Dead Inside_A Space Team Universe Novel

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “Yeah. I don’t think it did,” Artur said.

  Dan spun, turning his back to the assembled guns and putting himself between them and Ollie and Artur. “If you can run, run,” he commanded, then he clenched his jaw, tucked his chin in to his chest and braced himself for utter annihilation.

  But the guns didn’t fire. Instead, Dan heard the rich clunk of a ludicrously expensive car door closing, then the thud, thud, thud of heavy footsteps drawing closer.

  “Leave us,” said a voice. If Dan’s own voice was the sound of two bricks rubbing together, this one was the shifting of tectonic plates somewhere deep underground. Dan groaned. In a lot of ways, he’d have preferred death by blaster fire.

  “Everyone shut up,” he whispered. “Leave the talking to me.”

  When he turned, the Tribunal was packing up its gear and leaving as quickly as it possibly could. Where the Enforcers and marksmen had been was now a mismatched line of people who seemed to have been specifically built for the purposes of violence. There were only eight or nine of them, but each one looked capable of inflicting the damage of twenty men.

  The casual observer might be forgiven for thinking the appearance of these brutes was what had sent the Tribunal rushing off in quite such a hurry, but Dan knew better. What had really been behind the Tribunal’s retreat was now thumping towards him, with a crisply-dressed assistant gliding effortlessly along behind.

  The shape approaching was female. Dan only knew this because of the smear of glossy red across its stony lips, and the reinforced metal heels strapped onto its feet. Without those distinguishing features, the walking boulder would be pretty much as genderless as the non-walking variety, although Dan would know that face anywhere.

  The assistant hurried ahead, reaching Dan and the others just before her employer did. She nodded curtly, then spoke in a soft but authoritative tone.

  “Presenting the revered and much-loved Shornack, High Murderess of the Eleven Seals, dominatrix of Qqqtzl, and destructor of the following planetary systems…”

  She launched into what seemed to be quite an exhaustive list of planetary systems, most of which Dan had never heard of, and probably for very good reason.

  Throughout the introduction, Shornack held Dan’s gaze, her lipstick-stained mouth pursed in a dry smile, her eyes cold and calculating.

  Once the assistant had reached the end of her list, Dan nodded in greeting. “Shornack.”

  “Deadman,” said Shornack, and Dan felt his bones rattling inside him. She raised a finger and wagged it reproachfully. “You have been a very naughty boy!”

  “About your guys, I can explain,” Dan began.

  “My ‘guys’? What ‘guys’?” Shornack asked. The assistant leaned closer and whispered in her ear. Or where her ear presumably was, at least, it was hard to tell. “Oh, yes. Those guys. No real loss.”

  Dan glanced around at Ollie, then down at Artur, hoping neither of them were about to try anything stupid. “So, this is about your money, then?” Dan asked.

  “Everything is always about my money, Deadman,” Shornack said. “Always.”

  “I’ll get it to you,” Dan said. “Soon.”

  “How soon? Now soon?”

  “Not all of it,” Dan said. “But I can pay you some.”

  Shornack held his gaze for a few long worrying moments, then her stony lips parted to reveal teeth made of diamonds and gold.

  “Relax, Deadman. Today, you have earned yourself a reprieve.” She raised that accusing finger again. “Today. Just today.”

  “Uh… OK,” said Dan. He felt the obvious question niggling around in his head like a hole in a tooth that he really shouldn’t go poking his tongue in. He poked anyway. “Why?”

  She gestured around them. “Isn’t it obvious? This place. Those men you took care of. They were working for a…” She smacked her lips together a few times, spitting sparks. “…competitor of mine. A newcomer, someone who doesn’t know any better. Yet. You struck a blow against him, and I felt I should show my gratitude.”

  Dan nodded slowly, then shrugged. “OK, then.”

  “And this is me showing my gratitude, Deadman.” She clicked her fingers. The line of built-for-violence henchmen all turned and faced the other way. “But be warned, I do not remain grateful for long.”

