Chapter 20:
Bort didn't think much of the shapechanger. He hadn't been all that excited to be working with one when they'd come to this place, and, in spite of all the intelligence it had brought them, his opinion hadn't changed very much. Much of that was the shapechanger's ability to be anyone. In a world built on rigid, military discipline, such creatures were an unwelcome distraction with the ability to become a very destructive disruption if they chose to be.
Of course Vwilona Vester felt much the same as Bort. She didn't like the frogs and never had. A frog had stiffed her uncle on a job out near the outer rim of the galaxy, leaving him high and dry and facing some very hard time. It had taken some hefty bribes to buy her uncle out of that jam, and the family was still paying the bills on that one. Vwilona had taken this job to help out, swallowing her pride and distaste for these creatures. Now she was bitterly regretting that.
Her cover here was burned. All the Plumbers had to do was search their records back through a couple of months to find the visiting Lenopan. From there, it would just take a quick search of the records to find her DNA signature, and then she would catch hell getting off the planet. The official port at Bellwood would be searching for her. Her only hope now was stowing away or hanging tough with these guys until the heat died down or she could catch a ride off this rock with one of their courier ships.
"I've got a passport," said Vwilona. "I can leave for Canada any time you'd like." The humans wouldn't be scanning her to find out if she was a Lenopan or not. They lacked the tech, and very few of them knew her kind existed. The only risk was the bastards who were here working with the city cops. If she could get out of New York City, she could slip across the border with ease.
Scratching at his chin-whiskers, Rillec rumbled, "three more days. I need to draw things down here." He had to go through his string of slaves, choose out the most reliable, and get rid f the rest. He couldn't afford to leave anything to chance. There could be no-one left here to answer questions and reveal where he had taken his men. He needed to siphon all the cash he'd accumulated out of the hidden accounts and move it, and he needed a place to hide their ship. They would have to make the journey at low altitudes to avoid detection by the Plumbers' surveillance systems. He had a great deal of planning to do.
Vwilona wasn't excited about that request. In her mind, she didn't have three more days. None of them did. They were on borrowed time already. The Plumbers weren't sitting on their asses waiting. They were making moves. She was very much afraid that they would have bulletins out to every local police department in the country. They were no longer in hiding. The world knew they existed, so why not? It would go a long way towards making their position tenable. If they once came up with some way to track a Lenopan that they could share with the local yokels on this mudball, she was a goner.
Don't ever take another job with frogs again, she thought. It was a mistake to take this job. She'd argued it with her sister. Wafwist had cussed her to hell and back for even entertaining the notion. The family motto was not, 'Starve before working with frogs.' Vwilona was not starting to realize that maybe that wasn't a bad idea. If she got geeked here, she couldn't help her uncle pay his debts at all, and she had a kid to support!
As she thought her way through that, an explosion below their feet announced that they didn't have three days. Things were kicking off right fucking now, and Vwilona was certain the Plumbers were involved. The frogs scrambled for their weapons and rushed to their stations. Knowing that the jig was up, Vwilona headed for the exit. If she could get there before the cops plowed these guys under, she had a chance of slipping away.
Nick Luchini was right behind the guy with the battering ram as the door to the old warehouse came down. No sooner was the door out of the way, than he was advancing into the warehouse with his heavy pistol at the ready. A second SWAT guy was behind him, toting a rifle in heavy .50 Beowulf, courtesy of the Chief, and behind him came Helen with her Proto-Tool. The cops advanced, shouting 'Police' and 'Search Warrant'.
They faced the most dead-end of dead-enders. These were the people who'd signed on willingly. They were the men who'd been happy to do dirt in Vanos's name. Now those men stepped out to throw down with the police on one last roll of the dice. This was it. Make or break. There were no second chances here. They were all looking at the death penalty–or worse.
Some of them had talked about it. They had been clsoe up with the frogs. They had figuratively crawled into bed with aliens. What if they couldn't be housed with normal people anymore? What if the feds decided to just do them? Or what if the alien cops–the Plumbers–took them away into space, never to return. All those thoughts and more went through the minds of those men as they went toe-to-toe with the SWAT team.
