Imperial Bounty

by William C. Dietz

  McCade shook his head.

  "Every now and then I think he is . . . although maybe it's just my memories of him. Anyway, after Father's death, the Walkers invited me to stay and I accepted. I've learned a lot . . . and used some of the things Father taught me to help out." Her right hand strayed to the butt of a blaster. "Meeting you is a good example."

  McCade smiled. "We can sure use the help."

  Mara looked thoughtful for a moment. "And that brings us back to the present. Something you said is bothering me. Something about Pollard launching a message torp. What message did he send?"

  McCade lifted one eyebrow in surprise. "Beats me. I just assumed it was his way of letting you know about us. You mean the torp never arrived?"

  Mara smiled and shook her head.

  "Then how did you know we were coming?"

  She laughed. "How did Pollard get inside your head?"

  McCade looked her right in the eye, and knew she wasn't kidding. "I don't believe it."

  "The facts speak for themselves," she replied lightly. "We haven't received a torp, but I knew your name, your mission, and approximate time of arrival. All were given to me before I left Chimehome." She chuckled. "It sure sounds like Pollard. Like you, he always had trouble believing in anything beyond the physical, and therefore doubted his own abilities. It would be just like him to use a message torp as a backup."

  It all seemed pretty strange to McCade, but as Mara pointed out, the facts seemed to support her contention that Pollard had used nonphysical means to send his superiors a message. If so, what had happened to the torp? They weren't infallible, but they were fairly reliable, and it seemed strange that it hadn't shown up. He felt a cold hand grab his stomach. What if Claudia had managed to intercept the damned thing? It would be just like the miserable bitch. He picked up his glass and finished off his drink. As he turned toward the others, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and plastered a grin on his face. "Well, here's to a quick and successful journey."

  Sixteen

  The Nuags filled the dimly lit staging area with their bad-tempered grunting and the stench of their excrement. Tons of flesh pushed and shoved, eager to reach the succulent roller bushes just dumped into their pen. The smaller animals, males mostly, were quickly pushed toward the rear while the dominant cows took their rightful positions in the front. Like pink snakes their long, greedy feeding tentacles slithered out from under leathery gray armor, to snatch up prickly round balls of vegetation and pull them back toward hungry mouths. It wasn't a pretty sight. The sounds that went with it weren't all that great either, McCade decided, as the nearest cow put away another roller bush, slurping and gurgling with happiness. In addition to their other unpleasant traits, Mara informed him Nuags were also lazy, stubborn, and not very bright. In other words they'd make outstanding admirals, McCade thought.

  "So why keep them around?" he asked.

  "Because," she answered, "they are also big, strong, and perfectly happy to spend the night in the middle of a storm which would kill us. All of which makes them perfect for hauling you around."

  "Couldn't we use a nice cozy crawler instead?" McCade asked wistfully, imagining one equipped with a small, but serviceable bar, and some comfortable bunks.

  "Because," Mara replied patiently, "our storms tend to pick up crawlers, and toss them around like leathers, something which rarely happens to Nuags. Follow me and you'll see why."

  So he followed her down to the staging area where the Nuag convoys were loaded and unloaded. It was a huge man-made cave which served as both a barn and warehouse. At the moment the place was packed with milling Nuags. Mara was forced to shout over her noisy subjects.

  "Look at how they're shaped!" Mara shouted. McCade looked, and saw that most Nuags were about thirty feet high, and forty feet long. Their smoothly rounded gray armor made them look like huge beetles. Only beetles have heads and Nuags don't. In fact, with the exception of some narrow breathing vents, their exterior coverings were completely smooth. "The wind just flows over and around them," Mara yelled. "They can travel during even the worst storms."

  McCade nodded his understanding, and followed as she waded into their midst, kicking, pushing, and swearing. Much to McCade's surprise, the Nuags did what Mara told them, albeit reluctantly, as if respecting anyone as mean and crotchety as they were. As she shoved her way through the crowd, McCade did his best to avoid their prodigious droppings, making a face at her when she turned and laughed.

  "They may be ugly, Sam, but once you've tried getting somewhere without them, they start looking a lot better. Besides," she shouted, adopting a professional air, "each one is a masterpiece of evolutionary engineering. Take those breathing vents for example." She pointed toward the nearest Nuag. "Each one is protected by a flap which closes automatically when the wind hits it. Meanwhile the ones on the opposite slope of the mantle remain open, allowing the Nuag to breathe. Neat, huh?"

  "Incredible," McCade agreed, ducking as one of the miserable beasts relieved itself of sufficient gas to power a small city.

  Mara laughed. "It's a good thing you weren't smoking a cigar. Now, take a look at this." She hammered her fist on the side of the nearest animal. Its armor started to flex, and then curled slowly upward, until it was about four feet off the ground. "After you," she said politely, delivering a formal bow.

  "You're too kind," McCade replied dryly, ducking under the edge of the raised armor. She followed, the Nuag's protective covering dropping into place behind her.

