“Because we’re not taking their gear,” I said. “We’re just taking them and the clothes they’re wearing and any babies they might’ve had while they were here. Which, if they’re smart, will be none.”
“Will they go for this?” Bonnie asked.
“They’ll have to,” Clark said. “After the planet’s sterilized, their gear and all their data will be retrieved in a calm manner, on a clean planet which will be under perfect control.”
“What if they don’t want to leave their stuff here?”
“Nobody asked them.”
Silence fell, at least for a few long moments.
Finally Theo broke the tension. “How much do we know about these bug-things?”
Clark shrugged. “Big, ugly, gooey, fast, mean, aggressive, and sneaky.”
“Lawyers,” I grumbled.
An unexpected ripple of laughter made me suddenly self-conscious. I was a stranger here. Their reaction surprised me, made me uneasy. I froze in place, not wanting to blow it. I didn’t need them to like me. I needed them to accept me for the duration.
“We’re not sticking around to get fleeced,” Clark went on. “The whole evac-deploy shouldn’t extend past midnight. This seems real simple and it should be. We’re going down in daylight just after dawn, which is the safest time. Have all of you done your homework on these aliens we’re going to be scrupulously avoiding?”
Everybody nodded. I watched them, their twitches, their eye movements, the sulky postures. They hadn’t all reviewed the tapes like they were supposed to. Everyone one of their faces looked like a mug shot.
“We have the Marines to take care of us,” Clark went on, “and Rory to help corral his mother, who runs this camp down here. You’ve all heard of Jocasta Malvaux. Real powerful scientist, hobnobs in high circles. Once she complies, they’ll all fall into place. After that, we deploy the poison-packers and split. Colonel MacCormac, you got anything to add?”
The Marine commander, a cylinder with no hair and powder-blue eyes like an Alaskan dog, stepped forward. His voice was fairly high for a man, and had a surprising gentility about it, but that was the only soft thing about him and I didn’t buy it for a cover. “Contamination resistance is number one,” he said. “This ship and the surrounding area remains under heavy guard and twelve-point automatic surveillance the whole time. The ship’s auto-defense will protect us if we don’t make any mistakes. Nothing sneaks aboard. One egg can destroy a ship. It’s happened before. That’s why we’re evacuating and leaving the robotic poison-packers to hunt down every last one of these bastards.”
“Do we know what they eat?” Bonnie asked. “I mean, do they eat . . . us?”
“There’s no record that they eat humans,” Clark said. “We don’t know what they consume. Maybe nothing.”
“Um . . . ”
Everyone waited, but Bonnie suddenly got shy.
“Go ahead, girl,” Clark said. “Speak up.”
She flushed in the cheeks, but met the challenge. “Creatures that big and active have to consume something. They’re too thin and bony to store much.”
“Sounds fragile,” Gaylord commented.
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” MacCormac warned. “Making assumptions like that is what got a whole squad of Colonial Marines slaughtered.”
I looked at the thick-necked, strong, bull-like man and at his other seven human tanks, trying to imagine what could get past them. I was suddenly glad none of them had been in the galley when the fox bat broke free, given that shoot-through-the-ship thing and all. I could only guess that was why they weren’t allowed to carry projectile weapons while the ship was in space. Not that they weren’t armed anyway, with nerve neutralizers and shockers and just plain blades.
Suddenly I felt foolish for pulling my plasma pistol out of storage and forgetting why it was put away in the first place. I’d lost my cool. In hindsight, I was embarrassed about that.
MacCormac unclipped an unassuming blue cylinder from his belt and held it up. “This is a canister of base. Anybody who’s ever worked in a kitchen knows that dumping baking soda on acid will neutralize the acid. These animals have been known to spit or spray acid if their bodies get ruptured. Everybody in the landing party will carry a canister of base. If any acid gets on you or the person next to you, spray this on him. It’ll cut the effect till we can get medical treatment. Miss Bardolf here has been trained for treating acid burns.”
