Much too long. Better to lower the force shield for a moment, let the trucks across the boundary and then raise it again. For those few seconds everybody would be watching for trickery, with Drill's ready finger on the Proton Cannon's firing switch. Grudgingly, Hammer agreed. It was a gamble, but the Bloody Deckers had taken bigger risks then this just going to the movies on 42nd Street.
If lunch was late, or the UN tried anything stupid again, Drill resolved that the first building to go would be the city hall. Or better yet, police headquarters!
Trell noted a meter flux and focused his scanners onto the indicated area. “Sir, there's a large party approaching our ship from sector 12,” he announced.
“Show me,” Hammer commanded, reclining in his form-fitting chair. His viewscreen swirled into a picture of the war-torn park.
Meandering through the mountains of dirt, splintered trees, and glowing lava pools, was a conga line of vehicles headed by four silver limousines, followed by several armored bank trucks and flatbed wagons filled with bales and bales of a leafy, dark green material.
“Yee-HAW!” Drill whooped, exuberantly smacking the adamantine arm of his steel chair. “It's a freaking parade! Goddamn it chief, the government is actually paying us off!"
“There's our gold,” Chisel whispered, the illuminated controls of the tech station brightening in harmony with its master's heightened emotional state. “Gold."
No, not one bank truck, Hammer noted with misgivings, but a convoy of five. He didn't like that. There was too much stuff out there. Much more then they'd asked for. Some subtle instinct, honed true in a thousand street fights, warned the youth of treachery, but for the life of him the ganglord couldn't figure out from where.
“This is more tribute then you asked for, isn't it, sir?” Trell asked, twisting about in his seat. “Are your people trying to—” and the alien spoke of a practice common to his race of giving a victorious enemy many gifts to soften their feelings towards you. His translator merely said the word: “Bribe."
After a moment, Hammer nodded. Yeah, that made sense. The world was scared spitless of his gang and they were trying to buy the Deckers’ goodwill. The government was always paying people lots of money to behave themselves. It never seemed to work, but they kept trying. Greedily, he rubbed his hands together. Well, he certainly appreciated the habit!
“Trell, steer them over to the loading bay and prepare to lower the force shield.” Hammer scrutinized the caravan of goodies closely. “You sure the loading dock can hold all of that junk?"
“Easily sir. Vehicles included."
“No problem?"
“None."
Drill's face broke into a grin. “Shee-eet! Our own personal bank trucks! Say! Could we...” The locksmith stopped talking in mid-syllable, his mouth and eyes forming a triangle of circles. Hammer and Chisel swiftly followed suit.
The caravan had reached the assigned spot outside the alien force shield and the drivers were disembarking. Women. They were all women. Beautiful women. Gorgeous women. Redheads. Blondes. Slim, long legged, busty women who were mostly dressed in lacy bits of gossamer that hid none of their ample charms.
Timidly, a few of the women waved at the starship. Then a gorgeous redhead in a micromesh bikini bent over to examine something from the ground and the three males swallowed hard.
“Damn,” Drill murmured in awe. “Now that's what I call tribute!"
Chisel tried to close his mouth, while Hammer removed his tongue from the viewscreen. Trell also observed the scene with interest. Ah, lunch!
“L-lower that force shield,” Hammer ordered, the ganglord having trouble speaking. “Get that, those, get them aboard!"
“Women,” Chisel said, drooling slightly. “Hubba-hubba."
“Oh, we par-ty tonight!” Drill stated for a fact.
Unaffected by the display of shapely human females, the alien Technician remained ever vigilant, his sensors constantly sweeping the starship's perimeter, as he carefully lowered their main defense.
* * * *
A dry twig propped against the force shield fell to the ground, and the crudely built black box in the hand of a NATO trooper beeped.
“The shield is down, sir,” a corporal reported to his commanding officer.
“Then go-go-go,” Colonel Robert Weiss whispered into his throat mike and a jumbled pile of smashed trees disgorged a platoon of heavily armed soldiers.
