Gun Runner

by B. V. Larson

  The dark crab-like body slowly shuffled itself around to face us. The distorted face which had been merged somehow into the side of the thing and fused with its shell was only vaguely human.

  The face began to drool, and the mouth began to work. It made loud breathing sounds. It was as if a huge pair of lungs were attached to that face, lungs bigger than those of any normal man.

  “Is it trying to talk?” Sosa asked.

  “Sickness,” Jort said. “Let me blast this disgusting thing!”

  I waved them both back. “It brought us here. Let’s hear what it has to say.”

  “No! We should kill it while we can!”

  “Your instincts are good, Jort, but give me a moment to see if we can do better than commit suicide.”

  “Suicide? It is that thing that will die.”

  “And what do you think its offspring will do once it’s dead?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll let us out of here?”

  Already, at the door we’d shut and sealed, hard-shelled limbs were thumping and beating like drums. The hunched, man-like things were back in force, and they wanted us to let them in.

  “…intruders…”

  That was the only word I caught out of a series of odd noises produced by the face. The voice it spoke with was deep, as if it had lungs and vocal cords that outsized the small opening of that mouth. The lips didn’t move naturally when it spoke. Instead they flew wide, jaws unhinged and spreading open like those of a snake. Over torn and bloody gums, the noises came blatting out of that orifice.

  “…intruders…” it said again.

  “I hear you, monster. Are you a Tulk?”

  The lips worked briefly, then gaped open again. It looked like it was vomiting every time it spoke.

  “…Tulk serve what is here…”

  “…what is here? You mean you? Your grotesque body?”

  “I mother the Tulk. They must have an origin.”

  “I see. I guess that makes sense. Why did you bring us here?”

  “To speak, before the endpoint is reached.”

  I glanced at my crewmen. None of them looked happy. They were revolted, terrified and fascinated all at the same time.

  “The endpoint? You mean, before you die?”

  “I cannot die. I exist in many places at once, not just this one.”

  “Really? That’s sounds like a good trick. How do you manage it?”

  The thing made some more blatting noises. “You cannot understand. Your communication medium has no words for such an advanced meaning.”

  I figured the noises it had just released might have been an explanation. I supposed our language and concepts were too different, or their ideas were too alien. Looking at this thing, this mother of the Tulk, I could believe it.

  “What did you want to talk about then?” I asked.

  “You oppose us. This is a mistake. You must not stop our advance.”

  “Uh… what? You want us to just die? To let you take over?”

  “We will come. We will breed. We will infest and guide your species. When we are done, you will be safe.”

  “Safe from what?” I asked with a snort. “It seems to me that you’re the worst thing humanity has ever encountered.”

  “Not so. My children are benign. The humans of the Faustian Chain know us. They accept us. They work with us. Together, we’ve defeated terrible invaders.”

  I squinted. I knew that these Tulk came from the Faustian Chain, another cluster of stars humanity had colonized long ago. We’d lost contact with them here at the Conclave cluster—but I’d figured that might be due to the Tulk themselves.

  “If you’re a friend,” I said, “you’re a strange one. We’ve lost contact over the years with our relatives from the Faustian Chain. Is that because of you?”

  “No ships come from the Chain now, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “This is by design. This is due to caution. If you have a disease, you don’t travel among the stars spreading it. To do so would be immoral.”

  “I guess I can understand that. You’re saying the humans from the Chain are sick?”

  “Their worlds are diseased. Invaders run rampant. Working together, we’ve erased many lost worlds, and we have contained the enemy. We come here now to help you.”

  “Who are these invaders?”

  “Creatures that exist only to conquer and destroy. They have struck here before, at the Sardez star system.”

  Now, I was beginning to wonder. It was true that some alien invaders had invaded the Sardez system. The humans there had fought hard—but the Conclave historians said they’d been evil people, and the Conclave had been forced to ruin their star.

  I looked down at the rifle in my hands. It was a relic of that struggle. Could this freakish Tulk be telling the truth?

  “You’re talking about the creatures in the Sardez system? I’ve met up with a few—a culus and a shrade.”

  “Exactly, but you will soon learn there are even worse forms. The enemy comes in many shapes and sizes. Their intent is to invade every world in the galaxy. After that, they will invade neighboring galaxies. They must be stopped!”

  It said this last with a nauseating gust of wind and noise. The lips fluttered and squirmed wildly in excitement.

  “Tell us what we have to do to help you.”

  A small hand gripped my arm and squeezed even more tightly. I looked down, and I saw a panicked Rose looking back up at me. Her eyes pleaded.

  “Tell me, monster,” I repeated to the alien.

  “You stopped us at Baden Colony. You have almost stopped us here, at Ceti. Your resistance can’t continue. You must cease.”

  “Huh…” I said, thinking that over. “You were there, at Baden? You personally?”

  “One of my sisters was there. I only recently came here to stop Ceti from arming places like Baden along the rim. Your weapons have become too advanced. We cannot seed worlds that are so effectively defended.”

  I thought about the Tulk we’d chased off Baden. I recalled the strange spherical field they’d been appearing under and had retreated into.

