L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02

by Nagasaki Vector

  I slithered up the side of the ship, puttin’ careful toes an’ fingers in the recesses provided for same, until i got to the upstairs airlock. Charm’d been right: it was as wide open as the one below—they had good reason t’wanna air her out. I slipped inside, adjusted my disguise, such as it was, an’ stepped softly into the after lounge.

  “Come on now, honey. How much more can you— owch! You little bitch, I’ll teach you to bite!”

  Backin’ along the wall, I wondered if he’d get a psychosomatic bruise from that imaginary nip—too bad Georgie couldn’t carry rabies. At the hatch-frame, I cased the control-room best I could, usin’ the glass front of a gauge on the back wall, which was angled nearly right. Leavin’ the Colt in my pocket for a minute, to avoid makin’ any reinforcement-summonin’ noise, I whipped around the corner, grabbed Heplar by the scruff, an’ smashed his head against a bulkhead, left-handed.

  Somethin’ squished pleasantly, an’ he settled to the floor. With a quick underhanded swipe of the bowie, I slashed the overhead line to the DreamCap. There was a spark an’ hiss. Gregamer stirred on the couch, blinkin’ stupidly as he tried t’focus; then his eyes widened as he caught sighta me.

  I reversed the blade in my hand, thumb t’pommel, took a quick step forward, batted away the pistol he was grabbin’ for, an’ seized him by the lapel.

  “Gregamer, they’re gonna hafta castrate you loose from that couch!”

  “Denny! How did you—” I heard a voice behind me an’ turned, keepin’ one eye on Gregamer. There was Ab Cromney, momentarily fooled, but not any longer. He had a Confederate flechette gun under one arm. I pivoted, draggin’ Gregamer over across the couch-arm, an’ in one smooth motion, planted the seven-inch knife up to its cross-hilt in the left side of Cromney’s chest.

  He stood there a moment, lookin’ a mite surprised, rolled his eyes up, an’ folded at the knees. When he hit the deckin’, it drove the knife-point out through his back.

  Heplar stirred. I kicked him in the face.

  But things’d gotten outa hand. Gregamer was on me from behind, my size but broader, with a longer reach, and strong.

  I fumbled for my pistol, punched him in the solar plexus at the same time. He didn’t even blink, but cracked me on the forehead with the ruined DreamCap. He musta liked the effect it produced, ’cause he kept on doin’ it. Somewhere about the seventeenth blow, I kinda lost tracka what was goin’ on.

  There ain’t nothin’ in the known universe smells quite the same as the oily floor of an abandoned garage. Especially when your nose an’ mosta the resta your face is in intimate contact with it.

  After a twenty-foot drop.

  I could tell straight off my right arm was broken. Funny how y’know these things. Wasn’t altogether sure about my hip on that side or the knee. Like Charm’d pointed out, I always thought you were supposed t’faint when somethin’ hurt that bad.

  Abruptly, somebody’s pointed toe became instrumental in informin’ me that I’d busted three or four ribs as well. There was a sorta gurglin’ t’my breathin’, an’ I calculated groggily that it mighta made more sense t’count the bones that weren’t broken.

  Wouldn’ta taken near as long.

  The foot eventually turned me over on my damaged side, makin’ life even more miserable, an’ I saw through the remainin’ good eye that said foot was attached to Edna Janof.

  “He’s still alive,” she said with mingled disappointment that I wasn’t dead an’ welcomin’ the opportunity t’kill me all over again. I tried t’speak.

  Nothin’.

  “Well, Captain Bernard M. Gruenblum,” the lady said, “you meet your end at last. It’s certainly taken longer than I expected, but then 5 was handicapped with inferior assistance. Now you’ve kindly taken care of that for me by removing Cromney, and—of course I’ll have to finish the job you started on Heplar, and Denny’s out of the picture, but I-—”

  “But you’d better stop your little list right there, Edna darling, and keep in mind from now on exactly who and what I am!”

  Norrit Gregamer strode up beside her, lookin’ twenty feet tall from my pointa view, draped a negligent arm over her shoulder. She actually cuddled up into the embrace, practically purrin’.

  She mighta even meant it. No accountin’ for love.

  “Look at him, my dear,” Gregamer said evenly. “Observe his eyes—still confident. He’s still expecting help.”