  She glowered meaningfully at him, shot Ollie a cursory glance that somehow seemed to take in each and every one of her molecules, then turned away. She had barely made it two thunderous steps when her assistant leaned in and whispered again.

  “Oh yes,” she said. She turned her head a fraction, but otherwise didn’t turn. “And I left you a little surprise at your office. A gift, in case my appreciation of your efforts wasn’t clear enough.”

  “What is it?” Dan asked.

  “You’re an educated man,” Shornack said, lumbering onwards and leaving Dan and the others behind. “I thought you’d have a better grasp of the meaning of the word ‘surprise’.”

  Dan, Ollie and Artur all stood in silence, watching the gangster leave. If as Artur who eventually spoke.

  “It’s a bomb, isn’t it? She’s stuck a big fecking bomb in the filing cabinet, or something,” he said. “Mark my words.”

  “It won’t be a bomb,” Dan said, pulling off the gauntlets. He was about to toss them on the ground, but then decided they might come in useful someday, so shoved them down into his pockets instead.

  “Ye sure about that?” Artur asked, trotting along behind Dan as he set off towards the exit.

  “It probably won’t be a bomb.”

  “Ye want to money on it?” Artur asked.

  Ollie hung back. She looked down at her hands, then at the wreckage of the junk yard, before finally casting her gaze up to the floating city which was now being slotted back into place way, way overhead.

  She had done all that. Somehow. She had done all that. And it scared her.

  “Ye coming or what, peaches?” Artur asked. “Sure, we don’t want to get blown to tiny pieces without you now, do we? Where’d be the fun in that?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It wasn’t a bomb. In many ways, Dan would have preferred it if it had been. At least a bomb would’ve been just one terrible moment, rather than an endless succession of the fonking things all culminating in an enormous garage bill.

  A dark purple Jonta Exodus slouched in Dan’s parking space. It was the exact same make, model and year as his old car. The only real difference was, this one hadn’t been completely destroyed.

  Partly destroyed, maybe, but then that was just par for the course when it came to these pieces of shizz. Three of the four tires looked to be completely bald. One of the twin exhausts was tied on to stop it falling off, while the other was currently nowhere to be seen. Where it should have been was a short length of rope, suggesting the similar repair on the one remaining exhaust probably shouldn’t be considered a permanent measure.

  The paintwork was flecked with dark chips and freckled with rust. There was a patch of lighter-colored paint on the rear wing where someone had amateurishly patched up a hole, and at least sixty per cent of the driver’s side was taken up by a single long scratch running from the front wheel arch all the way to the back.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Dan muttered.

  “Is that… Is that your car?” Ollie asked.

  “No, but it’s annoyingly similar,” Dan said.

  “Maybe it’s better inside,” said Artur. He scampered up onto the back windshield, wiped away some of the grime covering the glass, then peered inside. “Ah no. No, it’s worse. Sorry if I got yer hopes up there.”

  Dan opened the driver’s door. It squeaked as it sagged out of the doorframe and plunged towards the ground. He hooked a foot beneath it and held it more or less level with where it should have been as he bent and peered inside.

  The smell was so bad it even bothered him. The seats were moldy. The floor was inch-deep with crumbs, empty candy wrappers and what looked like some kind of
pet hair. There was a stain of unknown origin on the fabric of the roof lining, but it was almost certainly something body-fluidy.

  His instinct was to have it destroyed in a controlled explosion, or just tossed into the ocean. But Shornack had given him the car, and that made it all much more complicated. He couldn’t risk offending her, so he didn’t have a lot of choice. He was once more the owner of a Jonta Exodus, the car widely regarded to be the one that single-handedly brought about the downfall of the multi-billion credit Jonta corporation, and the mass suicide of its board of directors.

  Owning one of these things was bad. Owning two? That was either careless, or some cruel and unusual form of punishment.

  Sliding in behind the wheel, Dan powered up the engine. It gurgled for a moment, coughed for several seconds, then let out a deep, throaty growl that reverberated up through Dan’s seat and into his bones.

  He gave the gas pedal a nudge and the car barked and snarled in a way no mag-lev ever would.

