When Harry Met Chunglie Box Set

by Jack Q McNeil

  “Geefin the Geefinly told me to start with.”

  I growled. “Oh, come on. He’s so full of happy pills these days, he can’t find reality with a long pole and a radio telescope.”

  “I know, so I spotted Crookshank of That Ilk in the lounge of the Happy Sundays, and I asked him. He confirmed that berOVO was top tier, but a lot of the money was gone.”

  Harry looked at me and I nodded. To be honest, I was impressed that LB was on speaking terms with Crookshank of That Ilk. He was top tier, too.

  “Suddenly, the million-to-one accident that killed the OVOs at their family dance…” Harry said.

  “Might not have been so million-to-one,” LB said. “Or accidental.”

  “Right, we can’t trust the reports from those private security companies, especially Vi Scount,” Harry decided. She mimed tearing up the reports. “If any of them are working for the Auld Gowk Cabal, the killers might have been paid to investigate themselves.”

  I dropped to the floor and began maintenance checks on my weapons. All of them. As the only detective marshal on the planet, Harry was a target at the best of times, but with the Auld Gowk Cabal involved, it was only a matter of time before the shooting started. LB peered down through the hatch.

  “Marshal Harry is reporting my finding to the ACM,” he said. “I hope this means we get back up.”

  I clicked my matched brace of flegmatic pistols back together and drew four other weapons.

  “They come at us,” I said, “they go down.”

  “Wish I had your confidence,” LB said. “I can’t hit a barn door if it’s moving, and Harry doesn’t even carry a gun.”

  “She doesn’t need to.” I passed a power cord through the hole. “Plug that in for me? Old Number Seven doesn’t hold a charge the way it used to.”

  “I’m not surprised. That thing’s older than both of us.”

  I checked the marshal wasn’t looking, drew a sealed container from my cyber harness, and took out a small piece of her prized gorgonzola cheese. I slipped this gently inside Trembling Bob’s holster and felt it shiver in delight. I was armed and ready for anything. Except what actually happened.

  CHAPTER 10

  Car 54 drove up to the main door of Trucks ‘R’ Us. Outside, it was a low, flat-roofed building, obviously the front of a warehouse.

  “I haven’t had time to check if these guys are part of the Cabal,” LB admitted. “I know they are Moordenaap owned, so they might be. Be careful what you say there.”

  I climbed out and scanned the area. We were on the outskirts of an industrial estate with nothing but trees along one side. If we disappeared here, we’d never be heard from again.

  “Car 54,” I said. “De-car your mobile unit and be ready to come in for us if we need back up.”

  “That probably won’t be—” Harry began.

  “The Chief says it’s my job to keep you alive,” I pointed out. “Therefore, it’s my job to arrange precautions.”

  “Oh boy,” Car 54 said. “This unit is so new, I haven’t had a chance to fire the guns yet.”

  An area below the cab slid out and unfolded. It had six legs and a twin cannon instead of a head.

  “Looks the business. If we yell, come in shooting.” Then, because of a recent embarrassment with an imprecise command, I added, “Shoot the other people, not us.”

  Harry hitched her belt and pushed open the door. We walked into the maw of the beast, or small foyer with a slate-tiled floor and hologram walls showing Trucks ‘R’ Us deliveries to schools filled with happy children of various species. The air was conditioned and had a whiff of ozone.

  “Nice,” LB said, looking around. “All I ever managed was a desk and some chairs in the lock up.”

  There was no one around, not even a holo-receptionist.

  “So how is your boy doing with the business?” I asked, because my curiosity had been bothering me for a while and LB, who talks about everything, had not mentioned his youngest son for a while. LB shrugged and walked over to a desk. There was a large button on it, which he pressed and a buzzer buzzed.

  “That bad?” I persisted.

  “Not bad,” LB said. “Not actually bad. He was determined to show me that you could run a trading business honestly, and he has done that.”

  “But?” Harry asked. She is good at hearing what isn’t said.

