Culture Shock: A First Contact Mystery Thriller (The Gunn Files Book 1)

by M. G. Herron

  “Elekatch.” Dyna’s forehead wrinkled. She looked irritated, or maybe offended. “Of course not. It is my duty as a Peacekeeper. The Lodian government takes care of all of our needs.”

  “Freakin’ alien communists.” I shook my head. “I’m not doing this for my health. If you can’t pay me, I can’t help. Go get your guy, and hike on out of here.”

  “For once, I agree with the human,” Kilos said, his deep voice rumbling from his chest.

  “And what if the Tetrad sends someone else?” Dyna asked, turning to face her partner. “An offworlder even more dangerous than Elekatch?”

  That caught my attention.

  “We will deal with it like we always do,” Kilos said.

  “In times of need, it is within our jurisdiction to appoint agents from the native population as we see fit. Peacekeeper code of conduct, section six, article forty-two.”

  “We need to stay focused on our mission.” Kilos insisted. “This is a waste of time.”

  “Kilos,” Dyna said, very quietly. “As your superior officer, I suggest you remember how to follow orders, or I will be forced to complete this mission on my own.”

  Kilos tensed, and for a second, I thought there was going to be a brawl. But eventually he relaxed and turned away, shaking his head and growling audibly.

  I followed the exchange with narrowing eyes. None of this sounded good to me. I had zero interest in playing Peacekeeper or becoming a lackey for this Federation of Lodi. And while I felt badly for Cameron Kovak—more specifically, for his widow and kid—this alien wasn’t my problem.

  Unfortunately, the looming debt payments were my problem. So when Dyna turned back to look at me after the heated exchange with her partner, I already knew what my position had to be.

  “We need someone on Earth we can trust,” she said. “Ideally someone with your particular abilities.”

  “I already have a job,” I said. “However, I feel terrible about what happened to Kovak, and for his widow’s sake, if nothing else, I would get great satisfaction out of bringing that tentacled freak to justice. And I guess I owe you for saving my life. But still, I’m only helping if you can pay.”

  “How much money do you require?”

  I thought about it. “Twenty large.”

  “How much is a ‘large’?” she asked in an earnest tone.

  I chuckled. “That means twenty thousand dollars. My normal fee, plus a healthy amount of hazard pay.”

  The number didn’t seem to faze her. Her eyes drifted up and she moved her lips, as if doing some math in her head. “I believe we have access to enough Federation credits, but we will need to find a way to convert them to your dollars.”

  I figured that was as much of a promise as I was going to get at the moment. It didn’t seem like a sure thing by any means, but it was a step in the right direction. “Fine. But if I find out at any point that you’re lying to me, we’re done. If I find out you can’t pay me, I’m out. And I’m only agreeing to this one job.”

  Dyna’s considered this for a long moment. Clearly, it wasn’t the outcome she was hoping for; I could relate. Finally, she nodded. “Very well.”

  “Now that that’s settled,” I said, “I’m still hungry. My buddy’s pizza joint is just around the corner. You guys want a slice?”

  Kilos’s ears perked up at the mention of more food. The Peacekeepers followed me across the street. Two blocks later, I turned left onto a side street and approached the familiar red and white awning. A script font spelled out the name of the place: Moretti’s Pizza.

  The glass door was locked, and the shades partially drawn, but I knew Vinny would be in the back counting his earnings for the night and cleaning up.

  I pounded on the window, jingling the bell attached to the door.

  Vinny’s very Italian head poked out of the kitchen, spotted me, and came jogging to the door. He was a tall, thin man with thick, dark hair who liked gold watches and chains and other jewelry. Even now, covered in flour dust from the kitchen, he sported several gaudy rings on his fingers.

  “Eyy, Gunn,” he said in a thick New Yorker’s accent as he opened the door, “What’s up, my man! Good to see…”

  His voice trailed off and his face paled as he noticed my two companions.

  “Uh, uh,” he said. “No way! I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  My friend slammed the door in my face and threw the deadbolt.

