He opened the test results curiously, but it only took a few seconds to confirm what Tobi had told him. A confirmation that the fingerprints had been lasered away, no genetic tracers, no implants, no retina records—nothing to tie any of them to any record in the United States. He hadn’t expected anything, but what Tobi had considered a line was really the way Rice always felt, and the thing he considered his major and most annoying fault: his ridiculous, irrepressible optimism. This time, though, he’d bombed out. Sometimes he wondered if he’d ever learn his lesson.
Rice swiveled his chair around and looked out the window, smiling a bit when he remembered his job interview here six years earlier and how they’d touted an office with a window view as one of the major perks. At the cynical look on his face, the MedTech recruiter had back-pedaled hastily, saying, “Not that it makes any difference in the scheme of things, of course, but it does make the day-to-day chores a little more bearable. It’s a stress reliever.” Bearable, indeed; sometimes Rice thought he would have been better off without the chance to glance down and see Central Park and the Upper West Side. He wasn’t fooled by the seasonal artificially engineered trees and grass or the brightly colored flowers that lined the walkways every spring when across the rest of the city the greenery could barely exist anymore. The foliage was an illusion, like printed jungle wrapping paper on a box that held a stew of teeming human bodies. The fact that he still saw hope for the people down there amazed even himself. At least the building was sound-proofed and he didn’t have to listen to the aircycles; he didn’t think he could have stood that.
It was still early, not even three. He’d made the decision this morning to go ahead and use the alien as a bloodhound, way before Tobi had delivered the formal test results to his office. After all, if there’d been something in the results that would have given them a clue, she would have called him as soon as she received the information. A MedTech star performer all the way, Tobi would have never allowed the information to lag at the tail end of a chain of red tape; from the paper trail part of it, she wanted that egg back as much as Rice did. Having it out there— stolen right out from under MedTech’s protective arms— was a fucking insult.
It was a damned good thing none of Rice’s superiors were there to see the dark grin that spread across his broad face.
Finally, a challenge.
Rice had come from the NYPD a little over six years ago, where he’d done a stint as an Undercover Operations Investigator. Before that, he’d been with the army’s Special Operations Detachment, a twice-renewed tour of duty that kept him on Homeworld involved in the ongoing ‘cleanup’ procedures. Ol’ Blue the alien was a leftover from his final mission; tagged and captured by Rice himself, the former army man had been able to track the alien through computer records when the army sold the creature to MedTech’s Research and Development Division. He needed to know where the life-form was at all times for his own peace of mind; after all, it was ol’ Blue that had nearly killed him and ended his service with the army forever. Thanks to his final Homeworld battle with the alien, Rice could never go off-planet again. Hell, he couldn’t even fly in an airplane; ol’ Blue’s offensive and nearly deadly swipe of claws had done soft tissue damage that made travel within a pressurized compartment permanently impossible.
Rice had thought working for the NYPD would be a suitable alternative to the excitement of the army’s off-world war. He quickly learned that he didn’t care for the constant emotional battering he felt when dealing with the victims and seeing people’s lives destroyed by the sharks on the street, but for a while he’d been caught up in the chase, so to speak. Hunting criminals wasn’t as physically challenging as whacking bugs on Homeworld, but it kept his mind in overdrive all the time; for a few years. Rice had actually been happy.
All that phanged, however, when some enterprising young biochemist discovered that once fertilized by a drone, the liquid secreted by a queen alien as she laid her eggs could get a lab rat stoned. That same young man had then set about perfecting and distilling his product until it could be used by human beings, and after that, manufacture and distribution of this irreversibly addictive drug—named royal jelly, or simply jelly for short—were only a matter of diligent research. The biochemist’s name was Christian Bloomer, but his location was one of the best kept secrets the cops had ever encountered; when you were only twenty-four years old and one of the richest men in the world, it was easy to disappear into the masses.