  “But he refuses to haggle,” LB moaned. “He says it feels dishonest. My old friends have admitted they feel guilty about taking his money.”

  “They could just start at the price they want for the goods.”

  “But that’s not the tradition,” LB wailed. “Start high and let the other person talk you down to the price you wanted all along. That’s how we do it. It’s become a habit.”

  “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!” a voice yelled. I twisted and drew my pistols. There was a head peeking above the desk. LB drew his sidearm and moved the marshal behind us.

  “Surrender or make your last move,” I said.

  “What?” a different voice said, and a new head and body straightened up behind the desk and raised her arms. “I surrender. I am unarmed.”

  “Especially me, ha-ha.”

  “Come out from behind the desk,” I said, not willing to take her word for anything. “Lie on the floor.”

  “We didn’t do it,” the male voice said. The body was a large amphibian, with a long body, a tail, and short, thick limbs. It looked old, with grey, loose skin and swollen joints.

  “Didn’t do what?” I asked.

  “Whatever you think we did.”

  “What the hell is that?” LB asked, pointing his gun at it. There was a head and neck sticking out of the amphibian’s lower back. This was the head not making sense.

  “You’re asking me?” I’ve been around, and still never met anything like it.

  Harry pulled out her scanner as I kept it covered. Stretched out on the floor, it was half my size. I tried to remember how long amphibian tongues could get as I moved back a little.

  “It is a Hoorigoth,” Harry said, reading off the scanner, “They practice parasitic reproduction. Never heard of that before. The male attaches to the female’s back and is absorbed by her body until just his gonads are left.”

  “He used to entertain the hatchlings,” the Hoorigoth said. “Although I think he’s gone a bit funny with age.”

  “You run for it,” the head said. “I’ll hold them off.”

  White fluid squirted from near the tail and hit LB in the face. The marshal blushed.

  “Well, he’s got balls,” I noted.

  “Enough of that,” Harry ordered.

  “Don’t worry, he could never hit LB like that twice,” I said.

  “Oh, you dirty bast—” LB put a hand in front of his face, but there was a lot of fluid.

  “Enough!” Marshal Harry roared. “We are marshals investigating three murders and I will have a little decorum.”

  “Sorry about that,” the female said, climbing to her feet slowly. “My name is Ohanlon and this is Ardl. It’s my own fault, I should never have given him a name. That’s when you get fond of them.”

  “You’re the only one for me, babe,” Ardl said.

  “Where does he get the dialogue?” I asked.

  “I got wifi installed in his head. He binge watches Netflix all the time.”

  “Well, that explains why he’s gone crazy,” LB said.

  “What do you do here?” Harry asked, looking around. There was still no one in sight, not even an AI or robot.

  “I am the Sentient Oversight: Warehouse Section,” Ohanlon said. “SOWS for short.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means,” Ohanlon shrugged, “I’m the only living thing in the building, unless you count Ardl.”

  “I don’t,” LB growled.

  “Harsh,” I said. “He’s head and shoulders above an AI.”

  “Were you interviewed by any of the original investigators regarding th
e murders of Mr cruisOVO?”

  “We didn’t do it,” Ardl shouted.

  “Of course we didn’t,” Ohanlon said. “I’ve never heard of a Mr cruisOVO. We did get a court order last year demanding copies of the logs for one of our drone haulers that crashed. The AI in charge of drone haulers processed the request and sent off the data.”

  “So you did not check your security after being hacked?”

  “Who was hacked?” Ardl demanded.

  “Your drone hauler was subverted by a hacker,” I said. “And used to kill someone.”

  “That’s not what Gussy said,” Ardl shouted.

  Marshal Harry put her fingers over her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose.

  “Who,” she asked, “is Gussy?”

  “That’s what Ardl calls the AI in charge of the drone haulers,” Ohanlon answered, her head bowed. I got the feeling she was embarrassed by the scrutiny her little world was getting. “Officially, it is called AICDH, but Ardl says that’s too much of a mouthful.”

