by T. R. Harris
The tiny ship entered the system unseen and hid in the wake of one of the larger cargo ships. As it neared Vesper, it broke away and headed for the tiny second moon of the planet. The satellite was nothing more than a captured asteroid and the ship set down on the tiny rock using anchors to keep from drifting off the surface. Monitors were set up, and then the crew of three waited.
Five days later a huge black ship six miles long entered the system and established an orbit around the planet. Two cargo ships came up to the monster vessel and then quickly returned to the surface. This had to be it, the vessel they’d been waiting for.
The three Nuorean Third Cadre operatives entered separate entry vehicles and made for the planet below. Each had the identical objective, providing redundancy, and increasing the chances of the mission’s success. They aimed for the large spaceport where the cargo ships had landed, located on the northeast side of a huge city. This was where most of the Klin activity was concentrated. If Adam Cain was on the planet, it would be here.
One of the Nuoreans was killed by a bulky robot the moment he landed. The other two were fortunate to exit their ships and make it into the city on foot. To avoid the deadly robots, Second-Player Cacas Iniss (990) and the other surviving member of the team separated and set off along different paths to the landing field. Cacas reached the security fence and scaled it with ease. He then scampered across the open field toward where the two cargo ships sat outside a huge hangar. Security was non-existent at the spaceport. Cacas reasoned the aliens had very little to fear on this hidden world, and relied on their machines to respond to any disturbances. It was Cacas’ mission to make sure that changed.
He slipped around to a side door to the hangar and made his way inside. He positioned himself behind a cluster of yellow barrels and pulled out a scanner scope to sweep the interior.
In the center of the vast chamber sat two transparent cubes containing what looked like one being in each. Four of the deadly robots stood guard. Cacas focused the scanner on the smaller of the two boxes and the occupant inside. A moment later, he lifted a small databox and compared the images. It was Adam Cain.
With his primary mission accomplished, Cacas did a cursory sweep of the other cube. Inside was a thin wisp of gas, and through the fog he spotted a figure lying on the floor. It was gray-skinned with a strange apparatus fastened around its torso. It appeared to be dead. This would be the mutant Panur.
Satisfied, Cacas slipped out the way he came and rushed off to the side of a nearby building. He found a hidden alcove between two trash receptacles and sat down, his back against a metal wall. He pulled out the comm device and activated it without hesitation, even though he knew it would seal his fate. Cacas knew this was a one-way mission, and he took pride in that knowledge.
There was a slight chance the signal could be traced, but only if the aliens were looking for it. Even if they did, there was no way they’d be able to decipher the encrypted message. The series of electronic pulses shot from the surface of Vesper and to the spaceship on the small moon. From there, a miniature wormhole link reached out through the void and made contact with the ship of his Third Cadre commander, Kontin Lemoon (918).
The Nuorean officer felt a tremendous surge of excitement and pride when the message was received. Just as it was for the lowly Cacas, this was his primary mission, and now he had the final piece of the puzzle. He wasted no time relaying the signal to the unit he’d left at the transit point on the edge of the Kac. The periodic pulse jump was due forty minutes later. When the time came, the signal was routed through the return pulse, and a split second later the data sent from Cacas on Vesper was in the Suponac galaxy. It had only taken forty-four minutes for the signal to make it to another a galaxy.
But the signal’s journey wasn’t over. Wormhole comms moved the signal from the landing point of LP-6 to the transit point for the LP-5 station. Like LP-6, there was a periodic pulse cycling every forty minutes, designed to catch any signal transmitted from the Kac.
All Launch Point stations in the Nuorean system were dedicated to the singular mission of finding and killing Adam Cain. Now that the focusing marker for the target planet had reached the landing point for LP-5, it was a simple matter of broadcasting the data to LP-6, a distance of half a light-year. The tracking signal was programmed into the computers at the midpoint station and the series of huge gravity generators began to move, aligning with their target one-and-half-million light-years away.
Since the energy required to transmit the tiny data pack was so minimal, the time required to recharge the generators was also greatly reduced, from the normal twenty-two day time frame after a standard transit, to only three hours.
In three hours, Adam Cain would be dead.
24
Before Panur had fully recovered, Robert McCarthy entered the hangar and surveyed the work of the Klin technicians. Then he walked over to Adam’s cell.
“We know the mutant can be frozen from the outside in,” he said in a particularly jovial voice. “Now we’ll see how he likes being frozen from the inside out. You should tell him when he recovers that the vest is rigged to go off if he tries to escape. I wouldn’t want any accidents to happen.”
Robert smiled at Adam. “And now for you.”
Out of nowhere, Adam was hit by a strong bolt of electricity. His whole world turned white before he passed out.
When he recovered, Adam had a brief flashback to the only other time he’d be struck by a Klin stun gun. That was twenty years ago, the night he was abducted from Earth. And if he recalled the incident correctly, he was just as pissed at that time as he was now.
While he slept, the Klin had placed a personal diffusion shield around his torso and electrified it. He figured this was to neutralize his ATD. It seemed to be working. They’d also chained his arms and legs together, and tied him upright to an alien form of hand dolly.