  10

  I turned around and stared, deadpan, at Dyna and Kilos.

  “A Pangozil, huh?” Kilos said. “Shame. Pangozils make the best pizza.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It can’t be. I’ve known Vinny for years!”

  “How well do you know him?” Dyna asked.

  Suddenly uncertain, I turned back to the door and laid into it with my fist. A cold dread settled like a lead slug in my gut. “Vinny! It’s me! Come back.”

  Silence.

  “Buddy, come on. You didn’t do anything wrong. We come in peace!” Then I turned to the Peacekeepers and raised my eyebrows, as if to make certain my last statement was true. Dyna nodded, and I went back to pounding on the door.

  Come to think of it, Vinny always had been a paranoid shut-in; it was part of the reason we clicked. I knew for a fact he kept a shotgun under the cash register, strapped to the counter with Velcro quick-release straps. I also knew there were three exits out of the pizza joint, with two deadbolts and a chain on each door, plus a ladder in the back alley that led to the roof. Now, I wondered if his caution had been justified for other reasons.

  Vinny had never seemed anything other than human to me. If the events of this evening hadn’t prepared me to accept the unbelievable, I would have immediately dismissed the idea. He wasn’t some alien—he was Vinny Moretti, New York City transplant and restaurateur! But the events of this evening had opened my eyes far enough that I was no longer willing to lie to myself just because I wanted something to be true.

  And, I realized, alien or not, Vinny was still my friend.

  “Vinny, come on, man! You always make a meat lovers pizza after closing on Fridays. I know you got a few slices left back there.”

  Vinny peered out of the kitchen again. He crept slowly forward, eyeballing me until he reached the door. He frowned through the thick pane of glass. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, I’m tellin’ ya.”

  “We believe you, Pangozil,” Kilos said. “We will believe you more if you give us pizza. Meat lovers sounds good.”

  “Gunn, I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t like it! I just got attacked by an Elekatch!”

  Vinny’s brows drew down in confusion.

  “His name is Elekatch,” Dyna said. “He is Pharsei.”

  The blood drained from Vinny’s face. “Oh, no… The power outages! I should have figured.” He smacked his palm against his forehead. After looking up and down the street, he finally sighed and said, “All right. Just a sec.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen for the third time and returned carrying a pizza box. “Gunn, you can come inside. The other two stay out there. Peacekeeper code of conduct, section three, article sixteen: Peacekeepers cannot enter a Federation-registered being’s place of residence unless that being has violated a law or invites them inside. I’ve done neither of those things.”

  Vinny opened the door a crack, shoved the pizza box into Kilos’s eager ham-fists, then yanked me inside. He shut and bolted the door again before I could argue. Dyna watched me through the glass with narrowed eyes while Kilos shoved the first slice of pizza into his mouth and closed his eyes, chewing contentedly.

  I turned around as Vinny disappeared into the kitchen. He reappeared a moment later bearing a steaming meat lovers pizza and dropped it on the table in the back corner, as far from the door as we could get. The look on his face could have melted diamonds.

  “Not cool!” Vinny said in a low voice. “You think I’d be all right with you bringing Peacekeepers here?”

  “For a s
lice of pizza? Yeah. I thought it would be fine.”

  He threw up his hands in disgust. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.” He picked up a slice and began to stress-eat.

  I shook my head. He looked so human. “You’re right, I don’t. When were you planning to tell me that you were an offworlder? A, what was it, Pangozee?”

  I almost couldn’t believe what I was saying. Peacekeepers. Aliens. It felt like I was swimming around in Marsha Marshall’s brain.

  “Pangozil,” he corrected. “And I wasn’t.”

  I slammed my fist down on the table. “Dammit, why not?” I demanded. “I thought we were friends.”

  “You’re a great customer, Gunn, and over the last few years, you’ve truly become a friend. But you don’t understand what I’ve escaped in coming here. There’s no way in hell I’m risking getting dragged back to the bureaucratic pisshole of the Lodian court system just because of your frickin’ feelings.”

