Illegal Aliens (16 page)

“You girls, stay close,” he ordered. “And keep your mouths shut. Or else. Got it?” Terrified, the women meekly nodded agreement, and tagged along behind the racing street gang as best they could.

Minutes later, everyone was crowded into the control room and Trell manually closed the security door, using a magnetic lock to hold it in place. Then, as an afterthought, he wedged Boztwank's heavy pot against the door.

“Who's out there anyway?” Drill inquired, only casually interested in who they were about to slaughter. “The FBI? The Army?” Then he blanched. “Not those star cops again!”

“Who freaking cares,” Hammer snapped taking his seat and throwing what few switches he knew how to use. “Where are they?”

“Deck six. No, five, no, deck four!” Trell shouted listening to his belt translator and hurrying over to his post. Whoever the invaders were, they were getting uncomfortably close to the control room.

A tremor shook the floor and suddenly there were no more working sensors in that part of the ship. What the Void was going on down there?

“Deck 4,” he repeated. “Deck 3 sensors indicate projectile weapons, chemical explosives, some kind of an energy weapon and a large metal machine of some kind. Why, they’re battling the warobot!”

Trell was astonished. “It must have been hunting for us ever since you escaped from the Test Chamber.”
Gak!
They had probably passed right by it on their journey to the bridge, hidden in the Omega gas.

“A war robot?” Roxanne asked curiously.

With a snarl, Hammer told her to shut up. Frightened, the ladies exchanged nervous glances. They could only imagine such a machine as a horrible metal monster with an armored tank-like body and a dozen weapon-tipped arms. All they got wrong was the number of arms. There were a hundred.

“Our enemies battle our enemies,” Drill muttered, sliding into his ponderous chair. “Like biblical, man.”

In spite of the situation, Hammer grinned at his lieutenant. Always the intellectual.

As if for protection, a brunette pressed herself against Chisel and he shoved her away. No time for that now. This was business.

“How hot we gotta make the gas?” Drill asked, punching buttons and pulling a lever. Trell reached past him and pushed the lever back a notch.

“Eight times your body temperature,” said the translator on his belt doing a fast conversion. “That will take about 4,000 seconds. No! Only 1,000 seconds. The Omega Gas is still warm from before!”

Another tremor shook the starship and a patch of lights on the Protector's board went dark.

“Trouble?” Hammer questioned.

“Only for them,” Trell snapped. The angry Technician hated to kill anybody, but the instinct for self-preservation was strong in his species.

Brushing back his wild crop of hair, Hammer scowled at his console. “What button do I press?” he asked. The alien pointed and Hammer poised a thumb over the glowing indicator.

“You just tell me when,” Hammer growled, through gritted teeth. Rule #1 for the universe: Nobody messes with the Bloody Deckers and lives.

Trell wiggled acknowledgment and checked the panel gauges. There would be no mistakes this time. He was going to wait until exactly the right moment, and then release scalding hot Omega Gas into the corridors, peeling the very paint off the walls and killing everything organic it reached.

* * *

Deep within the bowels of the starship, the deadly Omega Gas bubbled and steamed in a metal caldron, the growing pressure accelerating the heating process until the war vapor was straining at the release valve, struggling to be set free. But it had been commanded to wait.

Nine hundred seconds to go and counting.

FIFTEEN

Streamers, stars, and swirls gradually faded from their eyes and sight returned to the NATO soldiers. Fifty meters away sat the warobot, an inert black mountain with its multiple arms dangling like metal wind chimes. Deep scars were burned in its prow from the jumping tip of the energy cone of the Atomic Vortex Pistol.

Raggedly, the men cheered in triumph, then stopped, as every inch of their exposed skin was painfully sunburned. Medical packs were opened posthaste.

“What does that weapon fire again, corporal?” Lt. Nealon asked, applying first aid cream to his blistered hands.

“A controlled nuclear tornado, sir,” the soldier replied, dressing his own burns. “According to the manual.”

Somebody laughed. “That? Controlled my ass.”

