Tropical Punch (Bubbles in Space Book 1)

by S. C. Jensen

  The second guard stepped away from the door and into the fray. I crouched low and charged it, hoping the body armour would act like a battering ram if I got going fast enough. I hit the shell with a crunch, but the angle was all wrong. The nerves inside my prosthetic screamed, and I dropped to my knees, cradling my arm.

  “Behind you!” Cosmo’s high-pitched screech pierced through the fog of pain, and I whipped my head around.

  The Rose stalked toward me, limping slightly in her bare feet, with a little pisskicker pointed at my chest. “Now hold still. This will hurt excruciatingly, but only for a little while.”

  The android I just tackled wrapped its arms around me and held me in a vice-like embrace. The one I’d tossed earlier stood up, its torso twisted at an awkward angle. What would have been a fatal injury to a human appeared to be little more than an inconvenience to the robot. It shuffle-stepped sideways toward us to join the party. Dickie kicked at the Rose’s legs again as she passed but this time she was ready for him. She cracked him in the nose with the heel of her foot. Blood spurted from the wound and my partner keeled over backward.

  Cosmo whimpered and wriggled himself over to check on Dickie. The android tightened its grip around me, one hand up under my chin, holding my head back to expose my throat. The Rose extended her long, metal claws toward my throat, lifting the little gun as she did, keeping it well out of the reach of my enhancement. The room was silent, but for Cosmo’s whimpering and my own ragged breathing. I gritted my teeth, waiting for the gory end to my pathetic life. Staring death in the face, seeing her for what she really was, I felt a little ripped off. Getting my throat opened by a wannabe demigod was a bit of a cop-out after everything I’d been through.

  A commotion outside the door broke through the silence and my contemplation. Shouts and gunfire erupted in sharp staccato bursts. The Rose turned her head for a fraction of a second. It was enough. Something leaped on her back. A furious ball of curly black hair and silver sequins clung to the Rose with thin brown limbs wrapped around her waist. The little pisskicker went off and the limping robot went down. Parts needed for reassembly. The android holding me faltered. I broke out of its grip and swung my metal fist backward into its face. A shower of sparks rained down, and I got a good jolt through the prosthetic. I had forgotten about the grapefruit knife.

  I spun around, placed a knee on the pink-robed robot’s chest, and pushed it off my arm. Shaking out the pins and needles, I flexed my fingers and looked up to see Patti wrap a plasma wire around the Rose’s thin white neck.

  “Patti, no!” I cried, and I dove for the struggling pair just as the door into the Mezzanine chapel exploded inward and a swarm of grey HCPD uniforms, peppered liberally with Whyte’s baby blues, burst onto the scene.

  “Everyone put your hands in the air!” The shouting voice was familiar. But it was too late. Momentum was on my side. I hit the Rose in the chest and knocked her backward. We both landed on top of Patti. It wasn’t enough to stop her. The wire sizzled as it cut through the religious leader’s throat and an ozone stench filled the air mixed with something like damp metal and burnt plastic. The Rose’s body spasmed and twitched. Then the skin around the throat melted.

  I backed away from the horror, my mouth gaping. Sparks burst out of the wound as the Rose’s body kicked one last time and her head rolled off her body. Its head. Its body. The Last Humanist wasn’t human at all. Patti shoved the android corpse off herself and stood up, her wild eyes roving around the room. “Hank?”

  “Patti,” Whyte stumbled forward with cuffs on his wrists and fell to his knees. “Patti, you’re all right.”

  “What have they done to you?” Patti crouched next to her husband and used the coil of wire to cut through his bonds.

  “Uh, is that allowed?” One of the HCPD lunks scratched his head.

  “Hey, Bubbles,” Said a familiar voice from the back of the group. “What’s the smoke?”

  “Weiland, you desk jockey.” I panted, trying to hide the relief in my voice. “What are you trying to do? Make ‘Better Late Than Never’ the new HCPD force motto?”