  Huh. Maybe it wasn’t all bad.

  The passenger door opened, and Ollie slid in beside him. Artur hopped out of her hands and up onto the dash. “Oh, it’s ripe in here, alright!” he said.

  “We can clean it up,” Dan said, running his hands along the faded leather of the wheel. He turned a handle on the door beside him. “Maybe open a…”

  The glass in the door fell outwards and smashed on the ground.

  “…window.”

  “Oh yeah, that helps, right enough,” said Artur. He clapped his hands, then rubbed them together. “So… pub?”

  “Soon,” said Dan, jerking the Exodus into reverse and lurching out onto the street. “I just have one little thing to do first.”

  * * *

  Commissioner Usakt Polani stepped from his private elevator, drained the last of his coffee from a plastic cup, then tossed the container roughly in the direction of where he thought a trash can would probably be. The cup paffed onto the floor, but Polani either didn’t notice, or assumed someone else would pick it up. He caught his reflection in the darkened glass of his office door as he shambled along the corridor, and saw how the night had taken its toll.

  His eyes were ringed with red, his pudgy, overfed cheeks more bloated than usual. He’d been wearing the same clothes for twenty-six hours now, and he looked it. He dreaded to think what he smelled like.

  Hardly surprising, though. He hadn’t remembered a night like this since that bounty hunter had swung into town a decade ago and taken out half of Down Here’s politicians. The Tribunal had dealt with plenty since then, of course – rampaging off-worlders, gang battles and the willfully unemployed, to name but a few – but nothing had come close to that night.

  Until tonight.

  He had all available units searching for the woman who had single-handedly taken out one of the longest streets Down Here, plus a few of his more qualified detectives looking into the flying metal cloud angle. They knew he was expecting results, and would be unlikely to disappoint him.

  Usually, he wouldn’t get involved. He’d be holed up with one of his mistresses somewhere, or taking care of his own business. What he wouldn’t be doing was returning from one of the Watchtower’s canteens, having just forced down a cold pastry filled with an unidentifiable gray mush, with a cup of cheap and barely lukewarm coffee as a chaser.

  Polani took a moment trying to fix his hair in his reflection, then accepted he was wasting his time. He stepped inside into darkness. “Lights,” he said, but the bulbs failed to illuminate.

  Behind him, the door closed with a faint but definite click.

  Polani turned, moving surprisingly quickly for a man of his age and size. He swung with a forearm strike at the shape barely visible in the gloom. The blow was knocked aside, and Polani cried out as he was shoved backwards, hit his desk, and rolled clumsily all the way over it.

  Whether through accident or design, he landed butt-first in his chair. The momentum rolled it a few feet to the wall, where it bumped to a stop against a city map marked with thousands of colorful pins.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” the commissioner spat. If he was scared, he wasn’t showing it. “You think this place isn’t being watched? You think two dozen Enforcers aren’t on their way up here right now to blow your fonking brains out? You dumb shizznod. You’re a dead man walking. You hear me? You’re a dead man walking.”

  “Funny you should say that.”

  Dan stepped from the shadows and into the sliver of blue light that seeped in through the closed blinds of the window.

  The change in Polani’s expression was slight, but it was there. He had built a career on being surprised by nothing, taking everything in his stride. Dan could tell he was rattled now, though, or making a damn good job of pretending to be.

  “Holy… Ripley?” the commissioner whispered. “What… I mean…” He plastered a big old goofy grin on his face and started to stand. “Great to see you, man. We all thought you were—”

  Dan’s knuckles introduced themselves to the bridge of the commissioner’s nose. “Sit down,” Dan instructed, although from the way Polani flopped back into his chair, it probably wasn’t necessary.

  “I know you did it,” Dan said. “Or ordered it, anyway. Me.” He gritted his teeth, wrestling with the next word. “Vanshie. I know you did it.”

  “Ripley…”

  “Don’t,” Dan warned. “That guy’s dead.”