  I unclenched my fist and looked down, somewhat abashed. “That serious, huh?”

  “You’ve got no idea,” he said. “Where I grew up, my family was lucky if we got a full meal twice a week. The surface of my home planet is so filled with radiation you can’t go aboveground without a protective suit. Our apartment was smaller than your office, and seven of us lived there. I had to enlist in the army to get a ticket out of that stinking system.”

  I hadn’t thought about it from his point of view. If there were consequences for his being completely open with me, could I blame him for holding back information that would have gotten him into serious trouble? Vinny was just doing what he had to do to protect himself.

  I sighed. “Okay, fine. I can understand that. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What do you really look like?”

  He nodded his chin toward the door. “Not here.”

  “They dropped their disguises for me,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Dyna and Kilos. Kilos was lifting another slice from the pizza box. Dyna was sitting cross-legged on the ground. She appeared to be meditating.

  “They can do whatever they want. I ain’t a Peacekeeper. I’ve got laws to follow. Laws that they enforce. Here, have a slice,” he said, obviously noticing I hadn’t moved toward the pizza. “Now that you know, things are different. We can actually talk about this stuff. I’ll tell you, it’s been a long time since I met a human who knew about the offworlder colony here on Earth.”

  “Colony? There’s a whole colony?” I took a cheesy slice of pizza and folded it in one hand.

  “They didn’t tell you much, did they?”

  “This went from DWI to murder to freaking alien shit storm in less than twelve hours.” I combed my fingers through my hair and stared down at the slice of pizza in my hand. Sausage, pepperoni, bacon—normally I’d be on my third slice by now. I took a small bite, and then a larger one when my stomach reminded me how good Vinny’s pizza was.

  Vinny exhaled noisily. “Trust me, you don’t wanna get mixed up with those two.”

  “I think it’s too late for that,” I said. “They know my name. They’ve been in my office. They saved my life tonight.”

  Vinny grunted.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Be careful you don’t trust everything that comes out of a Peacekeeper’s mouth.”

  I frowned. That didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy about the deal I’d just made with Dyna. “What do you mean?”

  “Like the police here on Earth, they’ve got their own bosses and their own agendas. Priorities change. If they so much as thought I violated a Federation code, I’d be slapped in energy bracelets and hauled back to Lodi faster than you could say ‘pepperoni.’ That’s why I didn’t let them in here.”

  Vinny grabbed a napkin and wiped down a portion of the table, worrying at a scuff mark that had probably been there for years.

  “Dyna said she wanted to appoint me as a local agent, whatever that means.”

  Vinny grimaced. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, man.”

  “You think I don’t realize that?” I snapped.

  “Sorry,” he said. Vinny leaned forward. “It may be hard to hear, but you need to be reminded. Let me give you some perspective. Why do you think I came to Earth? I’ll tell you. Because, to the Lodian government, Earth is a dusty backwater of a planet hardly worth paying any attention to. The culture is ‘primitive.’ The technology is ‘basic.’ For a person who wants to get out from under the galactic thumb of the Federation, Earth has a specific appeal. Advanced enough to have some modern comforts. Primitive enough to be ignored by most of the inhabited universe.”

  “And these Pharsei, they don’t often come here?”

  Vinny shook his head emphatically. “Stars, no! Almost never. I ain’t surprised a pair of Peacekeepers were sent to retrieve him. Pharsei are short-tempered, violent, and obsessed with control. Knowing one is running around Austin makes me itch to get out of dodge for awhile, just as a precaution.”

  “What else can you tell me about the Pharsei or the Peacekeepers? Or about being an agent? Not that I’m going to go work for the Federation. Even if it paid well, the idea of being someone else’s lackey rubs me the wrong way.”

  “All the credits in this spiral arm of the galaxy wouldn’t be enough to make me take that job, Gunn. Not that I think it’ll actually pay well. It’s a government job, after all.”

  I grunted. “I’m not taking the job, but they did agree to pay me for my help finding this Pharsei. Just the one contract. It’s enough to replace what I lost on Kovak’s bounty, and then some.”

