The Outpost (34 page)

“You throw a pretty nice punch for a little feller,” he said. “Now let’s see how you take one.”

He stalked the alien around the circle, finally cut off his escape route, and connected with a mighty blow to the head. The alien dropped like a ton of bricks.

Just as Baker thought the fight was over, the taller alien leaped onto his back, biting his neck and digging his fingers into Baker’s eyes. Baker shook his massive head, sending the alien reeling away. Then he picked the graceful being up, held him over his head, spun around three times, and hurled him as far as he could. The alien flew totally beyond the circle of soldiers, hit the ground heavily, tried groggily to stand up, fell over, and lay still.

Baker turned to the alien commander. “They put up a good fight for a pair of alien heathen. Tell ’em when they wake up that they lasted about as long with me as anyone ever has.” He walked up to the woman and took her by the hand. “Come on, Queen Eleanor. Time for us to be going.”

As they began walking to his ship, the alien commander called out after him. “You have forgotten your explosives, Catastrophe Baker. We are an honorable race. We will allow you to take them with you.”

“You keep ’em,” said Baker over his shoulder.

“You are sure?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They got waterlogged back on Silverleaf II a couple of years ago, and haven’t been worth a damn ever since. You couldn’t blow ’em up with a detonator.”

Sitting Horse and Crazy Bull and the Aliens

“This is some ship, this flagship of yours!” said Sitting Horse, obviously impressed.

“Damned thing must be a mile long,” added Crazy Bull.

“It is the greatest dreadnaught ever constructed,” said the captain of the alien vessel.

“The humans don’t have a chance,” said Crazy Bull. “Not against this thing. What kind of armaments do you carry?”

“121 nuclear warheads, 77 pulse energy warheads, 16 laser cannons, and more than 300 torpedoes,” replied the captain proudly.

“You could probably win the war all by yourself,” said Sitting Horse.

“It’s quite possible,” agreed the captain.

“I knew we made the right decision,” continued Sitting Horse. “I took one look at this ship and told my friend here that we were fighting on the wrong side, that Men didn’t have anything that could stand up to this.”

“Besides,” said Crazy Bull with a note of contempt in his voice, “what did Men ever do for us?”

“You are just one of the many races that Men have subjugated,” said the captain. “I am surprised that you were willing to fight for them.”

“Willing is the wrong word,” said Crazy Bull. “We just didn’t see any way they could lose—and if you think Men are hard on races that submit to them, you ought to see what they do to races that try to stand against them.”

“That is why we are fighting this war of liberation,” said the captain.

“Oh?” said Sitting Horse. “I thought it was to conquer a few more star systems.”

“That is another reason,” acknowledged the captain calmly.

“And of course, it makes sense to attack Men out here at the edge of the Frontier, where all you had to defeat was a small, unprepared squadron of the Navy.”

The captain stared at them for a long moment. “Are you impugning our courage?” he demanded.

“Not at all,” said Sitting Horse. “We’re complimenting your strategy. Why take on the main body of Man’s Navy until you have to? You grow stronger every day, while their political and moral corruption makes them weaker every day.”

“I’ve never thought of it like that,” said the captain, “but, on reflection, it’s absolutely true.”

“Sure,” said Sitting Horse. “The day will come when you advance on Deluros VIII at the heart of the Monarchy and no one can stop you.”

“You have an exceptionally clear view of the situation,” said the captain. “I admire your way of looking at things.”

“We admire your way,” said Crazy Bull. “That’s why we chose to defect.”

“We are delighted to have two such intelligent beings join us.” The captain paused. “I will want you to address the crew later, to discuss the abuses you have suffered at the hands of Men.”

“It could take hours,” said Crazy Bull.

“Maybe days,” agreed Sitting Horse.

“Splendid!” exclaimed the captain. “We will excerpt your descriptions of the most humiliating abuses and transmit them to our home world, so that our people will know why we must conquer this vile and odious race.”

“We’ll be happy to participate,” said Sitting Horse. “After all, if it’s Man against the galaxy, as we have so often heard their leaders say, then it is only fitting that the galaxy unites against Man.”

“And if your race controls a few hundred more worlds when the fighting is done, that’s a small price for the galaxy to pay for its freedom from oppression,” added Crazy Bull.