“Hey, what about radiation poisoning?” a worried soul asked.

“According to the manual there's no harmful fallout,” the corporal stated, patting the leather bound book the size of the Manhattan Yellow Pages dangling from his belt.

“Enough chitchat,” a sergeant growled, slapping a fresh ammo clip into his M203 assault rifle and working the bolt to chamber a round for immediate use. “We still got a job to do. Let's move out.”

Groaning from their bruises, the soldiers got to their feet and prepared to rejoin their companions, when something creaked loudly behind them. They spun around to see the alien machine down the passageway tremble, then its arms stirred, and once more the warobot lifted off the floor and begin moving forward as though nothing had ever happened. Lt. Nealon cursed. Good lord, what did it take to stop that thing? A court order? The AVP had only stunned the warobot. Okay, how about more of the same?

“Visors!” the lieutenant shouted, and the troops rushed to obey, knowing what to expect. “Fire!” he ordered, tapping the AVP man on the shoulder.

Dutifully, the gunner raised the weapon again and pulled the first trigger. The scarlet beam of a tracking laser shot out from the tiny cylinder clipped to the underside of his cumbersome, multi-barreled weapon. With a gulp, the soldier then squeezed the second trigger, and a twisting lance of burning energy vomited from the bulbous muzzle of the AVP with a bucking recoil.

Searing yellow light blinded the human warriors as the spiraling cone of atomic flame stretched down the length of the corridor to strike the frantically backpedaling warobot.

Violently reacting to the impact, the alien machine shuddered as the stabbing tip of the nuclear tornado skipped across its prow, leaving ugly, glowing furrows in the black armor. Electrical discharges danced along the robot's massive frame, and drops of molten metal sprayed the walls. As the AVP ceased its outpouring, the warobot went dark and slumped to the floor, its assortment of blades and probes and drills punching holes in the soft deck.

In the blissful calm that followed, the toasted NATO troopers said a fervent prayer. Then groaned in disappointment, as the running lights of the robot brightened, its massive head swiveled towards them, its clanking arms assumed a defiant posture, the machine rose into the air and resumed gliding towards them.

Lt. Nealon grimaced. The damn thing shook the charge off faster this time, he noted unhappily.

“Fire!” the sweating man commanded.

Panting for breath, the corporal shook his head. “No go, sir. The battery pack needs time to recharge.”

“How long?”

“Sixty seconds.”

Sixty lives was more like it, he thought grimly. But every one of them bought Alpha Squad precious time. “Open fire!” he shouted.

Bullets streamed from assault rifles, probing the robot for a weak spot. Screaming rockets slammed into the distant walls, the ferocious blasts piling up mounds of material to delay its approach. The battle droid outmaneuvered the humans by reaching out with a pair of huge metal claws to grab a hold of the low ceiling and ponderously swinging itself over the massed wreckage. No mindless automaton, this robot learned from its mistakes.

That chilling sight prompted the troopers to fire their weapons with renewed determination. The starship's ventilators efficiently cleansed the smoke from the air, giving the NATO forces a clear shooting range. But for what? Thermite, grenades, napalm, so far the only thing to even hamper the machine was the Atomic Vortex Pistol. Fat lot of good it did.

A thunderous explosion sounded from around the corner and billowing smoke heralded the arrival of coughing men who thirstily drank in the clean air and stumbled away again, Col. Weiss among them.

Unbelievably, the dividing wall still stood and was only spiderwebbed with cracks. Benson and Kaminski expertly slapped more of the clay-like C4 plastique on the barrier, jabbed in timing pencils and twisted off the ends.

They scarcely had taken cover when the charges blew. As the fumes dispersed, the soldiers cursed louder than the plastique. The fissures were wider, big enough to put your arm through, but before their eyes, the cracks began to close like a wound in living flesh.

“Again!” Weiss ordered the demolition team. “This time with everything you’ve got!”

Pounds instead of ounces of explosive were smacked onto the wall, and time pencils broken. The concussion shook them to the floor. Lying prone, Col. Weiss rolled over, his assault rifle ready to add its pittance of destruction to the job. But the wall was gone, blown to smithereens.

