The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3

by Nicholas Erik

  Finally, the merchant gave a snort and began eating again, still holding his gaze steady. Wade forced a smile, but the fat man didn’t return the expression. He just glared.

  “I really don’t know where they are.”

  But the language barrier, coupled with the fact that Chen no doubt thought he was useless—after all, with no computers and electronics around, Wade’s skills were lacking—meant that the message fell on deaf ears.

  Chomp, chomp, chomp.

  Wade’s mind floated back to the idea of escape. Then a dozen other problems presented themselves—what would he do in Guangzhou? Where would he go? How the hell could he possibly find Keene and Strike?

  It was a needle in a box of needles in a goddamn needle factory.

  Chen said something sharp in Chinese, wagging his flabby hand at Wade. At the other tables, an argument was heating up, the men shouting with thick tongues. A table tipped over.

  Wade’s first instinct was to get up.

  Chen’s fat hand came down on his arm, seemingly nailing Wade’s slender body to the table. Despite the merchant’s lack of apparent fitness, the kid found that years on the road and tending to his animals had granted Chen deceptive strike.

  Or maybe Wade just needed to hit the gym.

  “Come on, let go.”

  “No. Money,” Chen said in heavily accented, but quite distinct, English. “You give money. Half.”

  “I don’t have money.”

  “Money.” Chen followed this up with an angry diatribe in Chinese. Wade hoped for a moment that the man would forget to breathe and simply pass out. But luck was not so kind, and the merchant stopped, huffing to catch his breath after his soliloquy. He finished it by again saying, “Money.”

  Glass broke in the background, followed by the sound of a fist connecting with flesh. Wade’s head spun around just in time to see a burly man crash through a wooden bench, splintering it in two. The broad man’s adversary leapt on top of him, punching and clawing.

  The rest of the tavern’s patrons joined in, rooting for the melee to continue. The beat-down progressed in lopsided fashion, the aggressor pummeling his prone opponent, when a massive boom rung out, followed by a sharp cry of pain.

  Wade’s body tingled, and he ripped free of Chen’s grip.

  The gunshot brought back a flood of bad memories.

  Heart pounding, legs barely working, Wade stumbled out of his seat and whirled around, searching for the exit. Wade blinked, and suddenly, the man who had been winning the fight was keeled over, clutching his abdomen, blood spewing on the beer-stained wood.

  Another gunshot burst out, this time followed by a reply, and Wade ducked down, making his thin body an even smaller target. An idea came to him. A wild and crazy idea. He brought his head out from the turtle position he had assumed, taking cautious stock of the room. The sparring had escalated, with close to a dozen men engaged in all out warfare. The muted ringing sound in his ears made it seem as if the battle was occurring miles away, instead of feet.

  This didn’t interest Wade, however.

  He watched as the tavern’s proprietor sped past, screaming to no avail, the drunken men ignoring his pleas to stop. The bearded owner waved a great cleaver in their general direction, but even this had no effect. Bloodlust had set in.

  Wade glanced at the counter. The till sat completely unguarded.

  Keeping low, he scurried across the floor, winding his way behind the bar. Out of breath, he pressed himself up against the wood and took a moment to steel himself.

  Wade popped up and dug into the register—really just a misshapen metal box filled with coins and dirty paper—emptying its contents into his pockets. He glanced up to see if anyone was looking. But the fight raged on.

  He vaulted the counter and sped out the door, into the cool dawn light. The door slammed behind him, then creaked open.

  His heart sank, and he froze.

  A familiar voice shouted at him in angry Chinese. Wade didn’t turn around, but he could imagine Chen standing there, chubby fist raised, shaking it at the sky.

  Then the merchant said a word Wade understood. “Half.”

  “Half?” Wade took a few steps up the road, then turned around. Chen stood right in front of the closed door, arms crossed, a stern look on his face. His greedy eyes glinted in the pale dawn. Wade smiled and took some of the currency out of his pockets. He set it on the road and nodded. “Half. All paid.”

  Chen came over and picked up the funds from the road, counting them twice with a suspicious eye.

  “Done,” Chen said. “Shoo.” He made a brushing motion with his hands, like he was trying to get rid of a particularly loathsome rat. Wade stayed put for a beat.

  The door swung open, the bearded proprietor screaming wildly. Chen whirled around, and upon seeing who it was, turned his attention back to Wade. The merchant took a menacing step forward, feigning like he was about to close in on the thief and wring his neck.

  Stumbling and tripping over his own feet, Wade darted away down the road, towards the muted lights of the coastal city, coins jangling in his pocket with each stride. Angry shouts and threats faded behind him in the distance.

  He didn’t know what to do once in the heart of Guangzhou. But he had some money.

  That was a start.

  Wade squinted as the sun peeked over the horizon. With the breaking day, the great city started to awaken, activities beginning to accelerate. Finally in the midst of the sprawling streets, Wade slowed his gait to a hurried power walk.

  His sides ached, and his feet yelped, but he refused to stop. He stuffed a hand in his pocket to keep the coins from jingling as he walked down the street. With no backup, he would make an easy mark. Better to look useless and lost, a wandering fool dressed in crazy clothes.

