Casper was aware of a tightness, a crackling static rejuvenation in his limbs. The air was full of life, so close to death. His beer had never tasted better.

Murphy, bulky and bear-like, leaned his heavy arms on the bar. Kloud followed his Captain's steady zombie gaze to an ancient mummy of a man.

His skin was pale, more wrinkled than bark. He wore a light gray military cap and a faded dress jacket. Near-blind eyes looked hopelessly into the foam of his beer mug, which he clung to with skin-wrapped wires that shook. His toothless Choom mouth was a saliva-dangling cavern.

Kloud looked back to his commanding officer; the dense smoke had brought a liquid shine to Murphy's eyes.

Murphy downed the rest of his drink, pushing the empty container away with distaste.

"You know," Murphy said, turning to Kloud, "I betcha if we told these guys where we were goin', half of 'em would want to come with us."

Kloud frowned doubtfully. "Think so?"

"A soldier's death is better than living death."

Autumn eve, shadows and chill. Murphy's car slithered up to the curb across the street from the tall stone block. They climbed out in unison. Murphy and Casper put on their helmets. The black dog Five scrambled out of its back seat and stood dutifully at its master's side.

Casper unlocked the trunk and began pa.s.sing out guns.

Kloud stood on the curb, staring up at the purple and black flaming fist, the Klu-Koza flag.

"Here, boy." Murphy's fingers clicked as he joined Casper behind the car. He reached into the trunk and pulled out a thick leather harness. He knelt by the patient mammal and wrapped the belt around its chest. His face vacant of all human qualities, Murphy proceeded to strap fifteen pounds of explosives onto Number Five.

The street was relatively quiet. Soon the Klu-Koza emba.s.sy would close for the night. Team B stole across the street and worked its way down to the big structure. They crept carefully, guerrilla-style behind it, positioning themselves outside the back door.

Typical Klu-Koza men, short, bald, layered in fat. They resembled hairless purple orangutans. The two door guards stood in their boredom-one glancing through a newspaper, while the other daydreamed up at the camouflaged moon hiding in the treetops.

Sov, the elder guard, shifted the weight of his rifle over his left shoulder and reached into his uniform for a cigar. He suddenly noticed a dark-haired human man carrying an overnight bag. The man paid them no attention and appeared to be pa.s.sing. Sov, for some reason, flicked his heavily lidded black eyes to the human's belt buckle. The insignia struck a chord; that yellow boar face. Tusk Company.

"Holy s.h.i.t!"

Kloud wrenched his boot knife from his pocket and drove it deeply into Sov's blubbery neck. With savage devotion he tugged the blade sideways, causing thick magenta gelatin to spew between meaty folds.

The other guard barely had time to drop his newspaper before Murphy stepped out of the shadows, driving a long bayonet into the fathoms of his throat. The big human snarled as he gave the weapon a firm twist, knotting the contents of the ogre's throat about the cold razor steel.

Murphy jerked the blade free and with a single sudden motion rammed it in and across the beast's dome-belly. The sound was wet, as the big gut yawned wide to vomit pink blobs of stringy pulp, steamy bucketfuls of blackish mashed potato. The jolly demon slumped into the doorway where Kloud had dragged his prize. Nice and silent.

Murphy stooped over the unctuous corpse and sliced off the tusk-like horn protruding from its forehead; he pocketed the trophy.

Number Five heard the silent whistle and instantaneously ran down the street carrying his bomb belt around his chest and Murphy's rifle in his mouth.

Murphy and Kloud were already ducking behind a car across from the emba.s.sy when Five reached them.

The Captain took his gun and set it aside. He took Five by the collar and turned him to face the target. Kloud had used Sov's remains to hold the lobby doors open. He pointed. "Kill." He gave the dog a swat on the rump.

Number Five darted across the traffic-barren pavement and charged into the open building, his crab-like robot leg clicking. Murphy held his remote control mechanism ready.

Amba.s.sador Dov and his a.s.sistant Mov and several bodyguards were in the lobby, just leaving the office suite, when they spotted a dog running at them.

"What is this?" Dov asked in his guttural native language, not at all amused.

"Where are the guar-"

The first floor lobby and offices erupted into a flaming o.r.g.a.s.mic light. The entire stone structure shook as walls ripped and rooms were reduced to pebbly confetti.

Team B destroyed the back door with automatic fire. They charged into a long gray corridor flanked by office doors. Casper took the left side, Dennison the right.

The first room was a lounge. Rotund Klu-Kozi men and women (indistinguishable from each other, excluding their gonads) were caught in mid-panic. Smoke from the ma.s.sive explosion coated their horror.

Casper leapt in a half-crouch into the open doorway, his little machine-gun barking loudly. Forty-five caliber craters formed a dotted line across one officer's chest. His thick body crashed over a table. The others, slowed by their bulk, attempted to dive for cover but were quickly a.s.saulted by sprays of lead.