Keeping low to the ground, the soldiers swiftly crossed those critical meters separating them from the force shield boundary line. The last man used a leafy tree branch to brush the ground in their wake, obliterating their tracks. Ghostly sensors from the starship tracked the soldier's every step, but the alien warning system did not announce their presence to Trell as the signal was nullified by a small black box that the NATO trooper carried.
Moving quick, the 30 men scrambled up the loose mound of dirt at the starship's base, making infinitely less noise then the caravan of trucks and cars on the other side of the interstellar craft.
Avantor and The 17 were not with the assault team, but had remained in the FCT's bunker as Prof. Rajavur considered their technical knowledge of alien weaponry much to valuable to risk in a firefight. Reluctantly, the Gees had agreed with the request, their hypno-training forcing them to accept the prudent course of action rather than go for the more fulfilling act of personal revenge.
As the commandos safely gathered in the cool shadow beneath the curved hull of the gargantuan ship, Weiss pulled a slim rod of burnished copper and hastily soldered microchips from his blouse, the override key hastily built by 17. Pressing the activating switch he waved it at the vessel's hull. Anxiously, the assault team waited. The Gee technician could only guess at the override code to open the starship's hull. If The 17 guessed right, fine. But if he guessed wrong, well, the NATO troopers were not afraid to die, but they did fear a useless death and the subsequent reprisal of the angry street gang on their defenseless world.
The men allowed themselves to breathe again as a meter wide section of the hull disengaged itself and swung aside, allowing a pile of alien trash to tumble out: bones, bottles, wrapping paper, half eaten fruits, busted bits of junk and one thoroughly dead quatralyan.
Heroically, the soldiers pretended to ignore its ominous presence. As quietly as possible, they began ascending the sloping tube, the rubber soles of their boots aiding the climb up the slick metal. When the last trooper was safe inside, Weiss pressed the activating switch on the jury-rigged key again. At the bottom of the pipe, the hull cycled shut and darkness enfolded them.
“Visors,” the sergeant whispered.
The men pulled the front of their helmets down. Through the infrared sensitive glass the darkness disappeared, to be replaced by a black and white view of the awful-smelling metal tube and their fellow soldiers. Somebody muttered a comment about defecating backwards and was sharply reminded to be quiet by an eloquent rap on the head.
“All present and accounted for, sir,” Lt. Nealon said, nodding his head and feeling awkward about not saluting. But he was bracing himself against the low ceiling with his right hand, and saluting a superior officer with your left was the supreme insult in the military, a matter duels were fought over.
Weiss thanked him and briefly consulted the map that The 17 had drawn from memory of the starship. Straight ahead of them should be a power junction for the garbage tube's security sensor. Raising specially modified binoculars to his visor, he found what he was searching for, a hexagon jutting out from the distant wall. Slipping in the alien muck, Weiss and his soldiers cautiously approached the sensor. The trooper with the black box scanned the dirty hexagon and received a reassuring beep. Tenderly as defusing a bomb, the service panel was removed. A private commenced cutting wires and bypassing circuitry cubes so that when the troops exited the tube, the control room would know nothing of the occurrence.
Col. Weiss bit his cheek in concentration as another wire was snipped. One wrong move here could cause t
heir immediate death, and this was the easy part.
* * * *
The last truck rolled across the force shield boundary and Trell flicked it back into existence. Safe once more. Thumps and curses caught his attention and he turned. Twirling Metal Spiral was pounding on his viewscreen.
“What is wrong?” Trell's translator asked.
“This freaking thing is busted!” Drill stormed. “I can't see the broads no more!"
“They have gone beneath the curve of our hull,” the alien explained. “Our cameras can't operate that close."
His lithe green fingers prodded a control lever and the view-screens shifted to a picture of the loading bay: a tremendous large room, with weird alien machinery adorning the stark white walls.
“Ramp extended,” Trell said formally, twisting an ivory dial and punching a clear plastic button. “Opening main doors."