  He should have been exhausted, having spent the night with the morose and demanding Chen, but instead he was wired. Each slamming door and click-clacking cart gave his heart a tremendous charge.

  Wade wondered if he’d made the correct decision. Maybe Strike and Keene had run late, or simply were waiting until the coast cleared to sneak out of the city. They were, after all, attempting to crash the deal of a pirate queen. That had to ruffle some feathers.

  Wade’s gait slowed to a shuffle, and he found himself dragging. No, these were just excuses. He had to show some bravery, take initiative. Maybe saving the day would help forget the bullet flash in the cabin, Derek’s body dropping to the floor. He shuddered with the memory. How had he arrived at a place in his life where he’d killed a man?

  “Keep it together, dude,” he muttered to himself as he cut down an alleyway, “you need to get out of this.”

  Serendipity wasn’t going to lead him to his friends.

  What the hell would Keene or Strike do, all alone here?

  More to the point, what had they done, rambling about these crowded paths? Wade paused at a vendor to purchase an orange, eying the assortment of other fruits. He tore off the skin, flinging it on the ground as he continued on.

  He bit into it, sticky juice ran down his chin.

  Just like home.

  He stopped and dropped the orange, watching it roll away into a pile of brush and dirt at the curb. The realization struck him like he’d placed a fork into a wall socket.

  The fruit. Some of it was native, or close to it, like the oranges. But the variety, the spread, it was like a farmer’s market or organic grocery store. That required trade.

  Which required boats.

  The heart of any coastal city was its port, which meant that Keene and Strike would’ve headed straight there. And pirates worked on the water. The idea was so simple and obvious that, for a moment, Wade slumped his head, astounded at his own stupidity.

  Then he started running.

  Because he had another plan, an even better one. Strike still had
her phone.

  And he had his.

  He shoved his hand into his pocket as he ran, extracting the device. No cell towers and no satellites meant it was largely useless, unless he wanted to play his pump-up music playlist or look at terrible drunken photos.

  But this being his own hand-picked hardware—he’d insisted on outfitting the team with what he called actual phones—meant that he’d also installed a few software and firmware upgrades. He was also the administrator, and could send commands to any of their devices from his own handset.

  If he wanted to, he could take complete control over their phones at any moment.

  Wade had kept that feature quiet, a sort of hacker’s victory over the more hands-on exploits and adventures of Keene and Strike. They could fight with guns and knives and fists. Pilot spaceships and drive cars super-fast. He could fight with data.

  It sounded lame, but it was also true.

  He brought his eyes up from the screen just in time to slam face first into a group of soldiers marching by in red coats. Wade bounced off, placing a hand on the ground to right himself, then kept pushing forward.

  “Watch where you’re going,” one soldier yelled in a thick British accent.

  Wade was already gone around a corner before they could pursue him, his eyes once again buried in the menus of the device. He did, however, take care to look up every few seconds, so as not to ruffle the wrong feathers again.

  Soon, he’d made his way to the port, where a startling number of vessels sat docked in the water, bobbing gently in the light surf. The dock teemed with sun-worn workers, their sinewy muscles tugging ropes, hauling crates and loading cargo around the ships.

  A pleasant hum carried on the wind, each man focused on his back-breaking task with absolute concentration. Practice meant that the operations moved with startling efficiency.

  A large stack of crates shrunk before Wade’s eyes into nothing. And then the dock workers were on to the next pile, and the next, paying no heed to the strange, gangly kid staring on.

  With ships coming and going of all nationalities, the dock needed this sort of mentality to function. Too much thinking and contemplation would gum up the works and bring things to a halt. Work needed to be done, and men were needed to do it for long hours with few breaks.

  Certain disruptions were commonplace.

  Others, however—such as fights in a neutral zone—were not. Rough men rarely frowned upon fighting, and a little knuckle dust-up, even around here, wouldn’t raise any hackles. But it planted a seed within Wade’s mind.

  He activated the Bluetooth hijacker on his phone, which—in exchange for dramatically reduced battery life—vastly extended the range of the usually weak wireless signal, allowing him to locate—and control—other devices in the area.

  The FCC would not like this particular program, but seeing as how they didn’t exist in nineteenth century China, Wade didn’t think their opinion mattered very much.

  Then he walked up and down the docks, watching as the battery bar dwindled down. He traveled to where he began, then walked in the opposite direction. A series of junks with red flags, like those that had chased the SS Bank of Legends, sat at this end of the port.

  His phone pinged, and a dot appeared on screen. Wade walked closer, to within about fifty feet.

  One ship, taller and gilded with gold, stood out from the others. Clearly the lead dog. He glanced between the phone and its location on the dock, trying to eye it out.

  This had to be it.

  A regally dressed woman appeared on deck briefly, at the bow overlooking the docks.

  “Damn,” Wade said. “Ching Shih, I presume?”

  This gave Wade his final idea. He mashed the touchscreen, entering a hasty message to Strike and Keene that he hoped would be delivered before their battery died.

  Then he dropped the burning hot phone on to the stone dock and hurried away.

  Now he just needed to find some pirates.

