Curse of the Full Mental Packet

by Jack Q McNeil

  “You will be going through the front door.”

  “So they shoot me instead of you?”

  “Well, you are the heavily armoured warbot,” I pointed out. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

  Daisy pulled off the two gold braids and plastic lips. A panel slid open and she stored them inside her armoured hull.

  “I’m ready now.”

  We waited in silence as the lift rose. I caught whiffs of vape, pepper and pokie, the rich people’s vices. I wondered why the Capolamps had chosen this hotel. There had to be a reason, they were not known for splashing out cash for the sake of it.

  We reached my floor and I scurried out. The corridor was lit in virid. The walls were visculent and frankly the bosky doors were a nice change. Even a centipede can have too much green.

  “Keep the lift here for ten minutes, then go down one floor,” I said. “Wait outside their door till I call and try to look inconspicuous.”

  “That’ll be easy,” Daisy said. “I’m sure they get a lot of three ton warbots in this hotel.”

  “Smart arse,” I said as the doors closed. There were windows along one side of the corridor and doors along the other. I scurried along to door eighty-nine dash B. Directly above the room I wanted. The wood around the windows had been heavily carved with images from the Book of Paghetti. I grabbed the face of Dorn in three claws and-

  A door at the end of the corridor opened, I spun and began feeling through my cyberharness for keys. A young Moordenaap couple left their room and I fumbled until they reached the lifts and the doors closed. Door eight-nine dash B opened.

  “What do you want?” A tall avianform looked down its long, orange beak at me.

  “Not this door,” I said. “Wrong room.”

  I turned and crawled away slowly.

  “This place has really gone downhill,” the avianform said as it closed the door. “They’re letting bugs in here now.”

  I pulled my pistols and turned back. Another door opened.

  “Bugger this.” I coiled my body and lunged through a window. The outer surface was steep and smooth. My claws skittered as I fell. “Who polishes bark?”

  I fell, caught a ledge with my last three claws and held on. Head down at the wrong end of a thousand metre drop. I turned up the oxygen supply from my cyber harness as I looked across the city. Heights don’t bother me, but falls? I’m not one for introspection, but I made a mental note never to leap blind through a window again.

  From this position I looked across into Loow Alsh’s apartment. There was not a stick of furniture in the place. That can’t be right? I arched my segments sideways until I caught more of the window ledge in my third and fourth pairs of claws. I scanned the hotel interior. There were nine people. Five middle of the room on benches. One in a small room off- I assumed a toilet. Three lying down in the bedroom, packed onto one bed. There was a couch two metres in front of the window. I decided to dive behind that first. It would not stop blaster shots, but it would obscure my body to incoming fire. I enjoyed the tension growing in my third segment a bit longer, then contacted Daisy.

  “I’m in position,” I messaged Daisy. “You ready?”

  “Yes. Can I do the count?”

  “Okay.” I pulled my flegmatic pistols and pushed my head into the tiny leaves that made up the window.

  “One. Two,” I heard the door splinter and gunfire. I rammed my front segment through the leaves. The Capolamps were fast. Already on their feet and pulling guns, but Daisy was faster and her twin automatics gunned them all. I dropped behind the couch, and emerged slowly, scanning the still forms.

  “They’re down,” Daisy said. She stood in the doorway, scorch marks on her hull and pieces of timber and plaster on the floor around her.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No damage,” she said. “They had only anti-personnel weapons.”

  “And you only used stun, right?”

  “Of course. They are customers of the bar in good standing.”

  “You deliberately went before three, didn’t you?” I realised. “You wanted all the shooting for yourself.”

  Daisy slapped her turret with one hand: “They designed me for battle. Sometimes I miss the action.”

  “Right. Okay, I guess we better—” The bathroom door opened, a Capolamp framed in the light. I drew and fired. “Check this place over and then get the bodies loaded into the taxi.”

  “Check over how?” Daisy asked, rolling further into the room and looking around.

  “First I run scans and then get my scene of crime kit out, but- do you smell Loow?”