The first man Nick encountered leveled an AK-47 at him and let fly. Taking his time in a hurry, Nick raised the .50, drew a bead, and thumped him dead center. As the body slumped to the ground, Nick moved onward. "On your left, Nick," shouted Helen. Before he could even react, she'd dropped another thug–this one standing in a darkened doorway, holding a Benelli semi-auto. "Thanks, toots," said a grateful Nick.
More cops were pouring in behind them, and the two got separated as Mike began dispensing orders. "Watch yourself," shouted Helen, as she disappeared down a hallway. As she disappeared from sight, Nick found himself whispering, "you too..." Shaking his head he turned to his right and went back to work. Room by room they cleared the structure. The evening devolved into a series of short, sharp gunfights with men who had nothing to lose.
Two of the gangsters double-teamed an unlucky SWAT officer, stitching him across his right leg and dropping him in a doorway. Before they could polish him off, Nick stepped in and shot the guy on the left, buying the injured man time to shoot the man on the left. "Man down," shouted Nick. Two of the SWAT team grabbed their injured buddy and dragged him to safety, leaving Nick to move on alone.
The warehouse was a maze. Reese and Tom quickly got separated from the main body as the teams got divided and divided again to cover the endless array of corridors and passageways. "No way this is original," groused the young patrolman. "Drywall," rumbled Reese. "In the time when this place was built, it would have been horsehair plaster." "They did this on purpose, then," rumbled Tom. Reese nodded. He was learning. Covering each other, they made their way down a long, narrow hallway, senses alive for signs of ambush.
Sniffing something that frightened him, Tom grabbed Reese by the shoulder and stopped her. "What," she whispered? "Water," said he. He smelled water. Just as he uttered those words, the floor opened up beneath their feet. Letting go of his weapon, he jumped up, pressing his back into the wall behind him and his feet into the wall opposite. Catching Reese by the scruff, he hauled her back up into the hallway as two thugs came out of the room at the far end of the hallway, guns blazing. Reese raised the heavy .50 and put a round through first one and then the other.
Straining against the pull of gravity and the weight of his partner, Tom all but tossed Reese across the two feet to the nearest floor. Then he shuffled his way across to join her. "Not bad, kid," muttered Reese, as she walked down the hallway to the two amigos.
On the far side of the wall, Mike Stack found himself in a wide-open room facing a half-dozen thugs at once. They were young and fast, and only the fact that nobody had ever taught them to shoot kept him from checking out. It was another reminder that he needed to seriously rethink the way he approached his life. With Lucy hinting that she maybe had a way for them to have kids together, the old way of doing business wasn't going to cut it.
"Got any Plumber tricks for this situation," shouted Tim? Mike chuckled. Nope. That would have been a big no-no. They were going to have to get out of this using good old fashioned Earth technology. Fortunately, the kids couldn't shoot. Jumping up, Mike rushed out from cover, slicing the pie as the kids tried to get a bead on him. Zig-zagging across the big open room, he did a neat tuck-and-roll at the last minute, throwing himself behind a row of barrels. Coming back to his feet on the far side, he geeked two of the punks.
The sudden shocking attack put the gangsters on their heels, buying space for the SWAT team. With Tim in the lead, the other officers charged out and mowed down the remaining gangsters. One by one, the gangsters checked out, finally leaving the cops in possession of the chamber. "Start looking for a door," said Mike. "These guys were guarding something..." As soon as he uttered those words, the roof began to descend. "Well, okay," chuckled Tim. "Welcome to my world," muttered Mike. A glance at the door they'd come through revealed a heavy metal grate blocking the way back. Turning to the others, he said, "start stacking boxes and crates. We gotta' keep that thing from smashing us..." As the ceiling descended at an ever-increasing rate, the cops started putting up obstacles in the way.
The boxes, unfortunately, weren't really sturdy enough for that. As the cops watched in dismay, the heavy ceiling crushed the first few layers instantly. "These metal drums gotta' stop that thing," shouted one of the SWAT guys. Several unhappy faces glared at him. "What's your idea," retorted the frightened cop. "Sure you don't have any Plumber Tech," asked Tim? Mike cussed him.
