Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Stop,” Dan snapped. “You didn’t stop them? Why the fonk didn’t you stop them?”

  Artur shrugged. “Because she’s a curious young woman with, I assume, a healthy developing interest in the old you-know-what.”

  “Which is exactly why you should’ve stopped her!” Dan barked. He crunched the Exodus into gear. “There’s no saying what that son-of-a-bedge might be doing to her.”

  “Me arse. He’s OK. He’s a good kid.”

  “Yeah? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  Dan pulled away from the curb, then immediately slammed on the brakes so hard that Artur crunched against the inside of the windshield.

  “Ow.”

  Ollie and Finn stood very close together in front of the car, both grinning broadly and looking a little flushed. Finn was wearing a wetsuit they’d found for him in a storage trunk on the yacht. It clung to his muscles in a way that even Dan had to admit was annoyingly impressive.

  “You’ll never believe what Finn and I just did!” said Ollie, practically frothing at the mouth with excitement.

  “Don’t want to know,” Dan said.

  “Spit nipples!”

  There was a thump as Artur peeled off the windshield and landed on the dash.

  “Spit nibbles,” Finn corrected.

  “Right! Spit nibbles! We got spit nibbles!”

  Dan blinked. “Spit nibbles? What the fonk are spit nibbles?”

  Ollie nodded enthusiastically, then held up a greasy paper bag and gave it a shake. “They’re delicious, that’s what!”

  “They’re the sugared kind,” Finn explained. He hurried around to the driver’s side window and held the bag out to the glass. “Want one, brah?”

  Dan peered into the bag.

  He peered up at Finn.

  He wound the window down a fraction. “Just get in the damn car. I’ll drop you off.”

  “What? Where? Why?” asked Ollie, appearing beside him. Her mouth was full of spit nibble, so her words came out as a half-intelligible spray of crumbs.

  “I got us somewhere to stay.”

  Ollie gasped, making a partially chewed spit nibble fall out of her mouth. “You did? So we don’t have to go back to that hole in the ground place? That’s great!”

  Dan nodded. He looked quite pleased with himself. “Exactly, so we’ll go drop Finn off, pick up our stuff, and—”

  “What? No. What?” Ollie said, her purple brow furrowing. “He should come with us. Right? I think you should come with us.”

  Finn met her imploring gaze. “I mean, I’d like to.”

  “You would?”

  “Of course!”

  “Yay!” Ollie beamed down at Dan. “He said he’ll come, too! Isn’t that amazing?”

  Dan exhaled very slowly through his nose. “No, but—”

  “It’s totally amazing, Peaches. We’re both very much delighted about it,” said Artur. He hopped down onto the window control button and rolled the glass back into place before Dan could chime in. “Now, best ye hop in before old gonad-features here starts wi’ the whinging and the whining.”

  DAN FLEXED HIS FINGERS.

  “No.”

  Ollie paused, mid-stitch. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

  “I mean no. It’s wrong. You’ve hooked up the wrong fingers.” He waggled his middle digit. “That’s my index finger.”

  Ollie watched it fold in and out. “No, it isn’t. It’s your middle one.”

  “I mean it should be my index finger.”

  Ollie stared at him blankly.

  “I mean in my head I’m moving my index finger, but my middle finger is the one that’s bending. So you’ve hooked them up wrong.”

  “Oh,” Ollie said. She watched his hand, in case it did anything else. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. They’re my fingers.”

  “Well they weren’t an hour ago,” Artur called over to him. “Could they maybe just be, ye know, wonky?”

  “They’re definitely wonky,” Dan confirmed. “But I’d like them to be unwonky.”

  He nodded down at his wrist and stared at Ollie until she began unpicking the last few stitches.

  They were gathered in the kitchen of the Tribunal safehouse as Ollie worked to stitch Dan’s new hand back on. The safehouse wasn’t actually a ‘house’ at all, but a small apartment in an undesirable block in one of the shizzier parts of town. Polani had given him the worst place they had, but it was several steps up from the Stagnates – and not just in a literal physical sense – so Dan wasn’t about to start complaining.