  “Not from this, I hope!” She laughed an’ raised the hand she’d been holdin’ behind her. Danglin’ from her fist by his little eyestalk was Charm, limp as a boiled gooseneck clam. There wasn’t any glitter in his eye.

  “Or from that...” added Gregamer with a chortle of his own. I followed his hooked thumb t’where the garage door’d been broached by the front end of Win’s Neova. Hangin’ through the starred hole in its windshield, sprawled over the hood, was a shaggy black body.

  Her blood was ruinin’ the paint job.

  How the hell long had I been out?

  The Hamiltonian turned back t’me. “I must apologize for having precipitated you so abruptly from the airlock door, Captain. I'm afraid I rather lost control of my temper for a short while. However, it did serve to flush this little vermin out of its hiding-place.” He indicated the inert Freenie while I mourned inside for two of the best friends who’d ever had the bad luck t’meet me.

  “Very touching,” Gregamer continued, “the way it hurried to your side, too preoccupied to notice Edna right behind it. You strangle like a pro, my dear.”

  “Why thank you, kind sir.” It was her turn t’gloat: “Your furry companion seems to have done herself in. I’m not the only one saddled with incompetents, I suppose. Still, they don’t train subhumans here the way they do at home, do they?”

  I tried t’speak again, with no better results than the first time. Just as well, she woulda gone for the manicurin’ scissors, considerin’ what I had in mind t’tell her.

  “Save your breath, Gruenblum,” Gregamer advised. “At least for one last prolonged scream. Edna, are you ready to go?”

  “Just about,” she answered with what approached docility. I guess some guys have it an’ some guys don’t. In this case, I hoped it wasn’t catchin’. “You see, Captain, we’re ignoring an old maxim and giving up the ship. Norrit has convinced me that there’s plenty we can accomplish in the Confederacy without it—did you know they have atomic explosives here, for construction work, but have never thought of using them as weapons?—especially as we don’t intend to leave it intact for anybody else to use.”

  “Now, now, dear, you’re giving away the good part!” He lifted a flechette gun—Cromney’s, t’judge by the Type O all over it. But then, just about everything seemed t’be covered with slippery carmine these days.

  “I really wish you could speak, Captain, although I’d guess you’ve lost your speech center from the way that side of your head is flattened onjhe concrete. Messy, messy. Still, I suppose I’ll always wonder: was she sapient or not? Ah, well, there are some things, I’ve been told, that mankind was never meant to know. Nineteen rounds of this"—he slapped the receiver of the shotgun—“right into the computer banks, and it’ll all be academic. I’m saving the last one for you, Captain”—he peered closely into my face— “that is, if you still require it by the time I get back.”

  This was turnin’ out t’be almost the worst mission I’d ever volunteered for. I sure hoped it’d be a lesson to me.

  “And by the way, the help you’re still expecting—thought you’d fooled me, didn’t you—can’t possibly be on time. We’ll be out of here in another minute; tell me, Captain, did you get your directions to the coach-bam before you left or en route?"

  My heart sank the final millimeter it had left t’go. He put a foot on the gangplank, chucklin’ softly to himself.

  “Use all twenty rounds, Norrit dear,” Edna called after him cheerfully. “I’m sure I saw a shovel around here somewhere, and I’ve always wanted to just sort of chunk!, y
ou know, right above the eyebrows?”

  Indulgently: “All right, my dear, if you insist. By all means enjoy yourself.” He started up the ramp, the Thane of Cawdor t’her Lady MacBeth. What a couple—is that a dagger that I see b’fore me?

  Edna flung little Charm away like a dirty rag an’ headed for the back of the garage. Even if I coulda talked, I wouldn’ta had the heart t’spoil Gregamer’s fun. My skull wasn’t crushed; it just/e/r that way, probably from lyin’ all this time in a hole eroded in the concrete floor.

  An’ speakin’ of daggers, while I’d left mine screwed into a well-deservin’ recipient upstairs, my left arm still worked. I twisted an’ bent it, scrabblin’ across m’chest, gropin’, gropin’...

  Yes! They hadn’t taken my Colt. I’d been layin’ on it all this time—it’d probably broken those ribs, in fact—an’ they hadn’t noticed or thought of it in all their newlywed excitement. Leverin’ it outa the pocket nearly cost me my grip on consciousness, broken up as bad as I was, but I finally got it free.

  Thumbed the ambidextrous safety down.

  Drew a shaky left-hand bead, an’—

  WHAMMM!

