Copyright 1992, by Scott Kellogg
THE 4.5TH COLUMNISTS
by
Scott Kellogg
- XXVII -
Almost silently, figures carrying stretchers were hurried out
of Flamboyant's main lock and loaded into a G-Carrier. The clicks
of armored heels distorted in the mutated acoustics of the hanger
to sound like dripping water. The scent of blood wafted like an
icy perfume to where Tuerz froze, hidden under the Flamboyant's
starboard main landing gear wheel bogie. He stood as a statue of
terror clutching the cold metal laser pistol close to his face for
all the comfort it offered. The sickly sweet flavored stench of
blood and explosives tickled his nose as his hackles stood up in
sharp patches of pure hate. Bile rose in his throat as he
recognized the stretcher cases being loaded by human shaped armor
with inhuman precision.
- XXVIII -
...One... no, two leaving.
Tuerz flattened himself against a wall in an alley as two
figures exactly the same height and weight came out of the Space
Winds bar. They walked down the street heading for the docking
bay.
He listened... Only one left inside moving around... A
cough: human, male: Whezel Kiriat.
Tuerz strode in the front door: a picture of seductiveness
wrapped in a black feather boa. The black dress caressed his
bright red fur. It was a strapless affair that showed the deep
cleavage of his two, five millimeter semi-automatic pistols. It
came down far above mid-thigh, just covering the garters that held
two more of the tiny pistols.
"Why hello Miss Tuerz!" boomed Whezel with a smile.
"Hello, Whezel." returned Tuerz demurely. "I'm looking for my
crewmates. I was supposed to meet them here but I'm afraid I'm a
little late. You don't know where they've gone do you?"
"Why uh... no, I'm afraid I don't know where they are... but
now that I think of it, they did say they'd be back soon. Yes
that's right. They asked me to tell you to wait here for them.
They'll be back shortly."
Tuerz tail wagged slightly, "Well then you'll just have to
keep me company won't you?" Tuerz hoisted himself up on the bar
and sat with his legs crossed under the very tight and brief dress.
He inclined his head and motioned Whezel to come closer.
Whezel Kiriat moved his ponderous weight over eagerly and sat
on a bar stool close to Tuerz.
Tuerz leaned his head and shoulders back, both emphasizing and
aiming his cleavage. Whezel took a deep breath, beads of sweat
broke out on his greasy forehead.
"Let's have some wine." Tuerz purred softly.
Whezel jumped up clumsily and hustled around the bar.
"Anything you say! Have some Zilan eiswein around here
somewhere... Nothing too good for...." He continued chattering
nervously as he hunted under the bar, while with one eye trying to
look up Tuerz skirt.
Tuerz just smiled while his tail waved languidly and
alluringly.
Finally, Whezel produced a pair of wine glasses and a sealed
bottle of wine "Fine stuff this is: '53 eiswein, it comes all the
way from over in Aramis subsector..." He fumbled with the seal and
popped the cork sending it flying across the room. Eagerly, he
poured Tuerz a glass and held it out to him in a shaking hand.
Tuerz tail waved stiffly as he flipped the boa around Whezel's
neck before taking his the offered glass. "Do you think it will be
long before my crewmates get back?"
"We have some time. I don't know where they went."
Tuerz sniffed the wine and sipped.
"Are you sure?" He playfully wrapped the boa around Whezel.
"I'm sorry, I have no idea."
"I think you do."
"I...."
The plasteel cable in the boa cut the words off. The cold end
of Tuerz iridium plated laser pistol found the man's nose. Tuerz
tail finally wagged with genuine pleasure as Whezel's eyes went
wide in terror. "So tell me, just where are they?"
- XXIX -
Tuerz sighed as he wiped the scalpel carefully and examined
his specimen. It had started badly. Tuerz was too excited to do
the job nice and slow. Already the fingers had been sacrificed
just to slake some of Tuerz thirst.
Whezel was mostly bald to start with, the tuft of hair was not
a proper trophy even when you included the skin of the bald pate.
But his mustache....
- XXX -
Tuerz began twirling his laser pistol...
Toe bone disconnected from the foot bone...
Foot bone disconnected from the heel bone...
Heel bone disconnected from the ankle bone...
Ankle bone disconnected from the leg bone...
Leg bone disconnected from the knee bone...
Knee bone disconnected from the thigh bone...