  Finn straddled a chair, watching on with a mixture of horror, fascination, and a bit more horror. “So… like… that doesn’t hurt?”

  Dan sighed. He had grudged answering the question the first time. Four times later, it was really becoming a grind.

  “No. Like I said, it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Like… not even a little?”

  “It doesn’t hurt. At all,” Dan said.

  “So not even a little bit?”

  One of the stitches Ollie was unpicking tore through Dan’s skin. A wad of gelatinous black blood ejected from the wound and spattered onto the rag Dan had placed on the table for moments just like that one.

  “Oh, brah! That must’ve hurt!”

  “Can we find a way to keep him occupied?” Dan asked Artur. “Like a ball of string or something shiny?”

  “Ah, quit yer fecking moaning,” Artur told him. He had climbed inside a wall-mounted cabinet and was rummaging inside. “Ye did good here, Deadman. They’ve got food and all sorts. It’s like a home away from home. Only better, on account of the last place being shoite.”

  “How long can we stay here?” Ollie asked, pulling out another stitch. The wound in Dan’s wrist opened, revealing bone, tendons, and gristle.

  “I didn’t ask. Until we deal with our monster friend, at least.”

  “Great! So no rush on that front, then,” said Artur. “We’ll just bide our time here, and if it turns up then we’ll deal with it. And if it doesn’t show face, bingo! We’ve scored a free house.”

  Dan’s fingers all twitched as Ollie dug around in the stump, trying to figure out what went where. He cut Finn off before he could speak.

  “Still doesn’t hurt,” Dan said, then he leaned back in his chair a little. “Tell me what happened. In the water, I mean. Did you see where it came from?”

  Finn tore his eyes away from Dan’s wound. “Where the water came from?”

  Inside the cabinet, Artur snorted.

  “No. Where the… thing came from.”

  “Oh, the toilet monster? No. I didn’t see it.”

  Dan frowned. “You didn’t see it?”

  “Nah, brah. Didn’t see it,” Finn said. He shrugged. “It’s all kind of a blur. One minute I was on the boat with you guys. Then, like, sploosh. I’m in the water. You know? Like in the water.”

  “I understand what being in the water means, yes,” Dan said. “Then what?”

  “Then… I don’t know,” Finn said. “I closed my eyes, I think. Something tore my clothes, but I didn’t see where it came from.”

  He frowned in concentration. “There was screaming, I think. Don’t reckon it was me, because I was still underwater.” His frown deepened. “Can you scream underwater?”

  “Not if you want to live,” Dan said. “It was the sea-monster. The big one. That’s what was screaming.”

  “Right. Right,” said Finn, nodding. “Anyway, after that, next thing I know I’m lying on the deck of the ship, buck naked. What happened in-between? I have no clue, brah.”

  “Well, that was enlightening,” Dan said. “I’m glad now we let you stick around.”

  Finn’s face brightened.

  “Yeah, I was being sarcastic, kid. You were no help whatsoever.”

  “They’ve got booze!” Artur boomed from inside the cabinet. “They’ve got beautiful, beautiful… Ah. No. Wait. It’s fish sauce. My mistake.”

  There was th
e sound of a cap being unscrewed, followed by a series of gulps and an aaah.

  “Hits the spot, mind you.” He burped. “Bit of a salty aftertaste, and it’s sixteen months out of date, but beggars can’t be choosers, can we?”

  His head appeared from inside the cabinet. “Although, just so we’re clear, this is mine, and if anyone tries to drink it, I’ll scratch their fecking eyes out.”

  “Finished,” said Ollie, tying off the suture. “You’re all fixed.”

  Dan flexed his fingers in turn. “Much better,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

  He lifted his hand. The rag it had been resting on lifted, too. Turning it over, Dan saw six stitches crisscrossing through the thin material. Sighing, he placed his hand back on the table. “Still, full marks for trying.”

  Ollie set to work again.

  “Assuming ye’re not going to go with my brilliant scheme of just lounging around here drinking fish sauce until we can’t see, I take it ye have a plan?”

