to find that Laurie's assailant had her down with a hypodermic needle touching her jugular vein.

  "Freeze or I'll drain her dry!"

  McCade laughed and lowered the blaster. "That won't be necessary, Sara. She's one of us—at least for the moment."

  Sara stood and tossed the needle into a corner. She extended a hand to Laurie and helped pull her up. "You might knock next time," she said with a crooked smile.

  "Laurie, meet Sara," McCade said, looking around. Against the far wall he saw a hospital bed, almost hidden by a jungle of tubes and wires.

  "Charmed, I'm sure," Laurie said, rubbing her neck reflectively where the needle had pricked her skin.

  "You two will have to get acquainted later," McCade said, striding over to the bed. "Right now we've got a few problems . . . like how to get Bridger out of here." Looking down, he hardly recognized the gaunt old man who lay there with eyes closed. His chest barely moved with each shallow breath. McCade waited for the rush of hatred and felt cheated somehow when it didn't come.

  "He's dying of Millette's disease," Sara said, moving to McCade's side. "They brought me here hoping I could make him talk."

  Millette's disease. A rare form of blood infection first contracted by Lt. Jim Millette a hundred years earlier during an unauthorized landing on a survey planet. Unaware that he was infected, the young scout spread it to a number of planets before the first symptoms showed up. Scientists throughout the human empire had been working on a cure ever since . . . without much luck. So each standard year a few people died. Soon, it seemed, Bridger would be one of them. It certainly explained why Bridger had grown increasingly irrational, McCade thought. One of the effects of Millette's disease was a gradual deterioration of brain tissue.

  "He wasn't rational enough to tell them what they wanted to know," Sara said softly. "So they brain pumped him."

  It took McCade a moment to absorb the implications of what she had said. Brain pumping was illegal even in the secret interrogation chambers deep beneath Naval Intelligence Headquarters on Terra. But where knowledge exists, there are always those who will exploit it for a price. And for the completely unscrupulous, the temptation was irresistible . . . the complete transference of another's memory and knowledge, a form of theft often more profitable than any other type of crime. However the process was not without risk. From what McCade had heard, the donor usually died from neural trauma and the recipient was quite often rendered insane. It takes an unusually strong individual to deal with the complete memories, loves, hates, likes, and dislikes of another person superimposed on their own. It was said the second set of memories eventually faded, but few recipients remained rational long enough to describe how it felt.

  "They made me watch while they did it," Sara said hollowly. "He recognized me, Sam . . .. I know he did. He saw me and smiled. Then this man made them begin."

  "Mungo?" Laurie interjected tersely from across the bed.

  Sara nodded and McCade felt her shudder. He put an arm around her. "Mungo was the recipient?"

  Again she nodded and tears ran down her cheeks.

  No wonder they were willing to turn me loose, McCade thought. They weren't bluffing. They really did have all the information they needed. All safely tucked away in Mungo's head. His estimation of Mungo went up a bit. Having all of Bridger's thoughts and memories in your head wouldn't be any picnic.

  His thoughts were interrupted by shouted commands and the answering sound of Van Doren's energy weapon. Outside, two security men were stupid enough to turn a corner without looking first. The rest of their squad didn't make the same mistake. Firing from every scrap of cover they could find, they turned the anteroom into an inferno.

  Slamming the door behind him, Amos said, "Time to go, boss . . .. Seems they won't take no for an answer." He aimed his weapon at the opposite wall.

  McCade felt the blaster being jerked from his hand and turned to see Sara bum a hole through her father's head. Laurie screamed, "No!"—but jumped forward too late.

  "Even he deserved that much," Sara said, handing the blaster back to McCade.

  "Damn, you little fool!" Laurie said. "Now we'll have to do it the hard way."

  "Let's go!" The voice was Van Doren's. Laurie was gone in a flash. McCade turned and pulled Sara after him. Van Doren had already followed Laurie through the glowing hole he'd created in the hollow plastic wall. McCade and Sara were right behind. Laurie led them through a maze of corridors and rooms, sometimes using existing doors and sometimes calling on Van Doren to make new ones. Before long, McCade was completely lost. So when Van Doren burned his way through another wall and they emerged into a conference room, he didn't recognize it at first. Then he saw Mungo and Urbus still sprawled where they'd fallen.

  "This should be the last place they'll look for a few minutes," Laurie said. "Here, let me borrow that for a moment." She indicated McCade's blaster.

  McCade made eye contact with Van Doren, who nodded. Curious, McCade handed Laurie the blaster. She took it, adjusted the beam to fine, turned and neatly sliced Mungo's head off. McCade stood stunned as Laurie bent over to pick up the head by one ear with all the nonchalance of a grocer handling a choice melon. The beam had cauterized the severed neck.

