Alien Bounty

by William C. Dietz

  "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?"

  Sixteen

  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!

  McCade knew that much from past experience. What he didn't know, and wanted to find out, was whether the pirates had added anything new since then.

  So McCade was swabbing the deck when the DE came into range of the nearest weapons platform. Never mind the fact that robots normally swabbed the deck. The pirates never asked any questions as long as he did something menial.

  "Platform alpha sixteen coming up, Skipper." The pilot sounded bored. And why not? The DE had the proper codes and he knew it.

  "That's a roger," the skipper replied, looking up from a skin mag. "Hey, gark breath, how 'bout a cup of coffee?"

  "Right away, sir," McCade sniveled, and shuffled his way toward the small alcove at the rear of the bridge.

  The pilot ran his hand through a shaggy head of brown hair, picked his cavernous nose, and tapped out a short rhythm on his keyboard.

  Peeking out from the small pantry, McCade saw the words "Brotherhood vessel 6456 Delta cleared for planetfall" appear on the pilot's com screen and vanish again as the pilot cleared his board.

  "We're cleared for planetfall, Skipper."

  "That's real good, Murph. Hey, gark breath! Where the hell's my coffee?"

  McCade had an idiotic grin on his face as he shuffled his way over and spilled scalding hot coffee on the captain's leg.

  "You idiot!" The skipper jumped to his feet, hit the coffee pot with his arm, and sloshed more hot liquid onto his right foot.

  There was quite a commotion for a while as the captain swore and hopped around the control room on his one good foot with McCade in sniveling pursuit.

  Finally the officer stopped in one place long enough for McCade to dab ineffectually at his leg and analyze what he'd seen.

  The system hadn't changed, and later on that would play an important part in his escape, assuming there was an escape. First of course he'd have to get on the Rock, avoid detection, and find the vial. Just take it one step at a time, he told himself, that way you won't realize how completely stupid the whole thing really is.

  The skipper was still glowering a few hours later when the pilot put the ship down on the planet's light side on the inner ring of Port Seven.

  Being devoted to both military and commercial enterprises the Rock had some sixty spaceports, number seven being entirely dedicated to the repair and maintenance of raiders.

  McCade had never seen someone clean out their ears and land a spaceship at the same time before, but the pilot not only pulled it off, he did it rather neatly as well. The landing jacks made only the slightest bump as they touched down.

  A small army of robo tenders scuttled out to refuel and perform maintenance on the ship as the whine of the ship's repellors died away.

  Eager to see their families, or to tie one on, the crew wasted no time gathering their personal belongings together and heading for the main hatch. And, as one of Ace's belongings, McCade found himself wearing shackles and struggling to keep up with his owner.

  As he clanked his way down the robo stairs to the durocrete pad below, McCade took a look around. This was a military spaceport, but with the exception of the ships themselves, it looked a lot like the commercial version he'd seen during his previous visit. Long orderly rows of ships, and beyond them the endless vista of black rock that stretched to the far horizon.

  And interspersed among the ships were the black towers. Each one was a hundred feet high and topped off with a bulbous turret that bristled with weapons and sensors. Up there, behind armored glass, members of the Brotherhood's planetary police stood watch, and the knowledge sent a chill down McCade's spine.

  Wouldn't they just love to catch him! On his last visit he'd almost leveled a spaceport, destroyed dozens of ships, and caused the destruction of an orbital weapons platform. Now he was back, and if the police found out, slavery would look good by comparison.

  His heart leaped into his throat. There were four members of the planetary police waiting at the edge of the pad! Their black uniforms and military appearance were supposed to strike fear into the hearts of miscreants everywhere and it worked. The muscle in McCade's cheek started to twitch and his emotions clamored for attention.

  "Run for it!" they screamed. "Kill! Run! Hide! Do something!"

  "Now wait a minute," his mind replied. "This doesn't make sense. They couldn't know about me. They're here for some other reason."

  "Oh, yeah?" his emotions asked. "And what the hell do you know? We'd
have been dead years ago if we listened to you. Hide! Run! Kill!"

  McCade was looking for a place to hide when the line jerked to a halt and the pilot dumped his flight bag in front of the police. It was mostly dirty laundry and as the police pawed through it they made a number of crude jokes about his purple underwear. Of course! A customs check!