  “Told you before, I don’t have a sense of smell.”

  I moved around the room. Loow’s scent was all over the couch. There were piles of stuff on the floor, a computer drive on the coffee table, and they all had Loow’s scent.

  All these things are Loow’s, I realised. “The Capolamps have been across the road and nicked his stuff.”

  There was white powder on a glass table in the middle of the floor. I licked a claw, stuck the tip in the powder and tasted it.

  “Drugs?” Daisy asked, having seen that same cop show. I spat the stuff out.

  “Mycil,” I said. “Someone has terrible athlete’s foot. I’m calling Marshal Harry.”

  Her hologiph appeared in front of my eyes.

  “What have you got?” she asked.

  “The Capolamps are down. Their hotel room is full of Loow’s stuff. He wasn’t even cold before they were across the road and stole it.”

  “Keep your cool, I need those people alive and talking.”

  I unlocked my sensors and let her see what I had seen, then gave her a quick glimpse of Loow’s empty apartment.

  “That’s a funny angle you had on the apartment,” she noticed.

  “You think the Capolamps know something we don’t?” I didn’t want to talk about my fall.

  “The thing is, they don’t seem to know the money is missing, so they probably didn’t shoot him.”

  “They robbed my friend’s corpse.” That point was sticking in my crop.

  “What’s the white powder?”

  “Mycil, someone—”

  “Was dusting for prints,” Marshal Harry said. “Avianforms don’t get athlete’s foot.”

  That shut me up. I scanned Loow’s stuff.

  “They lifted prints off his computer,” I noticed. “We will go over to Loow’s apartment and search it once we are finished here.”

  “Don’t waste your time- if the money was there they would have found it and bolted. Bring the Capolamps in and find this Doc person.”

  “Are you sure you want Doc?” I asked. “She has a smell that makes my eyes water.”

  “You don’t have tear ducts.”

  “I know- that’s how bad she smells.” The link cut and I went back to work with my sensors and scene of crime kit. We found Loow’s mattress in the bathroom, slashed open and the stuffing pulled out.

  “These people are pissing me off,” I said.

  “Me too. Can we shoot them for real now?”

  “No. they will answer the marshal’s questions. In some ways, shooting would be kinder.”

  Daisy drew a holopic from under the foot powder.

  “The last few months, when Loow was drunk, he would talk about his kids,” she said. “Odd, because he never mentioned a family before.”

  The holopic was of twelve Heedyin pups grouped together, looking skinny and hungry. Still looked ten times cuter than Loow with big orange hair tufts reflected in their huge oval eyes. There was a price tag built into the holopic for fifty thousand simoleans. I called the marshal again and showed her the thing. I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my life, but a price tag on a bunch of kids is still one of the worst. Her voice was cold when she said:

  “Bring me the Capolamps.”

  The Capolamp I shot moved. My palps were dripping venom as I scuttled across the floor, but Daisy got there first and picked him up by one foot.<
br />
  “The hell have you people been doing? Loow isn’t even cold and you’ve grabbed every stick he ever owned?”

  “I just did what I was told,” the captured bird squawked. “I liked Loow, personally.”

  “Name?” I demanded, dripping long slow blobs on his upturned beak. I’d seen the move in a film and liked it.

  “Capolamp27, and could you stop dripping drool on me please?”

  “That’s not drool, it’s venom. Tell me what you people are after.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I could pull one leg off,” Daisy pointed out. “He doesn’t need legs to talk.”

  “That is true. So what’s this holopic about?” I pressed it against his beak. “Who are these kids?”

  “I have no idea,” Capolamp27 said. “Look, I hold my hands up to stealing Loow’s stuff. He don’t need it anymore. But whatever he was into with the Rehd Shirts, we haven’t found out.

  “The who now?” There were thousands of criminals in Port City, even I couldn’t know them all.

  “The Rehd Shirts own a fleet of ships,” Capolamp27 said. “They move high end merchandise like drugs and guns. Wee Sis said Loow had sold all his stuff, house and that, to put a big deal together. She thought we could jack the cargo. But we didn’t. And if we did, I still had nothing to do with it.”