To put it frankly, Rice got tired of jelly. It became the basis for everything in his work with the NYPD. Eventually the murders, thefts, fights, even the kidnappings almost always led to the drug and some addict or dealer trying to steal or score. He hated the stuff as much as the next cop but stopping it was like trying to stop the wind with a nylon net. Jelly was everywhere, and as fast as they did a sting operation in one place, two more sprang up to fill the gap. And stakeouts—God, how he hated those. Four years of drowning in that crap and he’d bailed and taken the job with MedTech.
At least here he occasionally got to work with the bugs again. The covert Alien Research Lab didn’t need him often, but once in a while he’d get a call to come down to Sublevel Five and do containment or transport, or assist with some experiment or another. The harness they would use on ol’ Blue tonight was Rice’s invention, based on his work with the army and the small, hive of aliens that MedTech put at his disposal downstairs. Rice had developed it and MedTech had footed the bill; now he and the mother company shared the patent, MedTech had an ace in the hole over a specific corner of the market, and Phillip Rice probably had a job for life.
Rice forced his attention away from the window and back to his desk, then reached over and switched on his computer. With more than an hour of daylight left and a rush hour coming at the end of that, he couldn’t contemplate taking ol’ Blue—his pet name for the older and bigger-than-average alien drone that had nearly killed him—out and onto the streets of Manhattan. Rice played with the on-line data regarding the city for half an hour or so, mapping out a number of possible routes out of Manhattan. Finally, he sat back in disgust. Why bother? Ol’ Blue would take them where he wanted to go—which should be where he smelled the pheromones of his own hive. If the stolen egg was still in the city, the Homeworld creature would find it.
Rice ran his tongue over his teeth thoughtfully and stared at the glowing computer screen. While he might not know where ol’ Blue would take them tonight, he’d damn well better know where they could or couldn’t take the alien. A few clicks of the mouse and he switched programs and tapped into the one the major newspapers used to make up their layouts on what was happening with events around the city. A number of things showed up, including a Greenpeace rally at Times Square that didn’t start until eight tonight—they’d be freezing their environmental butts off by eight-thirty—and a concert at Presley Hall that started at seven and ended at ten. That made both Times Square and Presley Hall off-limits until the crowds cleared out, and the people from the two events—especially the concert—would cause a surge into the restaurants and cheap shops in the area. If Rice’s team and the alien headed west, then south, they’d have to pass the Port Authority, which might not be a good idea—way too many chances to run into jelly users there. Screw it. Rice was game for something to relieve the boredom; he and his team would go out late—after midnight—and march right up Fifth Avenue. Then ol’ Blue could tell them which way was next.
* * *
“It’s midnight in Manhattan, boys.” Rice grinned at his two best security men. “You ready for this?” The bushes around them made crackling sounds, like plastic bags being crumpled, and Rice tensed. After a few seconds though, the GuardTech Robots stalking them on the other side of the still leafless vegetation slipped away. This time his smile was one of relief.
“Stop smilin’ at me, you asshole,” Eddie McGarrity snarled. He tightened his hold on the rear guidepole that angled over his head and was connected somewhere out of sight at the b
ack of the complex metal harness wrapped around the Homeworld life-form. “I had a date tonight and it sure wasn’t with you.”
“Luckiest day that woman ever had,” Ricky Morez hooted. He inclined his head briefly toward the alien, unnaturally quiet within his titanium mesh jacket and alloy muzzle. The only sound they could hear was its breathing, a sort of low hiss that constantly echoed around the creature. “Did you tell her you play with bugs, big boy?”
“Hey, I’m still in the ‘making a good impression’ phase,” McGarrity protested with a toothy grin. “I’m not looking to scare her off.”
Rice snorted. “Don’t worry, that’ll happen naturally.” He tugged on the guidepole at ol’ Blue’s left shoulder and the alien obliged with one long-strided step in that direction, then another. “Look sharp, guys. This sucker may seem like he’s under wraps, but he’s always going to be bigger and stronger than us.”
“And anything else on the street,” McGarrity shot back. “At least we don’t have to worry about getting buzzed by one of the aircycle gangs at this time of night.”
“Fifth Avenue is a No Fly Zone,” Rice reminded him.
“Like it makes any difference.”