  "See," McCade told his emotions, "there was nothing to worry about."

  "Maybe," they grudgingly admitted, "but let's delay the celebration until after the customs check."

  Having finished with his flight bag, the police were running sensors over the pilot's body. It made sense. Without a search the crew would start to skim loot off the top of their haul and the Brotherhood would lose out.

  The pilot was cleared and the line jerked ahead. As Ace stepped up to the table he gestured for McCade to follow.

  The police flicked a retinal scanner across Ace's eyes while they pressed his right hand onto an electro pad. Somewhere a computer compared the incoming prints with the ones on file, achieved a match, and signaled its approval.

  Three of the police had their visors down, all the more to intimidate you with, but the fourth wore hers tilted up. And surprise, surprise, she had a sense of humor.

  "Name?"

  "Ace Javers."

  The woman consulted her hand-held comp. "Gee, Ace, looks like we've got a mix-up here. The computer thinks you're some guy named Harold."

  Ace mumbled something.

  The policewoman pretended not to hear. "What was that? Harold? Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Glad we settled that. Now, who's the guy in chains? Prince Alexander?"

  "We call him gark breath," Ace responded, eager to regain some of his lost composure. "I won him playing Flash."

  "Witnesses?"

  "The skipper was there."

  "Good enough. We'll take him from here. Usual deal, ninety percent for you, ten for the Brotherhood."

  "Sounds good."

  "Okay, give me your seal."

  Ace pressed his right hand on the electro pad for a second time and was waved through the checkpoint. He took off without so much as a backward glance at McCade.

  The policewoman gestured for McCade to step forward. "Okay, gark breath, let's check you in."

  McCade was scanned, printed, and cleared all within a couple of minutes. Even so the seconds dragged by like hours, each one bringing the very real possibility that the central computer would cough up his real identity and finish his mission right there.

  But his real identity had never been properly recorded during his previous visit to the Rock, so nothing happened.

  The policewoman looked up from her comp and smiled. "Hey, buddy, you're now WM 89546. It ain't much, but it sure beats the hell out of gark breath. Next!"

  Two hours and a series of rides later McCade found himself in an all-male holding pen. For someone who'd done time in Molaria's Pit 47, it was all too familiar: the hopeless eyes of his fellow prisoners, the subjugation of the weak by the strong, and the desperate scramble for food. McCade faded into the dog-eat-dog structure of it without conscious thought.

  But all things considered, the holding pen was nicer than Pit 47. It was well lit, fairly spacious, and furnished with durasteel furniture. You couldn't move it, you couldn't burn it, but you could sit on it and McCade did.

  There were other differences as well. Where Pit 47 had housed the same men for months at a time, there was constant turnover in the holding pen, and that slowed the emergence of a strong pecking order. And that was fine with McCade because beating the hell out of people was not his idea of a good time.

  "Aha," said a voice from behind him. "A fellow anomaly I trust?"

  McCade turned to find himself face-to-face with a little man with bright inquisitive eyes, a long, thin nose, and ears that stuck out like handles on a cup. Like McCade he was dressed in little more than rags.

  "An anomaly?" McCade asked.

  "Why yes," the man replied. "You know, a deviation from the norm."

  McCade smiled patiently. "Yes, I know the meaning of the word, I just don't understand how it applies."

  The little man looked surprised. "You don't? How strange. It's quite obvious to me." The bright little eyes looked McCade up and down. "You're in good shape, you're well fed, and you're wearing nice rags."

  "Nice rags?"

  "Um-hmm," the little man said. "Nice leathers that were ripped and torn to look like rags. And there's your body language. While most of us are scared, wondering what'll happen next, you're relaxed. So, you're an anomaly. And where there's an anomaly there's a reason."

  "And you have a big mouth," McCade said thoughtfully. "Which doesn't qualify you as an anomaly, but could get you in deep trouble."

  The little man looked around to make sure that no one else was listening. "Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me." He stuck out his hand. "They call me Chips."

  As McCade shook the other man's hand he found it was dry and surprisingly hard. "Chips?"

  "Yeah, Chips, like in computers. That's what makes me different than the rest of this herd. I'm smarter than they are."