  “You came here using some kind of transportation field, didn’t you?” I asked it. “A point of connection between two very distant places.”

  “Your primitive descriptions match the past imprecisely. You interfered and stopped us at Baden. You must not do so again.”

  Considering, I shook my head. “I can’t trust you,” I told the alien. “You’re too dangerous, too different.”

  “You are provincial in your outlook.”

  I shrugged. “I’m only a gun runner from the fringe. I live by my wits. What do you expect?”

  “Then I must appeal to your base nature. We come to help. If you allow us to invade this system, you can repair the damage you did when you prevented us from forming a hive on Baden.”

  After thinking it over for a moment, I advanced and studied the thing more closely. The deformed face on the side of the shell was sort of human, as I’d noted before. But while I’d spoken with it, I’d come to realize something else.

  “The skin tone and features have changed, but now that I look closely, I see a tuft of hair on the head—that’s Kersen’s head, isn’t it? Embedded in your side?”

  “The being known as Kersen is no longer here. His parts operate in service of the origin.”

  “The origin. You’re the origin? Kind of like a queen ant giving birth to your own race?”

  “That is a rude description.”

  “But accurate, right?” I said, walking around the thing. I thought over its words. “What was the deal you made with Kersen?”

  “Tulk infested his subordinates. He then gained new subordinates, and we rode them as well. Over time, many here on this station became hosts to our kind.”

  “Right… He helped you invade Ceti. So why did you consume Kersen if he was helping you? Why is he part of the… the origin?”

  “When your ships came to invade,
he complained to us, asking for help. He had failed to protect us, so we renegotiated our arrangement.”

  “Meaning… you ate him?”

  “No, no, we subsumed him. He is part of us now, serving in a new and more useful role.”

  I laughed. Kersen had always been a talker. Now, he was nothing but a mouth on the side of this abomination.

  “All right,” I said. “I think I’ve heard enough. I’m sorry, but we don’t need any aliens here in the Conclave. Not your kind or the others you speak of. We’re going to fight all of you.”

  The mouth began to work again, to drool slime and blast out vapors—but we didn’t listen to anything else.

  I pumped round after round into the obscene thing, and my crew did the same without orders. The chamber lit up with pulsing cones of flame as the shredders hammered away, accentuated by larger, blue-white flashes from the Sardez rifles.

  My crew had been waiting a long time for this moment, and they didn’t let up until the giant alien was a slumped mound of death.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  I radioed for help after that, telling Baron Trask and his men that we’d found Kersen and dealt with him—but needed help. I gave few details, as I thought it was a situation best left vague. Seeing was believing, and I figured it would be easier if Trask convinced himself.

  The mercenaries fought their way down to us, and although the enemy Tulk tried to break in to avenge their dead queen, we held them off long enough. When Trask’s mercenaries finally forced open the door, we faced one another with guns drawn.

  “Lord Trask,” I said, “it’s about time you came down here.”

  He stared at us, and we stared back. At last, he released a loud gust of laughter. He lowered his gun first and his men did the same.

  With a gesture, I instructed my crew to stand down as well.

  The baron walked into the room, strutted over to the dead alien and examined it. “I wouldn’t have believed this monstrosity could exist if I wasn’t looking at it right now.”

  “That’s what I figured. Essentially, it’s a giant Tulk with some extra equipment it uses for reproduction.”

  “Disgusting… you said you killed Kersen? Where is he?”

  “Yes… notice here, this fleshy tumor on the side of the Tulk?”

  Reluctantly, Trask approached and examined the region. “Is that Kersen? He’s buried inside the guts of this thing? What horrifying company you keep, Gorman.”

  “A man’s master is rarely a looker.”

  Trask eyed me strangely for a moment. His finger came up, and it waggled at me. “There’s more to you than meets the eye. You’re no greedy fool of a gun runner—not like most of them. You’re cagey. Dangerous.”

  “Thank you, Lord Trask.”

  The baron stepped closer, and he circled halfway around me. I got the feeling I was being sized up, but I wasn’t worried. Jort was here, and with my crew I had as many men in the room as he did. Mine were just as loyal, too.

  “I’ve got one ship without a captain because of you,” he said. “You owe me.”

  I glanced at him in surprise. “There are plenty of men in Magnus’ crew that would love to move up, I’m sure.”

  Trask gave me an evil smile. “There it is again. Wisdom beyond your station. You know a thing or two about the Sword Worlds, don’t you?”

  “I know you don’t just step aboard a ship and call yourself a captain. I know you have to earn it, and the respect of your crew. Otherwise… you’ll end up deader than Kersen, here.”

  Trask nodded. “That’s right. You’d be surprised how many men would fall for that. Vanity, greed… the easiest way to get rid of an enemy is through apparent kindness.”

  “I’ll remember that, Your Lordship.”

  Trask put his big fists on his belt and looked around. His nose wrinkled. “Old Kersen really did a number on this place. We’ll have to take what we can and clear out. There’s no salvage value here, even if we could lift the whole station from her moorings.”