Robert was inside the plastic cell, waiting for him to wake up.
“Ah good, you’re awake.” He waited for Adam to survey his bindings. “Please understand that I’ve taken these precautions so I can present you to the Pleabaen. He’s pretty skittish, and this is the only way he’d see you. Once that’s done, I’ll take off the shackles. But be warned, at that time I’ll also relieve you of your telepathy unit. Yours is much more advanced than mine, and I want to make sure it’s removed properly and not damaged. And as an added precaution, I have to do this while you’re still alive in case it has a self-destruct feature upon your death. That would be a waste of a perfectly good brain-interface device.”
He looked over at Panur’s cell.
“Your friend is just about thawed. When he does, I suggest you both relax and accept your fate. It won’t be much longer now.”
If Adam could have thought of something witty to say at the time he would have, but his mind was still jumbled up from the electric shock. Robert was gone by the time Panur stood up and began to check out his new attire.
Adam looked at mutant. “Here’s another fine mess you’ve got me into.”
“I understand the reference, my friend,” said Panur. “Am I to assume the device on my back will react if I remove the tubes?”
“That’s what they tell me. And then there’s the issue of the four robot guards outside our cells. FYI, we’re to be taken to the Pleabaen soon. After that…well, use your imagination.”
Panur focused in on Adam’s…predicament, and wide grin spread across his grey-skinned face. Adam imagined he looked something like Hannibal Lecter in the movie Silence of the Lambs, all tied up and fastened to a dolly. He would be taken before the Pleabaen, but on wheels. He wasn’t sure what state Panur would be in at the time. That would be up to him.
Panur sighed. “Then I suppose we should get out of here,” said the mutant, matter-of-factly.
Adam made a shrugging motion with his shackled shoulders. “I’m ready if you are. Let’s do this thing. Besides, I have to take a piss, and I can’t very well do it in this get-up and c
hained to a dolly.”
Panur walked to the far side of his cage, opposite the door. He looked at Adam and winked.
A moment later Panur bolted for the door, using all his mutant strength to cover the distance in a flash. The security measures on the vest were just as quick. Panur was injected with a generous dose of liquid nitrogen and his torso ballooned into a ball of frozen flesh, tearing away the apparatus he wore, plus the jacket and shirt of his silk business suit. His lower body remained normal—spindly legs covered in a pair of ash-gray pants.
His instantly frozen body—carried along by the incredible momentum of his run—hit the plastic of the door and shattered it. Panur rolled out onto the floor before coming to a stop next to Adam’s cell. The four robot guards opened fire, pumping ten scorching flash bolts into the icy ball that was Panur’s body. The white-hot plasma was absorbed by the icy sphere, cycling through it with hypnotic flashes of energy. From this incredible intake of heat and electricity, Panur began not only to thaw, but to glow. A moment later he stood up and faced the automatons.
These were mindless killing machines, and when their sensors failed to register a heartbeat or match Panur’s extremely high body temperature with anything in their database, the machines stopped firing. To them, he was on fire, and therefore no longer a threat.
That’s when the mutant rushed the robots. Ten seconds later, all four were nothing more than scrap metal spread out on the floor of the hangar.
Panur went to Adam’s cage. The box was armed with nitrogen canisters, and if the door was opened without authorization, Adam would be bathed in the deadly liquid.
Panur’s body was still glowing white hot; this happened when he took in more energy than he needed. But now he would use the excess to his advantage. The mutant placed his arms at his side and then leaned against the plastic wall of Adam’s cell.
The material began to melt. A moment later, a substantial amount of Panur’s excess heat had been transferred to the plastic. He cooled, leaving an opening in the wall.
Taking no chances, Panur rushed through the hole, grabbed Adam’s dolly and tossed the whole contraption—Adam with it—through the opening. The sudden movement within the cell triggered the release of the liquid nitrogen from the ceiling, but by then, both Human and mutant were a safe distance away.
Panur’s mutant strength made quick work of Adam’s restraints.
“If I still had your brain cells, I could have done that myself,” said Adam as he unlatched the diffusion screen from around his chest. He felt a sudden surge of awareness as his mind reconnected with his ATD. He’d had the device for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like not having it continually linked to his mind. It was refreshing having it back.
He looked around at the huge hangar. “What now, Kemosabe?”
“I need to get to a computer, one that’s networked with the main Klin database.”
“Lead on.”
“I usually do.”
Simply stepping outside the hangar provided the pair with an instant solution to their problem. The airport was partially integrated into a larger city, and dominating the skyline to the southwest was a towering skyscraper easily ninety stories high. That’s where Pleabaen Cosnin would have established his headquarters, the highest point in the city.
The gravity of Vesper was similar to Juirean standard, which meant Adam could have easily jogged into the city without a problem, with Panur leading the way. Instead they climbed into a four-wheeled car with official marking on the side, of which Adam couldn’t read. He slipped behind the steering wheel and a wide grin stretched across his face.
Adam grasped the wheel with joy—he hadn’t seen one of these since he’d left Earth. He felt peddles on the floor and closed his eyes to take in the intoxicating scent of gasoline in the air.
“Now this is what I’m talking about,” said the Human.