Thigh bone disconnected from the...
"I'll talk..."
Tuerz smiled as the laser pistol's target designator flicked
over the next threatened target. He paused to sniff the smell of
the cooked meat of Whezel's right leg.
- XXXI -
The hospital was deserted.
A thin layer of dust had built up by the air filters. Several
florescent panels were out. One was flickering.
Time passed...
The panel flicked...
After six minutes Tuerz ears picked it up: A slight shuffle
as a guard shifted his muscles. Sixteen meters away.
Silently, he slunk down the corridor towards the sound.
Again, he froze.
Four minutes later, he got his second signal: a sigh thirteen
meters away. A quick triangulation: fourteen meters off the side
of the corridor in the third room off the side. 'That sigh will be
the last sound you make.'
Not true, his head sizzled as bone and tissue vaporized under
an X-ray beam while his clothes rustled slightly as he slumped in
his chair. But, in all fairness it was his last voluntary sound.
'Ten out of ten for execution, Five for style: He never had
a chance to suffer.'
Tuerz glanced at the fallen gauss rifle: powerful, but
clumsy, big, and very noisy. He strapped it on his back. A psi
helmet?... could be useful...
- XXXII -
Tuerz walked calmly into the medical lounge. Four physicians,
seven nurses. One looked up and caught a silenced five millimeter
slug on the bridge of his nose. He fell over backward with a loud
crash. Tuerz calmly picked his next target and squeezed the laser
pistol's trigger. The doctors jumped up. But none of them were
armed.
Tuerz teeth shone as he waded into the room flooding the floor
and spattering the walls with blood as he came. He was careful:
not a single wasted shot. At first they tried to run but they were
quickly herded into a corner of the room. Two tried desperately to
reach for communicators but neither lived to lift the receiver.
In panic, the others threw coffee cups and books but none even
came close. Some began to pray as the grinning angel of death sent
them to their reward.
The last physician alive was on her knees crying when Tuerz
simply said, "It's all right, come on."
She froze for a moment with tears streaming down her cheeks as
Tuerz waved his pistol toward the door. Slowly, she rose to her
feet as though in a dream and climbed over the blood spattered
bodies of her friends.
"It's all right," cooed Tuerz reassuringly, "We're going down
to the low berths and get some friends. Do exactly what I say and
maybe I won't kill you."
- XXXIII -
Kfoks could barely sit up in the low berth when Tuerz shoved
the gauss rifle into his arms. Inside the regeneration tank,
Jietlshaiepr began to show signs of consciousness. Tuerz herded
the doctor towards Rackan's low berth with his pistol. Gresha was
too sick to be of much use. Shtam would make it as a walking
wounded.
Jietlshaiepr would be a stretcher case for a while, till her
psionics could get to work.
They'd done some cute work on Gdeerzorr. The slugs and the
grenade had been removed and she was lying in a regen chamber.
Why?
That left Kfoks, Rackan, Kaezorr, Niedrsha, and Miakr at full
charge, reflected Tuerz.
He eyed the doctor carefully as she monitored the revival
phase, "If she keeps working like this, I just might let her
live...
...Nahh."
- XXXIV -
Jietlshaiepr watched tiredly as Tuerz sent the hypo home into
the cephalic vein of her left arm. He scrubbed the spot with
disinfectant and folded the arm up at the elbow. She closed her
eyes and opened her mind to listen carefully to what her nerves
were telling her.
Yes, the psi booster was starting to take effect... Then the
injuries slowly reported themselves. Two ribs cracked... They've
been set and were already half knitted... The serratus anterior
muscle has a rip in it... Just nicked the pectoralis major...
missed my mammary by a centimeter and a half... The armor must
have slowed it considerably, the lung is undamaged...
The humerus is only bruised... but the biceps tissue is badly
ripped and is half missing... Minor damage to the triceps and
deltoid... No damage to the brachial artery luckily... the bullets
must have missed by millimeters...
With a psionic x-ray in her head she began to heal what she
could. Tissue lost would have to be regrown and that's awfully
slow. She deepened her concentration on the injured bones mentally
taking over the process of knitting the bone and healing tissue.
Twenty minutes later she opened her eyes. Niedrsha was
watching her carefully. He caught up her left hand, "Hey babe,
what's the story?"
