Illegal Aliens (17 page)
“I am not of your species!” he shrieked as they hauled him wriggling into view. “I didn't mate with you! DON’T EAT ME!”
NSA field operative Alice Bentley bared her teeth at the alien crewmember. “If you don't turn off the Omega Gas and stop that robot immediately, I’ll bite your head off and then mate with you. Twice!” the petite blonde snarled.
Trell turned a nauseous shade of aquamarine and lunged for the control panel. Wildly slapping buttons, he reversed the Omega Gas process. He then turned to Gasterphaz's tech station and froze. The controls were destroyed, wires, switches and relay cubes melted into an unrecognizable mess. A laser must have splashed its beam across the panel. There was nothing anyone could do to effect repairs outside of a week of hard work.
Dejectedly, he faced the crazed female Dirtlings. “I hope I taste just rotten,” Trell said as his last great act of defiance.
Melissa Hutchings grabbed a fistful of the alien's uniform. “Just what do you mean by that?” the InterPol operative demanded, her bedroom eyes now spitting fire.
“Stop the robot?” Trell's translator squeaked. “Hot Void, I can't even talk to it.”
“Try anyway!” Melissa ordered, licking her chops suggestively, and the little alien obediently fainted.
Shifting to Plan B, the women efficiently stripped the gang of their clothing and distributed the items among the female warriors. Everybody was given at least two knives from Chisel's seemingly endless assortment. The huskier of the females wore the gang's leather jackets, and were armed with motorcycle chains. The three women in ripped bikinis had donned T-shirts to cover their nakedness. They also sported the stolen laser rifles. Lt. Jackson, in her peek-a-boo black lace body suit, stuffed torn bits of handkerchief into her nose to stop the bleeding.
With professional expertise, she checked the clip on Hammer's Colt .45, duly noted the number of bullets left, slammed the clip home and worked the slide on the automatic pistol, chambering a round for immediate use. On her orders, the door of the control room was forced open and Assault Team Charlie moved out. Their decorative, but not battleworthy, high heels had been discarded. However, the Deckers’ boots proved too large for any of the team, so they ran barefoot along the starship's main corridor. The soft floor felt oddly warm and almost alive.
Chosen by the Cray supercomputer of the FCT for their physical beauty, courage and military training, none of the women faced the upcoming fight with anything but grim resolution. The combat soldiers knew the desperate straits their male counterparts were in, and that the laser weapons they now carried could be the deciding factor in the battles outcome. But like the street gang and Trell, they were unsure where the fight was located and at a branching corridor they paused.
“Which way, sir?” panted the Swedish airline stewardess that Dr. Malavade had personally recommended for this assignment, knowing her fondness for trying new, exciting things.
Amanda cocked her head. “The noise does seem louder in this direction.” But the sounds of battle dropped off sharply as they neared a four-way intersection.
“Damn,” a zaftig Green Beret sighed, stopping in the act of using a discarded fishnet stocking to tie off her riot of blond curls. “We’re too late.”
“Can it, sister,” the U.S. Secret Service agent barked, wishing that she had her trusty .357 Magnum with her, instead of this souped-up alien flashlight.
Coyly, a buxom Russian FSB spy tucked a shapely breast back into the flimsy lace bra it had inadvertently popped out of while they were running. “Perhaps if we tried the next level down,” she suggested in flawless English.
“You tell us how to get there, comrade,” snapped the poster girl for the United States Air Force, a rocket jockey of a test pilot as famous for her impatience as for her fabulous pneumatic shape.
Down the corridor to their left, one of the women on point position seemed to be listening to the wall. “Mandell! What in hell are you doing?” Jackson demanded, walking closer.
Stacy Mandell, a martial arts instructor and ex-Miss Nude Connecticut, removed her ear from the vibrating white wall and waved her commander back.
“Clear the area!” she shouted, in a surprisingly husky voice. “Scram! Beat feet!”
As the women staged a tactical withdrawal, a high-pitched squeal became evident. Rapidly growing in volume, it reached higher and higher in tone and tempo until the squealing drove them to the brink of screaming. But the female soldiers gritted their teeth against the horrid noise and took the punishment, unwilling to yield another foot of the corridor. Obviously, something was coming through the wall, but they were not going to retreat. The team would stand and fight, if only to avenge the brave men sent to assist them. Whatever came through that wall was going to be hit, and hit hard, by beams, bullets, knives, chains, hands, feet and teeth.
