The Complete Aliens Omnibus

by David Bischoff

  Within the windowless pile, artificial light shone night and day. It was part of standard policy to keep the prisoners disoriented, and therefore less aggressive. Inside, there were the usual sections of prison cells, with catwalks outside them where the guards walked. There were workshops, food and laundry facilities, and a separate room where the inmates did state-approved work and earned a dollar or so a day for it.

  It was free time now. All the men not doing solitary were walking around the grounds, exercising, talking.

  A loud voice came from the prison loudspeaker. “All men whose names are on the Alpha Volunteer list, report to the auditorium on the second level.”

  The Alpha Volunteer List contained the names of those prisoners with space experience who were willing to volunteer for a hazardous assignment in return for a reduction of their sentences. It had been a while since the call went out for crew. The prisoners were well aware of the good things this early release could do for them. And anyway, it was easier to escape from a spaceship than from a federal prison.

  It was not easy getting on the Alpha list, because only a limited number were permitted even to apply. You had to bribe a guard to have any chance at all. And you were likely to have problems with other prisoners who wanted to take your place.

  Red Badger had been waiting for this chance a long time. Now he got up, smoothed down his unruly red hair, checked his shoes, and started for the auditorium.

  He was stopped by an inmate named Big Ed.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Big Ed asked.

  “I’m on the list,” Badger said.

  “You got it wrong,” Big Ed said. “That last place is mine.”

  “No,” Red insisted, “it’s mine.”

  “Sure. But you’re going to give it to me, aren’t you?”

  “No way,” said Red Badger. “Now, if you’ll just let me get past…”

  Big Ed stood in the middle of the corridor, blocking Badger’s way. “Do like I say,” he threatened, “or else.”

  Red Badger knew he was being challenged, knew that Big Ed had been waiting for this moment a long time, yet he also knew that Big Ed had picked him figuring he was the easiest guy on the Alpha list to intimidate. Badger already knew what he was going to do about it.

  * * *

  He was known as Red Badger because of his shock of coarse red hair. He had the light, easily sunburned skin that went with red hair, and narrow blue-green eyes that blinked at you from behind sandy eyelashes. He was a big man, heavy in the chest. He wore his leather waistcoat open to show his chest with its grizzled mass of hair. He had large square teeth and a nasty smile.

  Badger was an alumnus of many prisons. He had gotten his nickname at Raiford Prison in Florida, and as an act of defiance had taken it for his own. Badger was doing time for armed robbery and assault. He had a criminal record that went back a long way. Quick with his fists, he was also quick with his tongue and was always looking for a chance to cause trouble. “Trouble is my real middle name,” he liked to say. “Let me show you how I spell it.” And then he’d punctuate his remark for you with his fists. Like the badger, his namesake, he was most dangerous when cornered.

  * * *

  The fight was to be held according to the accepted prison rules: just the two of them, having it out in one of the washrooms. Whoever was still standing after it was over would go to the auditorium. The two combatants went there silently.

  Both men knew it did no good to be brawling in the corridors. There were stingray projectors with motion-indicator finders mounted in all the corridors, turning steadily and scanning in all directions. The stingers weren’t fatal, but they hurt like hell and could be counted upon to whip recalcitrant prisoners into line. There were no projectors mounted in the washrooms.

  Although it was never talked about, the prisoners figured the authorities wanted to leave them places where they could have things out for themselves, establishing who was top dog and who was underdog. Several of them, noticing where Badger and Ed were going, followed along to watch the fun. It had been known for some time that Big Ed was going to try to take Red’s place on the Alpha List.

  Big Ed was a seven-foot freak from Opalatchee, Florida. A bodybuilder, he looked like a model for Hercules, all gleaming muscle as he stripped off his shirt. Red Badger, on the other hand, was a solid man, but his musculature was well padded with fat. He looked slow, not formidable.

