Stinger Part 34

Curt sat on the floor, the cigarette clenched in a corner of his mouth and his eyes narrowed behind a screen of smoke. He watched the little girl that he knew was no longer truly human. Tom started to pull her away from the window, but she said, "No," and he let her alone.

"You want me to stomp a few more bugs in the dirt, I will!" Stinger promised. "It's up to you!"

The chase was over. Daufin knew it, and all her hiding was done. "I'm here!" she called back, and her voice drifted through the smoke to the figure she could just barely see.

"Now that wasn't so hard, was it? You gave me a good run, I'll say that for you. Gave me the slip in that asteroid field, but you knew I'd find you. A garbage scow's not built for speed."

"They're not built for reliability, either," she said.

"No, I guess not. You want to come on now? It'll take awhile for my engines to warm up."

Daufin hesitated. She could feel the walls of Rock Seven closing around her, and a torture of needles and probes awaited.

"I don't really need you anymore," Stinger said. "I've got your pod. That's enough to secure my bounty. When I take off, there's no way for you to get back to your planet. But I thought maybe-just maybe-you might like to trade."

"Trade for what?"

"I've got three live bugs in my ship. Their names are Sarge Dennison, Miranda Jurado, and Cody Lockett."

Curt sat very still. He stared straight ahead, and wisps of smoke curled from his nostrils. Belly-down on the floor, Zarra whispered, "Madre de Dios."

Daufin looked at Tom and Jessie, and they saw Stevie's features pinched with agony. Jessie felt faint; if Stinger had the pod, he had Stevie too. She lowered her head, tears beginning to creep down her cheeks.

"I'm waiting," Stinger prompted.

Daufin drew a deep breath. Another Earth phrase, one taught her by Tank and Nasty, came to mind: up s.h.i.t creek. The humans had done all they could for her; now she would have to do all she could for them. "Let them go and I'll come to you," she said.

"Right!" Stinger laughed dryly. "I didn't get to be this old by being stupid. You come to me first, then I let them go."

She knew Stinger would never set them free. They would bring him a bonus from the House of Fists.

"I need time to think."

"You have no more time!" It was an angry shout. "Either you come out right now or I take your pod and the three bugs! Understand?"

Curt smiled grimly, but his eyes were glazed. "G.o.dd.a.m.ned Mexican standoff," he muttered, with no apologies to Zarra.

"Yes," Daufin answered. Her voice cracked. "I understand."

"Good. Now we're getting somewhere, right? Lot of bad vibes in this dump, Daufin. At least you could've crashed on a planet that smells better."

Rhodes eased the rifle's barrel out the window, but Daufin said quietly, "Don't," and he took his finger off the trigger. Daufin raised her voice: "Take them. I'm not coming."

There was a shocked silence. Jessie pulled her knees up to her chin and began to rock like a child. Curt watched the cigarette smoke drift toward the ceiling.

"I don't think I heard you," Stinger replied.

"Yes you did. Take them. My pod and the three humans. I'd rather die here than live in a prison."

She felt the blood rushing into her face. With it came a torrent of rage, and she leaned precariously out the window and shouted, "Go on and take them! "

"Well, well," Stinger said. "I misjudged you, didn't I? You sure that's how you want to play it out?"

"I'm sure."

"So be it. I hope you like this place, Daufin; you're going to be here for a mighty long time. I'll think about you when I jingle my change." The figure, which had been shielding its eyes with its single arm, got down off the car and strode away.

As Stinger left the parking lot, another figure rose up from between two cars over on the far left, almost to the red boulders that ended Oakley Street, and hobbled toward the fortress.

"Stevie... oh my G.o.d... Stevie," Jessie moaned, her hands cupped to her mouth. There was stark terror in the woman's voice: an emotion that translated in any language. Daufin pivoted from the window, walked to Jessie, and knelt down in front of her. "Listen to me!" Daufin said urgently. Looked at the others, her eyes blazing. "All of you listen! Stinger would never let them go!

They're worth more of a bounty to him!"

"So that's it." Rhodes let the rifle rest at his side. He felt a hundred years old. "Stinger's won."

53 One Way

"No!" Daufin said fiercely. "Stinger has not won!" She peered into Jessie's eyes. "I won't let Stinger win. Not now. Not ever." Jessie didn't speak, but she wanted desperately to believe. Daufin stood up. "The process of systems checks will have already begun, all regulated by machines. There'll be other duties, like the freezing of sleep tubes for his prisoners. Stinger will be busy monitoring the machines; the procedure should take between twenty to thirty Earth minutes. When the force field is turned off, the engines will start to energize. I calculate another fifteen to twenty minutes for the power system to reach lift-off capacity. So: I have roughly thirty-five to fifty minutes to breach Stinger's ship, find the prisoners, and get them out."