The devilish noise reached its painful crescendo and the wall violently disintegrated in a blinding flash of light and heat, the spray of vaporized metal stinging every inch of their exposed skin. A rain of fused, black robot parts closely followed the explosion, four metal arms loudly clanging off the opposite wall, a whirling blade cutting a jagged trench in the white material and the robot's head embedding in the floor like a cannonball hitting a snow bank. After a moment, the starship's hidden ventilators whisked away the pungent smoke and from the gaping hole in the wall a coughing man in a NATO uniform stumbled into view. Amanda rushed to assist him.
“Are you okay?” Weiss and Jackson asked each other.
As the women helped the bedraggled soldiers into the corridor, their respective commanders took the opportunity to report.
“The Bloody Deckers are in our custody,” Lt. Commander Jackson reported giving a salute. “We are in control of the ship. No personnel losses to report, although each of us would like to be disinfected and shower for a week.” A twinkle entered her blue eyes. “I see you got the robot.”
“Don't even mention a shower,” the colonel laughed, mopping the sweat from his flushed face. “Yeah, we beat the damn thing. But I’m going to have some strong words with the scientists in the NATO weapons lab.”
“Why's that?”
“They never told us that the Atomic Vortex Pistols only had a kill range of three feet. Three measly feet!”
To the woman's puzzled expression he added, “I’ll explain later.”
Less than an hour later, in the underground Command Bunker of the FCT, the humans and visiting Gees were gathered around the green felt-covered poker table closely examining some of the more interesting artifacts taken from the
All That Glitters
.
Meanwhile, what remained of the Bloody Deckers was hauled off in chains to NATO HQ for a thorough debriefing and a jail sentence that could only be measured in radioactive half-lives. However in the weeks to come, a statue would be erected in Central Park honoring the gang for saving Humanity from Idow and his crew, a monument that was regularly defaced by the New York citizenry and cleaned by the local branch of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club.
Contemptuously smug, Sir John tossed the defense field generator onto the table with other belts, laser rifles, bits of warobot and the remains of Boztwank's squirter. “A toy,” he declared in an annoyed tone. “Useless. It was foolish of the aliens to depend on such a limited defense.”
Dr. Wu took her accustomed seat between Bronson and Nicholi. “True,” she agreed. “A force shield that was proof against both energy and material weapons, similar to the dome that protects their ship, would have used a great deal of power. More than the field generators in the belt could readily supply. But since you could link either shield or field to the starship's reactor, who cares?”
“Lack of mobility?” Prof. Rajavur guessed, fingering the woven metal hem of the belt.
“How about a compromise, then,” General Bronson suggested, grinding out his cigar butt in an ashtray. “A defense shield. Literally. A round disk, say a meter in diameter and anchored directly in front of you. Crouch down and you’d be safe from frontal attacks.”
“Plus, you could stand and run, firing around the edges,” Nicholi added, smiling broadly. “I like it, Wayne. I like it!”
Using a clean cloth, Dr. Wu wiped a smear of dried blood off the translucent crystal barrel of one of the laser rifles.
“As for these devices,” she began, minutely inspecting the weapon's breech, then holding it to the overhead light, casting a rainbow pattern of colors across her face, “I wonder what a full laboratory analysis will reveal about the beam focusing mechanism? An electromagnetic prism assembly like Prof. Richard Hill of Boston University is working on, or something entirely new?”
Rajavur made a note of the name so that he could requisition any available information on the man's research for her. Then he paused. On second thought, Yuki probably already requisitioned Hill himself as a lab assistant. “How long before you can make a report?” the Icelander asked his scientific advisor, hiding a smile.
“Twenty-four hours for the preliminary,” she replied, primly crossing her legs and wondering what the older man found so amusing. “Sooner with any luck. NATO is sending an armored truck to collect these small items and carry them to the UN laboratory on Long Island.”
With fingertip pressure, Mohad turned one of the defense fields on and off several times. “The results will be most enlightening, I am sure,” the linguist quipped.
“Will you and Yuki be conducting the experiments?” Nicholi asked, luxuriating in his old poker chair and carefully stretching his arms so as not to impolitely smack any of his teammates. Czar's Blood, he was glad to be out from behind that sheet of glass.
“No,” Dr. Malavade said with a frown. “For a while at least, Yuki and I will be living in the alien starship with an international team of scientists overseeing its complete dissection. Why, the communication equipment alone . . . ”
“I want to see those engines,” Dr. Wu stated flatly.
Prof. Rajavur countered with, “You mean the medical facilities.”
“No, the shield generators,” Bronson interjected.