  Stripping off his shirt, he stood in the middle of the shower space, looking fat and sleepy, his hands loose and open at his sides, waiting for Ed to make the first move.

  “You sure you want this?” Big Ed asked, moving forward slowly, hands raised like an old-fashioned bare-knuckle fighter. “Ain’t going to be much left of you when I get through.” He looked at the spectators and laughed. “I’m gonna skin me a badger today, boys.”

  The men laughed dutifully. Big Ed suddenly lunged forward, and Badger responded.

  People said later they’d never seen a big fat man like Badger move so fast. One moment he was standing right there, practically under Big Ed’s fists. But when Big Ed attacked, Badger was already out of the way, dancing back. He easily eluded a roundhouse right, and, taking his time, delivered a blow to Big Ed’s neck, catching him at a nerve junction on the right side.

  Big Ed bellowed and moved back. His right arm was dangling awkwardly at his side. He strained to lift it, but could get no sensation into it. He wasn’t hurt; not really. It was just that his right arm wouldn’t lift.

  “Where’d you learn that stunt?” he demanded.

  Badger smiled but didn’t answer. What good would it do to tell Big Ed that his most recent cell mate, Tommy Tashimoto, had taught him the fine art of nerve strikes—getting him to practice for hours, hitting over and over again from all angles until he could strike half a dozen targets unerringly where the nerve bundles were near the surface or rode over bone.

  Red Badger hadn’t been one for formal education. But when he got a chance to learn how to incapacitate a larger, stronger opponent, all the doggedness of his character came out, and he had worked until he knew what he was doing.

  Now he circled around Big Ed’s right, hitting him quick hard blows to the face and ribs, coming in over the dangling and useless right arm. Big Ed tried to launch himself at Badger. If he could just get his hands on him, even one-handed, he’d tear the smaller man apart. But Red had a strategy to offset that. He hit again and again at the nerve junction in Ed’s neck, and soon the numbness was replaced by a galloping pain that traveled up and down Ed’s shoulder, from his face to his groin, filling him with an agony so painful as to be exquisite.

  At least Badger thought it was exquisite, because he saw he had his man where he wanted him, helpless but still on his feet. A hunk of meat to which he could mete out punishment.

  Badger hit and hit, using the heel and sides of his hands. He knew he had this fight won; he just had to guard now against injuring himself. It wouldn’t do to be incapacitated for this spaceship call. Big Ed turned and twisted and floundered, but he couldn’t defend himself. A shrewd kick on the elbow brought down his left arm. He stood there, his face a mask of blood, while Badger hammered away at him like a man driving nails into a tough piece of wood. He hit and he hit, and Big Ed groaned with pain but wouldn’t go down.

  “Hell, I got no more time to waste on this,” Badger said. He stepped back and, measuring his man carefully, delivered a kick with his steel-capped work shoe right to the point of Big Ed’s jaw. The men watching the fight winced as Big Ed’s front teeth came flying out like a spray of broken china, and Ed himself crashed face-first to the floor. Badger turned on a tap and cleaned himself quickly but thoroughly. It wouldn’t do to be all sweaty for his interview. He checked himself in the big mirror before he left the washroom to make sure he didn’t have any of Big Ed’s face hanging on his clothes.

  16

  “Hi, I’m Stan Myakovsky,” Stan said. “These are my associates. I telephoned ahead. I need
a spaceship crew for a hazardous mission.”

  If the guard at the front window of the entry gate was impressed, she didn’t show it. She was a squarely built woman with short bristly hair. She put down her biker magazine and said, “What company you with?”

  “Sonnegard Acceptance Corporation,” Stan said, and showed his credentials.

  Back before his troubles began, Stan had taken over the Dolomite by buying the controlling shares in Sonnegard, a spaceship holding company. The company was the real owner of the ship, not Stan, who had never bothered to have the ship reregistered in his own name. In fact, he had decided not to; that way, if the ship got into any trouble, he wouldn’t be liable.