Rhodes stared at her with utter disbelief. "No way."

"One way: through the tunnels. I've got to find the entrance nearest Stinger's ship. I presume that would be somewhere across the bridge."

With an effort, Jessie spoke. "Even... if you could get them out... what about Stevie? How are we going to get Stevie back?"

"Find the pod. Take it from Stinger. As I've said, I've been aboard a Stinger's ship twice before, and I know how the systems work. I can enter the navigational quadrants for my world into the guidance mechanism, put everything on automatic, place my pod in a sleep tube, and meld into it before the freezing process is finished. When I enter the pod, Stevie will be freed."

"But still in the pyramid," Tom said. "And how are you going to find the pod and those three people inside that thing? It must be huge!"

"I know from experience where the prisoners are being held: level three, where the cages are. The pod will be close to Stinger."

"So you find Stinger and you find the pod, is that what you mean?" Rhodes asked. He raised his eyebrows. "Have you considered that Stinger wants you to come after them?"

"Yes. I won't disappoint."

"That's crazy!" Rhodes insisted. "Maybe you're some kind of firebrand on your world, but on this one you're just a little girl! First thing, you'd have to get through the tunnels-and my guess is that Stinger's got replicants in there waiting for you; and secondly, you'd have to kill Stinger to take the ship. How are you going to do that?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I've never seen a Stinger killed before."

"Great!" Rhodes frowned and shook his head. "We don't have a chance, folks."

"I didn't say that Stinger couldn't be killed," Daufin continued, and the strength of her voice revitalized Jessie's waning hope. "Stinger must have a vulnerable spot, just like every other creature. If Stinger were invulnerable, there'd be no need for the replicants."

"A vulnerable spot," Rhodes repeated quietly. "Right. Well, I wouldn't go down into those tunnels without a grenade launcher and a few dozen napalm bombs. It'd be suicide."

"I'm willing to risk it." Tom grasped the rifle and retrieved it from the other man. His face was pale and sweating, his lips a tight gray line. "I'm going with Daufin."

"And get yourself killed? Forget it!"

Jessie reached up and took Daufin's hand. Little waves of static electricity flowed between them.

"Tell me the truth: can we get Stevie out of there?"

"We can try. I want to go home as badly as you want Stevie. If my tribe doesn't fight, they'll die. If the House of Fists returns here, your Earth will die. Neither of us has a choice."

Jessie nodded, and looked at Tom. "I'm going too." She stood up. Before Tom or Rhodes could respond, the door opened and Gunniston came in. With him this time were Rick Jurado and Pequin. Rick's face was streaked with dust and grime and his swollen ankle was bound up as tight as he could stand with a strip of sheet from the Smart Dollar. He had come out amid the houses at the end of Oakley Street in time to hear Stinger's message, had checked with Mendoza and his grandmother, and then snagged Gunniston and Pequin. He nodded a greeting at Zarra, relieved to see his friend was still alive, then directed his attention to the colonel. Underneath the dust, Rick's skin had bleached a couple of shades but his eyes were hard and determined. "That thing's got my sister!

What are we going to do about it, man?"

"Nothing," Rhodes said. "I'm sorry, but there's no-"

"Yes there is!" Rick had shouted it. "I'm not letting that b.a.s.t.a.r.d take Miranda!"

"We're going into the ship and get them back," Jessie told him. "Tom, Daufin, and me."

"Dream on." Rhodes wiped sweat out of his eyes. "You go into those tunnels, there's no way anybody's coming back again. h.e.l.l, even if you did get to the ship, what would you use for weapons?

Maybe you could round up a few more guns, okay, but I don't think bullets are going to do Stinger much harm."

"We need electric lights." Daufin was aware of time ticking away. "Strong ones."

Tom said, "We could take some of the lamps off the walls and figure a way to carry them. Maybe wire three or four of them together. Plus we've got that." He motioned at the bull's-eye lantern.

"We've got a whole lot more." Rick turned to Pequin. "You hung around with Sonny Crowfield, didn't you? Did you know about the a.r.s.enal?"

"What a.r.s.enal?"

"Don't play dumb, man! I found all those guns and s.h.i.t in Crowfield's closet! What was he about to try?"

Pequin started to deny it again, but he knew Rick would see the lie. "Sonny... was gonna start a war with the 'Gades. Gonna make it look like the 'Gades were burnin' down houses in Bordertown."

"But they weren't?"

"No. I was with him when he set the fires." Pequin shrugged. "We wanted some action, that's all."

"I want to know about the dynamite."

Pequin stared at the floor. He could smell the blood that was spattered over the front of Rick's shirt.