Bonnie didn’t look anywhere near as confident in her skills as MacCormac wanted us to believe. Her wide blue eyes batted around uneasily at us as if she were hoping nobody quizzed her.
Before those thoughts solidified too much, Clark asked, “Colonel, would you please give us a test firing of the auto-protection system?”
“Yes, sir.” MacCormac did a sharp right turn to a fancy-ass control station with about a thousand little touch-plates, stations of which I happened to know there were only six on the entire ship. Executed in a bright, polished, yellow metallic, these “gold cores” were total-system access, and those who knew the right things could do almost anything from them. If the helm area or any other critical area ended up contaminated or depressurized, the ship could even be launched, steered, landed, loaded, and unloaded from any of the gold cores. Now MacCormac used the system to cause a deep rumbling in the body of the ship. Energy flowed from the otherwise recumbent magnetic reaction chambers and popped out some kind of deployment array high over our heads, on the outer shell of the Vinza.
On the screen, the view of the landscape and the camp huts turned a sharp, disturbing blue-green. An electronic buzz sent us all grabbing for our ears, then ended in a hard snap. Then the blue-green color faded back to the natural golden crunch of the planet.
“That’s a field of bubble pellets carrying charged waves,” MacCormac said. “It won’t kill humans, but you’ll be plenty bruised after that kind of punch. If you get caught in a volley, move toward the ship. The charges are most powerful at the widest perimeter.”
“It won’t kill humans?” Bonnie asked.
“But it’s DNA-coded to cook anything that isn’t human over the weight of five pounds,” the colonel said. “Hopefully we won’t be here long enough to charbroil any native herds of cattle or whatever lives here.”
Bonnie looked worried. “Five pounds . . . you mean ordinary innocent animals can just wander in and get killed?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right. We had to set the weight limit to account for certain growth levels of the creatures we’re avoiding. We won’t be here long enough to do much damage. As long as we don’t dump anything that attracts the local fauna—”
“We’re not going to be down there long enough for any engagements,” Clark said before anybody got the same thoughts Bonnie was having. “We’ll go down in broad daylight. We’re going to keep as tightly to our schedule as possible. We’ll be gone before dusk, and the alien infestation’ll be neutralized before any other human being ever sets foot back on the planet. These critters adapt fast, so I’ve got the latest formulation of the pesticide aboard, loaded onto the PPs, programmed to go after any species that’s not DNA matched to the planet, leaving every other species alone. Dead aliens, healthy planet.” He glanced around, making eye contact with each of the crew, then nodded. “Deploy, y’all.”
As the crew moved away from Clark, I moved toward him and in a moment we were as good as alone in the middle of the bay and its cargo of enormous rectangular green containers.
“My mother’s not going to go along with this,” I said.
His expression didn’t change, but his eyes got a little twinkle of trouble. “Then we’d better not tell her we used her research to come up with the current formulation.”
“Yeah . . . let’s not tell her that,” I agreed.
“PlanCom should’ve sent synthetics in to do this research instead of a bunch of overeducated dweebs.”
I shook my head. “Mother’s the Dweeb Queen. Dweebs flock to her. PlanCom couldn’t get the
rights without giving my mother and her team the chance to study here. They wanted to go. She’s influential. She wouldn’t make the mission happen unless she and her little parade of sycophants were approved for infiltration.” I got a chill and squeezed my shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” Clark asked.
I looked him square in the eyes. “You keep talking about how easy this is going to be.”
“Well, that’s my job. A captain’s supposed to be able to sound confident even if his shorts are on fire.”
“Know anything about this planet? What kind of terrain is out there past what we can see?”
“In this region, rocky, semi-desert part of the year, fairly dry, hot, some plant growth. Livable, breathable, could be better and hopefully will be some day.” He paused, musing. “This planet is one in about eight million, Rory. A livable, breathable planet with two oceans, that won’t even need much terraforming . . . hell, another decade of atmospheric modification, and humans can move right in. We can actually live on it now, if we don’t run marathons. We won’t even have to destroy any indigenous species. You know how rare that is in the reachable galaxy?”