  "What the hell?" McCade asked in amazement.

  "If we freeze this quickly enough," Laurie replied matter of factly, "it may still be possible to retrieve what we need to know."

  "Why
you bitch!" Sara shouted, shaking with rage. "If I hadn't shot my father through the head, you would have done the same thing to him!"

  "And why not?" Laurie replied calmly.

  "That's enough," McCade said. "We don't have time for this. But before we go any farther, I'd like to know who's who. Let's start with the guys in the uniforms. The ones that keep shooting at us. Who are they?"

  Laurie shrugged. "They're planetary police. Supposedly they work for the Brotherhood, reporting to Mungo, who was Chief of Security. Over time Mungo corrupted many of them. The one who calls himself Wong is a good example. Anyway they were acting on Mungo's orders."

  "Not the Brotherhood's?"

  Laurie shook her head. "As far as I know, the full Council doesn't know about the War World. As you no doubt realize by now, I was placed in Naval Intelligence as a sleeper years ago. But when Bridger disappeared, and I figured out why, Mungo was the first to know. He took Urbus in as a partner, and they planned to use the War World for their own purposes."

  "And the others?" McCade asked. "The ones with the red arm bands?"

  "They're members of the Committee for Democratic Reform," she replied. "They want to overthrow the Brotherhood in favor of a democracy."

  "And you're a member?"

  Laurie nodded. "The founder actually. I thought it would be a good idea to have some troops of my own . . .. As you've seen, I was right."

  The unvarnished cynicism of it appalled and surprised McCade. This woman seemed so different from the one he'd met in Swanson-Pierce's office.

  "Then why are you helping us now?" Sara asked.

  "Good question," McCade added, "but you'd better hurry the answer. It sounds like they're getting closer."

  Laurie shrugged. "I didn't think Mungo planned to take me with him. So I killed him before he could kill me. Plus I figure if we give them what they want, the Empire will go easy on me. Who knows? Maybe Swanson-Pierce'll give me my old job back."

  "You make me sick," Sara said.

  McCade watched as the blaster in Laurie's hand began to come up in Sara's direction. But before it had traveled more than an inch Van Doren hit her with a massive, openhanded blow that sent her reeling sideways as the blaster flew one way and Mungo's head another. As he helped her up, Van Doren relieved her of the small slug gun. Having retrieved the blaster McCade aimed it casually in Laurie's direction.

  "There are some more questions I'd like to ask you," McCade said, "but this hardly seems like the time or the place. Pick up that head you're so fond of, and show us a safe way out of here. And by the way, if anything goes wrong, I'm gonna make sure you're the first to go."

  Van Doren grinned his agreement as he stripped off his jacket and handed it to her. Laurie quickly wrapped Mungo's head in it and moved toward the opposite wall.

  "I won't give you any trouble," she said. "I've got as much reason to want off this crud ball as you do." She palmed the wall.

  With a slight hiss of equalizing air pressures, a panel slid aside to reveal a narrow flight of stairs leading down. As she stepped through, McCade was close behind. As they started down the steps, McCade noticed the same dampness they'd experienced coming down from the surface. From the look of it, the passageway hadn't been used for a long time. The ancient lum lights embedded in the walls cast barely enough light to show the way.

  Behind him Van Doren and Sara followed, their boots clattering on the metal stairs. As they continued to descend, McCade noticed intermittent vibrations strong enough to set up a sympathetic hum in the handrail.

  Ahead of him, Laurie turned a corner. As he followed he saw that the tunnel opened up into a small bay which reeked of mold and decay. The pools of stagnant water and piles of unidentifiable debris made a marked contrast to the sleek bullet shape of the empty transcar sitting beside the platform. Beyond it a short stretch of gleaming monorail reached out to join the main line which passed by outside.

  Again McCade felt the vibration he'd noticed earlier. It was stronger this time. A second later a transcar flashed by with a whoosh of displaced air. It was doing more than a hundred miles an hour. Not bad for a back way out, McCade reflected. Mungo had left nothing to chance.

  The transcar had been designed only for two, so the four of them were a tight fit. But after some struggle, and some profanity from Van Doren, they were all in. Laurie touched a destination on the map display and the transcar slid smoothly into motion.

  Moments later they had joined the main line and now began to accelerate. Outside, the tunnel walls moved by with increasing speed until finally they became a blur. What seemed like only moments later the transcar began to slow, finally coming to a stop in a large terminal filled to overflowing with milling travelers.

  One by one they struggled out of the car. As soon as they were all clear, the transcar moved away from the platform, picked up speed, and then disappeared into a tunnel.

