Chapter 1

Sergei felt sore all over. He checked that all his body parts were in place. They were. He was breathing normal air, except it smelled of metal and other things inorganic.

When he felt at his head he noticed that he was shaven bald and had no beard.

"Hello?" he asked in a hoarse voice. He turned over and stood up from the the bed. The room he was in was all shiny metal except the mattress - smooth, slightly corrugated on the floor. It was warm but not too warm, and the air felt a touch humid. Like a hotelroom, the place had a bathroom - but no bathroom door. Sergei found that the shower, the toilet and the water tap all worked exactly like on Earth. The tap water was cold and tasted like metal. The mirror was a sheet of mercury. The mirror image showed nothing new on his body, except all signs of hair had vanished from his skin.

His clothes lay on the bathroom floor, and he put them on: underwear, pants, shoes, shirt, sweater, brown leather jacket, scarf, wristwatch, wallet, pistol holster, pistol... pistol?

Sergei examined the pistol closer. It only looked like the Glock. As he held it in his fingers, a dozen tiny points of light lit up on the barrel.

And the gun spoke in a deadpan imitation of his own voice: "Hello."

His hand twitched and he dropped the gun; it clattered to the floor.

"Hey!" the gun complained.

The clothes fit him like they ought to, but they smelled and felt strange, like they were made of synthetic materials. Sergei looked about himself.

"Anyone here?"

Cautiously, he bent down and picked up the gun. It said: "Yeah."

"Shut up," he told the gun, staring madly at it.

"Okay."

Some of the lights on the barrel went out.

"Bloody crazy robots with their bloody crazy tricks... they took my car."

The now familiar machine voice returned, speaking from the walls:

"We had to examine the 'Mercedes' vehicle to ensure it was not related to us."

"You speak better Russian now, 2-2-2. Just give me back my car."

"Yes."

Suddenly, a section of the walls folded away and Sergei's car rolled in by the bed. He rushed into the driver's seat and turned the ignition keys. Nothing. Not even electricity to make the dashboard light up.

"Shit!" He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. "No fuel. The battery... how long has it been dead?" He stuck his head out the side window and asked: "2-2-2! Where are we now?"

"It is not important. We decide where you are."

Sergei paled. An impulse made him dig into his jacket for the wallet, and he opened it. All the photos were there: him and his wife, the mistress, and the little daughter - no more than three years old.

"Forget your planet of origin, Sergei. The people in those images are gone. Too much time has passed."

Sergei muttered: "You're lying. We just left."

"You left and it happened seven hundred years ago. The journey took that long, and then we revived you."

"You're lying."

"Another thing: The modified weapon you carry is not allowed to kill you."

The pistol in his hand said: "Yeah."

"I can still kill myself," he said, an edge of terse desperation in his voice. "You can't stop me."

"Hear us, Sergei, and know that we the 2-2-2 do not lie: if you die, by accident or otherwise, we shall destroy all organic life and all culture on your home planet. Your kind shall cease to exist. Nothing of its records, buildings or structures shall be spared."

Sergei pointed the gun to his forehead, flicked the safety and pulled the trigger.

The gun said, in his own level voice: "No." Nothing happened, except the tiny lights on the gun went red.

Sergei put the gun into his shoulder holster, stared ahead of him, at the metal room...

Shutting his eyes hard, he said: "This is a dream. I had an accident with the car and I'm lying in hospital, dreaming this. It's got to be the only logical explanation."

"The 2-2-2 does not approve of dreams," the voice in the walls said. "Dreams, fantasies and wishes are a defect of organic life. Come out and say hello to your new company of enforcers. You are all employees of the 2-2-2 now."

"Not a dream. Not a dream." He shook his head. "Was it just me? Did you take any others from my planet?"

"Just one. Organic life becomes dangerous and irrational in larger groups. Individuals work more efficiently. You fit our requirements best. The ideal combination of destructiveness and the intelligence to control it. Come out now, or we shall force you out. There is food for you at the end of the passage. Stay here, and you starve."

Weeping silently, Sergei stepped out of the car and walked out through the opening in the wall, into a large illuminated corridor. His footsteps echoed along the curved, thirty-feet high walls. Gravity was lighter than on Earth; his feet moved jerkily, and it took some effort not to stumble. After a few minutes he came to a circular chamber, where other individuals stood or sat waiting. Some were apparently eating from trays that stood on tube-shaped columns of varying height. Others seemed to be avoiding the trays.

When he came close enough to see the details of their appearance, Sergei began to tremble.

Sergei slowed his steps and treaded toward the tray that bore his name in glowing Kyrillian letters. Underneath the name was another, longer row of symbols that resembled no Earth language.

In his tray, made of metal, a gray porridge flowed up from the tube below. A metal spoon lay in a corner. He sniffed the food - it smelled like a mixture of salt, sugar and meat - and tried a spoonful. The lukewarm food came down and stayed down. While he ate, he warily regarded the other individuals in the great room.

Only fifteen feet from him stood a very tall humanoid, eating voraciously and with slobbering noises. He (or she, or it) was of slender build, had three sinewy legs and two very long knobby arms with three fingers on each hand. Its head was flattened at the front, where a pair of slit-like dark eyes flicked anxiously from side to side. The humanoid had a bulging rib cage, and its lungs swelled and shrank at a rapid pace; there was an extra set of nostrils on the sides of the wiry neck. Its skin was a pale yellow, with patches of blue fur (or pelt?) on the shoulders and back. If the humanoid had genitals, they could not be seen: a fold like a skin pouch hung from the small of its back, concealing its gender.

When Sergei stared at the three-legged humanoid for more than three seconds without blinking, the humanoid bared its yellow teeth at him and let out a quick hiss.

"Take it easy... tripod."