“I really don’t.” Translation: I really don’t care.
“Get out of Milwaukee once in a while,” he said. “A planet the right size, the right distance from a sun, with an atmosphere and a moon . . . hell, it’s worth hundreds of trillions just in the arable land. That’s not even starting with the mineral rights, the oceanographic advantages, the value in alien botanicals and native fauna for medical advancement . . . it makes you dizzy, all the things we can do with a place like this. Hell, we’ve found a living planet that won’t be hurt at all if we live on it! We can have a second Earth up and running, and not in a hundred years after fortunes are spent on it, either. I’m talking ten, twelve years, if this crew does its job right this week. We got paradise here, except for this infestation we’re here to stamp out. We come, we kill, we claim.”
“How does this hunter-killer, poison-packer part stay inside the Alien Species Act?” I asked. “My mother and fifteen senators hammered that out. It’s even got a subsection called the ‘Malvaux Amendment.’ It sure doesn’t allow for killing off entire species just to get a claim on a planet.”
“Indigenous species,” he corrected. “Read the fine print. These things aren’t from here. They’re aliens.”
“So are we.”
He smiled and nodded. “Guess so. You never heard of a range war?”
“Has anybody ever found out where they come from? What they’re doing here?”
“Nobody knows. They’re cosmic hitchhikers.”
I don’t like mysteries. Maybe that’s what drove me to get into law enforcement. We’d tried to do our homework— me included—but there wasn’t much homework to be done. Not much was known about these animals we were here to exterminate. Of course, that was why my mother and her team were doing their dangerous work—to find out the things nobody knew about these aliens.
Clark shifted on his feet. “If this works out, it’ll be my last mission. I’m sub-contracted for an estimated percentage of the mineral rights in advance. And they estimated high. The crew gets huge bonuses, and I get that, plus a cut of the profits. If it goes lower, I keep my percentage. If it goes higher, I get further dividends. Pal, if this planet works out, I’m set for life. Hey, how often do you get to be a hero and get rich? I can quit peddling bulk for a living, finally make good on that plantation.”
“You and your plantation.”
“Hey, we can do a lot worse than sit in the beautiful south-western desert and grow guayule and sunflowers, then leave the land to our kids.”
I broke out a little laugh. “What is this ‘we’ shit? We don’t have kids.”
“You need some. A nice chubby wife, and kids.”
“Kids—I can’t handle a bat! Kids.”
I watched him for a moment, and tipped my head critically. “I don’t see you in a Panama hat, sucking on a big cigar and watching your fields grow.”
“Well, you’re gonna, bud. Get used to it.”
“What is it you want to grow? Wahoo?”
“Guayule,” he said, getting the “ee” on the end. “Naturally hypoallergenic latex. Medical applications, space industry, military, transportation, colonization . . . and you’ve always wanted to quit schlepping bad guys and come live with Nancy and me on our rubber farm and help me raise my kids. This is your dream . . . repeat after me. I, Rory Malvaux, dream of rippling fields of latex plants . . . ”
“And you, Clark Sparren, are hallucinating.”
He smiled. Caught up in his mental picture, I smiled too. No more Milwaukee-to-Chicago crime corridor? No more dirty streets, crime scenes, and outlines of dead guys? Was I ready to say goodbye to my whole identity? Clark thought I was. Of course, Clark thought I should never have said hello. He liked being in control. Nobody could control the streets.
I thought about these alien animals which would be the hair in our pudding on this trip. “How long have ‘they’ been on this planet?”
“Sometime between the first scouting androids, about eight years ago, and three years ago when the PlanCom returned to stake its claim. Sixty-two advance scouts and settlers were killed before they figured out these were the same monsters we’ve run into before on one of the mining spacelanes. That’s when your mom was brought in to analyze the situation and decided she wanted a stab at research. She’s had her chance, and now we’re calling it quits and taking over. We think we know all we need to know about them for our purposes. We’re not zoologists, y’know.”