  “You’ll find my name on the list,” Stan said. He was hoping that the government hadn’t gotten around to proscribing his company and red-flagging it on the computer. It was unlikely. As Julie had pointed out, it took government forever to bring their records up to date. The inefficiency wasn’t strictly government’s fault. There was neither the time nor the personnel available to record all the crimes, arrests, and dispositions that were taking place around the clock in an America more lawless than it had ever been in all its lawless history. Sonnegard Acceptance Corporation would probably be a legal entity for months to come.

  The guard punched the name up on her computer. “Yeah, you’re on the list. Go on through.” She buzzed open the heavy metal door leading to the prison.

  “So far, so good,” Julie said.

  Stan, accompanied by Julie and Hoban, went through into a long, brightly lit corridor.

  “Oh, I didn’t expect much trouble getting in,” Stan said. “It’s the getting out that concerns me.”

  “You worry too much,” she said. “Doesn’t he, Captain Hoban?”

  “He’s worrying about the wrong things,” Hoban said. “What he should be thinking about is what if one of those men recognizes me?”

  “You’re not exactly a cover girl,” Julie said. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

  Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they went down the long corridor, following the flashing arrows that took visitors to the recruitment center.

  There was a door at the end of the corridor. It buzzed open for them.

  Within was a large office, plenty of plain metal desks and chairs, and a guard seated at a bigger desk in front of a computer.

  “Come on in, Dr. Myakovsky,” the guard said. “I’ve got all the volunteers in a holding tank just behind this room. There are twenty of them. That is as you requested, is it not?”

  “It’s fine,” Stan said. “I’d like you to meet Miss Lish, my associate, and Thomas Hoban, my captain. He’ll be doing the actual selection in my name.”

  “As you know,” the guard said, “we have already made the preselection for you, giving you the top-twenty men on our Alpha List. You may reject any of them, and you do not have to give a reason. If you’re ready, I’ll have the people sent in.”

  Stan nodded. The guard pressed a button. A panel slid up smoothly in the steel wall. There was a sound of moving feet, and then the prisoners came marching out in single file. Following the guard’s commands, they formed a line across the room, stopped, and turned to face Stan and his party.

  Captain Hoban walked up to the men. He paced up and down the line, peering into their faces. He came to one, hesitated, stopped, and stared.

  Red Badger stared back.

  Hoban said, “Do I know you? Have we ever met?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Red Badger said. “But of course I’ve got a lousy memory.”

  Hoban kept on staring at him. Badger said, “I’m a good spaceman, sir. I just want a chance to rehabilitate myself.”

  Hoban pursed his lips, frowned, then turned away.

  “Anything wrong, Mr. Hoban?” Stan asked.

  “No, everything is fine,” Hoban said.

  “Do the men look all right to you?”

  “Yes, they look fine.”

  Stan could see that something was bothering Hoban, but now was obviously not the time to ask him about it. Maybe, he thought, the captain was just nervous.

  Stan turned to the guard. “I’ll accept this lot. I’m posting money to send them out to their ship.”

  “Okay with me,” the guard said. “What ship is that?”

  “The Dolomite,” Stan said, and waited.

  The guard bent over the computer. “How do you spell it?” she asked, and Stan knew everything was going to be all right.

  17

  They were transporting the prisoners to Facility 12, where they would take the shuttle to the Dolomite, their new ship.

  Hoban was thinking, Damn it, I know I’ve seen that man before. He knew who I was, I’m sure of it. So why did I pick him? Because I could tell from his look, if I didn’t take him, he was going to tell everyone who I was. It’s not just my imagination, I knew what that bastard was going to do. I should never have gotten myself into this in the first place…

  Unexpectedly, Hoban found himself regretting his decision to go in with Stan. Some people might have thought it was crazy, but people just didn’t understand. He was grateful for this chance to redeem himself, get back on top, prove himself a winner. But another side of his character knew himself for a loser and just wanted a soft place to lie down. Funny to think of Jersey City as a soft place, but it was. Somehow he always got fed, always had a roof over his head. And best of all, nobody expected anything of him. He could relax, take a drink or two, take a lot of drinks… He knew that wasn’t how he ought to feel.