  Norrit Gregamer’s head exploded like a balloon fulla Sherwin Williams’ best firetruck enamel, splatterin’ all over Georgie’s hull. The decapitated body took one last step toward the airlock, kinda slumped off t’one side, missed the edge of the gangplank, an’ dropped onto the same floor that’d ruined me.

  “Norrit!" Edna shrieked. “Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard!”

  I kinda figured this last was directed my way, especially when she loomed up outa the darkness with that shovel vertical in her hands.

  I waved my .45 in her general direction, but it was gettin’ a mite heavy by now, an’ like everything else in this place, my hands were sorta slippery-feelin’. One moment the Colt was there between m’fingers, an’ the next my mitt was empty, the automatic lyin’ there on the cement, its big ugly eye lookin’ straight at my belly-button.

  “You...bastard! The only man I’ve ever met in my entire life who wasn’t a wimp, and you had to shoot him!”

  She held the shovel before her, half-raised.

  “I’m going to chop you into so many little—”

  SPANNGG!

  Somethin’ caught the rusty blade an’ smacked it flat into Edna’s rage-filled face. She staggered backward, tripped over an abandoned crate, an’ fell. I got the .45 in hand again, breathin’ two sighs of relief at once, twisted around painfully, an’ there was Miss Koko Featherstone-Haugh, sittin’ up an’ aimin’ her .11-caliber Webley Electric at the place where Edna’d been.

  I tried t’shout at her an’ couldn’t. She untangled herself from the remains of Win’s car, dried blood all over clothes an’ pelt, an’ shambled over t’where I lay, keepin’ that pistol of hers pointed toward the shadows at the backa the garage. She picked up the badly-dented—but unpunctured—shovel and examined it with disgust.

  “Bernie, are you still alive?”

  I blinked at her an’ finally managed somethin’ halfway between a croak an’ a whisper. “That’s a damn silly question t’ask. How about yourself? I thought you were a goner for sure.”

  She grinned a human-type grin, still maintainin’ a watch where Edna’d gone down. “I faked it! Your disguise gave me the idea. I smashed the windshield with my pistol—I guess that accounts for the sights being off. I was aiming at her center-of-mass like Uncle Olongo taught me. You know, he warned me the .11-caliber was underpowered.

  Look, it didn’t even penetrate!” She tossed the shovel aside, where it clanged and raised dust.

  “Well, my disguise didn’t work out too well. How about all that blood?”

  “The blood? Oh, that! She gave me a sheepish look. “Well, I sort of punched myself in the nose, also with the gun. Nothing like a nosebleed to—and let me tell you, it hurts too!”

  “I’ll put you in for a Purple Heart. Meantime, kiddo, I’m in kind of a bad way myself. Can you get aholda Win an’ the folks? An’ you better check little Charm over there. I’m afraid he’s probably—”

  “THIRTY SECONDS TO FAILSAFE AUTODESTRUCT!” said Georgie suddenly at about a thousand decibels. Her voice was frozen an’ inhuman. “TWENTY-NINE SECONDS TO FAILSAFE AUTODESTRUCT'!"

  A hand crawled over the coamin’ of the passenger-level airlock. It was followed by its owner, Rand Heplar.

  Georgie went blarin’ on.

  “You’ve killed me, Bemie Gruenblum.” He laughed insanely, an’ by the look of his bashed-in cranium an’ blood-soaked hair, he was probably right. “But I’ve killed you back!”

  "TWENTY-FOUR SECONDS TO FAILSAFE AUTODESTRUCT!" Georgie said. "TWENTY-THREE..."

  22 Edna’s Last Stand

  . . SECONDS TO FAILSAFE AUTODESTRUCT!”

  “Georgie, cut that out!”

  Rand Heplar was draped artistically over the sill of the passenger-deck airlock, unconscious but breathin’: exactly the same condition I’d be in—maybe even leavin’ out the breathin’—in a couple more minutes. Every now an’ again he moaned.

  “All right,” Georgie said in a normal tone, “but Bemie, you’ll have to countermand the Autodestruct manually. I can’t do anything about it myself, and you’ve only got twenty—”

  “No count-downs, please. Honey, I ain’t in any shape t’do nothin’! Koko, get up there an’ down into the engine—”

  “I’m on my way!”