  To McCade's surprise, he found the interior to be well lit, and rather spacious. The light originated from some chem strips fastened to the animal's belly with some sort of adhesive. But even more interesting was the large gondola suspended below the Nuag's midsection by a massive harness. The gondola was made of light plastic boasting both windows and a door. Taking a peek inside McCade saw comfortable seats, an array of darkened viewscreens, and even a tiny galley. He groaned.

  "Don't tell me, let me guess. We get to travel in this thing."

  Mara shook her head in pretended amazement. "Amazing. It'll be tough putting anything over on you."

  McCade decided to ignore her sarcasm. "How the hell do these things see anyway? I didn't notice anything resembling eyes out there."

  Mara nodded. "Right, there weren't any. Follow me."

  McCade followed her toward the front of the animal. He noticed it had no head to speak of, just a rounded area above its chest, which was mostly mouth. At the moment two feeding tentacles were busily stuffing a gray roller bush into the large pink maw. Mara pointed, and McCade saw there was a single eye located just below the Nuag's mouth, right in the middle of its massive chest. The eye was red in color, and seemed to regard McCade with considerable hostility. "Their eyes are located down here," Mara said, "safe from windblown dust and sand."

  McCade looked up from the Nuag's baleful red eye, and into her pretty brown ones. "Kind of a limited point of view, isn't it?"

  She shook her head. "Not really. First you must realize that because of the frequent storms, the surface visibility is often zero. And second, it happens that Nuags have no natural predators other than man. And, since they navigate using some sort of biological direction finder we haven't figured out yet, all they have to see is the next few feet of trail."

  "Very impressive," McCade said politely, eyeing the gondola dubiously. "How far did you say it was to this Chimehome place?"

  "I didn't," Mara replied, grinning. "But you'll be pleased to know that it's only a hundred miles or so."

  Six hours later, McCade tried to ignore the swaying motion of the gondola, and convince himself that a hundred miles was no big deal. Uncomfortable though it was, he consoled himself with the thought that if the viewscreens meant anything, it was much worse outside. Before departing Deadeye, Mara had placed heavy-duty vid pickups on the outer surface of the Nuag's armor. During the early part of the trip the pickups had provided a somewhat monotonous view of windswept plains. Now even that wo
uld be welcome. For the last hour or so all he'd seen was a brown mist of windblown dirt and sand.

  Even though he couldn't see it, McCade knew Rico and Phil's Nuag was close behind, with still another animal bringing up the rear. In fact, he could have called them on the radio had he wished to. Although the storms made long-distance communication difficult, short-range stuff worked just fine. Nonetheless he resisted the temptation. They were probably sacked out. That was the weird part of traveling by Nuag. You didn't have anything to do.

  Apparently early settlers had wasted a great deal of time and energy trying to train the Nuags like horses or other domesticated riding animals. Eventually, however, they noticed that each group had its own migratory paths, and that animals from a particular herd refused to walk any paths except their own. They also observed that Nuag herds were fairly well distributed across the surface of the planet. So, knowing when they were beat, the colonists quit trying to train the Nuags to go everywhere, and took advantage of the places they went on their own. Research stations and mines were placed along secondary paths, while major settlements were generally located where a number of primary walks came together.

  Deadeye was a good example. Approximately one third of all ancestral routes passed through Deadeye. This was due to the plentiful supply of roller bushes pushed there by the circulating winds. It seemed all the Nuag walks had evolved from the eternal search for food. Like the Nuags themselves, their food also roamed around, searching for windblown nutrients. And because the major weather patterns were quite repetitive, the windblown food tended to end up in certain places, at certain times of the year.

  So, while the colonists hadn't managed to train the Nuags, they had found ways to use them.

  McCade had to admit that the system seemed to work. For hours their Nuags had trudged along without any sort of guidance. Still, he thought Mara's attitude a bit too relaxed, and was determined to keep a careful eye on the viewscreens. So he scanned them one after another, fighting the hypnotizing movement of the brown mist, completely unaware when he drifted off to sleep.

  He awoke with a guilty jerk. The horrible swaying motion had stopped, Mara was no longer asleep beside him, and the door to the gondola was wide open. Glancing at the viewscreens he saw that either the storm had stopped, or they had moved out of it, and into an area of momentary calm.

  He climbed down from the gondola, and thumped his fist against the inside of the Nuag's armor, just as he'd seen Mara do. The beast uttered a grunt of protest at this unreasonable demand, but grudgingly lifted its armor, allowing McCade to duck under and out.

  Outside, a chill breeze tried to penetrate the stiff fabric of his seamless one-piece windsuit, failed, and whistled past, searching for easier victims. The sky was a dark gray color, and McCade imagined that somewhere above the clouds, the sun was nearing the horizon. About fifteen or twenty other Nuags dotted the area. Most were motionless, resting or asleep, almost covered by windblown sand. But others were awake, and pulling restlessly against whatever held them in place, eager to socialize with the newcomers. McCade looked around but there was no one in sight.

  Hearing a noise, he walked around the nearest animal to see Mara feeding the third, with Rico and Phil looking on. The Nuag was grunting contentedly, as Mara pushed a roller bush under its mantle with the help of a short pole.

