Air Pirates of Krakatoa

by Dave Robinson

  DOC VANDAL

  in

  Air Pirates of Krakatoa

  by Dave Robinson

  A Doc Vandal Publication

  Copyright 2017 by Dave Robinson

  Cover Illustration by Carlos Balarezo

  Cover Design by Queen Graphics

  This is a work of fiction. All similarities to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All events, locales, and incidents are either purely the product of the author’s imagination or used for fictitious purposes.

  The Doc Vandal Series

  Against the Eldest Flame

  Air Pirates of Krakatoa

  Attacked Beneath Antarctica (Forthcoming)

  This novel is dedicated to Kim, without whom I would never have written a word; to Kyrie, and to my brother Neil, who always believed I was a writer even when I didn’t. Also thanks to my mother, Lyn Robinson, and the memory of my father, Clive Robinson.

  I would also like to thank everyone who has helped me on this writing journey from the moment I first decided I wanted to create my own pulp heroes to the last word I typed; especially those who have read my works and given the kind of feedback you need to get the best out of a story: Jules Ironside, S.L. Huang, Vincent Collins, Jaap Geluk, and Ian Gill.

  Any errors are mine alone.

  Table of Contents

  Dinner and a Movie

  Batavia

  Plantation by Night

  Thrown in the Hold

  Showdown in the High Skies

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dinner and a Movie

  Doc Vandal rarely visited the Republic State Club, even though he had been a member for years. Generally, he preferred the Adventurers or Explorers Clubs where he was judged on his achievements instead of his bank accounts. Yes, his inventions had made him very wealthy, but they had also taken him on more adventures than almost anyone else alive. Tonight, he was sitting in a private room at the request of one of his very few living relatives; his cousin Cornelius, a man with whom he had almost nothing in common. Realizing he was drifting, Doc let the whir of the projector draw his attention back to his surroundings.

  A newsreel flickered against the screen at the far end of the darkened room, showing the black-and-white image a tramp freighter steaming through the South Seas. To Doc's right, Victoria Frank leaned forwards in her seat, apparently fascinated by the image. In a place like this, she looked every inch the Russian aristocrat she would have been but for the Revolution. Tonight she had given in to Doc’s request and worn a dress, though he knew she’d rather be wearing a flying suit. As they watched, the camera panned around to show more than half a dozen small freighters passing through Sunda.

  “These are the coffee freighters I was telling you about.” Cornelius Basingstoke whispered in his ear. “Eight ships bound for Batavia, coming through Sunda from the Java sea.” Basingstoke had only been the head of the Dutch East Indies coffee consortium since 1935; he was fiftyish, heavy-set and of Anglo-Dutch ancestry. His mother and Doc's had been cousins; although having only met a handful of times the two men were almost complete strangers.

  “Uh huh,” Doc answered noncommittally, his attention on the screen.

  A shadow crossed the screen, and the cameraman panned up to follow it. A huge flying wing was coming out of the east, a biplane configuration with over a dozen engines on the upper wing. Even though Doc knew it was an artifact of the film, the silence was eerie. Pursuit planes dropped from the lower wing, first one, then another and another.

  The screen filled with empty sky for a moment, the ship must have turned sharply enough to heel over, and then came back into focus. Two of the pursuits were coming in at one of the ships. Two long black shapes dropped into the water, and the planes pulled up.

  White wakes cut through the calm seas, drawing lines toward a freighter wallowing in the water as its crew tried to turn the vessel away from the threat. Doc clenched his fists, watching the sailors on their doomed ship. Two leaped from the side, while others worked at a lifeboat, gathered around the starboard davits.

  As the camera zoomed closer to the ship, SS Hazelton according to the hull markings, rivet lines and rust stains began to appear. She was an old three-island design, and looked to have seen better days. Whoever was in charge was making full steam, but it wasn't going to be enough.

  Two waterspouts covered the screen as the torpedoes struck home.

  Basingstoke snapped his fingers and a servant turned the lights on. “There you have it.”

  Doc raised an eyebrow. “There I have what?”

  “An idea of what we're up against.” Basingstoke gestured towards the dimly visible screen. “That happened just last month. We've lost a dozen ships in the past two months, and now we're having a hellish time finding anyone to carry our coffee.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” Doc raised an eyebrow.

  Basingstoke dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Well, to be honest, we were hoping that you could do something about the pirates for us.”

  “Wouldn't that be a matter for the Dutch?” Vic asked, swirling a glass of wine in her hand. “I think they have a cruiser at Batavia.”

  Basingstoke leaned forward, letting his stomach flow over the edge of the table. “Pardon?”

  Vic wrinkled her forehead. “That's piracy in Dutch territorial waters. I don't know exactly where in the Sunda Strait that happened, but there's a Dutch naval base maybe a hundred miles away. Why not talk to them, rather than asking us to look at it when we're ten thousand miles away?”

  She took a very small sip of her wine. “It doesn't make sense.”

  Doc smiled, Vic had some very good points. “Yes, Cornelius, why didn't you talk to the Dutch authorities?”