  “Oh… right,” Harry said. “So what does… Gussy say happened to the drone?”

  “It doesn’t know,” Ohanlon said. “We lost the tracking signal shortly after it left the compound. That can only happen if the AI is turned off.”

  “Did the investigators ask you about the route information they downloaded from the black box?” Harry asked.

  “They never asked us anything,” Ardl said. “She told you that.”

  “Right, look at this and tell me if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”

  I was ready to nod off as the marshal took a miniprojector from her pocket and replayed the drone hauler’s route. I had been expecting a bit of witty banter and a shoot-out. There was nothing beyond the windows but tarmac and the occasional drone moving cargo. LB slipped around the desk and began rooting through the company computers. I felt as useful as a third leg.

  “Why’d it do that?” Ohanlon asked.

  “Do what?” Ardl asked, stretching his scrawny neck to see around Ohanlon’s bulk.

  “Rewind a bit, please,” Ohanlon asked. I leaned in to watch this time. The drone left the docking bay, slowed to move along a straight bit of road in front of some gates.

  “That will be it queueing to leave with the other drones.” Ohanlon glanced at the marshal and then back at the tiny dot moving through a map of the compound.

  “Watch, it comes up to that T junction and there’s a pause. What’s that about, I ask you?”

  “Don’t your drones normally stop for traffic at junctions?” I asked.

  “They don’t normally stop at that junction. The east side is a dead end. There’s no traffic to stop for.”

  The marshal rewound and I timed the pause. “Forty-two seconds. What could that mean?”

  “Is there any way to drive the drones manually?” Harry asked.

  “Oh yes, there’s an emergency system in place in case of a catastrophic failure,” Ohanlon said. “Never gets used, of course.”

  “Could you show us?”

  “Okay, come down to maintenance— Hey!” Ohanlon spotted LB behind her desk. “Get away from there.”

  “Sorry, I was just reading the About Us section of your website,” LB said, stepping away.

  “That’s out of date,” Ardl said. “We’ve been bought over.”

  “I noticed that.” LB caught the marshal’s eye. “The week after one of your trucks ran into cruisOVO, this place was bought by a holding company.”

  Harry looked around. “Would someone kill to own this place?”

  “They’d have to be damned fools,” Ardl said. “Place used to make a lot of money decades ago, but we lost our market share.”

  We followed Ohanlon. She limped behind the desk, pushed a recessed door open, and stepped into a large warehouse. There was an AI built into one corner, indicator lights blinking, but the rest of the space was taken up by hauler drones, mostly in bits. Ohanlon led the way to the nearest.

  “This one’s the same model as the one that crashed.” She twisted a handle and a door opened. The space inside was small and dark.

  “No windows,” I pointed out.

  “There’s two screens inside. One shows the front and one shows the back.” Ohanlon leaned in. “Can you see? Because I don’t fit in this thing and the power is off.”

  “I can see what you’re doing,” Marshal Harry said, standing on tiptoe. I reared my front half until I could see over the top of her head.

  “You slot the override in that… slot… and you can drive this thing,” Ohanlon said, pointing to a vacant hole in the dash. “Obviously, it’s not something I have to do.”

  “Erm…” LB said. “I’ve found out who is CEO of the holding company.”

  The marshal turned. “Someone we know?”

  “The wife, mapoTHER.”

  Marshal Harry turned back and peered into the cab. “Could a Qoh Mode fit in there?”

  “Sure. We used to have a guy who oversaw the maintenance of these things,” Ohanlon said. “He used to run one around the compound on his break. You know, for fun?”

  “I’m aware of the concept,” Harry replied. But she wasn’t really listening. “I want to go see that junction. Is it too far to walk?”

  It was, to my relief. We trotted back to Car 54 and he carried us around the building, through the loading compound, and out the gate the drone haulers used.

  “This place is massive,” Marshal Harry said.

