McCade's Bounty (19 page)

The ground came up with unexpected suddenness. McCade's legs absorbed most of the impact and he managed an awkward roll. He scrambled to his feet. How the hell were you supposed to roll wearing body armor and a day pack? Who thought of this stuff anyway?

McCade hit the chute release before a sudden gust of wind could pull him off his feet. He touched a pressure plate on the side of his helmet and watched a ghostscape appear around him.

Most of the things around him were a sickly green, except for the rocks, which retained enough of the daytime heat to show up as fuzzy red blotches.

McCade spilled the last bit of air from his chute, gathered it into his arms, and looked for a place to hide it. A black patch between a pair of red blotches suggested a crevice. McCade walked over and found that the chute fit with room to spare. A loose rock went on top.

Good. Now for the team. Where were they? And was everyone okay?

McCade removed the small tac comp from his combat harness and flipped it open. He touched some buttons and a map appeared. It looked weird via night vision but was still readable. A glance told McCade that he was located just fifteen miles west of their target. Not bad.

His position was marked by a red star with a scattering of blue dots all around. Twenty-three in all according to the data summary at the bottom of the tiny screen.

McCade frowned and pushed another button. The map vanished and was replaced by words:

Subject: Zemin Mary Ann Serial number: NB965471 Status: KIA, Drang Cause: Module Failure Disposition: Explosive Disintegration Threat Factor: 001

McCade swore softly. He had liked Zemin, in fact, with a couple of exceptions, he liked the whole team. Zemin had been cheerful, competent, and their best electronics tech. There were others, each member of the team was qualified in at least three specialties, but none of them was Zemin. There had been only one Zemin and she was dead. Dead in a stupid war, on a stupid planet, in a stupid universe.

McCade cleared the screen, touched a key, and looked around for a place to wait. Somewhere out in the darkness twenty-three men and women would hear a solid tone in their headsets and follow it to this position. If they had trouble tracking the tone, a quick check of their own tac comps would solve the problem.

McCade pulled a weapons check, found that his slug gun, blast rifle, and force blade were all where they should be, and retreated between a couple of boulders. With any luck at all his body heat would blend in with the warmth stored in the rocks and shield him from infrared detection.

McCade readied his blast rifle just in case. After all, there was always the chance that government troops had located him somehow, and were on the way.

Ten minutes of almost total silence passed before McCade heard gravel crunch under someone's boot. He grinned as a ghostly red blob appeared ten feet away and looked around. It was Martino, easily identifiable due to the launch tube strapped to his back, hoping to catch McCade by surprise.

Moving carefully McCade picked up a small rock and tossed it in Martino's direction. It made a soft thocking sound as it bounced off the mercenary's helmet. Martin spun around, auto thrower ready to spit lead, and swore when he saw McCade. "That wasn't very nice, Skipper . . . I damn near messed my pants."

McCade chuckled. "Sorry . . . I couldn't resist. Besides, it isn't nice to sneak up on your CO."

Martino grinned unashamedly. His teeth looked green.

The two men repositioned themselves in the rocks and waited for the rest of the team to show up. They came in ones, twos, and threes, whispering the password prior to closing on the rocks. It was like a ghostly echo out of the night, "Hammerfall, hammerfall, hammerfall," until all were present. Everyone was okay outside of some bumps and bruises.

Phil came in third from last. He checked to make sure the team had established a defensive perimeter and huddled with McCade. "Too bad about Zemin."

"Yeah," McCade replied. "I hope it was fast."

"Yeah," Phil agreed somberly. "I hope so too."

McCade flipped his tac comp open and pushed a series of buttons. Because the entire area was flat the tac comp dispensed with contour lines and gave him what amounted to a simplified road map.

The target showed up as a pulsating orange square. According to the tac comp it was some fifteen miles to the east. That would be the lights McCade had seen from the air.

The mission itself was relatively simple. The team would cross fifteen miles of desert, infiltrate the town of Zephyr, and find one particular home. And according to McCade's information, that should be relatively easy.