Eagerly, Sir John leaned forward. “Trell is what I’m really interested in,” he said in scholarly passion. “There's so much that he can tell us about Galactic society and the way it works. Why, even what he doesn't know can be informative. You see—”
Nicholi lifted a restraining hand. “Please Jonathan, no lectures today.”
“Be sure to clear everything through Wayne,” the diplomat sternly told them. “He's in charge of security for the whole project. The brand new Secretary General of the UN has placed the entire matter in our, quote, highly competent hands, end quote.”
The bunker rang with easy laughter as the First Contact Team relaxed after this most hectic of days. Unnoticed by the humans, the two golden beings standing over by the kitchen unit nervously exchanged meaningful glances, put down their mugs of buttered and salted coffee to briefly touch hands. Seconds later the avantor stepped forward.
“Unfortunately, we can not allow you access to any of this information,” she stated firmly.
Everybody stopped laughing.
Maintaining a diplomatically neutral face, Rajavur laid aside his huge coffee mug. “Why is that?” he asked.
“Yeah,” General Bronson puffed suspiciously, from behind a freshly lit panatela with General Nicholi closely flanking him on the left. “What gives?”
“After all, we can probably improve upon your designs,” Dr. Wu said in tactless truth.
“Most likely, doctor,” Avantor agreed. “But it is strictly against the rules.”
“The Galactic League Handbook,” The 16 piped in. “Chapter Nine, Codes of Conduct, sub-section 3, Regulations Referring To The Dispersal Of Technical Information To Non-Member Planets: Item One—Don't Do It.”
“This is ridiculous!” Bronson snapped, plainly nettled by the outrageous statement.
Avantor was unruffled by his outburst. “But a fact, none the less.”
Unable to stop the Gees without resorting to physical violence, the FCT watched helpless as the two aliens collected the items taken from the starship and placed them in a storage box supplied by the humans. Avantor locked the box tight and 17 dry-swallowed the key.
“But surely, the mere fact that we already know of these devices existence, eclipses such an action on your part,” Sir John observed.
Score one for our side, thought Mohad smugly. Then he froze as a strange hand began groping his knee under the table. Eh? What was going on here?
Avantor wiggled her ears in dissent. “The rule book disagrees. Besides, I personally believe your race is simply too violent to be allowed scientific knowledge of this level.”
“We’re too violent?” General Bronson stormed, removing the stogie from his mouth and jabbing it at the two alien beings. “What the hell were Idow and his crew? Galactic girl scouts?”
Rasping hoarsely, The 16 coughed into his hand and fanned the air. No Koolgoolagan cigar, that cheroot. “On the contrary, they were criminals. However, you are not.”
Not openly anyway, thought Rajavur as he continued to tap a message in Morse code on Dr. Malavade's knee. The communications expert squeezed the diplomat's hand in acknowledgment, politely excused himself from the table and left the bunker by the main door.
Sir John marshaled his powers of debate and rallied to the attack. “Well then,” he said, taking a hold of the lapels of his gray tweed suit and assuming his best lawyer stance. “You must be ignorant of the effect that your presence has had on Earth. Peace has broken out like the common cold. China, Russia and America have signed an unprecedented peace treaty. England and Ireland have come to terms. Israel and the PLO have, pardon the term, buried the hatchet. North and South Korea, New York and Brooklyn!”
The sociologist spread his arms. “It's pandemic! A new feeling of Earthly brotherhood has enveloped our globe. Such an unconditional reaction on our part
must
,” he stressed that last word. “Must cause you to reconsider.”
Avantor was clearly not swayed by his argument. “No,” she repeated.
Stoic as a steel statue, General Nicholi Gagarin Nicholi regarded the guardian of the galaxy in the disapproving manner that Russian generals seem to have patented. “If we were indeed the savage primitives you think,” he said rationally. “Then would we not simply take the machines and deny you use of the starship that you so desperately need to return home?”
Lovely, noted Courtney, mentally applauding the general. Not a threat per se, merely the acknowledgment that a threat could have been made, but wasn't. Crafty ol’ bear. Maybe?
With inhuman control, the avantor turned her expressionless black eyes on Nicholi. “General, we are in constant communication with our home world. Any unwarranted acts on your part would result in eventual retaliation by our Great Golden Fleet. The starship
All That Glitters
, its equipment and sole surviving crewmember belong exclusively to us. Do you really wish to test your military prowess against ours?”
Angrily, General Bronson removed the cigar from his mouth, noticed that everybody was staring at him, paused, and then returned the stogie to its normal position, his thoughts unspoken.
“Well, if that is your unalterable position,” Prof. Rajavur sighed, his voice trailing off in resignation. “Are you sure there is nothing we could say to change your minds?”