  That statement again surprised me. I didn’t think such a thing was possible—but then, the sword-brothers were the most experienced raiders in the cluster.

  Trask turned to me and suddenly thrust a gauntleted hand in my direction. Jort tightened his grip on his rifle—but then relaxed when he realized the move was benign.

  I took the pirate’s hand and shook it.

  “Our deal is done here,” he said. “You’re free to keep that ship of yours—no, don’t thank me, I’m throwing it into the deal. I’ll take the plutonium, and I’ll wait on Gladius for the delivery of the fifteen hundred rifles we agreed upon. Correct?”

  My mouth opened to automatically object. “You’ll get your twelve hundred rifles in a few days. All I need is a full tank of fuel and an hour to get out of here.”

  “See that you don’t remove any extras, right?” Trask said, with a hint of warning malice. Now that the station was in his hands, he clearly thought of everything in it as his personal property.

  I made no objections and walked out. Jort and the women followed.

  “That was smart,” Jort said. “You promise rifles. That way, he would not dare kill you to take your ship right now.”

  I shrugged. “It would be difficult for mercenaries to stay in business if they killed the men who hired them all the time.”

  “Yeah, well… we little people. We don’t count.”

  I glanced at him. “What do you mean, Jort?”

  Sosa spoke up. “Jort is right. You’re no out-world prince from the fringe. You don’t have a planet loaded with wealth behind you. Trask knows he’ll probably never see you again, and there will be no repeat business. In such a situation, he must be tempted to take everything you have.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” Still, I was worried, almost rattled. Could they be right? Trask was a man who was much rougher around the edges than I’d believed at first.

  We made our way through the station, passing a hundred mercenaries who were stealing a hundred different things. They took everything of value that they could carry onto their ships. Metals, electronics, nano-gear and medical supplies. Even the furniture was vanishing in places. The station was being methodically stripped bare and hauled away back to the Sword Worlds.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  When we reached Royal Fortune, we all felt a certain sense of relief. She’d become our home over the preceding months.

  Fueling her and taking what supplies we needed, we glided away from the station, and then I let her oversized engines flare brightly. We roared away from Ceti.

  Already, outside the way-station, four patrol ships had gathered. They were waiting outside cannon range. I knew they were gathering their strength. When they had enough ships, they would storm the station and take her back.

  But by that time, it would be too late. The station would have been ransacked, and Baron Trask’s men would be long gone.

  We took our time traveling back to the Sardez system. We did it in a round-about way, traveling through several systems under various aliases to throw off any pursuers.

  I was worried both about Trask and his men, in addition to the dogged patrolmen. Trask would want to know where I was finding rifles of such fine quality. He would want to steal the secret for himself. Likewise, the patrolmen wanted to capture me and bring me into alignment with their code of justice. In both cases, I had to make sure they failed.

  When we reached the cloud of ice and rocks that circled Sardez in the freezing darkness almost beyond the yellow sun’s glare, we stalked the planetoid quietly.

  “All engines stay idle,” I repeated.

  Jort’s restless hand slid from the controls again. He gave a disappointed sigh. “We’ve scanned a hundred times, Captain. There’s nothing here to see us light our engines. Besides, we’re drifting off course.”

  “That’s fine. Chunks of ice and stone are expected to drift.”

  Rather than powering up and landing at the secret base, I
’d taken great precautions. I’d used Royal Fortune’s big engines only briefly after reaching the Sardez system. Most of the thrust I’d released had been an effort to brake, to bring us onto a collision course with the planetoid, approaching at a sedate pace.

  As a further precaution, I’d squirted water out onto the hull, letting it freeze there into a hard shell. Shutting down all our detectable systems, I’d let the ship drift. That process had taken nearly a month.

  Now that we’d reached our destination, however, I was far from satisfied. I stalked the world in my drifting ship, coated in ice. We released no emissions. No heat, no waste, no vapor or active pinging sensors. All our systems were set to scan passively, quietly—we were doing our damnedest to look like just one more chunk of frozen rock.

  Our spiraling approach took three days. During that time, Jort and I slept, played games, pestered the girls and ate too much of the good food we’d plundered from the station.

  “It’s not fair,” Jort said on the third morning.

  “What’s that?” I asked, only half-listening.

  “The women only want you. They are not interested in Jort.”

  I glanced at him. “What’s unfair about that?”

  He folded his lips into a disappointed expression. “Jort has a lot to offer.”

  “More than enough, I’m sure,” I replied.

  “Then how is it that you have not selected a woman? You’ve bothered them both, both are willing. Choose one and take her for your own!”

  My face twisted into half a smile. “What if I don’t want either of them?”

  “That could be good… tell them this, please. Tell them you have no more interest in women.”

  “That would be lying, Jort.”

  “It would be good lie! It’s the kind of thing women are told all the time. Tell them you’ve fallen in love with one of those duck-aliens back on Baden. Tell them you must have webbed foot in your bed.”

  “I’ll tell them no such thing, Jort. You’ll have to wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Until they decide—or I do—who will sleep with who.”