"Alright, everybody," said Mike. "Get small. Gather around the drums. Let's stack the drums close together. If one won't do it, maybe a bunch will." Grunting and cursing, the cops started shoving the heavy oil-drums across the concrete floor, gathering them in the center of the room. When they had two rows of them, the eight cops sheltered between them. Mike found himself praying like never before. If this shit didn't give him PTSD, nothing would. Fortunately the gamble paid off. The ceiling stopped atop the steel drums.
As Tim turned to congratulate their leader, a hissing sound announced that they hadn't quite made it to safety. "Sonofabitch," growled one of the cops! "Why can't they just shoot?!" Mike shushed him. They had to get that door open. "Conserve your strength, guys," said he. "I'm gonna' try and get that door open!" Fortunately, just as he went crawling across the floor, the gas suddenly stopped, and a trap door opened. Reese stuck her head in and said, "you guys ok?"
In short order, all ten cops were out of that would-be grave and standing atop the structure above the heavy ceiling panel–staring up at the belly of the frogs' spaceship, no less. "I could kiss you," said Mike. Chuckling, Reese retorted, "we're both married!" "This was what they were guarding," murmured Tom. "But where're the Alphas," asked an uneasy SWAT officer? The Alphas were supposed to be taking down the frogs and their spaceship. They had assumed the ship was on the bottom floor of the warehouse, but now it appeared their guess was wrong.
Mike didn't like this one bit. They weren't equipped for this. He stood to lose a lot of men if th frogs came out to play. They couldn't go back the way they'd come. The door was locked, and they couldn't figure out how to get it open again. The only other way out involved a swim through the frigid waters of the East River. Mike was considering drawing straws when an explosion opened the bottom of the frogs' ship, sending shrapnel flying. "Take cover," shouted the BPD cop, as three frogs came flying out through the hole with two of Molly's Alphas in hot pursuit.
As Mike watched, the frog drew a bead on the lead Plumber and blasted him out of the sky. The alien plummeted like a stone, landing heavily on the ground. Mike feared he'd just watch one of Molly's crew die. The second Plumber nailed one of the frogs, sending him flying into the walls of the vertical shaft the spaceship sat in. The frog half-slid, half-tumbled down the wall, nearly landing on top of Tom. When the second Plumber went down–double-teamed by the two frogs, the city cops went into action, lighting up the room with rifle-fire.
Mike knew it was a losing proposition as soon as he saw the second Alpha go down. These guys were wearing combat-armor. It wasn't just their armored uniforms. This was the heavy-duty stuff they wore to war, and even the .50 failed to get through that. More to the point, with both remaining frogs flying around on jetpacks, they weren't going to be landing any head-shots tonight.
"Worthless savages," shouted Rillec, as he sprayed bolts of plasma at the cops. A bolt of blue-white energy clipped one of the SWAT guys, slicing his leg open and dropping him. As he screamed, the frogs continued to fire, and Tim threw himself on the guy, rolling them both out of the way. The cops continued to fire, which kept the frogs from getting clean shots too, but Mike knew this was a losing proposition. His head turned to the dead frog and the gun he'd had clipped to his assault-gear. The minute he went for that gun, he'd be painting a target on his back. No choices, buddy, he thought. This was what they paid him the big bucks for. "Cover me," shouted Mike, as he sprinted for the plasma gun.
Rillec and his buddy swooped down, spraying bolts of plasma at Mike as he sprinted across the heavy iron deck, leaping over the structure that supported the lowering mechanism. At the last minute, he stopped short, causing the two frogs to overshoot. Diving for the plasma gun, he came up in a crouch, leveled the ugly metal tube at the handiest frog, and punched him through the neck. The creature went flailing through the air to slam into the giant steel post that supported the ceiling.
No good deed went unpunished, though. Rillec slammed into Mike, knocking the gun out of his hand. "You die, human," growled the frog, as he shot skyward again! He was headed straight for the underside of his spaceship. Bug on a windshield, thought the cop, as the ugly black wall came up. That was when Molly and Shar intervened.
Having finally finished off the last of the frogs, the two came rushing through the hole in the hull of their ship, anxious to catch up to the three runners. Molly shot Rillec through the center of his back, causing him to drop her friend. Shar swooped down and caught Mike before he plummeted to his death. "Hooo, boy," whistled Mike! "Remind me to send your folks a thank-you card!" "You are welcome, Officer Stack," chuckled Shar.