The home belonged to one Nigel Harrington and by all accounts it was huge. A mansion really, spread all over two acres of land, and as eccentric as its owner.

It seemed that Harrington was the patriarch of the entire Harrington clan, and taken together they owned Harrington Industries, the very heart of the combine.

The combine feared, and Pong agreed, that the moment his fleet showed up government forces would try to take Nigel Harrington hostage. The old man would provide considerable leverage. And because he lived in a small town, far from the combine-dominated cities, it would be easy to do.

Over and over Nigel Harrington's sons and daughters had pleaded with the old man to stay with them, and over and over he'd refused. Zephyr was where his wife was buried and Zephyr was where he'd stay.

The family had reinforced the mansion's small security force but couldn't do much more than that without alerting the army unit stationed in town.

So it was McCade's job to reach the mansion, defend it for the better part of two days, and keep Nigel Harrington alive. Of more immediate concern however was the fifteen miles of desert between him and the Harrington mansion.

The first ten miles looked relatively easy. Open desert mostly, crisscrossed with dry riverbeds and dotted with unmanned oil pumps. The original source of the Harrington family fortune.

Closer in things got more complicated. There was a five-mile-deep defense zone around the town, ostensibly created to defend against raids by the nomadic indigents, but actually placed there because the Harrington family wanted it to be. Like all wealthy families the Harringtons lived in fear of thieves, kidnappers, and assassins. Between the efforts of their well-bribed government representatives and their army of lobbyists, the proposal for the Zephyr defense zone had sailed through the parliament.

Now, however, their government-funded defenses might work against them. In addition to fortified positions and motorized patrols, McCade and his team would have to deal with an unknown number of robo sentries. These were of some concern not only because of their heavy armament but due to their sensors as well. The team would have to be very, very careful during that last five miles.

"Well," McCade said, "time to move out. We've got fifteen miles of desert to cross and about six hours left to do it in. When morning rolls around, and the sun comes up, the desert will turn into a frying pan. Not only that, we'll be visible for miles around."

Phil nodded soberly. The very thought of all that heat made the ice-world variant start to sweat. "Right, Sam. What do you want?"

McCade flipped the tac comp closed and attached it to his harness. "Put Evans and Kirchoff on point, with Abu Rami running the left flank, and Stobbe guarding the right. I'll go first and you ride drag."

Phil nodded and whispered into his mic.

Three minutes later the special ops team was up and running. They were spread out to lessen casualties in case of an ambush, or land mine, but thanks to the enhanced optics built into their visors still in sight of each other most of the time. Radio traffic was kept to minimum and all-out speed was sacrificed to a ground-eating jog. Every now and then the team would top a slight rise and see lights in the distance. They got brighter all the time.

Time passed and McCade fell into a comfortable rhythm. Thanks to the conditioning on HiHo he felt pretty good. His boots made a steady crunch, crunch in the loose gravel. His breathing was deep and steady. His pulse pounded evenly through every vein and artery. In spite of Molly, in spite of what lay ahead, it felt good to be alive.

Mustapha Pong was awake although his eyes were closed. He heard the swish of the hatch sliding open followed by the click of boots on the metal deck. He recognized the step as belonging to Raz. "Yes?"

"The Harrington party has come aboard, sir."

Pong opened his eyes and blinked in the light of the overhead spot. It felt good to be back aboard his ship safely ensconced in the privacy of his own cabin. He hated the prospect of making small talk with the Harringtons but it had to be done. They'd hired his army, and as representatives of the combine had a right to see what they'd paid for.

Pong nodded. "Thank you, Raz. Show them into the wardroom. I'll make my entrance after they've had some time to stew."

Long accustomed to Pong's ways, Raz nodded and withdrew.

Pong closed his eyes. He directed a thought toward the mind slug. "Show it to me again."

The alien gave the Melcetian equivalent of a sigh. Pong never seemed to tire of the fantasy and demanded to see it at least once or twice a day. The mind slug secreted some chemicals, waited for them to take effect, and projected the appropriate thoughts.

