McCade's Bounty (2 page)

By the time Sara entered the main corridor she could hear the sounds of distant battle. The pirates were forcing their way in and the command center staff was making one last stand. Tears rolled down Sara's cheeks as she pulled her blaster, checked its charge, and headed for the entry. The bastards would pay.

The room was small and heavily hung with rich fabrics. Perfume misted the air and shadows filled the corners as the two men regarded each other across the surface of the expensive desk.

The merchant straightened his robes, pouted his lips, and rubbed his chin. The likeness of a serpent wound itself around the merchant's bald skull and terminated at the center of his forehead. The merchant waved his hand and light winked off a golden pinky ring. "One hundred and thirty-five thousand imperials, and not a credit less."

Sam McCade took the cigar out of his mouth, examined the soggy end for defects, and shoved it back in. He had gray eyes, strong even features, and a two-day growth of beard. "You're out of your mind. I'm here to buy fertilizer, not diamonds. I'll pay one-twenty, and not a credit more."

The merchant shook his head sadly. "McCade, you are a crude man. I will lower my price just to be rid of you. A hundred and thirty."

McCade blew foul blue smoke toward the other man's face. "A hundred and twenty-five."

The merchant coughed and pushed a terminal across the surface of his inlaid desk. "Done. Collect the tanks from my private loading dock and never darken my door again."

McCade grinned, tapped in the amount of transfer, and added his personal code. His leathers were worn and stained. They creaked as he stood. "Thanks, Corrus. You're a thousand laughs. See you next time around."

Corrus waited till the other man was gone, sprayed the air with perfume, and allowed himself a big grin. He liked McCade. Only Sol knew why.

Rico waited outside. He was a big man, with a head of unruly black hair and a beard to match. His eyes were small and bright. He wore a loose-fitting shirt, a leather vest, and a pair of black trousers. Like McCade he was armed with a low-riding slug gun.

"Well? Did ya purchase the poop?"

McCade frowned. "Yes, and since it cost Alice more than a hundred thousand credits, I'll thank you to refer to it as 'liquid fertilizer.' Come on. Let's find Phil."

Rico grinned and followed McCade up the corridor.

The asteroid had a little spin but not much. The men moved carefully. Without much gravity it would be easy to bounce up and bang your head against solid rock.

Like most of the passageways within Rister's Rock, this one was courtesy of Rister himself.

Rister had lived on the asteroid for more than thirty years, and during that time, he'd bored tunnels in every direction.

Not because he
had
to, or was looking for minerals, but because he
wanted
to.

It seemed that Rister enjoyed the process of boring tunnels, and, more than that, believed the finished product was a work of art.

The fact that no one else agreed with him didn't bother Rister in the least. He went right on boring tunnels till the day he died. In fact, Rister had been dead for years by the time they found him, a dried-out mummy in a beat-up space suit, grinning like he understood the biggest joke of all.

Now Rister stood in the back of Meck's saloon, where he served as a sometimes hat rack and surefire conversation starter.

But regardless of Rister's intentions, the asteroid had been put to good use. Located as it was on the very edge of the asteroid belt, and close to a hyperspace nav beacon, the planetoid made a handy spot to do business.

In fact, Rister's Rock had a pretty good rep, but still attracted all kinds, and McCade watched as they passed by. There were the roid rats, striding the halls in beat-up armor, and spacers, bored-looking men and women, hunting for something they hadn't tried, and merchants, some as colorful as peacocks, others drab and boring, all watching one another with the wary look of potential combatants.

There were aliens too, not many, but a feathery, scaly scattering of Finthians, Lakorians, and Zords, plumage waving, tentacles writhing, feet stumping along.

From long habit McCade sifted the crowd for fugitives. They could be of any shape, size, or species, sentients who'd committed a crime, or been accused of one, and were on the run.

Pragmatic soul that he was, the first Emperor had decided to rely on bounty hunters, rather than ask his hard-pressed citizens to foot the bill for an empire-sized police force. And like many of his ideas, this one worked.

Most worlds had a police force, but its jurisdiction ended in the upper atmosphere, and that was fine with them.

