McCade's Bounty Read online

  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 be
en 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.

  Seconds later they were free of the asteroid's light gravity and headed out toward the area where the Void Runner and some of the other large ships drifted miles apart.

  The Void Runner had originally been a Destroyer Escort and, as such, was twice the size of McCade's previous ship Pegasus.

  Although still small enough to negotiate planetary atmospheres, and therefore streamlined in appearance, the Void Runner was more ship than one person could comfortably run by himself.

  The ship had carried a crew of eight back in her military days, but McCade had modified her to operate with a crew of four, and could fly her single-handed in an emergency.

  So, Rico and Phil had come along to keep McCade company and crew the ship. They chatted with each other as McCade sent Void Runner a recognition code, countersigned the return password, and slid the shuttle toward the lighted berth on DE's port side.

  There was another similar berth on the starboard side presently occupied by a four-place speedster. More toy than tool, McCade justified it as a lifeboat and ignored Sara's disparaging remarks.

  Easing the little ship into its bay, McCade fired the shuttle's repellors and lowered it onto the durasteel deck. The outer hatch slid closed shortly after that, air rushed in to pressurize the bay, and a pair of snakelike robo tubes slithered out to connect themselves to the shuttle. The tubes pulsed rhythmically as fuel flowed into the shuttle's tanks.

  McCade, Rico, and Phil left the shuttle the moment the bay was properly pressurized. The argrav was adjusted to Alice normal and felt good after Rister's Rock.

  Bright lights threw hard black shadows down against the durasteel deck. All around the three inner bulkheads, tools, torches, and hand testers were racked and waiting for use.

  McCade tapped a code into the lock and waited for it to iris open. The lock was necessary so that a loss of pressure inside the shuttle bay wouldn't affect the rest of the ship.

  McCade still felt a sense of pride when he stepped out of the lock into his ship. Pegasus had been comfortable and fast, but nothing like this. The Void Runner was larger, roomier, more heavily armed, and even faster than Pegasus had been. She was three years old, but she still smelled new, and McCade took pleasure in walking her corridors.

  As McCade made his way toward the ship's bridge he passed the hundreds and hundreds of items that mean little by themselves but taken together make a warship.

  There were com screens, remote status displays, zero-G handholds, navy gray bulkheads, damage-control stations, equipment panels, warning labels, first-aid kits, access doors, radiation detectors, patch paks, ventilation ducts, weapons lockers, maintenance ways, crash kits, miles of conduit, and, yes, brass that did little more than look good.

  McCade scrambled up a short flight of metal stairs and entered the bridge. The overhead lighting was subdued. Hundreds of indicator lights glowed red, green, and amber.

  There was a command chair located toward the center of the room, fronted by three control positions, one for the pilot, the copilot, and the weapons officer.

  McCade dropped into the captain's chair and touched a button. "Maggie? You there?"

  A screen came to life. It showed a middle-aged woman. She was all torso and no legs. Both had been horribly mangled during a drive-room explosion and scissored off by her self-sealing space armor.

  For reasons only Magda Anne Hornby could understand, she'd refused stim growth replacements and prosthetics, settling for a custom-designed argrav box instead.

  But legs or no legs, Maggie was still the best damned engineer for a hundred lights in any direction, and knew it.

  Maggie blew a stray strand of red hair out of her eyes. "Of course I'm here. Where the hell did you think I'd be?"

  McCade grinned. He knew from experience that Maggie was impossible to please. In fact it was Maggie's personality rather than her handicap that kept her from more lucrative employment on a freighter or a big liner. "My mistake. I'll need the drives about five from now."

  Maggie nodded curtly and the screen went black. Though welcome on the bridge, she preferred to ride where she worked, in the drive room.

  Rico ran a manual preflight check, while McCade tapped instructions into the ship's navcomp, and Phil sharpened a durasteel claw. Although the variant was a lousy pilot, his keen brain and amplified reaction times made him a crackerjack weapons officer.

  With all systems green, and a gruff "go ahead" from Maggie, McCade fired the Void Runners standard drives. The DE would reach the nav beacon in a few minutes, enter hyperspace, and exit about three standard days after that. A short run later and they'd see Alice.

  McCade allowed the seat to make him comfortable and delegated control to the navcomp. He couldn't wait to get home.

  Three

  The ship's screens blurred momentarily as the Void Runner slipped out of hyperspace. McCade felt the usual moment of nausea and scanned his readouts for signs of trouble. Nothing. All systems were green.

  Phil tapped a series of keys. Sensors reached out to probe the surrounding vacuum for indications of heat, metal, or radiation. Passive receptors listened, scanners watched for signs of pulsed light, and vid cams searched for movement against the stars.

  Phil growled in the back of his throat as the skin along the top of his muzzle formed a series of ridges and his fangs appeared.

  Something was wrong. Although Alice couldn't afford
remote weapons platforms, she did have deep-space robo sensors, and based on their warnings the Void Runner should've been challenged by now.

  Phil opened a com link, tapped in a frequency, and spoke into his mic. "This is the Void Runner, Delta Beta, six-niner-two, requesting a planetary approach vector. What the hell's wrong with you people? Wake up and smell the coffee."

  Silence.

  Phil's chair whirred as he turned toward McCade. "I'm worried, Sam. No challenge so far, and no response."

  McCade frowned. Maybe there was some sort of equipment failure.

  "Try 'em again, Phil, and run a diagnostic routine on our gear. There's always the chance that some equipment went belly up."

  Phil tried again and got the same result. He ran an auto check on the ship's com gear. Nothing. The variant turned toward McCade and gave a shrug.