Why was I still sweating? I wiped my face with the leather jacket, then remembered it had just had a bat wrapped in it. I needed a few more seconds to get past that.
Clark glanced around to make sure we were out of earshot, or at least interest, of the crew, who were bustling around us the whole time. “I want you to deal with your mother for us. Don’t waste a lot of time discussing her opinion. Discussions give people the wrong idea. No sense opening a carton we know is sour. Just tell her what’s happening and strongly advise her to comply without a fuss.”
“She hates being told what’s happening unless she’s doing the telling.”
He rubbed his shoulder where the bat had driven him into the wall. “Maybe try to appeal to her motherly qualities?”
“She has no motherly qualities.”
He grimaced. “You serious?”
“She protected her cubs until I was old enough to pour my own milk. After that, raising myself and my sister were my job. Mother became famous and I became screwed.”
“Geez. Sorry.”
“Nah.”
“There has to be some way to get to her.”
Annoyed at the load he was putting on my shoulders, and at myself for allowing him to convince me to come in the first place, I tried to turn away. He caught my sleeve.
He fell quiet for a moment of thought. “How about the leadership instinct? Her people will panic or get scared or confused, y’know, crushed, if she doesn’t deliver a positive experience—”
“She’s not a Girl Scout, Clark.”
“Tough nut to crack, huh?”
“Accent on ‘nut.’”
“Yikes. Okay . . . go do like we taught you to suit up and we’ll go ahead out there. This won’t take long. There’s only one ending.”
The conversation was over. He was already working his palmtech to do captain things. I was already out of his thoughts, his attention fixed on whatever the little screen was telling him as he cradled it in the palm of his hand and did a thousand things at once. We’d known each other for almost fifteen years and I knew the posture.
He’d done both of us favors by asking me to come along. He needed a legal officer, and I needed a break. I’d just wrapped up a murder investigation, the revenge murder of a fellow officer, his wife, three kids, and their two dogs. I’d jumped from street cop to plainclothes detective just to pursue the violent snake who’d slaught
ered them slowly, starting with the dogs. For three years I chased the bastard across two continents. The idea was to bring him to justice. Instead, I cut his arms off and let him bleed to death. Oops.
The department covered it up. The official story was that the guy’s arms were sliced off when he tried to escape across a farm co-op and got caught in a shredder. Nobody had any problem keeping that secret. I’d always been a loner, but the whole department stuck up for me anyway. Go figure. I’d have let me hang for it.
Clark took me out of the media storm by bringing me along on this mission. The P.D. was glad of it—they’d shoved me out the door. The idea was, I guess, that by the time we came back from forty-odd months in space, I’d be yesterday’s news. Whe-ther I wanted to be here or not, I had to be, for the good of everybody else.
I watched Clark, standing there in his blue flight suit with the lapel pin of a cloisonné bluebird which his wife had made for him in art class. He kind of looked like a big blue bird with a red crest. I appreciated him for his ability to live a utilitarian life of routine and practicality while still hanging on to universal visions. I couldn’t do it. My visions never went past my shoes.
“This might not go the way you want it to,” I warned.
He looked at me. “It will.”
I stepped closer, to make sure none of the bustling crew around us could hear. “You can have this planet any time you want, but you and your crew don’t get your big bonuses without my official certification that’s it’s clear of human life. If we can’t account for every one of those researchers, dead or alive, then I don’t sign off on the deployment of your poison platoon. I’m not here to do you a favor. If I don’t certify, you don’t collect.”
I felt like a ghoul, silhouetted from behind by the brighter lights of the loading area, which now was bustling with active crew as Gaylord and Theo directed their preparation for what would come over the next few hours.
Clark squinted in mental discomfort and clearly some disappointment. Maybe he had expected me to bend to the occasion in his favor. If you want rules bent, ask a friend.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 25