  “Used to be the largest hauler on the planet,” LB said. “They moved cargo from sixteen ships a day through here. Probably a half a million drones coming out this gate on any one day.” We climbed out Car 54 and had a look around. I scanned, but there was not much to see. The gates were so old I doubted they could be closed; the short stretch of road between the gate and the T junction had a high bank on each side that had been recolonized by nature. The shrubs and trees hid any view of Port City. To my disgust, Harry walked off along the road, looking up the banks. I scuttled after her.

  “I should get paid more per hour when we’re walking,” I decided. “Because I’m having to work fourteen legs while you only have to move the two.”

  “Must be less pressure on each leg, though,” Harry said. “So less wear and tear. Maybe you should be paid less than me per hour?”

  Just before the junction, there was an animal track through the grass. Harry and LB clambered up it and I followed. There was a small, open area surrounded by thick trees. It reminded me of home.

  “I need a drink,” I said.

  “Didn’t you grow up in a place like this?” LB asked.

  “That’s why I need a drink.”

  A hauler drone passed us.

  “Do you think it detected us back here?” Harry wondered.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “Their sensors are set up to monitor ground level. We’re above their roof here.”

  “So if someone ran down there and hopped in the cab, the drone wouldn’t see him coming?”

  A drone came along the road and slowed as it approached the junction. LB whooped and dove down the path, fists and feet pounding turf. He caught up with the drone, pulled open the door, and disappeared. The hauler drone performed an emergency stop just short of the junction.

  I followed Harry down the slope at a trot.

  “LB, what were you thinking?” she demanded, trying the handle.

  LB was hunched on the seat, grinning. “I was thinking I could catch it,” he said. “And I did. If I had one of those manual override thingies, I could take this drone anywhere.”

  “Who are you people?” the drone asked. “I warn you, if this is a hijack, I’ve already called the Marshal Service.”

  “We are the Marshal Service,” Harry said.

  “Wow, that was quick,” the drone said. “Can you get this organic out of me? It’s giving me the creeps.”

  “Hey, I am a deputy marshal performing an important investigation,” LB said. “I am not creepy.”

  “I k
now how you feel,” I said. “But you get used to him.”

  “How would you like something small and organic moving around inside you?” the drone asked.

  “It can be fun,” Marshal Harry said.

  “Look,” LB pointed at the dashboard. “The manual slot is hidden by a plastic cover, and the screens are folded away. You would have to know what you’re doing to drive this thing.”

  “I can hear you, you know?”

  “Sorry, I’ll get out now.”

  “Good.”

  The hauler pulled away, leaving us to call Car 54 and wait for pickup.

  “So what did that get us?” I asked.

  “More questions,” Harry said. “I’m going to ask Car 54 to follow the usurped hauler’s route. I want to see what the killer saw.”

  The smell of wet rug wafted through the hatch and into the armoured compartment.

  “Are you nervous?” I asked LB.

  “You’re not?” he retorted. “The last time someone came this way, a man was killed.”

  I banged the sides of Car 54 with a claw.

  “Armoured and his sensors will see a truck coming.”

  “Plus, I got my 50 calibres locked and loaded,” Car 54 said.

  “Right, then answer me this.” LB shoved his big hairy face against the hatch. “Could you take out this car and the people in it with one of your guns?”

  “Erm,” I realised I’d waited too long to lie convincingly, “okay, yes.”

  “That’s why I’m sweating.”

  “Car 54, do you have emergency screens like the drone haulers?” Marshal Harry asked. “I’d like to see where we are going.”

  “Yes, I’ll turn them on,” Car 54 sounded reluctant. “But don’t touch anything.”

  Two screens slid out of the dashboard and lit up. We had a wide-angled view forward and the same to the rear. The buildings in this area were tall and crowded the narrow streets. Automation doesn’t require a view, so the warehouse districts tend to be dull and dark.

  “Between the armoured hull of Car 54,” I pointed out, “and all these buildings, my scanners are not showing much.”

  “I wouldn’t like to try steering this thing,” LB said, “with just this view. How did he dodge the other traffic?”