She smiled weakly, "Right arm's out of order. Psionics can
only accelerate healing so much, and I've just about used all my
juice."
Niedrsha leered wickedly and leaned close, "Well, I'll just
have to give you one of my custom psi boosts..."
Jietlshaiepr smiled as she lifted a plastic vial to her lips.
Carefully, she bit into the straw to start the fluid flowing, and
began to suck voraciously at the fluid contained there. The
regeneration diet supplement tasted bitter sweet as it coursed down
her throat. Regeneration calls for high sugar and protein
concentration to rebuild damaged tissues.
Niedrsha just stared at her teeth.
Kfoks poked his muzzle around the door, "Sorry to break up the
party, but we're double parked outside..."
- XXXV -
The main chamber of the settlement was not in a uniform state
of disrepair. Close to the starport hangers there were a few
buildings which had decent facades. Many of the others had been
ransacked for parts. Some of the buildings were quite large. The
stolen grav ambulance was well concealed in the abandoned building.
Shtam was looking pale as he surveyed the group. Radiation
drugs had taken their toll. It would take time to build up his
strength, but time was not in abundance. "Look," he said tiredly,
"As far as they know, we are in the hospital and only Tuerz is on
the loose. Odds are they got teams out there looking for him.
What ever they are hiding here, they do not need to hide any more.
Right now they must be feeling pretty safe."
"But who ARE they?" wondered Miakr, "WHERE are they? What the
Viepchakl are they hiding? This doesn't make sense. The whole
place is practically deserted, abandoned mines all over the
surface, nobody in town, and the handful in town are a bunch of
zombies."
Shtam nodded, "I've been thinking about that, let me put this
in front of you...
"Suppose you wanted to take over an interstellar government.
How do you do it? If you launch a full scale offensive, you get a
full scale reprisal right back in your lap. But... what if you
come in the back door?... Take a sparsely populated planet... wipe
the population out and substitute them with your forces."
Jietlshaiepr nodded, "The butcher, the baker, the starport
machinist: impostors."
Kfoks thought aloud. "You couldn't kill everyone who came
through. If no ships never came back, somebody'd get damn
suspicious."
"Waitaminit," interjected Niedrsha, "Ralampago... He'd know
something was up. Yeah, that's why they took 'em out. .."
Miakr looked skeptical. "Ok, maybe you're right, but that
still doesn't explain what they're hiding. A secret base? This
place is falling apart around us. And we've checked out just about
everywhere else...
"Except... The old base..."
Shtam shook his head. "It's too radioactive: look what it
did to me. Also, it is in ruins."
Miakr cocked his head, "Well, suppose it wasn't radiation..."
"Yeah, *sure* right..."
"Wait a minute, I mean suppose it wasn't radioactive *slag*,
but something else... like a particle accelerator?"
Kfoks nodded, "That ruin is an old fighter base... It might
be in ruins on the surface, but what about in the bunkers?..."
- XXXVI -
The door to the mining colony's air raid shelter had been
deliberately hidden, somebody had wanted it to look disused, but it
clearly had been used frequently. A security measure that had
started with a good idea, but camouflage deteriorates when
constantly disturbed.
The muffled sounds of machinery echoed up from below barely
audible even to Tuerz sensitive ears off the sound proofed walls.
He was on point, forty meters from the team, cautiously edging down
the stairway leading into the bowels of the planet. The floor here
was very clean, and would have clattered with noise if his boots
hadn't been left behind.
Barefoot, he padded softly around a landing when he saw the
shadow around a corner. Definitely human form: unarmored,
fourteen meters away, no sound coming from him. Not even
breathing. Tuerz bit down on the implanted radio in his jaw three
times.
Forty meters up the stairs, Kfoks held up a hand to the
others: DANGER.
Tuerz waited silently. He strained his sensitive ears
carefully tuning out the sound of his own heart beat.
No noise.
Tuerz waited.
No movement at all.
Tuerz waited.... Weird... Humans don't stand like that...
they shift, they make noise, they BREATHE. The group forty meters
away makes more noise than this guy fourteen meters away.
Nothing.
Tuerz took a step.
Nothing.
His own silent steps sounded like a crash of symbols in his
tuned ears. He paused five meters away from the corner to listen
for sounds his steps might have covered... Nothing.