Color swirled in front of Pong's eyes, paused, and gradually took shape. A vision emerged, an omnipotent vision such as God might have, in which entire solar systems and galaxies were little more than pieces laid out on a table of black marble.

Here and there Pong saw bursts of light as stars were born, black holes as others collapsed, and collisions so monumental that entire planets were turned into clouds of cosmic debris.

But these were trivial events, no more important than a spring rainstorm on Desus II. Of more importance was the vast sweep of sentient activity. He could see it drifting across the blackness like star dust, succeeding here, failing there, all according to chance and the work of a few unusual minds. Minds like his.

Well, not exactly like his, because Pong could see the possibility of order within the chaos. He could conceive of something greater than the stars themselves. A single civilization, with him at its center, reaching across known space and beyond, to wrap all races and cultures in a single embrace, an organism so big, so powerful, that it would live for a million years.

Yes, that was a vision worth working toward, worth sacrificing to. Humans, Il Ronnians, and, yes, the 56,827, all of them would kneel to Pong.

The chemicals ebbed from Pong's system and his eyes snapped open. The vision had the effect of reenergizing him. Now he was ready to deal with trivial annoyances like the combine and its somewhat arrogant leadership.

Pong got down off of his thronelike chair and headed for the hatch. It swished open at his approach. Raz and Molly waited outside.

Ever since the assassination attempt Pong had insisted that Molly be with him at all times. Pong had always liked and respected the little girl, but this was something more than that, an almost superstitious belief that she brought him good luck.

After all, since Molly's abduction from Alice Pong had yet to suffer a single defeat, and she had literally saved his life. Surely it would be wrong to ignore such an obvious talisman.

Pong smiled at Molly, and she smiled back, but it was polite and somewhat distant. Oh, how he hungered for a real smile! The kind he saw on those rare occasions when she was swept away by the joy of the moment. Like the precious hours they'd spent walking the streets of Segundo, the aircar hovering above them like a guardian angel, Raz practically dancing in his eagerness to get Pong off the planet.

Those had been magic moments during which Molly had forgotten herself, and her parents. Yes, her parents were the problem, and one with which he would eventually deal. Perhaps Molly's mother had been killed in the attack on Alice. If not, a hired assassin could finish the job.

As for the almost-legendary Sam McCade, well that might be a little more difficult, but where there's a will there's a way. The trick would be to kill Molly's parents in such a way that their deaths could never be traced to him. And then, with that accomplished, arrange for Molly to find out. She'd be sad for a while, but children are resilient creatures and recover quickly. With all hope of being reunified with her parents gone, Molly would gravitate to him, and Pong would see those smiles a good deal more often.

Yes, just two more of the many small details that must eventually be dealt with. Pong took Molly's hand and together they walked down the corridor toward the ship's wardroom.

Pong cut it extremely close. By the time he entered the wardroom Marsha Harrington, the most senior of the Harringtons present, was just short of a boil. No one kept her waiting on Drang, and by God no one should keep her waiting here either, especially some jumped-up mercenary general. Her escort, a rather junior officer named Naguro, had done his best to stall but had run out of small talk five minutes before.

So as Pong entered the room, Marsha Harrington turned her somewhat beefy body his way and was just starting to speak when he preempted her.

"Citizen Harrington, this is an enormous honor. I knew the president and chief executive officer of Harrington Industries was brilliant . . . but I had no idea that she was beautiful as well."

Being far from beautiful, Marsha Harrington flushed at this unexpected compliment and found herself completely disarmed. Pong was entirely different from what she'd been led to expect. Quite pleasant in fact, and, aside from the grotesque alien draped across his shoulder, dangerously handsome. She found herself babbling like a schoolgirl.

"The honor is mine, General Pong. May I introduce my brother Howard, and my cousin Nadine?"

Howard, a rather sallow man in his mid-thirties, gave a stiff bow, and Nadine, a dissipated-looking creature in a custom-tailored Harrington Industries business suit, nodded. She looked at Pong like a rancher judging a prize bull. "Charmed."