He looked around for a key or ignition button. The car was a service vehicle for the airport, so there was a universe toggle switch to start the vehicle rather than a key. The engine fired and the car began to rumble.
“I like this,” he said to Panur.
“Then I would recommend you put it in gear and get us moving. Our escape could be discovered at any time.”
Adam nodded and pressed the accelerator. The car took off, its engine revving to screeching RPMs in a matter of seconds. There were only two peddles on the floor—an accelerator and a break—but no clutch. In desperation Adam searched the steering column for a gear shift. It turned out being a button on the steering wheel. He pressed it once and the RPMs dropped, only to build again as the car moved faster. Another push of the button and soon they were humming across the tarmac heading toward the tall building in the distance.
After passing through an unguarded gate at the boundary of the airport, Adam began to wind through nearly-deserted streets, always keeping the skyscraper in sight. There were very few natives around and nearly all of the storefronts were shuttered. The Klin had taken over most of the city, after which an unspoken understanding took place. The natives would stay out of the Klin section, if the Klin stayed out of the native section. This made Adam and Panur’s journey to the headquarters building thankfully uneventful.
The skyscraper had once been a glimmering business center for the Vesperians. There had been fountains in the middle of an expansive courtyard and manicured gardens forming a park-like setting surrounding three-quarters of the grounds. The fountains were now stagnant cesspools and the gardens overgrown jungles of brown and dying vegetation. The Klin cared nothing for aesthetics. The building served a purpose. As long as it didn’t fall down, the Klin were content.
There was a hundred or more Klin coming and going near the entrance. Adam had never seen so of the silver-skinned aliens in one place, not even aboard the twenty-mile-in-diameter giant space stations called Colony Ships. These vessels could carry twenty thousand Klin in comfort. But they were made up of tight interior corridors and compartments, limiting the number of Klin who could gather at one time. Adam had spent time aboard a couple of the Colony Ships but he never saw a Klin mess hall, where thousands may have gathered for meals. Now it was a little nerve-racking seeing so many of the evil creatures in one place.
The building had a ubiquitous underground parking garage, and Adam steered the alien vehicle down a short ramp and into the dim light under the large concrete and steel structure. There were very few cars here; the Klin didn’t venture far from the building. There were two hundred thousand of them on the planet. He bet two-thirds were in the huge building at this time, making for a very juicy target….
Adam parked the car and then looked at Panur. The mutant was shirtless with his silk pants in tatters. Adam didn’t fare much better. He wore a simple green t-shirt and jeans. What had once been white tennis shoes—without socks—rounded out his ensemble. And now the pair proposed to walk into a building occupied exclusively by seven-foot-tall, silver-skinned aliens. It’s not like they would stand out….
Adam fumbled around until he found the latch for the trunk. They rifled through the contents and found a couple of dark blue work uniforms used by the natives at the airport, when they were in charge. Like most creatures from light-gravity worlds, the Vesperians were taller than Humans. The arms and legs of the uniform hung six inches beyond Adam’s hands and feet. On Panur, they formed a tent.
Adam spent the next few minutes tying Panur’s uniform in places so he could move. He pulled the collar up over the mutant’s head to form a hood. It was sloppy, but concealing. For his uniform, Adam did the same collar-as-hood arrangement, which helped with the leg length. Then he rolled up the sleeves, but left them long enough to cover his pink hands.
“This is not going to work,” he said after checking his handiwork.
“Have faith, Adam. We just need to find a computer terminal and then a CW communication center. After that we can fight our way out…like I know you’re itching to do.”
“I never said t
hat—”
Panur headed for a bank of elevators, leaving Adam scrambling after him.
Adam found the whole building layout comfortably familiar. The truth was that most Prime beings were built more-or-less the same, with the exception of their exterior shells. This also meant that buildings had walls, floors and ceilings, and multi-level structures needed some way of moving people up and down. Elevators were the universal answer.
Inside the elevator they scanned the floor selection. This cab only went to the twenty-fifth floor. Panur punched the top button.
“That’s a lot of real estate to cover if we get in a pinch,” Adam said.
Panur smiled as the car began to move. “What do you mean we? I’d just jump out a window and fall to the ground. Imagine the Klin’s surprise when I get up and simply walk away. It’s good to be immortal.”
“Rub it in, asshole.”
When the door slid open, the pair was met by six Klin going about their business. One noticed their rag-tag appearance, but then moved on without a second thought. The aliens were in their environment; there was nothing here that could harm them.
Panur moved from the elevator and up to a counter with a Klin sitting with his back to the lobby. “Could you direct me to the nearest CW comm center?”
The Klin heard perfect Klin spoken through his translation bug and responded without turning. “Two floors down…nine, no eight doors on the left.”
Adam and Panur went back in the elevator and down two levels. As they made a beeline down the corridor, they passed half a dozen more Klin; some looked at them with disgust, while others ignored them completely. They came to the designated door and went inside.
“Comm room?” Adam whispered.
“There has to be a computer in here somewhere. And I’m going to need the CW facilities to relay the transponder codes to Lila once I find them. Seemed like an efficient use of our time.”