  Vinny chewed on the inside of his mouth and chose his next words carefully. “Here’s the thing. Hypothetically, if you were to take the job, you should know that someone else already owns Austin. And he don’t play nice with others.”

  “If someone else is already doing the job, why the hell do Dyna and Kilos want my help?”

  “Oh, no. The guy I’m talking about is not an official, Federation-appointed agent, and he’s certainly ain’t no Peacekeeper. He’s more like a… hmm, how do I put it in a way you’ll understand… Ah. Let’s just say he has more in common with a mob boss than he does a sheriff. No one crosses him. They’re afraid of the consequences, and I ain’t talking about some Lodian prison.”

  “And the Federation just lets a mob boss be in charge here?”

  Vinny shrugged. “The galaxy’s a big place and, like I said, Earth is a dusty backwater. They don’t exactly approve of this guy, but he keeps things in order.”

  “Just like a good Don. Say, how do you think this guy feels about a Pharsei running loose and wreaking havoc in his orderly city? It’s got to make him look bad.”

  “Oh, I guarantee he don’t like it. But with the Peacekeepers in town, his hands are tied. He’s got to be on his best behavior.”

  The gears of my mind turned, and a crazy idea began to form. “If he’s a mob boss, he’s got to be running some kind of racket. Do you have to pay for protection?”

  Vinny waved a hand. “It’s a small tax. Chump change, really. He makes most of his money by taxing imports and exports.”

  I whistled. “I’ll bet he’s amassed some wealth over the years. And I bet he pays all his taxes, too.”

  Vinny chuckled. “You kiddin’ me? Only core planets have enforceable tax laws.”

  I blinked. “You’re joking.”

  “Not even remotely. He’s cleaning up.”

  My heart began to speed up again as a fresh wave of adrenaline pumped through my veins, banishing any weariness I’d been feeling. This was it. This was my opportunity to nail down the payment. If this guy was local and had the cash, either he could convert Dyna’s credits for me, or he could pay me himself for taking care of the Pharsei—or both.

  “I need you to take me to see him.”

  Vinny gave a heavy sigh and shook his head. “Real bad idea, G
unn. The best course of action is for us both to get out of dodge while the Peacekeepers clean things up. Then life can go back to normal.”

  Normal didn’t seem so appealing to me right now. A mountain of debt that just seemed to get larger and more daunting, an eviction notice looming, and the only paycheck I’d attracted in weeks had been eviscerated by an alien fugitive who ate my stun rounds like candy. If there was even a slim chance I could take this streak of bad luck and turn it in my favor, I had to take the risk.

  “Introduce me to him.”

  Vinny shook his head. “Are you mad? No way.”

  “Vinny, please. I need this.”

  Vinny chewed on this for a second. He glanced in the direction of the Peacekeepers and seemed to decide that he liked me a lot better than them. “He won’t like it if I bring two Peacekeepers onto his turf.”

  I nodded. “Better that way. Those two can stay here and stew on it for awhile. We’ll sneak out the back. What’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

  “He calls himself the Gatekeeper.”

  11

  Retracing the route I took with Dyna and Kilos just a few minutes before, we moved east along Sixth Street, passing the bratwurst vendor whose tiny Jabba the Hut pal waved at Vinny.

  The Peacekeepers weren’t following us, but that didn’t make Vinny any less paranoid. He rubbernecked over his shoulder as we crossed the street, finally coming to a stop in front of the entrance to the Museum of the Weird.

  “You’re joking, right?” I said when I stopped next to him. The building itself was nothing special, just a couple of narrow stories sandwiched between a bar and a restaurant.

  “What did you expect? A Denny’s?”

  “Isn’t the Museum of the Weird a bit… on the nose?”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Any more so than a Texan bounty hunter named Gunn?”

  I laughed. “So, what’s behind door number one?”

  “I still don’t think you want to be on the Gatekeeper’s radar. He’s dangerous, man.”

  “More dangerous than a Pharsei?” I asked.