The Outpost (36 page)

The Cyborg waited for almost three minutes, then carefully stood erect, stuck her head out, looked in both directions, and quickly walked to the corner.

The street soon made a 160-degree turn, almost doubling back on itself, and simultaneously narrowed to a point where it was less than ten feet wide. She felt very claustrophobic as she kept walking and the street kept narrowing. Within another hundred yards she had to walk sideways, with her back pressed against a wall, to pass between buildings on the opposite sides of the alien street.

Then it broadened again, not slowly and gradually, but abruptly, and in a single stride she went from a street so narrow that it seemed like a corridor to a thoroughfare so wide that she thought for a moment that she was in a large public square.

There was no artificial illumination, but the moon Catherine de Valois was directly overhead, and none was needed. It was almost bright enough to read by the moonlight, and she realized that she had almost three hundred yards to walk before the street narrowed again, three hundred yards in which there were no lampposts, no benches, no trash atomizers, nothing to hide behind, and she would be the only living, moving thing.

She considered traveling via the rooftops, but very few of the buildings were remotely similar in height and structure. The sewers were out, too: even if she had a map, which she didn’t, she didn’t know how to go about finding an entrance to them.

Finally she decided that there was no alternative to crossing as quickly and silently as she could, and this she proceeded to do, staying as close to the buildings on the left side of the street as possible. When she had covered slightly more than half the distance, she saw an alien staring at her from a fourth-story window.

She pointed her finger at him, and he tumbled down to the ground, the hole between his eyes still smoking. She expected to hear outraged screams, or alarm sirens, or approaching footsteps, or
something
, but nothing happened, and in another ninety seconds she had turned another corner and found herself on a street that, for a change, seemed neither too wide nor too narrow.

She stepped into some deep shadows as two more aliens came into view. She was taking aim at them when they entered a small building. Curious, she approached it and tried to peer in, but the windows were too high.

Then a trio of aliens began approaching, and she once again hid in the shadows and watched as they entered the building.

This had to be it—the enemy’s barracks.

She went around back, looking for a less conspicuous entrance—and couldn’t find one. She spent a few more minutes trying to figure out how to gain surreptitious entrance to the building, and couldn’t hit upon a solution. At last she leaned against a wall while considering her options—and almost fell over backward when a four-foot-wide section of the wall slid behind a miscolored part of the building.

She looked around quickly, before the wall slid back and plunged the interior of the building into total darkness, and found a narrow staircase. She shone her finger’s torch on it just long enough to fix the height of each stair in her mind, and then slowly, carefully, began ascending. Eighteen stairs later she reached a landing.

She activated her torch again and examined the landing carefully. There were four doors—one open, three closed. She walked to the open one and looked in. There was no one there.

She returned to the landing, studied the other three doors, and chose one at random. She opened it, found herself facing some twenty aliens in various stages of sleep and undress, and began firing. This time a number of them screamed before dying, and she raced back to the landing, waiting for more aliens to burst out of the other two doors.

As quickly as they ran out, she mowed them down.

“Who
are
you?” cried one of the aliens who had not yet emerged.

“I am your death, come to seek you out,” she answered. “As I seek out all who attack the race of Man.”

The alien yelled something in his own language, and got an immediate response from a different room.

The Cyborg decided that since her presence was probably known to the whole city by now, secrecy was unnecessary. She aimed a finger at the ceiling, fired a ball of energy into it, listened to the screams from within the rooms as the building began collapsing, and raced down the stairs.

She walked out into the open, surprised that there wasn’t an armed battalion waiting for her.

“It can’t be this easy,” she muttered—and sure enough, it wasn’t.

As she rounded a corner, she found herself facing a dozen aliens. She heard a scuffling sound behind her, turned, and saw that five more aliens were behind her.

“You are our prisoner!” said one of the aliens in front of her. “Make no sudden moves.”

She looked around as the alien approached her. There was no chance of reaching the temporary safety of a building before they gunned her down.