“Where’re we going?” Morez asked as he tightened his grip on the right guidepole, prodding the alien back into a straight-ahead direction. Maneuvering the creature using the harness and guidepoles was vaguely like steering an oversize canoe from the far rear—provided the canoe was equipped with a motor that ran in unpredictable directions.
“It looks like we’re headed—”
Ol’ Blue suddenly tossed his elongated head like a horse and made an abrupt right turn that nearly dragged Rice off his feet; Morez dodged out of the way and fought to keep his hold.
“Whichever way he wants!”
* * *
It took damned near two hours just to get past Rockefeller Plaza, and ol’ Blue kept trying to go west. Rice and his men kept up a steady resistance, hoping to keep the alien on Fifth Avenue until they were at least past Bryant Park, and preferably Herald Square—not that it really mattered. For all Rice knew, ol’ Blue could be leading them right into the heart of Penn Station. Sometimes Rice wondered about the way his own mind worked; had he really believed he and his team would be leading the Homeworld creature through an empty city just because they’d chosen the early hours of the morning? Not likely.
People were everywhere. Though most wisely kept their distance, crossing the street or ducking in doorways when Rice and his group approached, there were a couple of dorks on nearly every corner who had to try to get a better look at the alien, an occasional late-night tourist with his happy disposable camera who wanted a picture. Rice would’ve thought they’d seen enough of the bugs on the thousands of videos from the Homeworld Wars and, of course, the films that Hollywood pumped out by the dozens, complete with Soundlmmerse and holograms that made audiences bob and duck from their seats. But hey, what could beat the real thing?
“I think we’re headed toward Presley Hall,” Morez said. His young face was creased with worry. “That might not be such a good idea, boss. I heard they got a run of nightly concerts going on.”
“Tonight’s concert was over at ten,” Rice told him. “Last of the strays should’ve cleared out by eleven-thirty, twelve at the latest. That’s why we waited so long, despite McGarrity’s belief that I planned this entire trip to intentionally screw up his date.”
“Yeah,” McGarrity grated, “you’re doing real good so far. On both accounts.”
Before Rice could retort, the alien jerked slightly. All three men clutched uneasily at the handles of their guidepoles, then ol’ Blue fell back into that strange, half-bent gait that became more pronounced in the larger aliens. “So far,” the youngest member of their team agreed. Morez glanced at Rice. “But what if he gets really ticked off, Chief?”
“It won’t make any difference,” Rice insisted. He wondered if he was trying to reassure his men or himself as the life-form twitched again and swung his head back and forth, as if searching out the pheromones from his hive.
“The harness keeps the hands next to his sides so he can’t grab or scratch anything, and the muzzle won’t let him open either mouth wide enough to bite.” Another loping set of steps and the alien paused. “Come on, Blue,” Rice urged. He tugged at the guidepole, trying to get the creature back in gear. “Sniff those pheromones, boy. They’re from your hive. Find that egg, buddy.”
A few more feet down the street, and the creature jerked again, harder, as a couple of stoned yuppie secretaries started staggering toward the team and its harnessed creature, intent on “petting” the alien. McGarrity had hardly finished bellowing at the women and the team was cruising past West Forty-sixth and Diamond and Jewelers Row when ol’ Blue went, as Rice would think of it later, completely ballistic.
The MedTech trio might as well have been holding ol’ Blue with a harness made of rubber bands for all the control they managed to maintain. McGarrity was the biggest man of the three, and he had the dubious honor of being the first to be yanked off-balance when the alien suddenly crouched so low to the sidewalk that the blue-black bones guarding his chest cavity brushed the concrete. When ol’ Blue followed his squat by rearing into a stance that was nearly ruler-straight, McGarrity went soaring into the street, the handgrip of his guidepole bouncing wildly before falling uselessly to the ground.
“Hold on, Rick—!” Rice never got the chance to finish his shout. One moment he was clutching his guidepole with every ounce of muscle he had; the next he was flat on his back on the filthy walkway, staring at the sliver of smog-encrusted night sky barely visible beyond the faraway tops of the skyscrapers. He heard someone grunt and turned his head to see Morez in a heap fifteen feet away. Rice rolled to his right and saw ol’ Blue racing up West Forty-sixth, the three alloy guidepoles flapping behind him like heavy feathers.