  As far as McCade could tell, they weren't under surveillance of any kind. People swirled around them, all seemingly intent on their own errands. After considerable twisting and turning through the crowd, they arrived at a turnstile. McCade slid the metal card into the appropriate slot until all had passed. Moments later they were aboard another sleek transcar and accelerating away from the station.

  Laurie sat across from McCade, her features calm and composed, providing no hint that the untidy bundle on her lap contained a man's head. She seemed different somehow, but perhaps that other Laurie had never really existed outside his hopes and desires.

  Both Sara and Van Doren stared out the windows at the tunnel walls and the occasional stations that they raced by. Together the four of them formed an island of silence in the sea of chattering passengers.

  When the transcar slowed to a stop they followed Laurie off. Moments later they were packed into a crowded lift tube, heading for the surface. When the platform came to a stop, doors slid aside.

  McCade instantly recognized the shiny black surface of the spaceport, the guard towers and the hundreds of ships which pointed up toward the night sky. As their fellow passengers streamed off in every direction, they started off toward the guard tower nearest to the Far Trader. They had gone only a couple of feet when suddenly a circle of glaring white light snapped into existence, pinning them against the black rock. Then came a voice that rolled like thunder and reverberated off the ranks of ships. It belonged to Marvin Wong. McCade should have been surprised, but somehow wasn't. Hadn't Wong said that all is not always what it seems? Anyway, the fact that the Brotherhood had been on to Mungo through a double agent wasn't too surprising either. McCade suddenly realized that the Brotherhood had simply allowed Mungo to do all the work for them. And if it hadn't been for Laurie's intervention, it would have worked.

  "McCade . . . McCade . . . McCade . . ." Wong's voice echoed off the surrounding ships. "Stand where you are or die . . . die . . . die . . . You are under arrest by order of . . ."

  McCade didn't wait around to hear the rest. Instead he aimed a quick blaster bolt toward the top of the nearest guard tower, hoping to momentarily ruin the sentry's night vision. But as he dived out of the circle of light, he realized they could probably use infrared sighting devices. Of course, with so many heat sources around in the form of people and ships, infrared would cut both ways.

  Rolling up out of the somersault, McCade found time to wonder how they had been tracked. Mungo's men had taken the bugged slug gun from him, so it wasn't that. Then he knew. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the metal credit card. It twinkled with reflected light as he threw it as far as he could. As it landed, an energy beam leaped down from the tower to obliterate it. The others had formed up beside him.

  Yelling to be heard over the confused shouting and an alarm klaxon, he said. "Let's add to the confusion!"

  By way of demonstration, he snapped random shots at nearby ships and rolled away. The shots were quickly returned, with interest, by crew members of those vessels. They had no idea who was firing on them or why, but they weren
't about to just sit there and take it.

  The others quickly followed his example and within seconds a number of lively firefights developed between neighboring ships. Confused and frightened for the safety of their vessels, some captains opened fire on nearby guard towers with heavy ship's weapons, quickly reducing them to red-hot scrap metal. Other towers immediately retaliated, their energy weapons cutting down entire rows of ships like scythes harvesting wheat. Under the cover of the resulting total confusion, the four raced toward the Far Trader, only to see it vanish in a blinding explosion as a neighboring vessel began to fire randomly in every direction.

  "Pegasus" Laurie shouted. "She's over there!"

  They all veered to follow Laurie, dodging between ships and ground vehicles, using what cover they could, and occasionally shooting back when fired on. As he ran McCade felt the ground begin to tremble under his feet. Ship after ship was lifting on emergency power to escape the destruction now raging from one end of the spaceport to the other. They gave the remaining ships between them and Pegasus a wide berth to avoid being accidentally killed by someone's launch. Paranoid even at the best of times, both smugglers and pirates were giving free rein to their imaginations, and it was every being for itself.

  Panting heavily Laurie reached Pegasus and palmed the main entry port. One after another they tumbled into the lock and waited impatiently for the inner hatch to cycle open. As they scrambled through, McCade yelled, "Prepare for emergency lift at full boost. Activate all weapons systems and strap in!"

  He ran for the control room, palming the control lock as he slid into the command chair. He noted with satisfaction that Laurie hadn't bothered to de-authorize him. As bank after bank of indicators came to life, he routinely scanned each. Everything looked good. As his fingers danced nimbly among the controls, the outside viewscreens came to life. He felt Laurie slide into the position beside him. Her presence reminded him of how things had been before planetfall on Weller's World. The memory both pleased and annoyed him.

  "All systems operational," Laurie said with calm professionalism.