Aces High

"You might have telephoned. I would have come. Your goons didn't even knock. There are still constitutional protections in this country, even in Jokertown."

"We knocked," said Black. "We knocked real loud." He turned to one of his detectives, a joker with brown, scaled flesh. "You heard me knock, didn't you, Kant?"

Kant gri

"How about you, Matthias?"

"I heard you knock, too."

Tach clenched his teeth. "They… did… not… knock."

Black shrugged. "The doctor probably didn't hear us. He was busy." He leered. "He had company, if you take my meaning. A nurse. Real peachy." He held up a legal-sized document. "Anyway, our warrant was legal. Signed by Judge Steiner right here just half an hour ago."

The mayor turned to Tachyon. "We just wanted to make sure you didn't have anything to do with this."

Tach removed his hat and waved it languidly before his face as he looked at the room filled full of rushing people, including-Good God, a three-foot-high tyra

"What are you talking about, my man?" he finally asked. The mayor gazed at Tachyon with eyes like chips of ice. "We have reports of what might be a wild card outbreak in Jersey."

Tach's heart lurched. Not again, he thought, remembering those first awful weeks, the deaths, the mutilations that made his blood run cold, the madness, the smell… No, it wasn't possible. He gulped.

"What may I do to help?" he said.

"Forty thousand in one group," the general muttered, fixing the figures in his mind. "Probably in Princeton by now. Twenty thousand fliers. Maybe another twenty thousand scattered over the countryside, moving to rendezvous at Princeton." He looked up at the android. "Any idea where they'll move after Princeton? Philadelphia or New York? South or north?"'

"I can't say."

The lieutenant general gnawed his knuckle. He was a thin, bespectacled man, and his name was Carter. He seemed not at all disturbed by the thought of carnivorous aliens landing in New Jersey. He commanded the U.S. First Army from his headquarters here at Fort Meade, Maryland. Modular Man had been sent here by a sweating major general at Fort Dix, which had turned out to be a training center.

Chaos surrounded Carter's aura of calm. Phones rang, aides bustled, and outside in the corridor men were shouting. "So far I've only got the Eighty-second and the National Guard," Carter said. "It's not enough to defend both New York and Philly against those numbers. If I had the Marine regiments from Lejeune we could do better, but the Marine Commandant doesn't want to release them from the Rapid Deployment Force, which is commanded by a Marine. He wants the RDF to take command here, particularly since the Eighty-second is also under its protocols." He sipped cranberry juice, sighed. "It's all the process of moving a peacetime army onto wartime footing. Our time will come, and then we'll have our i

The android gathered that the Swarm had landed in four places in North America: New Jersey; Kentucky south of Louisville; an area centered around McAllen, Texas, but on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border; and an extremely diffused landing that seemed scattered over most of northern Manitoba. The Kentucky landing was also within the boundaries of the First Army, and Carter had ordered the soldiers from Fort Knox and Fort Campbell into action. Fortunately he hadn't had to get the Marines' permission first.

"North or south?" Carter wondered. "Darn it, I wish I knew where they were heading." He rubbed his temples. "Time to shoot crap," he decided. "You saw them moving north. I'll send the airborne to Newark and tell the Guard to concentrate there."

Another aide bustled up and passed Carter a note. "Okay," the general said. "The governor of New York has asked all aces in the New York area to meet at city hall. There's talk of using you people as shock troops." He peered at the android through his glasses. "You are an ace, right?"

"I'm a sixth-generation machine intelligence programmed to defend society."

"You're a machine, then?" Carter looked as if he hadn't quite understood this till now. "Someone built you?"

"That's correct." His contractions were getting better and better, his speech more concise. He was pleased with himself. Carter's reaction was quick. "Are there any more of you? Can we build more of you? We've got a situation, here."

"I can transmit your request to my creator. But I don't think it's likely to be of immediate help."

"Do that. And before you take off, I want you to talk to one of my staff. Tell him about yourself, your capabilities. We can make better use of you that way."

"Yes, Sir." The android was trying to sound military, and thought he was succeeding.

"No," Tachyon said. "It's not wild card." Further facts had come in, including pictures. No wild card plague-not even an advanced version-could have produced results like this. At least I won't get blamed for this one, he thought.

"I think," Tach said, "that what just struck Jersey is a menace my race has itself encountered on several occasionsthese creatures attacked two colonies; destroyed one, and came close to destroying the other. Our expeditions destroyed them later, but we know there are many others. The T'zan-d'ran…" He paused at the blank looks. "That would translate as Swarm, I think."

Senator Hartma

"They are not insects. They are in the way of being-how to say this?…" He shrugged. "They are yeasts. Giant, carnivorous, telepathic yeast buds, controlled by a giant mother-yeast in space. Very hungry. I would mobilize if I were you."

The mayor looked pained. "Okay. We've got a half-dozen aces assembled down below. I want you to go down and brief them."

The sounds of panic filtered through the skylight. It was four in the morning, but half Manhattan seemed to be trying to bolt the city. It was the worst traffic jam since the Wild Card Day.

Travnicek gri

"So the army wants more of you, hey? Heh. How much are they offering?"

"General Carter just expressed an interest. He isn't in charge of purchasing, I'm sure."

Travnicek's grin turned to a frown as he held his notes closer to his eyes. His writing was awful, and the note was completely illegible. What the hell had he meant?

He looked around the loft, at the appalling scatter of litter. There were thousands of the notes. A lot of them were on the floor, where they'd been ground into the particleboard.

His breath steamed in the cold loft. "Ask for a firm offer. Tell him I want ten million per unit. Make that twenty. Royalties on the programming. And I want the first ten units for myself, as my bodyguard."

"Yes, sir. How soon can I tell him we might expect the plans to be delivered?"

Travnicek looked at the litter again. "It might be a while." He'd have to reconstruct everything from scratch. "First thing, get a firm commitment on the money."

"Yes, sir."

"Before you go, clean this mess up. Put my notes in piles over there." He pointed at a reasonably clean part of one of his tables.

"Sir. The aliens."

"They'll keep." Travnicek chuckled. "You'll be that much more valuable to the military after these critters eat half New Jersey."

The android's face was expressionless. "Yes, sir." And then he began tidying the lab.

"Good gosh," said Carter. For once the chaos that surrounded him ceased to exist. The silence in the improvised command post in a departure lounge of Newark International Airport was broken only by the whine of military jets disgorging troops and equipment. Paratroops in their bloused pants and new-model Kevlar helmets stood next to potbellied National Guard officers and aces in jumpsuits. They all waited for what Carter would say next. Carter held a series of infrared photographs to the faint light that was begi