Dirty Deeds

by Mark Wandrey

  “Don’t like the perfume down here much,” Dandridge said.

  “Me, neither,” Murdock agreed, and keyed his radio mic. “Mika, we’re going in. Keep overwatch.”

  “Roger that,” she replied.

  He bent himself into as comfortable a position as he could manage and started crawling. As he went, he called the others. “How about the rest of you?”

  “Greenstein here,” one reply came. “I’m two blocks from the S&L in a broken-down fish truck. All clear.”

  “Kelso here, I’m hanging out with a group who are salvaging a solar array a block east.” His words were whispered so the others with him couldn’t hear. “All clear.”

  “I’m acting like a bum just down from the bank,” Dod said, sounding as surly as ever. “Fuckin’ boy scouts keep showing up trying to help me across the street, but otherwise clear.”

  “What’s a boy scout?” Mika asked as a series of laughs came over the radio.

  “All right, shut up,” Murdock said, trying to sound serious.

  “Tully here, I’m hiding in an alley a block to the west,” the man said.

  Ripper was back at headquarters, ready to respond if there was a problem. He hadn’t liked the idea, but couldn’t fault the logic. His mobility chair was simply too distinctive to risk being noticed in the operation, and there was no way it would fit in the tunnel. Murdock waited a moment for the last to check in, though he never did. “Yo, Dolan, you asleep? Dolan!”

  “Dolan,” Mika yelled, “wake the fuck up!”

  “I’m out of position,” the reply came, a whisper even quieter than Kelso’s.

  Murdock came to a stop, and he could see Dandridge do the same a short distance ahead. “Do you need assistance?” Murdock asked.

  “Negative,” was the reply, “signing off.”

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Dandridge asked, his voice echoing down the tunnel.

  “I have no idea,” Murdock admitted. He knew Dolan was a professional, so he had to trust the man. He was doing something important enough to keep him away from their current operation, and he wasn’t in immediate danger. “We proceed.”

  They hadn’t gone a hundred meters before Murdock’s hip began to throb. Shortly after his shoulder joined the game, followed by his back. I’m getting too old for this shit, he thought as he did his best to ignore his body’s complaints and keep going. He knew Dandridge, at more than seventy, couldn’t be doing any better. He had the advantage of his ectomorph physique, lean and flexible without heavy musculature; maybe he was having less difficulty.

  Dandridge reached a larger, open area and stopped for a break. Murdock pulled up next to him, flipping around to sit on a pipe with a sigh. Dandridge glanced at him, his goggles shinning from the technological wizardry that allowed them to see in near-total darkness.

  “You ok?”

  “Yeah,” Murdock said, twisting his back and cursing as the twinge went from his back to his shoulder, and then his hip. “Grrr, fuck!”

  “You want me to do this?” Dandridge asked, looking up.

  “No, you skinny fuck. I doubt you could carry my lunch.”

  Dandridge gave a little laugh. “I’m going first.” Murdock started to complain, and he held up a hand. “Just sit your fat ass here while I get through the security upstairs.”

  “Fine,” Murdock growled. Dandridge gave a snort of amusement and began climbing.

  Murdock stayed put and unfolded as much as he could, letting his back stretch out, and his hip stop cramping. While Dandridge was out of sight, he reached into a pocket by memory, pulled out a little container, dropped a pill into his mouth, and swallowed it dry. The fast-acting painkiller/stimulant known as CASPer Candy kicked in instantly.

  “Got it,” Dandridge stage-whispered above, and Murdock got up. His body still pained him, though less so as he climbed.

  Dandridge had used his impressive security skills to make entry through a maintenance access. He was already inside, hanging over the tunnel and offering Murdock a hand up. The exit was thankfully wider than the entrance, and with the help of his friend and CASPer Candy, he made his exit.

  The room they’d emerged into was an office at the back of the savings and loan. All the windows and doors were covered with bars, some hastily installed by the aliens when they’d taken possession of the facility, others dating back to its first use. The aliens had been nice enough to leave sufficient space between the bars that Vince’s wolf pups were able to spy through them and verify the underground entrance was accessible.