  It was like there were a couple of Hobans, and at least one of them was working actively to undermine him. He tried to remind himself that good things lay ahead: he’d soon be piloting his own ship again. You couldn’t do better than that. But somehow, it didn’t have quite the savor it ought to. And Captain Thomas Hoban became aware that he faced a greater danger than whatever Stan was getting them into. You can guard against murder, but how do you guard against your own thoughts of suicide?

  18

  There was one way to get aboard a spaceship without having to produce a pass or wait for a computer check. You could go aboard as part of a tour party. It was Julie’s idea. They waited a few hours to give the authorities enough time to deliver the prisoners to the Dolomite. Then they came to the Staten Island launch site.

  All ships picked up extra income by letting sightseeing parties aboard while they were in port, lifting them up to the ship’s orbit in a chemical launching craft. Touring the spaceships was a popular entertainment, as in a bygone year people had gone into New York Harbor to visit battleships when the fleet was in. Spaceships were still novel enough that people paid just to walk aboard one.

  With the passengers aboard, the little craft lifted lightly and soon was high above Jersey City. Julie looked through a viewport and saw the earth below looking like a swirly blue-white basketball. Passengers ate hot dogs and talked with each other until the lander arrived at the Dolomite’s geosynchronous orbit and locked onto one of the ship’s entry ports.

  Hoban, with Stan and Julie, came aboard the Dolomite with a group of eight other people, just a few of the hundreds who came up here every day from the Staten Island Spaceport. Accompanying them was a guide. He was giving his standard spiel about thruster jets and diosynchronous interrupter-type impellers and standard warp capacities.

  “Right this way, folks,” the tour guide was saying. He was a large man with pale blond hair, and wore a white vest with lavender polka dots under a crimson blazer. “Right this way you’ll find the refreshment stand and, just beyond it, the souvenir booth. They carry official ship’s souvenirs. Folks, these items are not sold in stores in the city. You can only get them here. There’s a hall of diorama views of approaches to various planets. There’s even a snack bar featuring delicacies from this world and many others. Right this way—”

  The guide broke off his spiel when he noticed something unusual happening.

  “Excuse me, you people there!” />
  He was talking to three people, two men and a woman, who had moved in the opposite direction from the crowd and now were about to open a door marked NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL in five different languages.

  “Did you mean us?” one of the men said. He was short and plump and wore glasses. The woman beside him was a handsome creature, slim and with magnificent chestnut-red hair. She was beautiful even with the livid scar that ran down one cheek. The other man, somewhat older than the first two, looked dazed.

  “Yes, you,” the guide said. “Can’t you read the sign on the door?”

  “Of course we can,” Stan replied. “It doesn’t pertain to us.”

  “You’re not trying to tell me you’re ship’s crew?”

  “Certainly not,” Stan said. “I’m the new owner.”

  “Impossible! I would have been told.”

  “I’m telling you right now. We’re going aboard.” Stan pushed at the door. The guide moved to stop him, then stopped abruptly when he felt a hand on his shoulder. The young woman had seized him, and she had a grip of steel.

  “Madame, unhand me!” the guide said, trying to make a joke out of it, because people from the tour were staring. He tried to shake free, but Julie’s fingers didn’t budge.

  “I’ll be happy to let you go,” she said. “Just don’t interfere with the new owner.”

  “I have no proof that he’s the new owner!” the guide said.

  Julie shrugged. “What difference does it make to you, anyhow, who runs the ship? You’ve got your concession. You’re selling your tickets and your hot dogs. You’re doing all right.”

  The guide considered. He didn’t want any trouble, life was hard enough, why stir up trouble with people who were probably nutcases? The woman with the strong hands was right, what difference did it make to him?