  Preferably ones who didn’t work for Ching Shih.

  21 | Left Out

  “Ow,” Strike said. “Son of a bitch.” She reached into her pocket and took out her smartphone with two fingers, then dropped it onto the cool, damp wood.

  Keene watched her with a raised eyebrow, but said nothing. The screen flashed, lighting up the dim surroundings. Strike squinted and read aloud.

  “Run with boom.”

  “Sorry?”

  Strike pointed at the ground, unwilling to touch the molten hot phone again. “That’s what it says on the screen. It just came up, like an error message.”

  “Great. Even the phone’s going crazy.”

  There was a long pause, then a devilish smile creased Strike’s lips. “Linus. That clever bastard.”

  The phone sparked and sputtered, and then the screen shut off.

  That left them without any light at all, the dim torch on the wall having flickered out while the pair had caught a few unrestful winks. Strike cracked her neck, rubbing the base of her skull.

  Her temples pulsed, and she felt a craving she hadn’t known in a long time. She tried to pass the seconds by playing with the zipper of her leather jacket, running it up and down its little metal track.

  Soon, the scratchy sound grated on her ears, adding to the nausea.

  “What time you figure it is?”

  “What am I, a magician?” Keene said.

  “Just be helpful,” Strike said, her voice almost a whine. The goddamn opium. She kept going and going, pull after pull. She’d never tasted shit that pure, and when it hit her lungs, the sensation spreading into her fingertips, there was no stopping.

  Now it was like her whole body just wanted more, would do anything to get it, but she—her mind, the sensible part, didn’t want any more, never wanted to see any sort of junk again. Then again, her conscious self couldn’t be all that sensible. She’d seen the pipe, taken it, and chased the dragon.

  Over and over again.

  Didn’t she know that dragons weren’t real?

  “Hey.” Keene snapped his fingers. “You nodding out on me?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I said we should spend some time figuring this shit out. Three times, you didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I’m two yards away and you didn’t hear?”

  “Nope.”

  “So you wanna be productive or not?”

  “Sure.” But when Strike thought about the variables and time travel—especially time travel, with all its paradoxes and quantum impossibilities—her mind revolted, hunkering down in a fuzzy morass of nonsensical thoughts.

  Keene’s words spun around in the darkness with no meanings or insights attached to the syllables. Just streams of sounds, meaningless and ephemeral, Strike grunting and nodding along at what seemed like the right moment. Every so often she’d stifle a dry heave, trying to give the illusion that she had it together.

  Even though Keene had seen her fall off the wagon before, slip-ups were embarrassing. More than that, they were an assault on the razor-sharp focus and execution capabilities which she cherished in herself. A junkie couldn’t do shit.

  Not even listen to conjecture about the space-time continuum, inflection points and Lorelei.

  “You think we’ll all disappear if she gets the ship?”

  Strike blinked and swayed, trying to grab her bearings in the conversation. “Not really, no.”

  “Your input is truly astounding.”

  Strike shook, even though it wasn’t that cold, then said, “Maybe you should explain it better, you rambling moron.”

  “No.”

  Strike stopped moving and sat still. The force of Keene’s voice was something she hadn’t expected. But it wasn’t frightening—more galvanizing, an extensive set of instructions embedded
within the simple utterance.

  Maybe this was what Captain Keene had been like for some fleeting moment, way out in the stars, two hundred millennia in the past. Strike raised her eyebrow, even though Keene couldn’t see it, like she was trying to size him up in the dark.

  Either this was the dope wearing off, some sort of hallucination or sensory malfunction at the tail-end of a great high, or one of them was getting it together.

  “I screwed up,” she said after a lengthy silence. “That’s on me.”

  “We can fix it all,” Keene said. “Just work with me.”

  Strike’s fragmented mind ran over the last half hour of conversation, the shards flitting in and out of focus. Run with boom. Say Linus pulled something off. Where would they go? Keene had mentioned something.

  “The Gray Island.”

  “Isle,” Keene said.

  “Whatever Linus has planned, if we escape from this musty hole, that’s where we head. You said that’s where the ship is.”

  “They’ll have backup. Dozens of men guarding it, if not hundreds.”

  “That’s a problem,” Strike said. “We’ll need a boat. A little money. You got a lead on this Gray Isle’s whereabouts?”

  “I read about it, then I got attacked by six limey jackasses with pointy guns, so no, I have no idea.”

  “So that’s where we start. We get the hell out of Guangzhou, and we find out where the Isle is.”

  Keene said nothing.

  “Deal?”

  “I already came up with that an hour ago.”

  “So why even talk with me?”

  “Because I think it might be the last chance we get.”

  As if on cue, the door at the end of the hallway swung open, light flooding the dim cell. Three sets of footsteps—two heavy, one soft—sounded on the floor.

  A woman approached the bars. Strike opened one eyelid a sliver and took a look. The woman said something, fire in her voice, even if Strike couldn’t understand the language.

  “What’d she say?” Strike said, looking back at Keene.

  Keene rose to his feet and walked slowly to the bars. “She said her name is Ching Shih. And she says my sister ripped her off.”