“Alpha Squad,” he shouted triumphantly. “Move out!”

Assuming an attack formation, the soldiers hopped over the remains of the wall and raced off. A zigzagging turn brought them to another dead end and the locking click of the self-healing wall was clearly heard by everybody present. Furiously the colonel thought, thirty years of battlefield training coming to his aid instantly.

“Search for an air vent,” he ordered, but alas, none were to be found. Only one thing left to do then, he decided, retreat and try to battle their way past that armored tank Beta Squad had been delaying. By God, they’d fight it hand-to-hand!

“Charge!” Weiss shouted, and without question the NATO troopers reversed direction and bravely advanced to the rear.

* * *

Two levels above the fighting, Amanda closed the front of her gossamer-thin babydoll nightie and approached Hammer. Teasingly, she touched the ganglord on the shoulder. “Hammer?”

“What?” the teenager snarled out of the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off Trell.

“Where are we?” Amanda asked, in a throaty voice.

“This is the control room, bitch, and we are in control.”

Uncertain of how to respond, the woman glanced about the strange white room, and the incredible profusion of controls at each of the four tech stations that the Deckers were sitting at. “What happened to Crowbar?” she asked.

Puzzled for a second, Hammer raised an eyebrow. Eh? Ah! Hmm. “He's out taking a leak.”

“Oh.” She seemed to accept that. “Can you really kill off the cops with some kind of gas?”

Hands poised at the controls, Hammer grinned at the tall blonde evilly. “Freaking-A, lady, they’re already history! This Omega shit dissolves ya like sugar in water. Pft! You’re gone. Super dead.”

“Wow.” A sparkle came to her eyes. “Then there's no danger to us. You’re still in charge?”

“We’re in charge of the world!” Drill roared, raising a clenched fist into the air like the revolutionaries on television always did. “King Deckers!”

The lovelies whispered among themselves, and the gang preened under their fearful respect. Yes, the Bloody Deckers were kings of the world.

“King of the World,” Amanda said reverently. “But a king needs a queen.” She drew herself close enough to Hammer so that a warm breast lightly brushed his cheek.

“Queens,” he corrected, his attention drawn away from his controls and to her cleavage in a momentary rush of lust. “Lots of’ ’em. At least a dozen.”

“But one's got to be his first lady,” she murmured, stroking his astonishingly clean mane of hair. “Can I?”

The street tough smiled. “Can you what?” he asked in return, thinking of a thousand things this hot bitch could do. And he read Penthouse Forum.

“The cops,” she said breathing deeply, which produced spectacular results. “Could I kill the cops? Please? I always wanted to off a bunch of pigs.” The ganglord hesitated. “Pretty please with sugar on top?”

With a laugh, Hammer slapped her on the bottom and she squealed in delight. “Okay fox, you off the pigs. You just gotta press this button here.”

Amanda's expression showed her amazement. “Really? Just press that button?”

The street tough nodded. “Yep. That's it.”

“Why, thank you, shit-for-brains.”

It took Hammer a good second to react to that. Surging with anger, he spun the chair towards her and she raked the boy's face with her nails, digging bloody furrows in his flesh, just barely missing the eyes.

With a curse, the ganglord lunged at her, swinging a haymaker that would have caved in her skull had it connected, but she swayed out of the way and gave him a short punch in the throat. Hacking for air, Hammer stumbled backwards.

Now painful cries from his companions showed that they too were also under attack. Blind from the blood in his eyes, the man shot a fist out, accidentally connecting with Amanda's pretty nose, shattering the bone. The girl went down, her face ruined. Kicking her aside, Hammer vaulted from his chair and turned, just in time to avoid having a spike heel driven into his brain by the long leg of Joyce. With murderous intent, he grabbed for his laser only to discover the weapon was gone.

In sudden realization, he saw that the women had split into teams. Three babes in black lace and fishnet stockings were piled on top of Drill, pounding him with their fists. Three blondes in peek-a-boo mesh body suits had surrounded a bewildered Chisel, who apparently had a patch of his hair yanked out.