Once someone fled the planet they were assumed to be guilty. A bounty was placed on their head, so many credits dead or alive, and they showed up in public data terms all over the Empire.

All a bounty hunter had to do was access a terminal, scroll through the possibilities, and select those he or she wished to pursue.

Then, for a very small fee, the bounty hunter could buy a hunting license and track them down.

It had been a long time since McCade had stepped up to a terminal and purchased a license, but he felt sure there were some fugitives in the crowd.

Loud ones, hiding behind carefully constructed false identities; quiet ones, doing their best to escape all notice; and the fortunate few, who by dint of biosculpture and organ transplants, had re-created themselves from the ground up. They'd be hard to catch.

McCade smiled. Well, they were safe from him. His bounty-hunting days were over. Now he was a part-time cop, a part-time purchasing agent, and a full-time husband. It would be good to get home.

McCade's thoughts were interrupted by a racket up ahead.

As the two men stepped out of the tunnel and into the circular area where a number of passageways came together, they found themselves in the midst of a crowd. There were numerous shops, but the largest was Meck's saloon, and people were looking in that direction. McCade craned his neck to see what the excitement was about.

There was an inarticulate roar followed by a loud crash as a spacer came flying through the front of the saloon to land in front of the crowd. Thanks to the light gravity, the man was able to roll over and shake his head. Friends picked the man up and dusted him off.

McCade turned to the roid rat on his left. He was a big man with a hooked nose and a walrus-style mustache. "What's going on?"

The man nodded his head toward the bar. "We were in Meck's having a drink when this bear-thing comes in. It orders a beer and sits at the bar. Then a spacer says T don't drink with freaks,' and all hell breaks loose."

The roid rat gestured toward the dazed spacer. "That guy tried to jump the bear from behind."

McCade looked at Rico and the other man shook his head. "Phil's gettin' less tolerant all the time. Must be gettin' old."

McCade sighed, pushed his way through the crowd, and entered the bar. Rico was right behind him.

The place was part saloon and part curiosity shop. Besides a mummified Rister, it boasted other wonders as well, including a cage full of alien birds, miniature landscapes made from human hair, a pickled something that no one could identify, a chunk of rock said to have strange healing powers, and much, much more.

The place was completely empty except for Phil, the man he was lifting over his head, and a distraught bartender. Broken furniture and shattered glass littered the floor.

Phil stood about seven feet tall, weighed in at more than three hundred pounds, and looked like a bear. He had brown eyes, a short muzzle, and thick brown fur. He wore a kilt of his own design, carried a machine pistol as a side arm, and wore a twelve-inch knife strapped to his right leg.

Originally human, Phil had been biosculpted for work on ice-worlds and liked Alice for that reason. Phil was not only a qualified biologist, but a one-variant army, with infrared vision, amplified muscle response, and razor-sharp durasteel teeth.

He could also go into full augmentation for short periods of time, a state that burned tremendous amounts of energy and left him completely exhausted.

In this case however the variant hadn't even worked up a sweat. This was partly due to the asteroid's light gravity but mostly because of his enormous strength. Phil was holding a man over his head and lecturing him at the same time. The man looked scared and, as McCade knew, had every reason to be.

Meanwhile the bartender, or perhaps Meck himself, danced around Phil and begged him to stop. It did little good. Phil had something to say and said it.

" . . . So, you can understand how I felt. No one likes to be singled out, identified as different, and subjected to verbal abuse. Especially by low-life cretins like you. Though generally a proponent of positive reinforcement, I think punishment has its place as well, which explains why I'm going to throw you through that wall."

Fortunately for the man in question this particular wall was made of lightweight plastic with a fire retardant foam core. He went through it with no problem at all. As luck would have it, however, there was nothing but solid rock on the other side. He hit with an audible thump.

McCade winced. Some of the crowd had filtered back in and lifted the unconscious man from the debris. He was alive but would spend the next few days in the rock's infirmary.

Phil ran an experienced eye over the damage, reached into his belt pouch, and produced five gold imperials. "This should cover the damage with something left over. Agreed?"