  “Hey, next time you want my help, try asking for it,” Detective Tom Weiland said. “This whole telling me to go lick a duck and then sending me off to get ambushed by an illegal AI plug thing was a little obtuse, even for you.”

  “To be fair, I didn’t know he was a plug when I sent you. I take it you got my message?”

  “I tried to report the plug to Chief Swain, but he still wasn’t in. After a little snooping around, I found out he’d hopped a bangtail with the idea of arresting you and Punch Blanco in one fell swoop. I put a call in to the admiral and fed him the line you suggested, commandeered a Grit squad, and managed to make the last jump up here.”

  “So that would be a yes.”

  “You and Blanco, though. Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  “Many things, Weiland. But none of them are fit for mixed company.”

  Weiland groaned and ran a thick-fingered hand over his face. “You promised me you weren’t going to go digging into—”

  “There is no Punch Blanco,” Patti said. She was busy nursing Whyte’s ego, a performance he was enjoying a little too much. “Blanco was me, in a prototype sim-skin I have been developing for Libra that’s undetectable by your helmet cams.”

  “Didn’t stop Swain from trying to arrest him.” I pointed to the smear on the pretty white dais. “Turns out Punch Blanco was the sweet spot. I’m a little put out about that after Swain went all the trouble of trying to fade me.”

  “Ahem. Ahem. AHEM.” A bug-eyed, galaxy-painted face peered up from between my boots. “This is a lovely view, sugar. But could you untie me, please? My hands are going numb and without my hands that only leaves my—”

  “I’ll get it.” Weiland elbowed me out of the way and got to work on the nets.

  Whyte picked himself up off the floor and wrapped an arm around his no-longer-dead wife. “What was the message to the admiral?” he asked. “I notice it got the HCPD on board, but it didn’t get me off the hook.”

  “I told him the Rose was distributing Blanco’s merchandise via those cute little necklaces Patti ordered,” I said. “That Swain needed backup, and it wasn’t clear who we could trust.”

  “You could have added a line to clear my name, couldn’t you?” Whyte rubbed his wrists and frowned. “I thought I was going to get snuffed when these goons showed up.”

  I shrugged. “It was mostly true.”

  “That was a neat trick you did with the news feeds,” he said. “We never would have sussed out the Rose’s plan without you.”

  “My trick?” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You broadcasted the Rose’s little acceptance speech to everyone on the Island Dreamer,” Weiland said, pulling away the last of the netting around Cosmo’s glitter platformed feet. “You didn’t do that on purpose? Slick moves, Private Investigator.”

  “Yeah, that’s P.I. not I.T.” I flicked on the holoscreen and saw the live feed icon blinking in the corner. I said, “Show’s over folks.” Then I killed the transmission. The feeds would be buzzing for weeks. I’d have to kill Rae, if I didn’t get arrested.

  “When I arrived, Whyte had been taken into custody and the admiral wanted all units on finding and helping Swain,” Weiland said. “But we couldn’t get a pin on him. I figured he had a lead on Blanco and wanted to do the takedown while everyone was arguing about what to do with you. Then your feed starts pinging every tattler on the ship …”

  “And the Rose started yapping. We got turned in the right direction pretty quick,” Whyte said.

  I yawned, suddenly feeling the weight of the last couple of days land on my shoulders like a sack of hockmarket rejects. “Can we save the debriefing for after I take a nap? I think I’m going cross-eyed, here.”

  “We can debrief anytime you like, bab
y.” Cosmo sidled up to me and wrapped an arm around my waist. “You just say the word.”

  I collapsed onto the stairs and put my head between my knees. “The word is never, Cosmo.”

  “Don’t worry, man.” Weiland snorted. “She’s turned down better men than you.”

  “I hope you don’t mean yourself, meat brick.” Cosmo snapped his fingers and sashayed his way toward the exit, high-stepping over the litter of android parts and puddles of fluids. “Because if I were you, I’d worry less about me and more about those eyebrows. They don’t call me Cosmo Régale, Destroyer of Masculine Paradigms for nothing. You’re just a grey sprinkle on the rainbow cupcake of life, my friend. More disappointing than an unsalted pretzel. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some other trash to take out. Whyte, you sunburnt monkey, where is my security detail? I’m about to show Lorena Valentia the definition of a Grit strip.”