Like an internal view of an egg being cracked, the white wall broke apart, and the split expanded until the afternoon sun flooded into the loading bay. Engines roaring, the cars and trucks rolled along the ramp and into the cavernous room. True New Yorkers, the drivers parked their vehicles anywhere they wished, in no discernible order. The women disembarked, gawking at the bizarre machinery, a few shivering in spite of the warmth of the huge room. Without a sound, the titanic white door cycled shut.
“You ready?” Hammer asked, both eyes glued to the female smorgasbord on the screen.
“Yes sir."
“Then do it, dude."
Trell hit a button and a throbbing yellow light filled the loading bay with its probing rays. The energy beam minutely examined the women. Bolt by bolt, the limousines and trucks were scanned, the thick armor of the bank trucks no more resistant than air to the questing rays. There were no hidden weapons, no poisons, no explosives, no radio transmitters, no ... no ... no ....
“Clean, my Leader,” Trell announced, thankful that the gang-lord's solar flare of a temper would not be invoked again. “They are as they seem. Predominantly naked females of your species and petroleum burning motor carts.” Petroleum burning! Hot Void, he hadn't thought of that. The alien thumbed the switch on the microphone of his viewscreen.
“TURN THOSE ENGINES OFF!” the Technician's voice boomed from the ceiling of the loading bay. The women rushed to comply. Trell snorked in disgust. Probably have to scrub the place by hand to get the stink out.
“Can we go and greet them, chief?” Chisel asked shyly. Women had always been a mystery to him. What to say, when to say it, how to get them to stop screaming ... A mystery that he fervently hoped would soon clear up, along with his complexion.
“Let the bitches come to us,” Drill said, his hungry eyes never leaving the viewscreen for an instant. He had never seen women like this before, not even in movies or magazines. It was a wet dream come true!
Trell advised against it though. “That would be unwise, letting them see the control room. Why don't you meet them in the Pleasure Room?"
“The what?” Hammer asked incredulously.
The little alien repeated himself. A pleasure room, the idea intrigued Hammer. These alien dudes did themselves okay.
“Trell, you tell them where to go,” Hammer decided. “Then show us how to get to this Pleasure Room too."
“Affirmative."
The ganglord stood and smiled. “You stay here, and keep a watch on things, while the boys and I get down."
“Yeah,” Drill said, licking his chops. “Get down."
The Technician spoke to correct their mistake. “But sir, the Pleasure Room is above us."
Hammer waggled a finger. “Just tell us the way there. No, on second thought, I don't want you here by yourself.” The hairy youth lost his friendly smile and loomed over the alien like death itself. “I don't want you getting no fancy ideas. You're coming with us."
After working so many cycles with leader Idow and Boztwank, Trell had no trouble creating a forced grin. “Of c-course, sir.” Oh Void.
* * * *
Once out of the garbage chute, the soldiers unzipped themselves from their coveralls and tossed the soiled garments aside. While Captain Weiss checked their location on the map, they closed the door behind them and prepped their weapons. In Double Time Hush, the troopers hustled down the clean white corridor as fast as their combat sneakers would allow them.
The interior of the starship proved to be an intricate maze of branching corridors, passageways, ramps and spirals. Soon, the colonel realized that his map didn't exactly match this craft, as a left turn put them in the kitchen, rather than the reactor room. Terrific. While it was true that without Avantor and her 17's help Earth would be in even worse trouble, it was also true that if the two of them had not let Idow and his crew get here in the first place, then none of this would have happened. Or maybe that was just sour grapes on his part.
A corporal tugged on his sleeve. “Sir,” the man whispered. “There's a Y intersection here that's not on the map. Which way do we go?"
“Left again,” Weiss said, mentally crossing his fingers, and the troops marched on. Thanks a heap, Great Golden Bozos.
* * * *
In the corridor to their right, beyond the curve of the ship, a huge armored robot ceased its endless pacing to and fro in front of Airlock #4 and rotated a massive armored turret. Rrrr? There had been a noise detected. With its weapons primed for action, the machine sauntered down the passageway to investigate.
* * * *
As the twelve women hesitantly entered the Pleasure Room, they gasped in astonishment, just as the Bloody Deckers had done only minutes before.