Standing with his back to his console, the disheveled kid swung his left hand in a glittering defensive pattern, while he sucked at a vicious bite mark on his right wrist. Hammer judged that the boy was in shock, but even as he watched, Chisel's face took on a feral look and the knife began to slice instead of defend. The half-naked lovelies hastily moved away from him. Luckily, they seemed to know nothing about serious fighting.

Not bait in the trap, the ganglord realized, correcting his previous appraisal, but decoys! Trojan whores sent to protect the invaders downstairs. Hammer contorted his face into a snarl. Well, tough tittie bitch, it hadn't worked!

Vindictively, the seething street tough punched a button on the console and his chair sank out of sight, the floor closing over the hole. He blinked and glanced at the bank of identical white buttons. Shitfire, he’d forgotten which one it was! In desperation, Hammer raked his hands across the control board, pushing dozens of buttons at once. Pictures of different planets appeared on the viewscreens. Wall panels opened and closed, laser rifles tumbling out. Ion clusters got a ring job. The turbo lift went into reverse. Toilets flushed. Dinner was started. Starch was added to the laundry. An unnamable alien device stopped doing its unnamable alien function, and the ship was renamed
Ezrlptxy
.

In short order, Trell had come to some disquieting conclusions about Dirtling mating practices and discreetly took refuge behind a small pile of stony rubble that had once been Gasterphaz. Even in death, the Choron protected.

Their long blonde, black and red hair streaming in the air behind them, several of the women dashed over to snatch the rifles that fell out of the wall. But they were dismayed to find that only the lasers taken from the Deckers were activated. They tried pulling this and twisting that to no avail.

Barking a warning, the three women with working laser rifles assumed a firing stance, holding the weapons with anything but trepidation. The other girls drew aside, modestly drawing the remnants of their ripped clothing together, their voluptuous bodies smeared with blood. Instinctively seeking protection, Hammer grabbed the dazed Amanda and held her in front of him as a living shield.

“Try it, and the slut dies,” he growled threateningly, and then added a few phrases that people in polite society would never utter in front of a lady.

The blonde awoke at his shouts and smashed a high heel directly onto Hammer's instep. With a howl of pain, the ganglord released the woman and she threw herself to the floor. Without hesitation, Wilma, Alice and Melissa fired their lasers. Triple beams of searing energy lanced out from the rifles, and the polychromatic rays struck and clung to the sparkling defense fields. But the earlier scene repeated itself as the fields shrank, trembled and then expanded, the women just as surprised as the Deckers had been when the lasers shut down rather than consume their own beams and be destroyed.

Now switchblade knives snapped into action, and the gang moved in for the kill with no thought of mercy for the fairer sex entering their minds. They had been betrayed and the women would die. Their blood would be just drops in the ocean already spilled by the New York street gang. It was four-to-one odds, and the women were virtually naked and unarmed. No contest.

As the Deckers attacked, the three women in bikinis expertly dodged the clumsy knife thrusts and jabbed out with their appropriated rifles, the butts smashing male teeth. Small fists smacked into pockmarked faces, breaking noses and jaws. Shapely knees met elbows. Bones cracked. Switchblades dropped from nerveless fingers and were kicked away. Drill's squirter was brutally wrapped around his neck. Alice and Wilma punched opposite sides of Hammer's head at the same time, scrambling what little brains he had. The ganglord slumped to the floor. Chisel was dropkicked on top of him by the beautiful, but deadly, Wilma Fisher, U.S. Secret Service.

The fight over, Lt. Amanda Jackson of the New York City SWAT team fired off orders to her mixed bag of commandos. “Fisher, Webbert, guard these morons. Kill them if they move. Hutchings, Bentley, find Trell and have him turn off that gas. Everybody else, with me.”

Through sheer force of will, Trell tried too make himself turn invisible, failing that he prayed, but the women found him anyway crouching behind his makeshift barricade.