  We all watched the intergalactic king of glitter strut his way out of the room, his wings torn and drooping, but somehow no-less glorious.

  Whyte shot me a look that said a thousand words. “You sure about him?”

  “Let it play out.” The words felt thick in my mouth. “Can’t get any weirder.”

  Whyte shrugged and sent two of his men to escort Cosmo to the cargo bay. Cosmo glanced once last time over his shoulder and called, “We’ll chat after your nap, Pinky. Cosmo’s got all the time in the galaxy to wait for you.”

  “Pinky?” Weiland raised a decidedly ungroomed eyebrow at me.

  “Save it, Tom.” The room listed a little to one side and some pretty coloured dots did a little dance for me. “Dickie needs a medic and I need …”

  I forgot what I needed. I tipped forward and gave the floor a kiss.

  Someone cursed and fumbled with my arms and legs. I tried to help them, but none of my body parts seemed to agree about which direction we were pointed, so I stopped fighting and tried to enjoy the ride. I hoped they’d set me up in a class cell this time. Private toilet and everything.

  I slept through the next trip on the bangtail and woke up in a hospital with Detective Tom Weiland sitting next to my bed, reading an old pulp novel with one eye and watching me with the other. On the bedside table next to me, a little plastic dish with a red crystal in it sat under a microscope. I glanced from the crystal to Weiland. “Taking a study break?”

  Weiland folded the book closed and sat up straight in his chair. “You’re awake.”

  “You’re very good,” I said. “Ever consider being a detective? I hear the pay sucks, but you work enough hours that you don’t really notice.”

  “I see your sense of humour is still intact.”

  I tried to push myself up in the bed and realized my prosthetic was missing. “What about the rest of me?”

  “Rae came to pick up the prototype,” Weiland said. “She said she had some adjustments to make after watching your livestream. I had to give it to her, the papers were in order.”

  “They always are,” I said. “How long have I been here?”

  “A couple days,” he said. “They dug this thing out of your neck, but I wouldn’t let anyone take it away until I’d heard from you exactly what happened. This illegal plug market is a big score. We can’t afford to mess it up.”

  In the smooth, white hospital room Tom Weiland was like a stone giant in his grey uniform. A little door in the far corner housed the toilet and shower facilities. Weiland must have been going elsewhere because it didn’t look like he’d fit through the narrow doorway. He took up more than his fair share of the space in the main room. He’d have been breathing up all my air if he’d been breathing. But he seemed to forget about that as he pondered his case.

  “What have you got so far?”

  “The acolytes have all been scanned, and the plugs decommissioned. The Last Humanist ranks aren’t nearly so impressive without the robo-mystics. We interviewed Hank and Patti Whyte,” he said. “Patti’s story checks out. She was a scientist at Libra, working undercover for the Last Humanists. She saw it as her spiritual calling. The nootropic in Tropical Punch was her baby. She thought she was going to expand the potential of the human species. Save the world. But Jimi Ng noticed a flaw in the formula. The nanoids. Patti knew she hadn’t put them there, and she suspected sabotage by Libra. She used the Punch Blanco skin to attempt to intercept Tesla’s delivery—”

  “What happened to Tesla? I was sure he’d be on the Island Dreamer.”

  “We found his plug charging in another storage unit like the one you saved Dickie and Pattie from.”

  “I’m going to have some serious trust issues because of this case,” I said. “I can feel it. I’ll need years of therapy before I don’t suspect everyone is a robot.”

  “It would probably do you good.” Weiland smirked.

  I ignored him. There was something I needed to work out. “So, the real Patti fails to intercept the delivery. But she has this antidote that Jimi created. The Rose is going to send an operative to pick up the new formula. Everything rates until they move too fast on Jimi, and Patti clues in that the Last Humanists don’t want the fix, they want to destroy it. She plays it cool, and when the operative drifts in she nails it with the wire—you know, for a tiny woman she packs a serious wallop … was she the one cutting off droid heads on the cruiser too?”