“Besides, you’ll have earned those worlds,” said Sitting Horse. “Whereas Man simply took them.”

“It is a subtle difference,” admitted the captain. “I am surprised that you can grasp it so quickly.”

“We’ve been trained by experts.”

The captain didn’t know quite how to respond to that statement, so he settled for summoning his steward and breaking open a bottle of his home planet’s most potent beverage. They spent the next hour toasting each other’s good health and swearing eternal friendship.

Then Sitting Horse stood up, swaying gently, and asked directions to the bathroom. When he returned it was Crazy Bull’s turn, and finally they signed their official requests for asylum.

“Excellent!” said the captain. “I’ll show you to your quarters now.”

“First we’ve got to get our gear off our own ship,” said Crazy Bull.

“You didn’t bring it with you?”

“We didn’t know what kind of welcome we would receive,” said Sitting Horse. “We might have decided you were no better than Men.”

“If you had refused to join us, I might have tortured you, or thrown you into the brig,” agreed the captain.

“Why?” asked Sitting Horse. “After all, we’re not the enemy. We’re just another poor, innocent, downtrodden race.”

“So how do we get back to our ship?” asked Crazy Bull.

The captain signaled for his steward again, and the steward showed them back to their own ship.

A moment later they were sitting at their controls, starting to break free of the huge alien flagship.

“Terrible tasting stuff, wasn’t it?” remarked Crazy Bull as they sped away.

“Give me human booze every time,” agreed Sitting Horse, adjusting the ship’s spin. “By the way, do you think there’s any chance he’ll find the bomb?”

“I doubt it,” said Crazy Bull. “You hid it pretty damned well. I mean, hell, it took me a couple of minutes to find it so I could activate the timer, and I knew it was there. Besides, what possible reason would he have for looking behind the toilet bowl?”

“How long until it blows?”

Crazy Bull checked his timepiece. “Maybe ten more seconds. Don’t worry—we’re clear.”

They both looked at the viewscreen where, nine seconds later, the alien flagship exploded. For a brief moment it seemed almost as bright as a supernova.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Sitting Horse with his less-than-firm grasp of human history. “It’s General Custard and the Big Little Horn all over again!”

Hellfire Van Winkle and the Aliens

Hellfire Van Winkle sped toward Edith of Scotland, the smaller of Henry I’s two moons.

“So you thought you could hide here?” he muttered aloud as the alien encampment showed up on his sensor screen. “Hell, if I could find the last Landship in the jungles of Peponi, I can sure as hell find a military outpost on a dead moon.”

He fell silent again, the current moment less real to him than the past. He remembered the sights and smells of Peponi, the feel of the thornbush as it scraped against his safari jacket, the taste of cold pure water on a hot afternoon, the thrill of the hunt, the adrenaline rush when he finally got a Demoncat or a Sabrehorn or a Landship in his sights.

What the hell was he doing here, fighting aliens he’d never seen in a ship he hadn’t adjusted to in a section of the Frontier that hadn’t even been mapped when he was a young man? He was not only half a galaxy away from where he wanted to be; he was
millennia
away.

Time hadn’t so much passed him by as played a nasty trick on him. He didn’t fit here, didn’t belong in this era, wasn’t comfortable anywhere except perhaps the Outpost, where he could rub shoulders and swap stories with other misfits. But misfits though they all were, none fitted in as awkwardly as Hellfire Bailey. (
Make that Hellfire Van
Winkle
, he corrected himself with a grimace; one more example of Time thumbing its nose at him.)

Yes, he’d outlived his time, no question about it. Now he had to prove that he hadn’t outlived his usefulness as well.

The problem was that he was tired of outliving things. He should have been dead and buried 4,700 years ago. He hadn’t enjoyed the past dozen years, and he didn’t anticipate enjoying the next dozen either.
So if I survive this battle, what will I do with the rest of my life? Just sit around remembering the past and feeling cheated because it was taken away from me before I was through with it? That’s no way for anyone to live.

His mind made up, Hellfire Van Winkle yelled out a “Geronimo!” that no one else could hear, aimed his ship at the very center of the military encampment, and increased his speed.

Just before he hit, he idly wondered if the explosion would be visible all the way to the Outpost. He was not surprised to discover that he didn’t really give a damn.