Sergei noticed that it was carrying a weapon on its back, like a shortened spear or rifle. He blinked, and very slowly turned his gaze in another direction.

On the other side sat a short, bloated, completely white being with four stubby, muscular legs. The whiteness resembled a creased suit rather than its skin, and its head was partly concealed by a white hood. Four round, red eyes gleamed underneath the hood. Instead of a nose, the being had a small trunk that sniffed at the air with nervous twitching movements. This humanoid also appeared to be armed. A spike-studded device protruded from its belly, with ominous-looking nozzles pointing in several directions.

"Snowball."

Like the three-legged humanoid, the rotund four-eyed one with the trunk seemed to be breathing the same air as Sergei did. A draft came from above them; huge open air shafts protruded from the ceiling.

Across the room Sergei spotted other humanoids. One of them looked almost exactly like a human and was dressed in a dark suit and shoes, but its head was completely hidden by a a ball of thick fur that slowly shifted color like a chameleon.

"Afro-man," Sergei christened the figure.

Another being seemed to have no legs at all: a pulsating brownish blob that breathed through small tentacles on the top; its internal organs were faintly visible through the translucent brown skin.

"Turd-face," muttered Sergei, sneering at the thing.

He could see four more beings of various sizes and shapes, one of them no taller than five feet. With himself, there were nine of them. All seemed wary or tense.

Most of them carried some sort of visible tool fitted with at least one spike, nozzle or missile.

"I get it," Sergei said to himself. "Everyone's packin' their own favorite piece."

His wristwatch was still working, and he checked the time every now and then. Ten silent minutes passed, and then something happened. A huge white globe came down from the ceiling and lit up with a three-dimensional image. Symbols and letters, pictures of planets and stars, in at least nine different languages.

All the nine living things in the rooms looked up at the globe, and one image appeared at the center of the globe: a metal construction, shiny like chrome, distinctly a machine with moving parts. On its upper end was imprinted a symbol: three pairs of connected dots.

"Two, two, two," whispered Sergei, staring at the apparition.

From his tray came the familiar voice; the other trays spoke in other tongues.

"Sergei, you and the others shall not fight each other. We shall teach you to work together in the work we assign to you. If you do not cooperate, all of you are punished with starvation. If you try to injure the others, or if they try to injure you, you will be stopped by force. You will all work for the 2-2-2 and be rewarded. Your primal urges will be satisified in work."

"No room for negotiation, huh?" he said.

"No negotiation. Training begins now. Greet your new friends."

He breathed faster.

"What to do I say? Can I use sign language?"

"Improvise. Help will come later. This is the introduction."

Sergei wiped his mouth and cautiously moved in the direction of the three-legged humanoid. Six feet from the alert humanoid, he stopped and looked it in the eyes.

Pointing at his own chest, Sergei said: "Me Sergei. Ser-gei."

Then he pointed at the three-legged humanoid, quickly, and let his arms hang by his sides.

Sergei's legs were shaking.

The humanoid's eyes widened slightly, and it seemed to grow tense. After a few moments, it pointed one finger at Sergei and said in a low basstone: "Seeer-geei."

The Russian nodded slowly, put his hand to his chest, and confirmed: "Sergei."

The three-legged one's eyes narrowed, and it pointed at its own pulsating ribcage.

"Yyyp-yyl-yy," it said, putting emphasis on the vowels. "Yyypyylyy."

Frowning, Sergei pointed at the alien and said: "Yyy-pyy-lyy."

The alien "Yyypyylyy" seemed to wince at the sound of Sergei's voice; its slit-like eyes narrowed into black lines.

Sergei grinned at Yyypyylyy. The seven-feet tall alien flinched at Sergei's display of bare teeth and reached for its weapon.

"Shit." Sergei's grin vanished, and he rapidly reached for his own gun. "Yyypyylyy! No. I made a mistake. No fight. No fight."

He stood like frozen, staring at the spear-shaped weapon in Yyypyylyy's three-fingered hands. Neither Sergei nor the alien would let the ir guard down. The other aliens regarded them in silence. No message came from the machines in the room. Seconds passed.

Suddenly, Sergei sighed and tucked back his gun into the shoulder holster.

"Relax, Yyypyylyy. They must've fixed your gun like they fixed mine. You can't shoot me even if you tried." He held out his arms. "Go ahead, try."

Yyypyylyy blinked and looked up at the glowing globe high above.

"You mind if I call you something else? Like, 'Tripod?'" Sergei pointed to Snowball, Afro-Man and Turdface in turn, uttering the nicknames he had given them.

Yyypyylyy gave a shudder, as if he had received a cold shower. Then his slit-like eyes widened slightly, and he held out the palm of one hand.

"Yyypyylyy hityymeii-reerr... Trri-pood. Tri-pod!"

And Tripod laughed. Or perhaps he coughed from trying to use the nickname with his alien speech apparatus.

Then, Tripod pointed at Sergei, and said: "Seergei... kiik. Seergei pyy 'Jeek-Jeek.'"

Sergei scratched his bald head.

"'Jeek-Jeek?'"

"Pyy Jeek-Jeek."

"Okay." He nodded, pointed at his chest. "Jeek-Jeek." Looking up at the communications globe above them, he waited for a reaction. "Hey, 2-2-2! Could you at least give me a pen and paper to communicate with?"

The oddly intoned voice of the 2-2-2 replied from Sergei's food trough: "Go to your room, Sergei. You will find writing equipment there. Take care of your bodily functions. Then return here and learn to communicate with your crew."

"Who's the main man of the crew?"

"Repeat the question."

"Who's leader of this group when we're not working?"

"It does not matter. The 2-2-2 gives the final orders."

Sergei nodded. He had a determined look on his face.

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

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