  I bit him to shut him up. It didn’t work.

  “Alas, is this the end of poor Capolamp27? All that lives must fail and perish. Cut off before I blossomed, ended in my sin. Unloved, unhoused, unbe—”

  “Belt up, I only injected enough venom to knock you up. I mean out.” I hate when bit part actors build their part. “Daisy, toss this lot in the taxi's boot and let’s go. I bagged the computer and holopic as evidence and sealed the room with tape behind me.

  In the elevator, I rechecked my guns. Taking Doc alive would be harder than taking down the Capolamps.

  It took a bit of shoving but between us we got the Capolamps into the taxi.

  “Right, get us back to the office,” I ordered.

  “I can’t, I’m carrying too many people,” InyagoM said. “If the authorities stop us, I’ll lose my license.”

  “I am the authority in your immediate area,” I enunciated carefully. “And I am telling you to get it in gear.”

  He got it in gear. The marshal and LB had not returned by the time we arrived, lifted the trapdoor and shoved the rest of the Capolamps down there.

  “Let’s go find Doc,” I told Daisy. “This ought to be fun.”

  “Weren’t you guys married for a while?”

  “Still are, I think.” I climbed on the back of the taxi. “My only excuse is it was a very dark club and I was very drunk.”

  “How do we find her?” Daisy asked, climbing up beside me. “I hope we don’t have to shoot her, I like Doc.”

  “It’s okay to use stun,” I pointed out. “Heavy stun is okay, too. We find her by eating pizza.”

  “I don’t eat.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll eat yours.”

  “Thanks.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Pop’s Pizzas is on the main drag; a small, single-storey building set back from the rest and easily missed if you’re not looking for it. The shutters were closed. I scurried round to the back door and hammered on the shutter with four claws until Pop raised it, saw me, said: “No,” and tried to pull it shut. I jammed my head under the lip. The heavy scent of hot cooking fat washed over my antennae and drool spilled onto the floor. His pizzas are that good.

  “I need to know where Doc is,” I said.

  “That’s a round of pizzas question,” Pop pointed out. He stuck his snout through the gap and looked at Daisy. “And there’s only one of you.”

  “He only counts customers,” I said to Daisy. “I’ll have six pizzas to go, two with rhubarb.”

  “Wait here. I’ll make a call.”

  Five minutes later he opened the door, and I dropped a hundred and five droogs into his large greasy palm. Pop doesn’t trust people much. He brought out a long tray with six pizzas, I opened my mouth and he slid them in. I felt my crop go to work, stuffed on the extra cheese stuffed crusts.

  “Doc went to Underground,” Pops said as he closed the door. “Good luck with that one.”

  “Shit.”

  “What’s bad about going underground?” Daisy asked. “I would too, if I was her.”

  “Underground is the amphibi-form bar on Hooplie street. I walk in there, every single one of them will want to eat me.”

  “So we are not going in there?”

  “Hell yes. I hate amphibians. Set your guns to maximum stun.”

  The interior pond had taken hits, burst in a flood of green water and the blaze was almost out by the time Marshal Harry arrived. Still, she didn’t look happy as she stared down at me.

  “You went in there to question one person?” she asked, waving a hand at the blackened skeleton of the roof. Daisy Tubes held up exhibit A. The crown of feathers on her head were soaked and her holster empty. Her scales glittered a dull, wet red and her arms hung limp.

  “Normally, Doc looks a lot more dangerous,” I admitted.

  “Went down harder than any of these amphibi-forms,” Daisy said.

  “She’s what- a metre tall?”

  “She packs a lot of nasty into a small area,” I admitted. Long Barnacle arrived a close third behind Isamary.

  “LB tells me she’s your ex-wife?”

  “Sort of,” I admitted. “We were both drunk, so I don’t know how official the ceremony was.”

  “But she’s a one metre tall feathered reptile of some description!”

  “So? We were in love.”

  “You’re a four metre long centipede. How could you... I mean... physically?”