When the street gang had first entered, they hadn't been very impressed. It was just another big white room. But as Trell palmed a glowing panel on the doorjamb, the walls and domed ceiling had darkened into a rich sky blue, with a holograph of cheerful orange clouds passing serenely overhead. A green carpet of living moss sprouted from the floor, each downy soft blade literally begging for the touch of their bare feet. The gang was ill at ease with talking grass, but after a brief experiment they rather enjoyed stomping the masochistic moss and its subsequent cries of joy.
While this went on, big comfortable divans seemed to flow out of the walls; plush couches that adjusted themselves to any position its occupant took, as the delighted Chisel soon discovered.
Tastefully displayed on cut crystal tables that dramatically dropped from the clouds without any apparent damage, were artifacts from a thousand worlds; gently humming vases of translucent metal, an ice statue of a bolting seven legged creature that neither melted or ran and a cheap plaster cockroach with a timepiece in its stomach.
Rotating out of a corner of the room was a library of video spheres, containing the stereophonic death throes of a hundred different test subjects. Hoping to find a porn flick or rock concert, Drill pulled out a sphere at random and tried to fit the rainbow ball into the play unit but was unable to make the alien contraption work.
Frustrated at his failure, the locksmith ceased his fumbling and pinked himself as the women entered. He lustfully gave them the gaze of a professional babe watcher. Oh man, these foxes were so hot they should have set off the fire alarm.
With his right ankle on the left knee, Hammer sprawled on a red velveteen couch like a king holding court, and waited for the women to approach. Making himself comfortable, the youth had doffed his black leather jacket and folded it neatly onto the moss by his boots, his activated laser rifle lying conveniently nearby. In his tight denims and sleeveless T-shirt, his muscular form was readily apparent, along were his many scars.
Timidly hesitant, the bevy of semi-naked beauties stayed clustered near the doorway until a tall blonde spotted Hammer and deliciously undulated over to the ganglord.
“Greetings, Hammer of the Bloody Deckers,” she addressed, obviously quoting from memory. “The United Nations of Earth salutes you and your brave men for the capture of this alien vessel and hope that you will accept us."
She had the grace to bl
ush here. “As additional tribute, in the spirit in which it is given."
“That's cool,” Drill said, barely controlling his rapine impulses. Sitting on the edge of the couch, the embarrassed Chisel crossed and re-crossed his legs.
With a seductive smile, the blonde smiled, as if reading their thoughts. “I'm Amanda,” she said introducing herself. “This is Roxanne, Ruth, Alice, Julie, and Cynthia.” Cynthia smiled bewitchingly at Drill, and he leered at her. The bitch had legs good enough to eat lunch off, and she had brought lunch!
“And over there,” continued Amanda, pointing to the second group of ladies. “Is Joyce, Deborah, Melissa, Stacy, Wilma and Laura."
Laura was a tiny blonde with an astonishing bust that captured the immediate interest of Chisel. Why, he was actually taller than her! New sexual vistas suddenly opened for the boy and he felt his face burn red.
Innocently curious, the wide bedroom eyes of Melissa glanced about the room. “I thought there were four of you?” she said, finger teasingly in mouth.
“There are,” Drill said, jerking a thumb towards Trell.
The bored alien was sitting over in the corner sullenly twiddling his thumbs. Mate and get on with it, the alien ordered them mentally.
Swaying in place, Melissa's eyes remained guileless. “Four humans,” she corrected.
Instantly alert, Hammer furrowed his brow. They thought the traitor was still alive, eh? Instinctively, he decided to lie.
“Crowbar's in the control room,” he said loud enough for the others members of his gang to hear. “Making sure that nobody tries nothing stupid."
Amanda shrugged, sending erotic waves through the more prominent portion of her anatomy. “That's okay. We could send a girl to keep him company so he wouldn't feel left out."
Hammer snorted. “Screw him."
The willowy blonde dimpled. “That too."
“I meant forget it. I don't want my man getting distracted like from his work.” The ganglord smiled then and mentally undressed the woman, which took very little effort on his part. “You sure could do that. Come here, babe."
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