  McCade nodded thoughtfully. "That's just great, Chips, except for one little thing. If you're so smart, how come you're a slave?"

  Chips dismissed McCade's comment with a wave of one hand. "This is a temporary inconvenience, nothing more. I work—or should I say 'worked'?—for a large conglomerate. Maybe you've heard of it. Mega Mining and Metals. No? Well, it's big, take my word for it, and I am, or was, their top programmer.

  "I was on my way to restore a major systems failure on some godforsaken asteroid when the company speedster came out of hyperspace right on top of a pirate raider. We tried to run, but they put a tractor beam on us and reeled us in like a dead carp. So, here I am, but," Chips added brightly, "not for long."

  Chips looked around and lowered his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. "How would you like to get off this rock?"

  McCade had run into his share of deluded prisoners before, Pit 47 had housed some real lulus, but he decided to play along. Although Chips seemed like a flake, he'd seen through McCade's disguise with disconcerting ease and that suggested hidden depths.

  "I'd love to get off this rock," McCade replied, "assuming I can pick the time."

  Chip's smile revealed some expensive dental work. "Good, because all I need to get us off-planet are these"—he waggled his fingers—"and a willing endomorph." Chips looked McCade up and down like a chef selecting a side of beef.

  McCade sighed. From gark breath to endomorph in a single day. Sometimes you just can't win.

  As slave markets go it wasn't too bad. It was fairly clean for one thing and they didn't beat you for another. Not much anyway. This didn't stem from latent humanism but from a reluctance to damage the merchandise. And being part of the merchandise, McCade approved.

  At the moment he and Chips were standing in a line that led out and onto a small stage. An underground transcar ride had brought them here from the central holding pens.

  Like everyone else they were naked, stripped of even their rags, and exposed to the world. McCade was reminded of his journey through the corridors of Molaria, and decided to handle it the same way, forcing himself to stand tall and look people in the eye.

  Everything was painted an eye-searing white. White walls, white ceiling, and a white floor.

  It seemed strange at first, until McCade realized that the white background made them easier to see. Especially for eyes used to a level of illumination higher than earth normal, and presumably there were some such in the audience.

  Seventeen

  As slave markets go it wasn't too bad. It was fairly clean for one thing and they didn't beat you for another. Not much anyway. This didn't stem from latent humanism but from a reluctance to damage the merchandise. And being part of the merchandise, McCade approved.

  At the moment he and Chips were standing in a line that led out and onto a small stage. An underground transcar ride had
brought them here from the central holding pens.

  Like everyone else they were naked, stripped of even their rags, and exposed to the world. McCade was reminded of his journey through the corridors of Molaria, and decided to handle it the same way, forcing himself to stand tall and look people in the eye.

  Everything was painted an eye-searing white. White walls, white ceiling, and a white floor.

  It seemed strange at first, until McCade realized that the white background made them easier to see. Especially for eyes used to a level of illumination higher than earth normal, and presumably there were some such in the audience.

  But no amount of white paint could cover up the feel of the place, the stink of their sweat, or the fear that oozed out through their pores to fill the air. It was a bad place, a place where sentients were bought and sold like hunks of meat, a place from which all compassion had long since fled.

  Beyond the stage there was row after row of theater-style seating. The seats were already half fall and the would-be slave buyers were still flooding in. A more variegated lot McCade had never seen.

  There were plenty of humans, the usual scattering of Zords, and even a Lakorian or two. Not too surprising since all three races were regular participants in the slave trade.

  There were some exotic species scattered throughout the hall as well, but it was hard to tell what they looked like due to their bulky atmosphere suits.

  What McCade wanted to see but didn't was Reba. She was supposed to land, buy McCade, then set him free. A workable plan given the fact that she was a pirate in good standing. But the seats were filling up now and Reba was nowhere in sight.

  It was as if Chips could read his mind. "So where's your friend?"

  McCade frowned. "How the hell would I know? I imagine she'll show up any minute now."

  Chips shook his head sadly. His voice was sorrowful, as though McCade had somehow led him astray. "Face it, Sam, she ran out on you. She wasted your friend, took your ship, and sold it. I should never have listened to you. Now it's too late to use my plan."