  Murdock left their access open, just in case, took off the small backpack he’d been wearing, and set it on the dusty floor next to Dandridge’s. They’d use them to load the credits. “Let’s do this,” he told Dandridge, and pushed the office door open into the lobby. The huge Xiq’tal turned its eyestalks and looked at him, seemingly just as surprised as he was.

  “Well, fuck,” Murdock said and grabbed for his gun.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Six

  “Holy shit!” Dandridge yelled as the massive Xiq’tal used one huge claw to snatch up an old desk weighing at least 100 kilograms and hurl it at them. Both men dodged under the thrown desk, Murdock rolling inside the room and to the left, Dandridge to the right. The desk hit the door where they’d been standing and exploded like a bomb. “What the fuck, it’s four times the size of the others!”

  “King crab,” Murdock said as he rolled painfully to hands and knees and crawled behind the former business’s counter.

  “Filthy mammals!” the Xiq’tal bellowed through the Humans’ translators. “You cannot have my money!” It swung toward Dandridge. The alien had two claws. One was twice the size of the other, and it had a slightly metallic glint in the night vision goggles. The alien angled the claw toward Dandridge.

  “Dive behind something!” Murdock yelled. Dandridge moved, but not fast enough. The king crab snapped the huge claw, the action breaking the speed of sound and creating a directed blast of supersonic boom. The blast caught the old merc’s lower body and flung him like a ragdoll into the rear wall of the S&L. The impact shattered the plaster wall, and he slid to the floor, unmoving.

  Murdock popped up from behind the counter and fired three quick shots. They weren’t carefully aimed, but they didn’t have to be when you were shooting at a king crab. These were the leaders of the Xiq’tal, kind of like a queen bee, only much, much more dangerous. All of them could do the claw trick to one degree or another. The regular trooper types could use them as breaching weapons at close range, or to stun an adversary. The king’s version was more like a bazooka. Swell.

  All three rounds hit, bouncing off the king’s armored carapace with no apparent effect except a slight blemish. He’d seen it before fighting the damned crabs. That sloped armor could shrug off a CASPer’s MAC round if it didn’t hit square. They were tough. Not invincible, he thought. The crab spun and snapped its claw again. Murdock cursed and dropped back down as the sonic shockwave slammed into the counter, partially tearing it from the floor and raining splintered plastic and metal on the merc.

  “Mother fucker,” he quietly snarled, holstering his pistol and crawling as quietly as he could. The king blasted the counter again, and again, until the center literally flew apart like a building in those old nuclear bomb tests. Murdock was already at the other end of the counter and unaffected by the explosion.

  The king ignored Dandridge’s still form and scuttled on its numerous pointy, articulated legs to the blasted counter, mounting the debris, its huge blasting claw held cross body, ready to unleash another attack. Murdock could see its eyestalks moving back and forth, searching for him in the wreckage. The smaller claw, still the size of a compact refrigerator, swept out in a sideways raking blow, sending broken material flying in a wide arc.

  Murdock took the chance. As the debris crashed around the room and the king dug for its prey, he rose to his feet, took several steps, and leaped on the crab’s back.

  “O
h, game on!” Murdock yelled as the king crab bucked back away from the shattered counter, spinning and leaping as it tried to dislodge him from its back. His right hand screamed where he’d lost his finger, and he dearly wished he’d put gloves on before hatching the hairbrained scheme of riding a king crab like a bucking bronco, but you played the hand as it was dealt.

  The eyestalks both pivoted and found him on the shell. Murdock grabbed them like convenient handholds and held on for dear life, his legs scrambling for a hold as the crab thrashed. Now blind, it screamed in rage and panic. Murdock wrenched the one in his right hand as hard as he could, and it gave a loud crack! as it separated just above the shell.

  Bingo, Murdock thought. The crab reared back and lurched into the S&L’s side wall with a thunderous crash. The impact dislodged Murdock, throwing him back into the wall hard enough to make fireworks appear in his vision. He fell forward and landed right back where he’d started.