  “I’m the only one of my kind to leave the home world,” I pointed out. “I’ve learned to be flexible.”

  Isamary looked from Doc to me and back again.

  “I don’t want that picture in my head,” he said.

  “Once you’ve gone reptile,” I said. “You never have ere—”

  “Enough,” Marshal Harry held up a hand. “I need her conscious to answer questions about last night. We still do not have an exact time for Loow Alsh’s death. Or even a good approximation.”

  “We played trans dimensional yatsy in the basement, until Soggibiscuit lost most of his cash and Loow went back upstairs to guard his bar,” a gruff synthetic voice answered. “That would be after four in the morning. Now tell this tin hussy to put me down.”

  “Marshal, meet Doctor Ldiddles Ldiddles Frump,” I introduced. “She’s lived in the Full Mental Packet longer than anyone.”

  “I never liked my middle name- call me Doc,” she said. Harry stared. “What are you looking at?”

  “Not you,” I said. “She does that when she’s thinking. Put her down, Daisy.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Daisy said, as she placed Doc back on her feet. See what I mean? Sometimes Daisy is too much like a person for comfort.

  “Right. Any more questions? No? Bye then.”

  “Hang on, Doc,” I said, as I spotted a clue. “You’re the only one from the basement with a weapon that could blast holes in Big Sam.”

  I pulled her hand gun from my harness and looked it over. She had fired it earlier, but I opened the power usage logs to check last night.

  “That’s a shit thing to say to me, Chunglie,” Doc said. “You know me and Big Sam were lovers for ten decades.”

  “Yeah, but you fell out over his gaming with Daisy. So I’m wondering—”

  “Fill your claws you son of a Wuppsnack-” Doc snatched her gun from my claw and I drew.

  “So you were living here the last time the bar was robbed?” Marshal Harry asked Doc.

  “Wha-erm-yes?” Doc said, distracted by the gun pressed to her head.

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody robbed the place,” Doc shrugged. “Look, me and Chunglie are in the middle of something here.”


  Marshal Harry looked from Doc’s gun to mine. I have quick reflexes.

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  “She was here for six of the robberies,” I said. “And that’s the only weapon here powerful enough to blast open a warbot.”

  Doc lowered her gun and looked at it. I took mine from her head and holstered it.

  “Apart from Old Number Seven,” Harry pointed out. “And Trembling Bob.”

  Every eye turned to me. The surrounding crowd looked like they were enjoying the show.

  “But we know I didn’t do it,” I said. “I’m on your side.”

  “You’re on my side?” The marshal yelled. “Then why are the patrons of Underground lying stunned in the street?”

  “Chunglie insisted that we rescue them,” Daisy supplied. “When the fire started. I would not have bothered.”

  Marshal Harry spun to face Daisy.

  “I believe her,” Doc said. “That steel slut cares for nothing but her own fun.”

  “But why did they need rescued in the first place, is my point,” Marshal Harry said. “You went in there to find one witness and escort her to the office... and this is the result?”

  She waved an arm at the burnt building, the water puddling in the street and the twenty-seven snoring amphibi-forms stretched out on the road. The two females were ten metres long, with six metre wide mouths. I’d taken photos for my trophy album. I trotted over to Exhibit B.

  “This one tongued me. I stunned her, then all the guys joined in. It was self-defence.”

  The Waddudu arrived and began clearing away the mess and taking the sleepers to an aid station, like good little workers. One or two stopped to look us over, then went about their business.

  “What does the Queen of Shaws have to say about this?”

  “I... ah... did get a pheromone message from the queen,” I admitted.

  “What did it say?”

  “Well, you don’t like colourful language, so...”

  “Summarize it for me.”

  “She cancelled my dance card until further notice,” I admitted. “She’s not bothered about the amphibi-forms because they have tried to eat her workers, but she is pissed about the building burning down.”

  “That was me,” Daisy raised a hand. “I shot three guys using the bar for cover and the drink bottles burst into flames. It was an enjoyable gunfight.”