Dennison used his boot to open the door. The emba.s.sy nurse stood in awe behind her metal desk. She lifted her fleshy fingers to shield herself. The a.s.sault rifle purred as it flicked out a thin tongue of light. Dennison st.i.tched a row of projectile-cavities across her thick jowled face. Soupy clumps of brain erupted from her bald purple head. The blood of a Klu-Koza had the look and consistency of grape jelly. The thick substance spattered the medical charts behind the fallen medic.

Murphy, a.s.suming that the majority of enemy on Level One had been killed in the blast, led the way up a steep metal staircase. The structure was wobbly and twisted by the blast and it creaked under them.

Bits of plaster leapt from the wall where the Klu-Koza gunman's bullets missed Murphy's head. The human spun and fired. The accurate a.s.sault rifle pelted the man's bulging midsection and hammered him back against the second floor balcony wall. Still kicking, the guardsman made a final attempt at attacking and lunged forward. Murphy injected more bullets into his torso and he shook as he accepted each one. Dead, the body fell forward, rolled over the banister, bounced when it hit the floor below.

There was quite a commotion upstairs. They were running all over, yelling and sputtering that ugly Klu-Koza gibberish. The main room housed computers with gla.s.sy blue screens. File cabinets stood against one wall, solemn like graves.

They sprayed the room with random bursts of gunfire. Whereas a human would probably have been dropped by such blasts, the heavy-bodied Klu-Kozi were merely jolted. Some performed the unlikely feat of falling forward in death.

Kloud's little submachine-gun took the screen out of a computer terminal and also blew a good amount of its operator's skull off. The woman plopped to the floor, which was splashed by her sweaty black brain jam.

Casper's submachine-gun jammed. He threw it aside, instantly yanking free his .45. A vet Klu-Koza, from the war of the same name, saw him dispose of his long-arm and darted from his office closet.

The helmeted human stabbed his gun into the corpulent creature's face and pulled on the trigger. There was that traditional deafening crash, the quaking of the room and the dousing of oily gore. The Klu-Koza stumbled back, a hideous steaming pit taking up half its head.

Casper's face remained tight but his mind's jaw fell open in awe as the stricken enemy reached up to feel the chunky gap. One of its eyes had popped from the blast; the survivor squinted in anger as the beast staggered forward.

"You f.u.c.k-er," it grumbled in poor English.

Sh.e.l.ls spun from the .45 as it leapt twice, nearly fracturing Casper's sleek musician's wrist. The Klu-Koza was pushed back hard, jelly-pulsing wounds drilled deeply into its chest. With a final death moan it slumped to the floor.

Dennison's frame rattled with the gun's recoil. His prey twitched uncomfortably under the fusillade of bullets. He aimed at their eyes, knowing all too well that these beings were notorious for the number of shots they could withstand. They were not very threatening, however, when the only weapons they had were pencils and computers. Their brains hugged the ceiling like rain-slicked parasites.

"Die!" The tiled walls of the large meeting room broke into splinters. Kloud's gun was growing less accurate due to the barrel expansion caused by the heat of firing. The Klu-Koza Secretary of Defense dived behind a leather chair. He reached for his dead bodyguard's revolver.

Kloud introduced him to his submachine-gun's ammunition.

Secretary Kov's head shattered like a jar of preserves. His excessive business-suited body went slack.

"Duck!"

Murphy's warning was a bit slow; one of the sniper's bullets burnt harshly into Kloud's thigh. He fell with a scream.

Murphy's a.s.sault rifle hammered the sniper to the wall and made such a mess of him that he stuck there rather than fell.

Captain Murphy, kneeling in the nitrate air, put a hand on Kloud's shoulder.

"Can you walk?"

Kloud looked up and nodded; he clutched at the runny red pit in his leg.

The weight of the Klu-Koza woman sent Dennison like a meteor into the wall. The picture they slammed against shattered, showering them with gla.s.s. He hadn't seen her hiding behind the door.

The woman wrapped her arms around the human from behind and shoved him against the floor. His rifle was pinned beneath him. Frantically he jabbed his elbows into the thing's gut.

"Mulla-bosk! Mulla-bosk!" the woman shouted.

Dennison managed to get a hold of his pistol, reached back to press the weapon's muzzle into the load on his back. The angle he fired at caused great pain to his wrist but did worse damage to his target. The ma.s.sive hulk rose quickly, taking several steps backwards.

She stood there contemplating her bullet wound with disbelief.

"Kabba-Kos, pellumb! (You shot me!)" she said.

Dennison, still on the floor, managed to roll over. He held out the sleek automatic and squeezed off a volley of shots. The woman convulsed as lead slammed into her. She crumpled, thick blood leaking from her pocked chest.

He was screaming, bellowing agony. A burly bald gorilla with deep purple skin, frantically, clumsily running around his office clutching a coin-sized gap in his belly. Murphy seemed to be too hypnotized by his pain-dance to finish him off. The crazed executive grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on his desk and stuffed them into the gorge.