“Come on!” he yelled as he scrambled to his feet. “We’ve got to catch him!” A solid round of curses from both his men told Rice they weren’t hurt, and by the time Rice had managed to increase his speed to a sprint, the other two were right with him. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have had a prayer of catching up with the alien, but ol’ Blue’s balance was off, skewed by the harness that wouldn’t let him swing his sinewy arms. Every third step or so one of the guidepoles would slip beneath the sharp claws of his feet and make him stumble; once he went all the way down, twisting on the sidewalk for a precious three seconds before he was upright again. Still, the Homeworld creature’s stride far outdistanced theirs, and when they finally skidded into the alley into which ol’ Blue had disappeared, they were in time only to hear the alien’s screams of rage and watch helplessly as he rushed two men at the alleyway’s far end.
Rice put an arm out as McGarrity pulled a laser pistol and started to head into the alleyway. “Don’t bother, Eddie!” He had to yell to be heard over the combined roars of ol’ Blue and the shrieks of his victims. “It’s already too late—look!” McGarrity and Morez followed Rice’s pointing finger and both blanched. Thirty feet down the rubble-strewn passageway, the creature was still roaring and hissing as he busily rammed himself headfirst against what… little now remained of the two men who’d been his target. The brick walls of the buildings at the dead end were splattered with alien mucus, human blood, pieces of bone and bits of brain.
“Jesus,” Morez hollered. “What the hell’s his problem? He was fine a minute ago!”
“I hope he stops here, Chief.” McGarrity’s voice was loud but shaky. “If he doesn’t, I think we’re fucked.”
As if on cue, ol’ Blue suddenly backed away from the carnage and crouched, rocking unsteadily on his jointed legs as his barbed tail flicked dangerously in the air behind him. Cocking his head, they saw him struggle to move his arms and when that failed, he managed two wobbly leaps forward, then leaned over and nudged tentatively at the scarlet mass of flesh, severed body parts, and bloody sludge. Dripping strands of tissue hung
from the alloy muzzle, and a solid line of greenish slime leaked from between the alien’s teeth, as if he could taste the meat just out of reach. Apparently satisfied with his handiwork, ol’ Blue leaned back, then rose and stalked to a point midway between his two fatalities and the MedTech team. There he paused, tucked his head close to his chest as he settled into a crouch, and waited.
“Well, I guess that takes care of them,” Morez said dryly as the men edged into the passageway. “Jeez, talk about a temper.” When they got to the creature, McGarrity and Morez cautiously reached for their guidepoles, but the alien offered no resistance.
“Hang on to him,” Rice ordered. “I want to check out these two. And be careful he doesn’t start up again.”
McGarrity snorted. “Not much to see down there.”
“Hey, Chief—given his recent history, I don’t think I’d take too long if I were you.” Morez shifted nervously as ol’ Blue’s hard, dark skin trembled. “We probably ought to remember that we don’t know why he did what he just did.”
“Yes, we do,” Rice called over his shoulder. He reached down and poked at something small on the ground but didn’t pick it up. “Bull’s-eye. An empty jelly vial—that’s what must’ve set him off. I think our dead pals here were a dealer and a junkie.” Rice hurried back and slipped his fist into the handgrip on the left pole. “Come on. Let’s get out of this dead end.” The three of them began to hurriedly maneuver ol’ Blue back toward the front of the alley where it intersected Forty-sixth.
Morez looked at him questioningly. “A jelly deal did that?”
Rice nodded, straining with the effort of forcing ol’ Blue to turn back toward Fifth Avenue. “Oh, yeah. We learned early on that the best way to kill off these things on Homeworld was to capture a dozen good-sized drones and turn them loose in a different hive. These things hunt by scent and hearing, but identify strictly on smell and are extremely territorial. Each hive has a unique scent, and when one of ’em gets a whiff of a colony that’s not their own, they go berserk. That stuff in the alley was nothing.” Rice shook his head as he kept a steady pressure on his guidepole. “You ought to see the attack technique when there’s a couple dozen of them tearing at each other.”
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