“Oh no,” I said. “We’re going to get—”
The sprinkler system activated, pouring expandable foam into the room. Guaranteed to get everywhere, I’d be picking dried foam out of crevices for weeks. I drew a flegmatic pistol and checked it was on stun. I had a feeling I would need it.
“Fire!” the marshal shouted. “C’mon, everyone shout, nice and loud: fire!”
“Fire!” I had the volume on my voice box maxed. Well, I am the deputy marshal, I have to join in however daft the order. The others looked confused but joined in. The wall between the lounge and the bar opened with a click. A Hublian male stumbled out of a hole carrying a large bag and a gun.
“Armed marshals, drop your weapon,” Marshal Harry said, but the Hublian aimed his weapon at her.
“Anyone moves and the girl gets it,” he said. His scaly green skin was covered in a cryogenics suit. It even coated his webbed hands in plastic.
“I am not a girl,” Marshal Harry said. “I’m a twenty-six-year-old detective marshal.”
The Hublian side stepped to put the marshal between him and my gun. I could rear up for a shot but not fast enough to beat his finger.
“You have to get past me to reach the front door, and the staff out back are armed,” I said.
“Drop the gun and we’ll take you alive,” Marshal Harry said.
“The bar staff won’t stop me,” he scoffed, backing away and pulling the marshal with him.
“Then you have to get past us,” Long Barnacle said, moving a hand towards his holster. “And you murdered our friend. Drop the gun.”
“Make me, you steaming pile of—”
I fired... twice.
Marshal Harry’s eyes opened, rolled up into her head and closed. I’d never shot a human before and worried the stun setting was too powerful.
“C’mon, Marshal, we need you to explain what just happened,” I said. The eyes stayed shut. “Okay, do it.”
LB poured a measure from an ancient bottle into a shot glass, pinched Harry’s nose and poured it into her mouth. Harry choked it down and sat bolt upright.
“That was quick.”
“I think it was a reflex,” LB said, peering at his patient.
“Marshal Harry, do you know me?” I asked, waving a claw in front of her face. She smiled beatifically.
“Jim.... You’re... Jim.”
“More,” I said. LB shrugged, tossed the cork and emptied the whole bottle into the marshal.
“What the hell happened?” Harry spluttered. I could tell she was angry, she never uses the H word.
“I shot both of you. Stun setting,” I said. “Sorry, but it was the only way to save your life.”
“Ah...” Harry looked around. Isamary was holding the Hublian by the ankles in one hand while he took a selfie. Then he traded with his dad, and Long Barnacle held the Hublian trophy while Isamary took a picture.
“Why are they doing that?” she asked.
“They’ve never been the good guys before,” I said. “They’re recording the moment for their social media pages.”
“Fair enough, they stopped him getting out the back way.” Harry climbed gingerly to her feet, smacking her lips. “Why is everything green? Do I want to know what was in that drink?”
“Probably not,” I said. “Ancient Moordenaap recipe. So tell us how you worked out that guy was hiding in the wall, and who the hell is he?”
“He’s the first owner of the bar, Oui Lee Big,” Harry announced. That got an open-mouthed stare, and LB held Oui Lee higher to peer at his muzzle.
“The first owner of the bar?” he said. “How did you know? None of us were around when he was here, not even Doc.”
“When Oui Lee Big disappeared, they found only a hand. People can survive without a hand. It occurred to me that he might have escaped his debtors by...” The marshal pulled the hidden door wide. “A cryogenics pod. A timer wakes him every fifty years. He exited, saw Loow sitting over there outlined by the poster and fired.”
A camera eye on the cryopod looked at Harry, looked to Oui Lee Big and said: “Sorry, boss, I heard shouts of `fire` and thought I better let you out.”
“Smart technology,” Isamary said, poking the cryopod. “Not so smart.”
“He went straight for the safe in the office, didn’t find the cash and worked back from there,” Marshal Harry walked over and swung the vault in Big Sam’s chest shut.
“But Big Sam would have protected Loow,” I pointed out.
“Oui Lee bought Big Sam, so I bet he had a backdoor and admin privileges to Sam’s operating system. But leaving the warbot turned off would have been too obvious, so he covered his tracks by making holes in Sam.”
“Chunglie said this bag must have the loot from all the robberies in it.” LB held up a holdall sealed in an evidence bag. “So we kept it safe for you. Unopened.”
“Proud of you, Dad,” Isamary said. “You didn’t even try to keep some of the cash.”
“Hey, I might cut corners, but I’ve robbed no one. Marshal Harry, Chunglie tells me you are short-handed,” LB said.
“Usually,” Marshal Harry admitted. “Sometimes things happen all at once.”