Silently, he edged up to the corner. The shadow seemed to
come from a light set on the wall around the corner. Tuerz guessed
the light to be three meters down the wall according to the way the
corridor was lit. By his shadow, the guard was half a meter from
the light. That's where Tuerz prepared to fire.
He poised to spring,
and jumped.
Tuerz flashed around the corner like a streak of lightning.
The thunder of his laser pistol struck the guard directly in the
forehead.
The crown of his head crackled and exploded in flames.
Burning plastic and metal fell to the floor at his feet as he
slowly brought up his gauss rifle.
Tuerz fired five shots in rapid secession as the remnant of a
human face glared at him hatefully. The arm holding the gauss
rifle fell away as he continued to advance. The x-rays sleeted
through the guard's body as he came on.
Suddenly, the guard froze and fell facedown on the floor with
a loud crash.
- XXXVII -
Niedrsha and Kfoks held the captured gauss rifles at the ready
listening for any sign of reinforcements.
Miakr looked over the remains of the guard carefully.
"Definitely tech level twelve... But it kinda looks like a tech
fourteen design... Like it was copied or something... The brain
is located in the lower abdomen. Aim for that. Head shots aren't
going to do much damage unless you hit in the eyes to blind it."
He picked up the robot's skull and showed it to Tuerz. "You
blew out his hydrogen fuel tank. Lucky it didn't blow up."
"Weird design:" noted Shtam, "the face and arms appear to be
the only thing made to look human. The rest of it is plastic. It
would not even pass a quick glance inspection."
"That's why it's wearing a combat environment suit." nodded
Miakr. "This wasn't meant to be seen without clothes. Put it in
a business suit and you wouldn't be able to tell..."
- XXXVIII -
Davis and Carton were lounging at the computer station. Davis
sighed without patience as he listened to Carton's endless whine.
"Look, we just gotta get a better assignment. I'm sick of
watching the inventory. I just want a chance to *Use* it!"
Davis's eyes rolled and he turned away to speak over his
shoulder. "Yeah, well maybe the Skipper just got sick of hearing
you belly-ache."
Carton failed to hear the annoyance in Davis' voice, "Nah!
They just wanted my brains here minding the store. But I'm bored!
Bored! BORED! BORED!"
Tuerz brightened his day with a sleet of X-rays.
Carton's head exploded in a red mist which drenched Davis.
"Yeach!" bawled Davis as he turned around on Carton in disgust and
annoyance.
Davis just had the time to recognize that Carton's mouth was
shut forever when Tuerz vaporized his face with high energy
photons.
"He lost his head." sighed Kfoks as he glanced in the doorway.
"Good shooting, Tuerz."
Tuerz strode into the terminal room sniffing the aroma of
fried brains. He kicked Davis body from the chair, "All clear.
Looks like this falls in your court Miakr."
Miakr stepped into the room and slipped on Carton's blood.
Kfoks grabbed his arm as he went down and hauled him up. "Please,"
asked Kfoks, "with the computer: no slip ups."
Miakr dropped his eyes, "Right. It shouldn't be too hard.
this guy's still logged in..."
- XXXIX -
Miakr nodded up at the map on screen. "They've moved the ship
over to the base. They kept the damn thing in plain sight. Right
in the ruins." Three icons on the map lit up bright red. "Nobody
could get in there 'cause of the particle accelerator batteries
located up there."
Shtam eyed the screen. "How is the ship?"
"She's been slated for inspection. Seems they're kinda
curious about us... Pretty heavily guarded..."
"The equipment?"
"Locked up in a magazine near the ship... most of it anyway...
Looks like they took most of the robots over to a lab... For all
the good that will do them..."
Niedrsha raised an eyebrow, "What do you mean?"
"Well, Vole's got so much security protection, they'll never
get him working. I rewrote the PPO2 warbot's command codes, with
the security protection already in place, it could take them days
to just start them." Miakr laughed. "It took me three days to get
inside them, oughta take them a week! The robots from the Vixen
don't have any brains. As far as I can see they left the master
unit on the ship. There is no note that it was removed from the
main computer. And the Tilly's have no brains either, not to
mention that they're built for Vargr operation. No human would be
able to..."
Kfoks grabbed Miakr by the shoulder, "You know where the
Tilly's are?"
"Yeah..."
Kfoks teeth shone in an almost human grin. His voice dropped
to a murderous growl, "Show me..."