Big Red and the Aliens

The tunnel was cold and damp, and it smelled like a sewer. Small alien animals scurried to and fro, and ugly alien insects clung to the ceiling. Big Red tried not to notice them

He’d landed on Henry IV, well away from the main body of alien soldiers. Hurricane Smith had said to leave them for him, and he was more than happy to do so. His scanner found a prison in a deserted city halfway around the planet, and he landed near it with the intention of releasing any human prisoners who had been incarcerated there.

A mile from the city’s walls he’d found the tunnel’s exit. He’d come almost two miles now, and by his estimate he had to be near the center of the city. So far there’d only been two branches, neither of them any more promising than the main corridor.

It was possible, of course, that he’d walk for another couple of miles and find himself outside on the far side of the city, but he doubted it. The tunnel may have smelled like a sewer, but it wasn’t constructed like one. It had to lead somewhere, and he was intent on following it to its end.

He proceeded another three hundred feet, and then the tunnel took a hard turn to the left. Twenty more feet and he came to a metal door.

He pushed against it. No luck. He tried to find a latch or handle to pull on. Nothing.

Finally he withdrew his laser and melted the door. Then he waited a few minutes so he wouldn’t burn through his boots as he stepped over the molten slag.

He came to a ramp that led upward at a slight angle and followed it. Before he’d ascended halfway he heard alien voices, and he froze. He concentrated on the voices, but he couldn’t differentiate them well enough to determine how many aliens were above him. He waited until he heard footsteps retreating, made sure his burner had recharged itself, and climbed silently to the top of the ramp.

Two aliens had their backs to him, and never knew what hit them. He pulled the corpses into a darkened area, then surveyed his surroundings.

Corridors jutted off in every direction. As he was trying to decide which one to follow, he heard a strong masculine voice singing a bawdy song about a young mutant maiden who had three of everything that could possibly be considered worthwhile.

He crept toward the voice, pistol in hand, peering into the darkness, ready for anything. The voice became louder (and the song even bawdier), and finally he emerged into a huge chamber surrounded by of a number of prison cells. There were no doors on the cells, but he knew from the faint humming permeating the area that they were protected by a force field.

The voice had reached the point in the song where he had everything required to satisfy the mutant maiden grafted onto his body, and was just beginning the final verse when it stopped almost in mid-word.

“Watch yourself!” it said suddenly. “Everything’s hot.”

“I know,” said Big Red. “Where are the controls?”

“On the far wall. Are you the advance party or the whole show?”

“The whole show,” said Big Red, walking cautiously to the control box.

“Hey! I know you!”

Big Red turned and looked into the cell.

“I know you too!” he exclaimed. “You’re Backbreaker Barnes! I saw you the night you fought for the title!”

“I wish you’d seen me on one of the nights I won,” replied Barnes ruefully. “And you’re the one they call the Quadruple Threat—basketball, baseball, track, and … and something else.”

“Murderball,” said Big Red. He indicated the control box. “Do you know if I can just melt this thing, or is it booby-trapped?”

“They’re not expecting company. Go ahead and melt it.”

Big Red fried the control box, which sparked and sputtered for a fraction of a second and then went dead.

Backbreaker Barnes walked to the front of his cell and cautiously extended his hand. When he didn’t receive a shock, he smiled and stepped out into the corridor.

“I don’t know what brought you here, but I’m mighty glad to see you. Big Red, isn’t it?”

“Right. Are you the only one here?”

“I am now.”

“What happened to the others?”

“I did.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They captured about a dozen of us and locked us down here. Once or twice a day they’d drag two of us up to ground level, stick us in an arena, and make us fight to the death.”

“You killed them all?”

“If I hadn’t, the aliens would have. Those were the rules: two men went in, one came out. The first day I knocked Captain Mazurski out and refused to kill an unconscious man, so one of the aliens blew him away. The second day I got Mukande Nbolo so bloody and groggy he could barely stand up. I stopped fighting, even when they threatened me. I thought they were going to kill me for refusing an order, but instead they decided Nbolo was in no shape to fight again the next day so they shot him instead. After that I knew it was me or my opponent, that there was no way both fighters were ever going to be allowed to live, so I killed each of them as quickly and painlessly as possible.”