  An’ she was, up the ramp, over Heplar’s carcass, Georgie helpin’ her by hittin’ corridor lights an’ panel indicators t’keep her headed in the right direction. Heplar murmured an’ stirred again. I tried wigglin’ m’toes. Far as I could tell, with the heavy boots an’ all, everything worked.

  Real cautiouslike I laid m’ .45 down, worryin’ overtime about where Edna’d got off to, an’ with a cowardly left hand, felt along m’legs, inspectin’ for bendy places where there oughtn’t t’be any. The general architecture seemed in dandy order till I got up to m’right hip. Somethin' rasped nastily across somethin’ else, an’ I went all over kinda sick an’ hadda stop.

  Poor little Charm. Some kinda god I’d turned out t’be; couldn’t even protect him—or Spin, for that matter—from one miserable lone crazy-lady.

  “Fifteen seconds, Bernie. Koko’s at the bottom of the ’tween-decks ladder and starting down the corridor toward the reactors.”

  “I hearya, I hearya!”

  Not knowin’ about Edna bothered me. I hitched up on an elbow, tryin’ to ignore the pain like my Academy Yoga instructor’d taught me. Never’d been m’best subject—oriental positions just don’t fit occidental bones. Managed t’drag m’self mebbe a yard closer to the ship.

  BLOMMM!

  A fountain of concrete-dust kicked up directly in my path.

  “Stop right there, Captain Gruenblum!”

  Well, that took care of one mystery: it was little Edna, hollerin’ down at me from the glassed-in office cubicle above the garage-floor at the back. I oughta say “formerly glassed-in”—that blast’d done for mosta the windows. I could make out the shiny ring of her flechette-gun muzzle from where I lay.

  Damn thing looked like the Gibraltar Tunnel.

  “Don’t make another move, Gruenblum! I want to enjoy this, and I won’t have you ruin it by dying too soon!”

  BLOMMM!

  The air went fulla cement chips behind me that time, an’ I could even hear the whine an’ clatter of a shotgun dart or two that ricocheted into the corrugated steel walls.

  Pretty plain what she had in mind: workin’ the pattern closer an’ closer till she could gimme just the edge of it— flesh wounds—without knockin’ me off outright. Remote-control torture. Ain’t science wonderful?

  BLOMMM!

  Bitsa concrete rained down on my head this time, like bein’ in a split-second sandstorm. With all the dust bein’ raised, it was gettin’ harder an’ harder t’breathe.

  An’t'see, I suddenly realized. Never had been too well illuminated i
n this garage t’start with. If m’suit’d been right-side-in, she mightn’ta been able t’make me out at all. I hooked a finger through the trigger-guard of my Colt, dragged it slowly toward me, an’ gathered in m’nether limbs as far as the damaged hip-joint’d permit.

  I knew pretty much just where the next shot’d fall. “Hey, Edna!” I shouted. “Answer me a question before y’take another crack! How come y’didn’t just stop Koko with your little play-toy—that’s the gorilla—an’ let the Autodestruct do your killin’ for ya?”

  “Five seconds, Bernie. Koko’s at the panel, and I’m giving her the reversal sequence now.”

  “But Captain Gruenblum,” protested my tormenter, “what fun would that be?”

  “Well, you’re takin’ quite a chance, Edna. She may blow yet—an’ take you with her!” I peered into the darkness an’ driftin’ dust, watchin’ for the glitter of her gun again.

  . “So be it!” she shouted back defiantly, “Gregamer and I had planned—”

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  I’d blasted in the direction of her voice, spreadin’ my shots a little, dragged m’self as quick as I could t’Georgie’s side, right to the same safe little comer in the shadow of the boardin’ ramp that Charm’d done his spyin’ from. Took me a second to recover from—

  BLOMMM!

  This time the cataract consisted of steel darts, aluminum confetti, an’ shredsa chewed-up lateprene from the gangplank. There was a pause in the gunplay as I held my fire, figurin’ I had four shots left t’Edna’s sixteen. My spare magazines were with my combat rig in Win’s hovercar, effectively a million light-years away.

  Heplar’s arm flopped once, twice. Once more in this darkness an’ confusion, he was gonna look like a pincushion. Edna had a nervous trigger-finger an’ the ammunition t’back it up.

  “One second to Auto—” Clank!

  Even out here I could hear that big lever bangin’ back into place. I breathed a partial sigh of relief. Or a sigh of partial relief. Mebbe both.

  “—destruct is canceled, thank heavens. But Bernie, I