Aces High

Prologue

He was still smoking where the atmosphere had burned his flesh. Heated lifeblood was running out through his spiracles. He tried to close them, to hold onto the last of the liquid, but he had lost the capacity to control his respiration. His fluids had superheated during the descent and had blown out from the diaphragms like steam from an exploding boiler.

Lights strobed at him from the end of the alley. They dazzled his eyes. Hard sounds crackled in his ears. His blood was steaming on the concrete as it cooled.

The Swarm Mother had detected his ship, had struck at him with a vast particle charge generated in the creature's monstrous planetoid body. He had barely the opportunity to signal Jhubben on the planet's surface before his ship's chitin was torn apart. He'd been forced to seize the singularity shifter, his race's experimental power source, and leap into the dark vacuum. But the shifter had been damaged in the attack and he had been unable to control it-he had burned on the way down.

He tried to summon his concentration and grow new flesh, but failed. He realized that he was dying.

It was necessary to stop the draining of his life. There was. a metal container nearby, large, with a hinged lid. His body a flaring agony, he rolled across the damp surface of the concrete and hooked his one undamaged leg across the lid of the container. The leg was powerful, intended for leaping into the sky of his light-gravity world, and now it was his hope. He moved his weight against the oppressive gravity, rolling his body up the length of his leg. Outraged nerves wailed in his body. Fluid spattered the outside of the container.

The metal rang as he fell inside. Substances crackled under him. He gazed up into a night that glowed with reflected infrared. There were bits of organic stuff here, crushed and pressed flat, with dyes pressed onto them in patterns. He seized them with his palps and cilia, tearing them into strips, pushing them against his leaking spiracles. Stopped the flow.

Organic smells came to him. There had been life here, but it had died.

He reached into his abdomen for his shifter, brought the device out, clasped it to his torn chest. If he could stop time for a while, he could heal. Then he would try to signal Jhubben, somehow. Perhaps, if the shifter wasn't damaged too badly, he could make a short jump to Jhubben's coordinates.

The shifter hummed. Strange light displays, a side effect, flickered gently in the darkness of the container. Time passed.

"So last night I got a call from my neighbor Sally.." Dimly, from inside his time cocoon, he heard the sound of the voice. It echoed faintly inside his skull.

"And Sally, she says, Hildy, she says, I just heard from my sister Margaret in California. You remember Margaret, she says. She went to school with you at St. Mary's."

There was a thud against the metal near his auditory palps. A silhouette against the glowing night. Arms that reached for him.

Agony returned. He cried out, a hiss. The touch climbed his body.

"Sure I remember Margaret, I says. She was a grade behind. The sisters were always after her 'cause she was a gum-chewer. "

Something was taking hold of his shifter. He clutched it against him, tried to protest.

"It's mine, bunky," the voice said, fast and angry. "I saw it first."

He saw a face. Pale flesh smudged with dirt, bared teeth, gray cilia just hanging from beneath an inorganic extrusion. "Don't, " he said. "I'm dying."

With a wrench the creature pulled the shifter from him. He screamed as the warmth left him, as he felt the slow, cold death return.

"Shut up, there. It's mine."

Pain began a slow throb through his body. "You don't understand," he said. "There is a Swarm Mother near your planet. "

The voice droned. Things crackled and rang in the container. "So Margaret, Sally says, she married this engineer from Boeing. And they pull down fifty grand a year, at least. Vacations in Hawaii, in St. Thomas, for crissake."

"Please listen." The pain was growing. He knew he had only a short time. "The Swarm Mother has already developed intelligence. She perceived that I had identified her, and struck at once."

"But she doesn't have to deal with my family, Sally says. She's over on the other goddamn coast, Sally says."

His body was weeping scarlet. "The next stage will be a first-generation Swarm. They will come to your planet soon, directed by the Swarm Mother. Please listen."

"So I got my mom onto the welfare and into this nice apartment, Sally says. But the welfare wants me and Margaret to give Mom an extra five dollars a month. And Margaret, she says, she doesn't have the money. Things are expensive in California, she says."

"You are in terrible danger. Please listen."

Metal thudded again. The voice was growing fainter, as with distance. "So how easy are things here, Sally says. I got five kids and two cars and a mortgage, and Bill says things are a dead end at the agency."

"The Swarm. The Swarm. Tell Jhubben!"

The other was gone, and he was dying. The stuff under him was soaking up his fluids. To breathe was an agony. "It is cold here," he said. Tears came from the sky, ringing against metal. There was acid in the tears.