The golden female shook her head in the accepted Dirtling gesture. “Sorry, Professor, no.”
With a sad expression, the diplomat shrugged and rose from his seat. “So be it. At least you will allow us to see you off in the manner deemed proper for visiting dignitaries? We could assemble the leaders of our world here in less then two days.”
Bull, thought Nicholi keeping a straight face. We could have the entire UN General Assembly here in less then two hours. What was the Icelander plotting?
Avantor remained unyielding. “Expediency dictates our immediate departure. We mean you no discourtesy, but we must return to our headquarters with all due speed. Prior orders. I’m sure you understand.”
The two generals nodded in agreement. Yes, orders were orders. That was a universal rule. Like never pulling on a busted straight, or volunteering for anything. That was how they got this assignment in the first place.
“But of course,” Rajavur agreed in sympathy. Ever gallant, he offered his hand to the aliens and they shook. “You don't mind though if we personally see you off, do you?”
At this, the avantor smiled. “A pleasure, Professor. My 17 and I would consider it an honor.”
* * *
This conversation, relayed to the Great Golden Ones’ Headquarters via the flying refrigerator, was judged to be fitting and proper. Avantor, the avantor and her 17, were to be congratulated on a job well done.
Much later, under harsher scrutiny, it was decided that this is where the two made their big mistake. But at the time, who could have known?
* * *
Night had come to Central Park. Past the tall trees, the electric towers of New York City brightened the horizon, while powerful floodlights illuminated the area about the colossal white ship brighter than day. In relative peace, the FCT bid its guests adieu while thousands of unseen eyes kept close track of their every move. The noisy civilian crowds were hundreds of meters away behind the military cordon, the NATO troops just recently reinforced by a special crowd control unit from the NYPD. During a rock concert, this small a group was the lull the police relaxed in. Heck, nobody was even drunk!
The street gang's tribute had been long since removed from the starship, and the confiscated alien artifacts replaced inside the cargo bay. Near the base of the loading ramp, Avantor and The 16 checked over the inventory of items, making sure that nothing from the ship was missing. But The 16 quickly noted a major discrepancy, and bluntly asked the attending humans where was Trell-desamo-Trell-ika-Trell-forzua-Junior?
Resplendent in his red diplomat sash, light gray morning coat and black silk top hat, Prof. Rajavur pretended surprise. “Gosh, I thought the ambulance would have delivered him already.”
Avantor chewed over the human word. “Ambulance,” she repeated. “A medical emergency vehicle? Why would the Technician have need of such a transport? Was he damaged in the fighting?”
“Killed while trying to escape, actually,” General Bronson said, sounding embarrassed. “Our troops were understandably a bit trigger happy.”
With an unreadable expression, the alien female turned her eerie black eyes on the Earth soldier. “And why wasn't I informed of his demise earlier?” she inquired, her voice the temperature of liquid methane.
Bronson shrugged, making his chest full of medals tinkle like distant wind chimes. “You didn't ask,” he replied truthfully.
“Where is Trell's body located?” interjected The 16, boldly stepping forward, his electrostatic clipboard and stylus floating rigidly in the air nearby.
General Nicholi, who was as equally decked out as his friends in full dress uniform, sash, ribbons and medals, none of them for good conduct, answered the golden male's question. “Across the street in a mobile UN lab undergoing total dissection. Why? Is there a problem with that?”
For a moment, Avantor and her 17 touched hands. “Produce his remains immediately,” the female alien ordered. The unspoken words ‘or else’, clearly heard by everybody present.
The FCT exchanged a round of glances as Nicholi muttered something to the military aide standing beside him. The UN soldier nodded, saluted, and spoke briefly into his helmet microphone. In less than a minute, the civilian crowd parted and through the NATO barricade rolled a military ambulance. The aliens strode over to the white car as armed UN guards opened the rear doors. On the rubber matting of the floor was a styrofoam container, and nestled inside a foggy bed of dry ice was an ordinary tin janitor's bucket with a snap-on plastic lid.
The Gees stared at the pail, each other, the pail again, and then The 16 gingerly lifted the lid. In frank dismay, they saw that the bucket was filled to the brim with a thick green mush the consistency of overcooked pea soup.
“Trell?” The 16 squeaked, as if half expecting an answer from the emerald puree. Swirling about, Avantor angrily opened her mouth to speak when Yuki interrupted her.
“I said total dissection,” Dr. Wu explained, her hands neatly hidden in the flowing angel sleeves of her heavily embroidered red and black formal Chinese robe.