Murphy's gun shook him from the trance as his trigger finger awoke. The rifle spewed flame as bullets st.i.tched the porcine beast and put an end to its disorientation.

Kloud blew the door's lock off and pushed. A desk barricade moved back grudgingly and a book bounced off his skull.

"f.u.c.ker!"

He caught himself before firing. The Klu-Koza backed against the far wall, hands raised in surrender.

"No shoot, no shoot."

The soldier walked forward, jamming his weapon into the man's ma.s.sive belly. The walls and ceiling of this room were silvery metal.

"The safe," Kloud hissed. "You show me the safe or I'll kill you."

The Klu-Koza blinked.

"Safe! Safe! Open the safe, understand?"

According to the floor plan, this was the room. Gun barrel buried in the Klu-Koza's gut, Kloud shot a glance at the floor.

"Raise it."

Shaking uncontrollably, the enemy fell to its knees and found a hidden switch where one of the diamond-shaped patterns in the carpet flipped up to reveal a keypad. There was a hum as the safe rose slowly from the floor.

"Now open it!"

"f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

The Klu-Koza rolled about on the floor as if it was on fire.

Casper stuck his pistol in his belt and s.n.a.t.c.hed the wounded creature's carbine from the floor.

The .45 slug had done extensive damage to its flab-padded face and yet it still spewed words: "f.u.c.k, you, f.u.c.ker!"

The bolt had already been pulled back. Casper merely aimed and squeezed. Ghastly moist sockets opened up across the man's back. He jerked as the projectiles drilled tunnels through his guts. After a final electric dance of contortions, the infuriated beast lay dead.

The office clerk emerged from the smoky hall, its bulky silver pistol barking. Two shots nibbled the wall; a third caught the human in the back. Casper's vest denied the slug entry into his flesh. He spun, carbine sparking, leaping, thundering. Foul mush slurped in rubbery chunks from yawning holes. The clerk dropped its gun and gasped. Its plump limbs jiggled with each fresh bullet. Agony.

"Garragh!"

One arm nearly amputated, the obese being was determined to live. It stepped forward awkwardly despite the shower of bullets.

The final shot in the gun spat free of the long clip, and still the creature stood. Exasperated, Casper reached again for his handgun. Thick palms closed on his shoulders and his feet left the ground.

The flimsy closet door crashed and splintered behind him. He slid to the floor, gla.s.ses hanging across his face.

The Klu-Koza was drenched in its own thermal slime. It staggered at him, arms outstretched like some movie screen zombie. Hands sweat-bathed, Casper managed to point the large automatic and fire.

Yolk-yellow pus e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed from the shattered throat. The sluggish mammal thumped loudly to the floor.

Casper sighed deeply and pulled himself up. He stabbed a fresh clip into his .45's handle and worked the slide. Suddenly his left leg was on fire. Something was wrong.

The jam-smeared enemy had jabbed a pearl-handled letter opener into him. Its free hand shot up and grasped his crotch. He followed the tugging arm to the floor, .45 sliding away from his grip.

The Klu-Koza let go of the bladed instrument's handle, released his crotch and clamped its palms against the human's temples. Enraged, the clerk pulled Casper's face into one of its wide, gelatin-oozing belly wounds. It attempted to drown him in its blood.

The foul substance seeped up his nostrils; his mouth and beard were buried in the muck. Desperately, Casper tugged the letter opener from his leg and brought it up and then down, into the great distended belly.

The Klu-Koza shrieked, releasing Casper's head as he carved a wide wet smile across its bullet-plagued stomach. A thick black tongue slurped across the gash's edge. Casper rammed his hand wrist-deep into the glistening valley and yanked out the meaty obsidian tongue.

Tortured howls shook the room. The sticky, blubbery Klu-Koza collapsed; it resembled an opened spread-eagle frog in mid-dissection. The desecrated alien thrashed like an electrocuted marionette. Yes, quick death was a vid-program myth; death, as Casper knew it, was often a process of suffering.

Murphy's eyes were lost in sweaty shadows. He surveyed the third floor lobby. There were two large stone buckets containing Klu-Koza jungle ferns on each side of the elevator doors. Instantly recognizing the shiny bald head of an enemy as it ducked down behind the vegetation, Murphy pulled free the large tubular Implode-Injector and stepped out into the open. His question of whether or not the hidden plum-purple ape was armed was answered by the absence of flying bullets. He marched across the short lobby area and shoved his arm into the thick fringed leaves. The barrel pressed against the polished scalp and the weapon hissed sharply; the explosive was embedded inside the creature's head before detonating.

Chunks of skull and brain pulp flew in all directions as the ma.s.sive headless body slammed up against the elevator doors. Its arms flailed in the air. Gelatinous rodents scurried from the neck pit. A m.u.f.fled voice bellowed through the wall of the monster's belly, "b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"