  “You three are going to go to the Stagnates and pick up our stuff. There’s an entrance not far from here,” Dan said. “We need clothes. Especially Artur. I can’t believe you haven’t changed those pants.”

  Artur looked down at the rainbow of browns coating the back of his legs. “That’s the beauty of hanging out with yerself, Deadman. No matter how bad I look, or how awful I might smell, it all just pales in comparison.”

  “Good to know. Thanks,” Dan grunted. “But get new pants. Get everything and bring it back here.”

  “What about me, brah?”

  Dan grimaced. “What about you?”

  “Should… should I get my stuff, too.”

  Dan glowered at him for a while, then flicked his gaze across to Ollie. She still had her head down, pretending all her attention was focused on her stitching. Even at this angle, though, Dan could tell she was blushing.

  “Fine,” he sighed.

  Ollie’s head snapped up, her face positively glowing. “We can keep him?”

  “No, we can’t ‘keep him.’ He’s not a pet,” Dan said. “But fine. He can stay. For a while. Not permanently.”

  “Thanks, brah!” Finn said. “You won’t regret it.”

  “For your sake, kid, I hope you’re right.”

  Artur gave a brief yelp as he plunged out of the cabinet, bounced off the worktop below, then face-planted onto the floor. He lay quite still for a while, and Dan was just wondering if he should do something when Artur groaned.

  “Ooh, me guts,” he said, clutching his stomach. “I’m not sure that fish sauce entirely agreed with me.”

  With some effort, he pulled himself upright. The gurgling of his stomach echoed around the small kitchen. “Before we go anywhere, I should probably go use the jacks,” he announced. “Ye know, for a big old shoite.”

  “We get it,” Dan said. “I’ll be gone by the time you’re out.”

  “Gone? Why? Where ye going?”

  “I’m going to get us some equipment,” Dan said. He felt the weight of the holster inside his coat. Or, more accurately, the lack of weight.

  Damn, he was going to miss that gun.

  “And we’re going to need weapons,” Dan explained. “A lot of weapons.”

  POLANI SMELLED Dan before he saw him. He turned sharply, then ejected a short sharp, “Fonk!” when he found the detective looming in the shadows behind him.

  “Will you please stop doing that?” the commissioner asked.

  Dan shook his head. “No.”

  He nodded up at the building whose doorway Polani had been lurking in. They were in a large storage yard around the back, out of sight of passers-by. A couple of flatbed cargo trucks stood silently over by the high fences.

  “This isn’t the armory.”

  “Of course it isn’t the armory. What, you think I can just waltz in and sign you out some military grade weaponry without it drawing attention?” Polani scoffed. “I might be the boss, but I’m still answerable to the people above me. And I do not want them asking questions.”

  “We had a deal,” Dan reminded him.

  “And I’m keeping my end of it,” Polani said, quickly raising his hands. “Kroysh. Calm down, Ripley. It’s in hand.”

  “I told you, I’m not Ripley. If I was, you’d already be dead.”

  “Bullshizz. If you were, we’d be working together,” Polani said.

  Dan shoved his hands deep in his pockets to prevent him ripping the son-of-a-bedge’s head off. “I thought we were working together?” he said, then he nodded to the door. “Get us in.”

  Glancing around at the high-fenced yard, Polani approached a retina scanner fixed to the wall beside the door. He had a small satchel slung over his shoulder, and fished in it as he flicked the scanner’s power switch.

  “Please look straight ahead into scanner,” an electronic voice instructed.

  Polani removed a clear plastic bag from his satchel and raised it to the scanner. An eyeball inside the bag stared blankly ahead as the scanner light swept across it, then the heavy door swung open and a series of lights clunked on in a warehouse beyond.

  “What?” said Polani, stuffing the bag back in his satchel. “You don’t think I’d use my own eye, do you? I don’t want to be connected to this.”

  “What about the cameras?” Dan asked.

  “All off. We’ve got an hour,” the commissioner said. “I suggest we don’t waste it.”

  Dan peered into the warehouse. Fifty or so racks of shelves ran from floor to ceiling in rows, each one groaning under the weight of the items crammed onto them. They took up around half the space, with several large, bulky tarp-covered objects filling the rest.