  Despite the blood oozing from his nose, Polani tried his best to turn on the charm. “Well, I mean, you’re looking great for it! Look at you.” His smile became something more sincere. “But, listen, everything aside, it was nothing personal, OK? To tell you the truth, I’ve regretted it ever since. Sure, we had our differences, but think of everything we did together before that. Everything we achieved. Right?”

  He used his heels to pull the chair a little closer to the desk. “You were good, Slam. Hell, you were the best. And you throw it all away for what? An attack of conscience?”

  Ripley spat a phlegmy wad of blood and spittle onto the desk. “Fonk conscience. We don’t need it. You don’t need it.”

  He leaned forwards so one arm was draped over the edge of the desk. “I’m sure you’ve heard, but I recently lost an important member of my organization. Your old partner, in fact. You know what that means, right?”

  “One less piece of shizz out there on the streets?” Dan guessed.

  “Well, not where I was going with it,” Polani admitted. “It means, I have an opening. It’d be a perfect fit for someone with your skills and experience. You’d be an asset to the team, Ripley, like the old days.”

  He gestured vaguely at Dan’s ravaged face. “Maybe we could even do something about… you know. We have access to some pretty good surgeons. Money wouldn’t be an issue. We could get you fixed up good as new. What do you say?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Huh,” said Polani. “Shame.”

  He tore open the top drawer of his desk and shoved a hand inside. His face fell when he found it empty.

  “I know where you keep your gun, commissioner,” Dan said. He brought the weapon up into the light. It was an old plasma pistol, modified to give it some extra oomph. They had been ruled illegal a decade or more ago, mostly due to the time it took those shot with one to die, and the journey they had to go on to get there.

  Dan peered down the gun’s narrow sights at Polani. “I know where you keep a lot of things. Your wife. Your girlfriends. Your children.”

  He let that last one hang in the air for a moment, then lowered the gun.

  “Are you blackmailing me, Ripley?” Polani asked. “Seriously? Is that what this is?”

  “Not blackmailing. Not threatening. Just… offering you some advice,” Dan said. He approached the desk and leaned over it, bringing his face closer to the commissioner’s. Up close, Dan was pleased to see the subtle signs of panic on Polani’s pudgy face. His pupils were dilated, and his open pores were glossy with sweat. “The girl. The wom
an who caused some problems down town tonight. I assume you’re looking for her?”

  Polani nodded, just once.

  “I know where she is,” Dan said. “Her name is Oledol Lodelo. Ollie for short. She’s registered. You can find her in the system.”

  He gestured with the gun to the glassy surface of the commissioner’s desk. “But you’re not going to,” Dan continued. “You’re going to forget all about her. You’re going to call off any squads you have looking for her, and you’re going to pretend you never even knew she existed.”

  Polani snorted. “I don’t think so. She caused millions in property damage alone. We’re bringing her in, and we’re putting her down.”

  Dan sighed and straightened up. “See, I’m not worried about what you might do to her. Not really. And I’m sure as shizz not worried about what she might do to you. But I am worried about what might happen if you come after her.”

  He pointed with the gun to the window and the world out there beyond it. “She almost destroyed the city tonight. Two cities, in fact. You know how?”

  The commissioner said nothing, but gave the briefest shake of his head.

  “She didn’t have some great plan. Didn’t have weapons. Didn’t have an army,” Dan said. He placed the barrel of the gun on the desk and leaned on the handle, lowering his face to the commissioner’s again. “She waved her hands.”

  He gave that a moment to sink in.

  “That was it. She waved her hands, and almost killed billions of people.” He leaned down even further until he could smell the sweat stink rising from the commissioner. From the way Polani’s nostrils flared, he was getting a good whiff of Dan’s scent, too. “Imagine what she’ll do when she’s cornered. Your wife. Your girlfriends. Your children. Gone, along with everyone else. And all she has to do is wave her hands.”

  Polani said nothing. He didn’t have to. Dan could read the man’s face. He’d do as he was told. What choice did he have?

  There was a click as Dan released the battery pack from the bottom of Polani’s gun. He tossed both parts into different corners of the room.

  “It was good to see you, Usakt,” Dan said. “But so we’re clear, if I see you again, I’ll kill you.”