  “Oomph!” he grunted as he crashed down on the crab’s back. It was confused and in incredible pain from having an eyestalk snapped off. Instead of wheeling around wildly, it just kind of shuffled a bit, and it was just the opening Murdock needed. He drew his HP-4, flipped the selector to auto, jammed the muzzle against the broken eyestalk, and jerked the trigger.

  The HP-4 roared as a stream of 13mm armor-piercing rounds punched into the seam in the Xiq’tal’s carapace, and through it. Designed to penetrate body armor then turn frangible, the rounds exploded inside the alien’s body.

  It gave a huge spasming leap, throwing Murdock off, before colliding with a pile of bags and boxes, then slumping to the debris-strewn floor.

  Murdock moaned audibly as he rolled over. His night vision goggles were knocked askew, so he pulled them back into place. They revealed the Xiq’tal king crab, legs flailing to the side, claws jerking back and forth, fluid spewing rhythmically from the hole Murdock had blown in its head. After a time, the spurting slowed, then stopped.

  “Ohhh, fuck,” Dandridge groaned from over by the wall.

  Murdock rolled onto his ass, swapped out mags in his HP-4, then holstered it. On the other side of the room Dandridge fought to his feet, slipping as he did. The man looked down to see he was standing in gallons of Xiq’tal goo.

  “You’re doing my laundry,” Dandridge said.

  In the night vision Murdock could see the other man was marinated in crab fluids. “Fine,” Murdock said, flexing his limbs and back to see if anything was broken. “I probably have shit in my drawers after that to mix in with them.”

  “Dead?” Dandridge walked over, then kicked one of the huge claws.

  “Yeah,” Murdock said, “put a couple in the head. We learned where to shoot them when we had to fight the fuckers underwater. Lasers attenuated in just a few meters, so you needed to get close.” He gestured to the huge metallic claw. “You think their claw blast thing is bad in the air, it was real bad underwater.”

  “I can imagine,” Dandridge said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dod said over the radio, “what are you two doing in there, having a gang bang?”

  “We had a crab in here,” Murdock said.

  “You need backup?” Tully asked. “We can be there in a few seconds.”

  “Negative,” Dandridge said, “Murdock capped it.” He went into the back room and retrieved the backpacks before bringing them to Murdock. “We better get this stuff packed up before another crab shows up.”

  “This was the head crab,” Murdock said, picking up the broken eyestalk he’d dropped in the fight. “He was probably sitting on the money because he didn’t trust the HecSha. He might have called for backup, but I doubt it.” He was examining the alien’s head region. “No sign of a pinplant.”

  “All the more reason to didi mao,” the other man said, and started grabbing bags to stuff into their backpacks.

  Murdock took the other and started filling it as well. Most of the bags were full of small hard objects, obviously credit chits. Others were different. There was no time to exercise his curiosity. He stuffed all the obvious credit-filled bags into his backpack. When all of those were split between him and Dandridge, they still had some room, so he added two more bags of the unknown stuff, then cinched the backpacks closed.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, and the pair headed for the rear exit.

  As they worked their way back into the underground tunnels, Murdock called for their team to prepare to pull back. He didn’t care about the tight quarters and lit a cigar from a waterproof case.

  “Good lord,” Dandridge complained behind him.

  “Next time take point,” Murdock shot back and puffed away as he crawled. They’d killed the commander of the Xiq’tal. Let’s hope we didn’t just tip our hand, he thought.

  * * *

  Chosht waited outside in the early morning as a team of their technical experts went over the crime scene. He looked up at the morning sky, pleased to see a hint of the planet’s reddish sun. While still cold, it wasn’t too bad a day. He might have enjoyed it, if not for what they’d found. Commander Khisht came out, shaking his huge head in disgust.

  “It’s the king crab,” Khisht said.

  “That’s not good,” Chosht replied.