  “If this is a trap…” Dan warned.

  “No trap,” said Polani. He sighed. “Now, d’you want this stuff or not?”

  Dan stepped past him and into the warehouse. He knew of this place from his time on the force. Evidence Storage. It was laughable, really. The Tribunal generally never let themselves get bogged down in the whole ‘evidence’ thing. Much better to execute the wrong man and send an auto-generated apology to his next of kin later than to waste time worrying about things like proof or motive or due process.

  None of the stuff here was ever used as actual evidence, but it was never disposed of, either. It was confiscated, logged, then sent to this place to be stored indefinitely. Dan knew of at least two other Evidence Storage warehouses in Down Here, but this one was the mother lode.

  “You have less than an hour. Clock’s ticking.”

  Dan left the commissioner and started to browse the shelves. The first stack was filled with drug paraphernalia – pipes, pore plungers, rectal pumps. That sort of thing. No actual drugs, though, Dan noted. If those had ever reached storage they would’ve been whisked away by some enterprising Tribunal officer pretty sharpish.

  None of the objects on the shelves were bagged, and very few of them were even labeled. A set of industrial scales had a reference number scrawled on the side, but there was no saying the Tribunal had written it there.

  The next rack along was mostly old TVs and computers. They were probably old tech when they were brought in, but having sat here rotting ever since, they were now pretty much obsolete.

  He found the weapons two racks down, past a few false limbs, a lot of fake watches, and a decommissioned robot with its head missing.

  They were piled up on shelves all the way to the ceiling, crammed in in no particular order. The shelf at Dan’s eye-height held at least a dozen blaster pistols, several rifles and some kind of plasma launcher. There was a flamethrower, too, but those things were a real pain to pump and prime. Also, they didn’t tend to work underwater.

  He was disappointed, though not in the least surprised, not to see another Mindy in there. He’d taken the gun from a Xandrie enforcer a while back, and had never seen a gun like it before or since.

  Cranking the handle on the side of the rack, Dan wound the next shelf down. This one was just as haphazardly filled as the f
irst. There were a few grenades and mines nestled in between the firearms on this one, and Dan felt a flutter of excitement in his otherwise lifeless belly.

  “Yeah. These’ll do,” he said.

  Putting his fingers in his mouth, Dan whistled. He rummaged through the weapons and waited as the rumble of wheels approached through the warehouse.

  An unmanned trolley pulled up beside him, the lid of its storage tub unfolding to reveal a space that practically cried out to be filled.

  “OK,” said Dan, dragging a scoped rifle out of the pile. “Let’s go shopping.”

  THE TROLLEY’S wheels creaked under the weight of the weaponry as it trundled along behind Dan like a dog at its master’s heel. Polani stood by one of the tarp-covered mounds, making a very deliberate show of checking the time.

  “You understand what ‘one hour’ means, yes?” the commissioner asked.

  Dan’s only response was a cold don’t-make-me-kill-you stare.

  “We still have to get this out of here,” he said, gesturing to the covered object beside them. “I’ve backed one of the trucks up to the shutters.”

  Dan regarded the bulky shape curiously. It was maybe three or four times the length of the Exodus, and a couple of times wider and taller, too. “What is it?”

  “You said you needed a boat, right? Well, we don’t have any. Not here. But we do have this.”

  He whistled two short notes and another trolley approached. In place of a storage container, this one had several long metal arms with a variety of attachments fastened to the ends. As Dan watched, it caught the edge of the tarp and pulled it clear, revealing a trailer

  Dan’s jaw dropped. “Holy fonk,” he muttered.

  “I assume, from your reaction, you’re happy?”

  Dan nodded slowly, like he wasn’t sure if the question were some kind of trick. “Yeah. I’m happy.”

  “Thought you would be,” Polani said. He whistled out a couple of other notes and a couple of other trollies set to work pulling the thing on the trailer over to the loading shutters. “I’ll have it taken to the docks by the safehouse. I already locked it to your voiceprint.”