  “We did.” Basingstoke mopped his forehead again. “But they only have a handful of ships. We asked for a cruiser escort, and even offered to try convoys, but all they would give us was a destroyer for a few days. There were no attacks while it was there, so they pulled it back.

  “The next day, we lost another ship to the pirates. The Dutch fleet just isn't fast enough to get there in time. It was all we could do to hire the cameraman who filmed this.” Basingstoke drained a glass of water and then waved a servant over to refill it.

  “And bring me a whiskey while you're at it!”

  “If you're looking for a hired gun, I'm not it,” Doc said. “I have enough trouble come looking for me; I don't need to go looking for any more.”

  “I understand,” Basingstoke said, “but I had to ask you know; the rest of the consortium insisted, your late mother and mine being cousins and all.” It was the third time he had mentioned their blood relationship as if it was something that should be important to Doc.

  He rang a bell, and the servant opened a door to let a waiter into the room. The young Eurasian carried a large platter with three covered dishes. He kept his head down as he walked over to their table and set up the platter on a set of folding legs.

  “Here you are, gentlemen,” the waiter said, then paused and nodded towards Vic, “and lady.

  “For your first course, we have a fish liver soup. A true delicacy for the discerning palate.”

  Without another word, he served the three steaming bowls, and then picked up his platter and left.

  “You really have to try this James,” Basingstoke said, reaching for his spoon. “They bring the fish live all the way from the Far East in a specially heated tank. It is absolutely delicious.”

  Doc nodded politely and reached for his own spoon. The broth smelled wonderful, and tasted even better. The fish had a very light taste that made his lips tingle. No, it wasn't the taste, it was poison,
they were pufferfish livers.

  He spat out the remaining soup, and upended the table sending bowls and silverware flying as Vic stared at him, her spoon half-way to her mouth. “It's poison! Stop the waiter!”

  A grim smile crossed Vic’s face as she pulled a Walther PPK out of her purse. She kicked her shoes off and ran for the same door the waiter had disappeared through.

  Doc turned to Basingstoke, but it was too late. Stark terror showed in the older man's eyes as he fought for breath. Doc shoved his fingers down Basingstoke's throat, trying to trigger his gag reflex, but there was no response, only the look of fear in his eyes. The poison had paralyzed his diaphragm and was racing towards his heart. There was no time to counteract it. All Doc could do was watch helplessly as the poison did its work. He hadn’t liked the man, but he was family and Doc didn’t have much of one left.

  “I'll find out who did this,” Doc promised, watching as the light went out of Basingstoke's eyes.

  #

  Vic stormed through the service door and into the hallway just in time to see a white-coated figure dash into the stairwell. She had hated the way Basingstoke had tried to undress her with his eyes, but even a slug like him didn’t deserve to be salted. With her gun in one hand, she hiked up her dress with the other and followed as fast as she could. The pistol was her new favorite toy, taken from a Nazi gorilla in a secret African city they had discovered the previous month. It was almost a standard-issue German pistol; the one big difference was that the trigger guard had been removed to make room for the gorilla's fingers.

  Reaching the stairwell moments after the waiter, she charged headlong down the steps taking them two at a time. The anti-slip tread shredded her artificial silk stockings, but since she hated the damn things it wasn't much of a loss. By the time she had reached the first landing the bottoms of her stockings were flapping around her ankles. She made it just in time to see the waiter push his way through the swinging doors and into the kitchen.

  Three long strides and a loud rip up the side of her dress had Vic through the doors and into a madhouse. A small army of waiters, mostly Chinese, were crossing in front of her while the kitchen staff slaved away over a row of griddles and stovetops. Above it all the chef bellowed orders in Cantonese, barely audible over the crash of pots and pans!

  “Coming through,” Vic yelled, and then repeated herself in Cantonese as she threw herself after the one waiter moving across the flow.

  Using the form that had served her so well on the hockey field she shouldered her way through the waiters, ignoring the curses that followed in her wake. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't gain on the waiter who slipped through the crowd with practiced efficiency.

  One of the waiters didn't move fast enough to get out of her way and she hit him harder than she intended. He bounced off her lowered shoulder and into a small knot of his fellows sending platters flying everywhere. Soup and steak littered the floor, turning it into an obstacle course. Vic planted her right foot squarely on a very hot very slippery sirloin and it went flying out from under her.

  Seconds later she was face down in hot soup, and surrounded by a wall of glaring waiters. Keeping a firm grip on her pistol, she levered herself back to her feet and ran for the back door. It was still half-open so she just pushed her way through into the alley. No one was there.

  Apart from a couple of stray cats digging through the garbage, she was alone. Vic took one more look up and down the alley before turning back into the restaurant.

  #

  Vic scowled as she came back into the room. Her dress was a mess with soup down the front and a rip up the side. Her stockings were in tatters. “He got away.”

  She threw herself down in her chair and retrieved her shoes; letting her tattered stockings hang down beside the heels. “Too late for Basingstoke?”

  Doc nodded. “Fugu poisoning; you're lucky you didn't eat any of the soup.”

  “What about you? I saw you take a sip.” Vic tried to brush bits of food off her ruined dress.