  “You think so?” Khisht spat with as much sarcasm in his voice as he could manage.

  “What will the rest of the Xiq’tal do?” Chosht asked.

  “I don’t know,” Khisht admitted. “They are caste based, bred to follow their leader.” He gestured back into the shop. The smell of spoiled shellfish was intolerable. Chosht moved a little further away. “Who knows what goes through the minds of those creatures?”

  “I would estimate a 13mm projectile went through its mind,” Chosht offered. Khisht glared at him for a moment, then let out a snorting laugh. The two techs came out a minute later, pulling up their breathing masks and inhaling deeply of the relatively pure air. Both were female HecSha; technical duties such as this were more in their nature.

  “What is your conclusion?” the commander asked.

  “We think it was a robbery,” one of the females said. “There is an old entrance to the subsurface engineering passages in the back of this bank.”

  “Why wasn’t that determined before we used it?” Khisht asked.

  The second technician shrugged. “It was,” she admitted, “but we didn’t consider the smallish Human physiology. They can fit through much smaller spaces than we females can.”

  “An understandable oversight,” Khisht admitted, to which both females bowed their heads in acceptance. “We don’t have a lot of direct experience with human colonies beyond some commerce or spying. What did they take? Show me the inventory.” The tech handed him a data chip.

  Chosht looked over his commander’s shoulder as the inventory was reviewed on a slate. He made a face as he saw how thorough the entropy-cursed Humans had been. A group of Human laborers arrived with a cart to dispose of the body, a task Chosht was glad he was not part of.

  “The credits are bad enough,” Khisht said and pointed at the inventory, “but this is extremely unfortunate.”

  “I agree,” Chosht said, watching the Humans unloading cleaning equipment. “How do we know these Humans weren’t part of the murder?”

  “We don’t,” Khisht said. “We need to recover what was stolen.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “This was a planned action,” Khisht said, “all the evidence points to this. This means the plotters are out there.”

  “The Humans must have been small, as the females said,” Chosht said, “does that not suggest the hatchlings?”

  “Perhaps,” Khisht said, “though not definitive. I’ve put you in charge of the cooperative Humans.” Chosht nodded. “I want you to squeeze them. See what you can find out.” The commander watched the Humans pause as they went into the building, obviously offended by the rotting Xiq’tal as well. “Maybe we can get lucky.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Seven

  T
he hideout was filled with the sounds of applause as Murdock and Dandridge came in and the double doors were closed. Both men were beat to shit, and still they smiled and held up their hands in victory. Murdock blew a big cloud of smoke and tried a somewhat successful smoke ring, and everyone hooted.

  “Okay, settle down,” Murdock finally said. “Dolan, check Dandridge.” The other man had a big bloody lump on the side of his head. The sounds of celebration fell off as everyone began to notice how messed up the two were. Then the smell hit them.

  “Holy shit,” Ripper said, holding his nose. “Smells like you guys fell in a bucket of fish guts.”

  “What happened in there?” Greenstein asked.

  While Dolan used the medkit to go over the two men, Murdock and Dandridge recounted the story of their surprise encounter with the Xiq’tal king crab. Dandridge for his part until he was knocked out, and Murdock from there.

  “No shit,” Dod said. “I ran into one of them on Karma once.” He spat on the floor. “It was the size of a small car and moving along with a dozen of the regular-sized ones.”

  “And you guys killed it?” Tully asked. Dandridge pointed at Murdock.

  “No, I was out cold. This crazy fucker ripped one of the crab’s eyestalks off and pumped a magazine into its brain.”

  “Didn’t know they had brains,” Mika quipped.

  “The thing pumped liquid crab goo all over the place while it was dying,” Murdock said, and indicated their clothes. Dolan gave him a once over before continuing on Dandridge, who he said probably had a mild concussion, then gave the old merc a shot of their meager supply of nanite therapy.

  “You gonna tell me what happened to you during the operation?” Murdock asked Dolan as the other man observed the nano therapy process. Greenstein was better at medical stuff, but the slate did all the hard work.