PROLOGUE

Sergei Nativicholsk was a tough guy.

He'd worked himself up to the top level of the Moscow underworld by killing men who would easily have killed him if he'd given'em a fair chance. He started his career by throwing a grenade into a rival's apartment. The rival and his sixteen-year-old brother both died.

Eleven killings and two years later, Sergei Nativicholsk gathered the six bosses of the city and staked out his territory. The other bosses agreed on most of his claims, and they all got drunk and celebrated with Moscow's finest prostitutes.

He was the youngest of them then, only 27 years old.

Sergei bought a datja in the countryside and moved in there with his new wife. He installed his mistress in a luxury apartment in Moscow. His crew, recruited from ex-Army personnel, were paid well and put under severe discipline. Sergei was strict but fair. He never killed anyone without good reason, and rarely tortured people; he preferred to use lie-detectors. His rackets thrived. He always wore a bulletproof vest, even in his sleep.

Sergei was a tough guy, but quick to learn. Once he was asked to run for mayor, and he laughed at the idea. He often said: "I'll bribe the politicians, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one."

One cold January night, while he was driving his bulletproof Mercedes to a meeting with the mistress, Sergei saw a bright light from above. He pressed down the gas pedal and reached for his shoulder holster. Then the road seemed to sink away in front of the car. Sergei gaped. He looked up at the bright light, saw the fast approaching spaceship, and put back the gun. Sergei was a tough guy, but he sure wasn't stupid. He'd seen science-fiction movies and heard the abduction legends, and must have had certain expectations.

And Sergei Nativicholsk vanished from the face of the Earth.

The Mercedes thudded down on a smooth surface, and someone opened all the doors from outside. Sergei sat stiffly in the driver's seat, and refused to come out.

A weird, mechanical voice spoke to him in clumsy, loud Russian: "Hello. Sergei Nativicholsk is you?"

"Who's asking?" he shouted, and he trembled in both voice and body.

"Ask we. Interview. Be friend and answer questions. Out of car you go."

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"Joke, no, perhaps not. Out go. Leave 'Glock' weapon inside."

Sergei looked at his Glock, and left it inside the car. When he stepped out of the car, all doors shut themselves, and he jumped away from it. The room he was in enclosed him on all sides, windowless and dark except for the sharp light from above. He peered into the shadows but could not see the source of the strange voice.

Sergei adjusted his jacket and straightened up.

"Show yourself," he demanded. "I will answer your questions if I see you."

"We are here." When he looked around, the voice explained: "This place. Part of us. We are machine. Space probe."

"Ah," Sergei said. "You're a robot. Who sent you here? People from space?"

"Not important. Another place in space and time. Could be distant relations. Sure are we not."

"Who's your boss? Does he, it, have a name?"

"We are one. All machine. We no have no name, maybe. Call us the two-two-two."

"Tu-tu what?"

"Number two, number two, number two."

Sergei laughed.

"Bloody stupid robot..." He held out his arms. "Ask me, then. Ask me anything."

"Who are you?"

He folded his arms and said: "Sergei Chimjevitch Nativicholsk, born in Moscow in 1978, citizen of the Russian Federation."

"Are you a man? Male gender of dominant species which that does not lay eggs?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Yes or no?"

"Yes."

A small metal needle shot up from the floor, pierced his thigh, and whisked back in a second. Sergei howled in pain and jerked away from the spot where the needle had emerged.

"What the hell was that for?"

"Sorry. Tissue sample. No danger." Sergei rubbed his thigh and muttered some old Russian curses. "We follow, watch your planet for a time. Seeking for candidates. Interested are in opportunities you?"

"Say that again?"

"You want to advance a 'career'?"

"Hell, yeah! Who doesn't?"

"And you are satisfied not with your present status in society?"

"Are you reading my mind?"

"A little. Indirectly."

"Of course I'm not satisfied. I'm sure I won't live to be forty. Sooner or later someone's going to kill me and take over my gang."

"Interested? We offer a new career opportunity now, to you."

Sergei's jaw dropped, and he staggered back against his car. It was locked. He tried the remote-control lock. Then the keys. Neither worked.

"Let me out of here!" he cried. There was no echo. "Take me back to my planet or you'll be in trouble, big trouble!"

"Trouble?" the machine voice asked. "We are in trouble, maybe. Are you interested more in hearing of it now?"

Sergei rolled in under his car and found the secret compartment that hid his sawed-off Kalashnikov. He pulled out the rifle, jumped up onto the hood of the car and aimed the rifle at the light above.

"I'm warning you! This is a weapon. Take me back to where you picked me up, or I'll make some seriously big holes in you."

The voice said: "No." The Kalashnikov flew out of his hands, as if pulled by an enormous magnet, and clanged against the wall - where it vanished, sucked into the surface. Sergei was breathing rapidly.

For the first time in his adult life, he wet himself.

"Listen to 2-2-2-belonging proposal. Offer you cannot refuse."

"Okay. Okay! I'll listen."

Sergei sat down on the hood of the car and covered his eyes against the harsh light.

"Sergei Chimjevitch Nativicholsk, we the 2-2-2 offer to you hire work for us in the great protection racket. Look at us. Stop your covering of eyes." Sergei emitted a low laughter, and tears flowed from his eyes. He was going into a mild psychosis. A quick stab from a needle in the floor caused him to snap back into an alert state. "Hear us, Sergei Chimjevitch Nativicholsk. We offer to hire you as employee in the great protection racket. Good pay, your own weapons and transportation, exciting work, retirement plan, many opportunities for looting and bonuses."

"Tell me about the retirement plan," he said faintly. "Do I get back to Earth? And when?"

"Later. If your planet then will exist."

"Will something happen to Earth in the future?"

"Maybe. In long time enough. So many asteroids in that place of space."

"Jesus and the Holy Mother, my family," he mumbled to himself. "Can you go back and get them for me?"

"This space probe can only support one specimen," the voice said. "We you can clone a female for later. We have tissue the sample from your body. If you die during this transport, we clone a copy of your person. We only are interested in suitable candidates for employment. You have excellent merits. Murder, extortion, theft, assassination, property damage, threatening behavior."

"Perverts!" Sergei cried. He went down on his knees and pounded the smooth floor with his fists. "I won't have sex with my own clone! It's wrong!"

"Yes. We understand. Another solution. Be patient. This journey is long, a time for will come a better solution."

With great effort, Sergei pushed himself into an upright position.

"Why am I getting heavy?" he asked, wheezing with every breath. "Are we moving?"

"Yes and no. A travel kind of displacement. We can explain later, maybe. Now sleep. Sleep... sleep..."

The doors of his car clicked open; he staggered into it and slumped over the front seats. All doors shut around him. Groaning, Sergei Nativicholsk held his short-cropped scalp and breathed slowly, painfully. His eyes shut.

Then, maybe, he died.

Some microscopic animals on Earth can dry up and remain in an inanimate state for over a hundred years, then come to life when exposed to water. The space probe did something similar to Sergei Nativicholsk's body and mind. The important thing is, he came back to life with all his memories and identity intact.

And he woke up.

(NEXT CHAPTA)

GALACTIC GANGSTA(c)A.R.Yngve 2003, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.

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