The bartender, a middle-aged man with radiation-burned skin and a sizable potbelly, nodded. He had no desire to engage Phil in protracted negotiations. "Agreed."

Phil smiled and revealed rows of gleaming teeth. "Good. Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll finish my beer."

So saying Phil hoisted his beer, poured it down in one swallow, and slammed the mug onto the surface of the bar. Tiny bits of foam and droplets of beer flew in every direction.

Phil belched and wiped his muzzle with the back of a hairy paw. "Ah! That hits the spot. Hello, Sam, Rico. Ready to go?"

McCade looked around and grinned. "Ready if you are. Sure you want to leave the place standing?"

Phil waved a dismissive paw. "Just a slight misunderstanding. You have the nutrient solution?"

Rico chuckled. "We've got it all right. More'n a hundred thousand credits' worth o' poop."

Phil frowned. "Rico, you're hopeless. It's not 'poop.' It's a specially formulated nutrient solution for use in our hydroponics tanks. Now, if you'd spent as much time looking at the planet's population curve as you do on hunting trips . . ."

Phil lectured Rico on hydroponics, demographics, and planetary ecology all the way up to the planetoid's surface. Once there they dodged a small army of vendors, paid an exit tax, and retrieved their space armor from rented lockers.

With space armor on and checked, they stepped into one of four large locks that served Rister's Rock, and waited for it to cycle them through. Five minutes later it did, and they stepped out on the asteroid's rocky surface. A good-sized landing zone was nearly filled with shuttles and smaller ships, while farther out, the sun made a line of jagged light across the top of a low-lying ridge.

All asteroids looked pretty much the same to McCade's eyes. As he bounced toward the shuttle McCade wondered what had made this one so special to Rister. He'd never know.

The shuttle, like the ship it belonged to, was of military design. Both had been gifts from a grateful Empire after McCade's last ship had been lost while searching for the Vial of Tears.

The Vial, a religious artifact sacred to the alien Il Ronn, had been stolen by a renegade pirate named Mustapha Pong.

The Il Ronn had sworn to regain the Vial no matter what the cost, and faced with the very real possibility of interstellar war, the Emperor had requested McCade's help. But that was history and something he'd just as soon forget.

The shuttle was a squat wedge-shaped hunk of metal, built to haul heavy loads and survive atmospheric landings under combat conditions. It had a blunt nose, a boxy fuselage, and short extendable wings. The shuttle crouched on retractable landing jacks and looked more like a primeval bug than a ship.

McCade punched a series of numbers into the key pad located on the shuttle's belly. A line of light appeared and expanded into a rectangle. Stairs slid down, found the ground, and stopped.

The three men made their way up the stairs, waited for the lock to cycle through, and took off their suits. They attached the suits to wall clips and entered the crew quarters.

Farther back, and almost full of goods and equipment, there was a cargo compartment. It could be pressurized to carry additional passengers or left unpressurized as it was now.

Passing between curtained bunks, through the tiny galley-mess area, and into the control room, McCade dropped into the pilot's position. Rico sat on the right, with Phil one seat back, in one of the two passenger slots.

McCade fired the shuttle's repulsors, got a clearance from the rock's computerized traffic-control system, and danced the ship toward the glare of greenish loading lights.

The loading docks were unpressurized and, outside of one or two space-suited figures, completely automated.

Auto loaders wove complicated patterns around one another, tall spindly robots stepped over and around piles of merchandise, and computer-controlled crawlers towed trains of power pallets toward distant ships.

Acting on a string of radio commands McCade skittered the shuttle over to loading dock seven, opened the main cargo hatch, and watched via vid screen as an auto loader positioned two silvery cylinders in the middle of the cargo bay.

The auto loader had four headlights, and as they swung away, a number of smaller robots scampered through the hatch to lock the cylinders in place. As soon as they were finished the robots left as quickly as they'd come.

McCade sealed the hatch, ran an auto check on all systems, and fired his repellors. The shuttle lifted and dust fountained up from the asteroid's surface. Then, with the ship safely aloft, McCade engaged the main drive.