“Where are your weapons?” demanded the alien.

“I have none.”

“Do not lie to me. You have killed more than twenty of us.”

“More than forty, actually,” she replied.

“Where are they?”

She pointed toward the aliens that were facing her. “Beyond that building,” she said.

The alien peered ahead of him. “Which building?”

She looked at the armed aliens. They were relaxed, secure in the knowledge that she was unarmed, that their commander was in complete control of the situation.

She lowered her finger until it pointed directly at them.

“That one.”
 

And then, before anyone quite knew what was happening, she sprayed the aliens with a laser beam. In one motion she pivoted, crouched, and turned the beam on the five aliens behind her. One of them actually managed to get off a shot—a wild one—before he died; the others all lay where they had fallen.

“I don’t believe it!” said the alien commander. “You are a mere female!”

“There’s nothing
mere
about me,” she said ominously. “Drop your weapons.”

He did as he was told.

“Have you got a knife or a sword?”

He learned down a picked up a knife from the pile of discarded weapons.

“You’re about to learn what a motivated female can do,” she said, as a shining blade sprung out from one of her fingers.

“And you will use no weapon but that?” he asked.

“It’s all I need.”

A smile cross his alien face, and he charged her, knife extended. She sidestepped and slashed his forearm.

He spun around, swiped at her with the knife, then charged again—and got slashed again for his trouble.

“I would not like to be your mate,” he muttered, approaching her more cautiously this time.

“It’s not something you’re ever going to have to worry about,” she said, feinting with the blade and landing a solid kick to his knee.

“You are already dead,” panted the alien, barely able to support his weight on his crippled leg. “You just don’t know it.”

“I never liked braggarts,” she said, slashing his left cheek. “Especially pompous male braggarts.”

“I am not bragging,” he said. “I know I cannot defeat you. But I don’t have to. I just have to keep you here for another minute, and then more of my warriors will arrive, so many that even your weaponry will be useless against them.”

“Then we’ve no time to waste, have we?” she said, stepping in close and burying her blade deep in his chest. He groaned once and fell lifeless to the ground.

The Cyborg de Milo wiped off her blade, then allowed it to slip back into her artificial finger.

She began counting. There were the first five she had killed. Then the one in the window. There were seventeen here on the street. And despite what she’d claimed, she was sure there at least fifty more inside the barracks building.

Seventy-three total. Maybe even a few more. Not bad at all.

And the night was young yet. She looked up and down the street, ready to add to the total.

There were no aliens in sight. Possibly they were hiding. Or regrouping. Or plotting strategy.

It made no difference. Wherever they were, she would find them. Whatever attack they planned, she would face it. She was the Cyborg de Milo, and this was what she was created for—what she had created herself for.

She began walking slowly down the middle of the street.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she called ominously.

Bet-a-World O’Grady and the Aliens

The casino on Mozart II was almost empty. Word of the war had gotten out.

Bet-a-World O’Grady wished there was a little more business going on. He liked the hustle and bustle of a well-run casino, and he especially liked having a few well-endowed nude girls dancing not too far away. Not that he had any interest in them (unless they had some interest in games of chance), but they provided a distraction to his opponents, and O’Grady used every angle available in his quest for victory.

Still, he mused, dancing girls probably wouldn’t have much effect on the aliens he had contacted. He didn’t know anything about them, except that they seemed to have a mad on against Man, but he couldn’t imagine an alien would have any more visceral interest in watching a human girl take her clothes off than he himself would have in watching a bird molt to music.

O’Grady sipped his drink and began going through his warm-up exercises. He shuffled a brand-new deck, dealt out four hands, turned the cards up, and noted that he hadn’t lost his touch: each hand contained a royal flush.

He shuffled again, cut to an ace, then to another, and then to a third. There was no sense trying to cut to the fourth; he had already palmed it.