  "So, sleeping beauty awakens," Phil said cheerfully. "It's about time." McCade noticed that due to his thick fur, Phil had seen fit to dispense with a windsuit, and wore only his traditional kilt.

  "Hello to you too," McCade replied good-naturedly. "Where are we anyway? And why?"

  Mara wrestled the pole away from a playful feeding tentacle, and gave McCade a smile. "We're at Thirty Mile Inn, which is where we're staying tonight."

  McCade lifted one eyebrow as he pretended to scan the horizon. "I don't want to seem ungrateful, but at first glance the accommodations seem somewhat spartan."

  In response, Mara reached into the cargo pocket on her right thigh, and pulled out a small black box. It had only two buttons and a short antenna. She thumbed the top button, and McCade heard a crunching sound to his right, as a thin crust of dirt and rock parted, making way for a metal shaft. It rose from the ground with a whine of hidden hydraulics. The shaft was about six feet square, had one large door, a lot of smaller hatches, and a pointed top. A number of cables led out of the smaller hatches to disappear under the sand. As it ground to a halt, a sign lit up above the door, welcome to the thi ty mile inn.

  "Don't tell me, let me guess," McCade said. "The Nuags always stop here for the night . . . so this is where they built the inn."

  "Like I said before," Mara grinned. "There's no fooling you. Now, if you gentlemen would give me a hand, I'd sure appreciate it."

  She led them over to the metal shaft and opened three small hatches. Behind each door was a power lead. Pulling one out, she handed it to Rico. "If you'd be so kind, sir. You'll find a connector mounted on the rear of your gondola. Just plug it in and flick the mode switch to charge. That way your gondola will have a full charge by morning . . . plus your Nuag will still be here. They tend to drift a bit if you don't tether them, and I don't know about you, but I don't need a mile hike first thing in the morning."

  "Yes, ma'am," Rico replied cheerfully. He trudged off toward his Nuag, dragging the power lead behind him. McCade did likewise, quickly discovering that after a few feet the cable got damn heavy.

  Meanwhile Mara and Phil headed for the third beast, which though equipped with a cargo gondola, still required power for various passive systems. The big variant used only his thumb and two fingers to haul the heavy cable. It was hard to tell if Mara was impressed or simply amused.

  A few minutes later they all met in front of the metal shaft. Mara palmed the lock and the door whined open. A gentle blast of warm air hit them, bringing with it the faint smell of cooking, and the less pleasant odors of stale smoke and beer.

  It was crowded inside the small elevator, but their journey was soon over. Apparently the inn was just deep enough to keep it out of the wind. After all, McCade thought to himself, why dig any deeper than necessary?

  As they got off the elevator, it became quickly apparent that the management of the Thirty Mile Inn never did anything they didn't have to. Where Momma's place was squeakily clean, and therefore the exception to rim world bars, this one was all too typical. The metal grating under McCade's boots just barely managed to keep him up out of the muck below. The walls of the corridor were bare earth, and what little light there was came from some tired chem strips dangling from the ceiling.

  "How quaint," Phil growled. "Sam always takes us to the nicest places."

  "Yeah," Rico agreed, "I wonder what time the string quartet performs."

  Just then the corridor opened into a large open room and McCade knew they were in trouble. As they entered, the normal buzz of conversation suddenly stopped, leaving an unnatural silence broken only by the steady drip of a leaking faucet. Tension drifted with the floating smoke to fill the room and dim the light.

  Nine heavily armed people stood with their backs to the bar. None of them looked too friendly. Especially the three hardcases Mara had faced down back in Deadeye. They stood at the very center of the semicircle. One of them, a weasel-faced man with short black hair, wore a shit-eating grin. When he spoke there was a general scraping of chairs as noncombatants scrambled to get out of the way. "Well, bitch, say whatever prayers the Walkers taught you, cause you're about to die."

  McCade couldn't believe it. The idiot was a talker. One of the stupid-scared ones that always have to explain how tough they are before they beat up some old geek, and take his drinking money. After a while they get in the habit, and eventually they wind up talking when they should be shooting. Weasel face died getting his next sentence ready. Mara's blaster bolt drilled a neat hole through his chest, hit the full tankard of beer behind him, and turned it to steam. Suddenly all hell broke loose.

  Rico and Phil had alrea
dy spread out right and left. Phil went into full augmentation ripping off the first burst from his machine pistol before McCade had even pulled his slug gun. Two men were still falling, their bodies riddled with Phil's bullets, when McCade's gun leaped into his hand and roared four times. His first shot kicked a leg out from under the woman in the middle, the other three punched black holes through the guy on her right, slowly climbing until the last one erased his face.

  Out of the corner of his eye, McCade saw Mara stagger and spin as she took a hit, and saw Rico nail the man who'd shot her. Then death plucked at McCade's sleeve as someone opened up with a flechette gun. Picking them out of the crowd, Phil roared with rage, and leaped across the intervening space to bang two heads together, dropping the limp bodies like so much dead meat. Limp fingers released the flechette gun and it clattered to the floor.

  That's when the man on Phil's right brought out a ten-inch blade and prepared to ram it into the variant's back. McCade fired twice and the man toppled backward, landing in a pile on his own guts.