“In that case, I volunteer to join the Marshal Service as your deputy. If you check my record with our military police, I’m sure you will find me suitable.”
That stopped me. Isamary stared at his father.
“You can’t become a marshal at your age,” he said. “What will Mum say?”
“She keeps telling me I’ve wasted my life,” LB said. “Perhaps I can earn back her respect?”
Marshal Harry stared at the holographic read out. Then at Long Barnacle. Back to the hologram.
“No one’s ever passed the entry exams in an hour.”
“No one knows the law better than a trader who cuts corners,” Long Barnacle admitted. “That’s all in the past.”
“Welcome to the team,” Harry said.
EPILOGUE
End of day, the sun falls below the trees and the scum and villainy come out to earn a living. It was early evening, and the Raptor Bar had a good crowd when I pushed open the doors and sauntered in. Ever heard a room full of people take one breath and hold it?
“I’m here for the minding of Doc,” I said. The only sound was my claws on the hardwood floor. “Here we talked and drank, laughed and drank. Played games and drank.”
“We weren’t going to bother with a minding,” the barman said. “She broke with everyone here at one time or another.”
“There is a pain I cannot carry any further.” I spoke the traditional words of the minding. “There is a grief I must share.”
I moved to the middle of the room, raised my first two segments enough for everyone to see I brought my guns. The people nearest raised their glasses high and rapped a beat on the tables. Sometimes, people take a hint.
“This is where we danced the spraglecht for the first time.”
“I had the burn marks painted over.”
There’s always one doesn’t take a hint. I pointed out a spot below the bar with a claw.
“That’s where she was lying the first time our eyes met. Red and green were always my favourite colours.”
“Doc stank worse than the drains,” a young raptor announced. He stood up, gun in hand. Before the laughter started I drew and fired. He hit the floor hard.
“That was stun setting,” I reached forward with a claw and flipped a switch. The click dominated the room. “This isn’t. I’m not here as a deputy marshal, I’m here as a grieving probable husband.”
“There is another part of this tradition?” the barman pointed out. He tapped the empty bar top. I ambled towards him. Fourteen legs moving in slow rhythm. I saw it in a movie.
“That.” I pointed at a corner table. The people using it hit the floor. “Was our table.”
“No, we burned that one out back, after—” the barman said.
“That’s where our table was.” I tossed the bounty for the Rehd Shirts on the bar
top. “Take care of everyone until this is drunk.”
“Well, she wasn’t much,” the barman admitted as he began filling flagons. “But she was the only mother I got. In Doc’s memory.”
He drained a flagon. I turned, heading for the door.
“That,” I pointed to a stain on the floor, “is where we stood back to back and shot our way out.”
“After which you promised never to return,” the barman pointed out.
“Special occasion,” I said. “First time I buried a wife, needed to do it properly.”
Weapons were being drawn, stances taken. I had outstayed my welcome.
“A flame has gone from this world, a bright spark we will not see again. The world is a colder and darker place for it. I’m leaving that money here for Doc,” I pointed out. “Try to think well of her as you get tanked. Her life was pointless but her death rescued fifteen kids and the marshal. Who’s like us? Damn few and they’re all dead.”
I turned and got out while they thought that over.
The End
Also by Jack Q McNeil and available on Amazon:
When Harry Met Chunglie, it was murder
Drugged…
Trapped on a crashing spaceship…
And that’s only Chapter One…
Detective Marshal Harry Ward’s first day on the job could be her last unless fate lends a… claw?
“The elevator climbing scene is better than Star Trek: Next Generation,” A. Einstein.
“Rubbish. Picard with a group of kids, is the definitive elevator climbing scene,” B. Franklin.
Chunglie is a stowaway. He wakes to find a bunch of aliens in the cargo hold with him, and the doors are locked. One of the aliens is small, barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, and willing to stand up to thugs to protect complete strangers. She has him by the curiousity.
“I’d like to see this on Netflix,” M. Twain.
“I wouldn’t, they’d ruin the humour,” Euclid.
When the bodies start to drop, Chunglie comes to realise his new friend is the only one who can solve the mystery. But the killer has worked that out too, and it is down to Chunglie to keep Harry alive.
“I laughed all the way through,” A. Lincoln.
Buy now, because everyone has that one strange friend who would climb an elevator shaft with them…
Case of the Thrice Murdered Man
Brutally murdered...three times.
His body reconstructed by doctors, twice.
The future has always been rough, but is this going too far?
Someone keeps murdering the richest man on the planet Smuds and he wants it stopped. There is one detective marshal in Port City. One hope.
Can Marshal Harry and her deputies solve the murders before someone polishes the thrice murdered man off for good? That's him in the jar on the cover.
These and many other questions answered, when you buy this book.
Curse of the Full Mental Packet Page 11