He spent a few moments dealing seconds, then false shuffled for a few more. His fingers felt limber now, and he excused himself to go to the bathroom, where, once he was certain no one was watching, he inserted his specialized lenses that would enable him to see any markings should the aliens use their own crooked deck.

That done, he returned to the table, spent a few more minutes dealing bottoms, then concluded by practicing the Greek Deal and the Center Deal.

Just about the time he was wondering if the aliens would show up, the hatch opened and four humanoid beings stepped into the airlock. Once the hatch was secured they removed their protective suits and entered the casino.

The one who appeared to be their leader looked around at the empty tables. Then his gaze fell on O’Grady.

“Welcome,” said O'Grady. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“We are not late,” said the leader, approaching him.

“Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that matters. Have you got a name?”

“I have eleven of them, depending on the occasion,” replied the alien.

“Which one do you want me to use?”

“They are all beyond your ability to pronounce,” said the alien. “Why not choose one that you are comfortable with?”

“Fine by me,” said O’Grady. “From this moment on, you are Nick the Greek.”

“A human name?”

“He was probably a little less human than some, but yeah, it’s a human name.”

“And you, of course, are Bet-a-World O’Grady.”

“Right.”

“May I sit down?” asked Nick the Greek.

“Certainly.” O’Grady gestured to the other three aliens. “Your men are welcome to sit, too.”

“They are not men, and they will stand.”

“Whatever makes you happy.”

“Tell me, Bet-a-World O’Grady,” said Nick the Greek, “do you really bet entire worlds on card games?”

“I’ve been known to do it on card games, rolls of the dice, sporting events, and just about anything else where you can determine a winner and a loser.”

“Most interesting.”

“But you already know that, or else you wouldn’t have shown up.”

“We did check you out thoroughly,” admitted Nick the Greek.

“And you have the authority to match my bets?”

“Yes.”

“Your generals must think you’re one hell of a gambler.”

“I do my best,” said Nick the Greek modestly.

“Where did you learn to play human games?” asked O’Grady.

“I have traveled the Inner Frontier extensively. And I studied under one of the greatest of all human gamblers.”

“Who was that?”

“An old friend of yours,” said Nick the Greek. “High Stakes Eddie Strongbow.”

“High Stakes Eddie?” exclaimed O’Grady. “Well, I’ll be damned! How is the old bastard?”

“He is no longer among the living, I regret to inform you,” said the alien.

“Sorry to hear it.”

“I understand human etiquette requires some preliminary banter,” said Nick the Greek. “Shall we begin to play, or is further speech required?”

“Might as well get started.” O’Grady signaled to the robot bartender. “Half a dozen new decks, please.”

“I will be allowed to inspect each deck, will I not?”

“To your heart’s content,” said O’Grady. “Always assuming you’ve
got
a heart.”

“And what game shall we be playing?” asked the alien.

“I’m a poker man myself, but I’m always open to suggestions.”

“Poker will be satisfactory.”

The bartender dropped off the decks. O’Grady pushed one across the table to Nick the Greek. “Go ahead and examine it,” he said.

The alien broke the seal on the pack, inspected the cards carefully, then nodded his approval.

“Stakes?” asked the alien.

“Let’s start out at fifty thousand credits a hand,” said O’Grady. “That ought to buy your side a handful of weapons if you win.”

“That is acceptable.”

“Cut for draw?” asked O’Grady.

Nick the Greek cut to a nine. O’Grady grinned and cut to a jack.

“Five-card stud,” he announced.

O’Grady won the first two hands, lost the third so as not to discourage the alien, then won two more.

“The cards are running against you, Nick old fellow,” he said at last. “Maybe this isn’t your night.”

“I have been ordered to accept your challenge and play poker with you,” said the alien. “We need the money for fuel and weaponry.”

“What you need and what you’re going to get aren’t necessarily the same things,” said O’Grady.

He promptly lost the next three hands, and then played the alien even for almost two hours. At the end of the time he sighed and leaned back in his chair.