"Sonny, me and Paco LeGrande went over the fence into the mine, couple of months ago. Just screwin' around. We found the shed where they used to keep the dynamite. We thought the place was just full of empty boxes at first, but Paco stepped on a loose board and his foot went through. We found the sticks in the dirt underneath, so we put 'em in a box and brought 'em out."

"To do what? Blow up somebody's house over here?"

"No." Pequin smiled sheepishly, showing his silver tooth. "To blow this place up, when the war started."

"There are five sticks of dynamite-with caps and fuses-in Sonny Crowfield's house over in Bordertown," Rick said to Colonel Rhodes. "And more guns and ammo too. Sonny's one of those things now: there's a hole in the floor, and how far down it goes I don't know."

"Where is this house?" Daufin asked.

"On Third Street." Like she would really know where that was, he thought. "Right next to where the s.p.a.ceship's sitting."

"That would be the nearest way into the ship, with the least distance of tunnel to go through," she said.

"Dy-na-mite." Her memory found the definition: an explosive compound usually formed into a cylinder and detonated by lighting a fuse. "What does it look like?"

"Like a ticket to h.e.l.l, if you ain't careful," Curt replied. He drew on his cigarette and held it up.

"Kinda like that, only bigger. Meaner too." He crushed the b.u.t.t out on the floor. "You got capped and fused dynamite lyin' around untended for G.o.d knows how long, you're askin' to get blown to smithereens."

"Some of the sticks looked burned," Rick said. "Like they'd been lit before but hadn't gone off."

"Duds. A dud sometimes don't stay a dud, though. You can't tell about dynamite-especially not that cheap s.h.i.t ol' man Preston shipped in. That stuff might go if you looked at it cross-eyed, or then again you might burn it with a flamethrower and it'd just sit there and sputter."

Daufin didn't follow most of what the man had said, but she knew even a crude explosive might be useful. "We'll need rope," she said to Rick.

"We can get plenty of that at the hardware store. And there's wire to tie the lamps together too."

"Then that's where we should go first." Tom moved to the wall and lifted one of the battery lamps off its hook. "Get ourselves organized and go from there."

"You mean get yourselves screwed up and slaughtered!" The power of Rhodes's shout silenced everyone. "My G.o.d, you're going at this thing like scouts on a field trip!" He advanced on Tom Hammond and gripped the rifle. "What are you going to do when something with metal claws comes out of the ground and grabs your gun? Or your throat? You'll wind up either getting slashed to pieces or blowing everybody else up! Will that get Stevie back for you?" He glared at Daufin. "Will that get you home?"

"Man, if you haven't got any b.a.l.l.s just stay here!" Rick told him.

"You'll be the first to get your b.a.l.l.s torn off," Rhodes said. He held Rick's stare for a couple of seconds, and then he pulled at the rifle. Tom resisted him. The colonel's face was gray, his eyes deep-sunken, but there was still a lot of strength in his grip and some of his fire had returned. "First," he said, "you need a leader."

"I can lead them," Daufin a.s.serted.

"Not in the body of a little girl, you can't. Not in a body you don't own. Maybe you know a h.e.l.l of a lot I don't, but flesh is flesh and if it gets flayed off there'll be nothing for Stevie to come back to." He pulled harder at the rifle. "Give it to me. With the lights and the dynamite, we might have a chance. Might, I said." Fear of those tunnels and the things that would be waiting in them clawed at his stomach, but Daufin was right: they had to try. "I'll lead you."

Gunniston said instantly, "I'm going too, sir."

"Negative. If I don't come out, you'll be needed to brief Colonel Buckner. You're staying here." The other man started to protest. "That's an order," Rhodes emphasized, and Gunniston remained silent. Tom gave up the rifle. "All right." Rhodes looked around at the others. "If Daufin's right about the time factor, we've got to get moving. Who else is going besides Jessie and Rick?"

Bobby Clay Clemmons backed against the wall. Zarra started to speak, but Rick cut him short: "You're staying. You take care of Paloma, understand?" He waited until Zarra nodded.

"Mr. Lockett?" Rhodes asked. On the floor, Curt had taken a picture out of his pants pocket, unfolded it, and now stared fixedly at the girl's face. He didn't answer Rhodes, and a shadow lay across his eyes.

"That's it, then. We need to round up some more lamps and flashlights. Let's get to it," he said, before good sense could overrule his decision.

Curt stayed where he was as the others left. Rick paused to untie the strip of sheet, draw it as tightly as he could bear, and then knot it again. The pain was a deep, pulsing ache but no bones had been broken. He said, "You're Cody Lockett's father?"

"Yeah." Curt refolded the photograph and put it away. "Cody's my son."

"We'll get him out of there. Him and my sister both." Rick saw the hogleg Colt on the table and picked it up. "This yours?"