  Weiland shrugged. “This case is like one of those funhouse attractions; you think you know where you’re going until you hit a wall that looks like a mirror. Nothing is what it seems to be.”

  “‘Galaxies, like the hoary breath of long-dead gods’ …”

  Weiland rolled the book in his big hands and tossed it on the bed. “Getting poetic in your old age?”

  “Something I heard once,” I said. “Makes me wonder. We have our rules, and the Last Humanists have theirs. This tech is only illegal because we say it is, right? We have no way of knowing how sophisticated these machines have become. Maybe we’re the old gods, not dead yet but taking our last breaths.”

  “You going to join the church?”

  “I’m too old-school to be compatible with the software upgrades.” I yawned. “These riddles are making my brain hurt.”

  Weiland pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket, tipped the device in the dish into the bag, and tucked it away. He put his huge hands on his knees and pushed himself up. “I’m going to go get some coffee. Can I get you anything?”

  “Coffee would be good,” I said and leaned back in my pillow. “Unless they’ll let me have a can of NRG.”

  Weiland shook his head. “Your nutritional profile was so out of whack I thought we were going to have to send you through the android scanners. Maybe I should bring you some fruits and veggies.”

  “If this is HoloCity General, they can’t afford fruits and veggies. I’ll have a coffee and a vitamin water if you’re so concerned. I’ll eat whatever they bring me, I promise.”

  He moved his bulk away from the bed and pushed the chair under the side table. “Okay.”

  “Do me a favour, Tom?”

  He turned, a small smile playing on his wide mouth. His eyes were a prettier shade of blue than I remembered. “Sure, Bubbles.”

  “Leave me your gun, would you?” I said. “I feel naked without my prosthetic.”

  He hesitated a moment, then reached into his standard-issue overcoat. Long and grey, and made to keep the rain out.

  “Don’t tell the brass.” He pulled out his sidearm and tossed in on the bed and turned back for the door. He said, “How do you take your coffee?”

  My heart thudded in my ears. I picked up the gun with my right hand, pulled it into my lap, and flicked off the safety with my thumb. I said, “With bubble gum.”

  Weiland stopped short and turned around with the question knotted up in his eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I lifted the gun and
pulled the trigger. I was still a fair shot. Old habits die hard. A hole opened like a third eye in Weiland’s forehead, and he dropped like a discarded marionette. A little spray of sparks preceded the trickle of synthetic blood, but the arms and legs didn’t twitch. Must have hit the CPU. I dropped the gun on my bedsheets and hit the call button.

  They found the real Detective Tom Weiland cuffed to his own bedposts, blindfolded, and with his underwear shoved in his mouth. Never put it past the pro skirts. Class jobs or not. I was never going to let him live it down. Once he was sufficiently recovered and had gone through the body scanner to make sure he really was who he thought he was, he visited me at my office.

  “I brought coffee,” he said, pushing the door open with his hip. “And doughnuts.”

  “I hope you got her order right.” Hammett snorted from under my desk and clip-clopped over to the door. “Last time you forgot how she likes it, she shot you between the eyes.”

  “Don’t worry,” Weiland said. “It’s mostly sugar. And I bought the doughnut with the pinkest icing I could find. It even has sprinkles.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Because if you hadn’t nailed the plug, I’d still be wearing fuzzy handcuffs and a blindfold.”

  “They were fuzzy?” I took a sip of the coffee. He still remembered. “I wish they’d let me come for the sweep.”

  “Pink, even.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Feeling nostalgic?”

  “You never miss the way things used to be?” He sat his bulk down across from me and bit into his doughnut. “It wasn’t all bad.”

  “Nothing ever is,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it good for you.”

  “She says while consuming enough sugar to give diabetes to a horse,” he said. “Where’s your pink upgrade? You’re back to the steel-skeleton look, huh?”