  “I didn't get much, and I have a stronger constitution than he had.”

  Doc didn't need to remind Vic how the peculiarities of his birth and upbringing had played in the development of his constitution. As far as anyone knew, he was the only human ever born on the Moon. Vic was one of the very few who knew the truth of his origins. While Basingstoke had been raised by a family of robber baron capitalists; Doc had been raised by three artificial minds on an alien moonbase that was older than North America itself.

  “Anyway,” Vic explained. “By the time I got through the kitchen he was long gone. When I came back in from the alley everyone was going crazy. One of the chefs, I think he was Japanese, looked to have had his throat slit by one on of his own knives.”

  Vic reached for her wine, but it was soaking into the carpet. She frowned and went over to the sideboard and poured herself two fingers of brandy.

  “According to the rest of the staff, the waiter who served us was new. They couldn't remember seeing him before, and he went out the back door in a hurry. Maybe twenty-five, possibly Eurasian, not fat or thin. They were more worried about the dead chef than a missing waiter.”

  Doc stroked his chin. “It was definitely murder, not an accident cleaning the fish; but what was the motive?”

  He looked down at Basingstoke, who had finally stopped sweating. “For that matter, who was the target? Was it Cornelius, one or both of us, or all three?”

  “I don't know, but harsh as it seems I'm glad he got Basingstoke rather than one of us.” Vic glanced at the dead man's face. “I wonder what it tasted like.”

  “Keep wondering, you'll live longer,” Doc advised her quietly.

  She took a large swallow of her brandy. “You're no fun.”

  He shook his head, sudden death always seemed to do something to Vic's sense of humor. “You can worry about having fun later, we still have to give our statements.”

  Her face fell. Doc normally had a good relationship with the police; but Vic didn't always get along with Commissioner Pennyworth, or his people.

  “All right.” The words were there, but Doc couldn't help noticing the way Vic looked at her shoes when she said them. She also put her pistol back in her purse and fastened it closed.

  The police arrived a few minutes later, with Pennyworth at their head. While his officers started examining the room, the commissioner wasted no time in coming over to where the two of them were sitting.

  “I suppose you're going to tell me none of this was your fault?” Pennyworth's gesture appeared to take in the whole room and possibly the entire building. For an intimate dining room, it was a mess. The table was still upside down, and Doc wouldn't be surprised if there was fine china ground into the rug. Not that it mattered much, Vic's preference for red over white wine had left its own mark on the floor covering.

  “Well, he did throw the table,” Vic said with a helpful smile on her face.

  “Thank you, Miss Frank.” The commissioner nodded to her. “See, you can be helpful on occasion.” He turned his attention back to Doc, raising an eyebrow. “Do you have anything to add to that statement?”

  “We had been served a soup made from improperly prepared Fugu, it's virulently poisonous. I flipped the table to get the poison away from us; unfortunately I was too late. Mr. Basingstoke had already consumed a fatal dose.”

  “And how did you know it was poisonous?” Pennyworth asked. One of his men had come up and was scribbling in a notebook.

  “I recognized the fish as Fugu by the taste, and the poison because my lips started tingling.”

  “Do you commonly eat poisonous fish? And how is it that you survived and Mr. Basingstoke did not?”

  Doc didn't like this line of questioning; but he answered politely, anyway.

  “I have had Fugu before, on a trip to Japan a few years ago. As for why I survived; I have a greater resistance to toxins than most, and I expect that I consumed much less of the fish than Mr. Basingstoke.” />
  Pennyworth nodded. “Uh-huh. And what was your relationship with the deceased?”

  “He was my second cousin on the maternal side, the purpose of the dinner was to ask me a favor.”

  Vic tried to hide a smile, clearly enjoying watching Pennyworth focus on Doc instead of her.

  “So your relative died as a result of sharing a poisoned meal with you, and it just happened to be a poison you were immune to?” Pennyworth said. “I just want to make sure I'm clear on this.”

  “Am I a suspect?” Doc asked mildly.

  This was a new side of Pennyworth for Doc. Usually he was cordial, if not friendly but since the Eldest Flame affair earlier in the spring their relationship had turned frosty. Whether it was the cleanup after dumping a flaming Zeppelin in the Hudson, or the narrowly avoided international incident that followed. Having to set his own warehouse on fire to eliminate a zombie infestation hadn't helped matters either.

  “Not yet, but you are a person of interest.” Pennyworth waved to where a police photographer was about to photograph the body. “You were the last person to be seen with the victim.”

  “But what about the chef who was murdered? And what about our waiter, he's the one who gave us the poisoned soup?” Vic smiled sweetly. “When I went looking for our waiter I found out that the chef who was supposed to prepare our fish was killed earlier tonight. The waiter disappeared, too.”

  “You can rest assured that we will look into that, Miss Frank,” Pennyworth said with a sniff. “My men are questioning the entire kitchen staff.” He turned back to Doc. “I expect that you and Miss Frank will make yourselves available for further questions should we have any?”

  “Of course, Commissioner. Now, if you would excuse us?” Doc extended an arm to Vic and led the way out of the room. What had they got themselves into this time?