Space Crime Conspiracy

by Gareth P. Jones

  ‘Thank you,’ said Stanley.

  ‘The name’s Hal Shorn, and you might want to hold on to your thanks,’ said the boy.

  Before Stanley could ask what he meant by this, Hal pulled from his belt a set of metal handcuffs with a long chain linking them. He slapped them over Stanley’s wrists.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Hal spun round and, using the chain, forced Stanley on to his back. ‘Hold on tight and don’t throw up on me,’ he said.

  He stretched out his right arm with his open palm facing upwards, then brought his other hand down on to it, making a loud clap. Stanley heard a tearing sound and a black hole appeared in front of them as though the clap had torn a hole in the air itself. However, the sound of the clap had attracted the attention of the guard below, who sounded the alarm. Stanley heard Grogun’s voice shout, ‘Who’s up there? We have the place surrounded. Give yourselves up.’

  While Stanley was considering whether, given the circumstances, giving himself up might not be the better option, Hal stepped into the black hole.

  From the sensation that his eyeballs were being chewed by a toothless cow while his face was being turned inside out, Stanley knew that he was entering cutspace. The rolling hills of Therapia had gone. In their place were swirling patterns. Without the protection of a spaceship, the nausea of cutspace was even worse, and Stanley felt like he would have been sick had he been able to locate his stomach. And then Hal clapped his hands again and a dazzling white light appeared. Stanley shut his eyes to protect them.

  He felt solid ground form beneath his feet and collapsed on to it. Laughter filled his ears. He opened his eyes to see hundreds of parrot-headed creatures looming down on him, their beaks clacking in mocking, victorious laughter.

  ‘Move out of the way, you filthy scabs,’ said a throaty voice. ‘Let me see our bounty.’

  The picaroons squawked approvingly and moved back, allowing someone to step into view, someone who wore a black bandanna and had a crack down the side of his orange beak. It was Captain Flaid. ‘Well done, Hal, lad. Well done, indeed.’

  Hal handed him the chain that held Stanley’s wrists.

  ‘And greetings to you, Stanley Bound. Welcome on board the Black Horizon.’ Captain Flaid yanked the chain so that Stanley’s face smacked against the floor.

  .

  PART THREE

  DI Lockett stands on the other side of the two-way mirror, looking in on Stanley. She has given him another break, but she wonders whether she needed it more than he did. She knows that breaks give him time to work on the incredible story he is telling, but she doesn’t get any sense that he is making any of it up. She has interviewed more liars than she cares to remember in that little room so she knows the signs to look for, but during the telling Stanley never once looked up at the ceiling or down at the floor to get his story straight in his head. She knows that PC Ryan is right and that he is most likely a very disturbed boy who has dreamt up this story to hide the reality of whatever happened to him during his time away, but the nagging feeling that he is telling the truth will not leave her. Something in his voice when he described how he regretted having lied to Jupp makes her think that here is a boy whose life is so damaged by lies that he values honesty above all else. Then there is the earring and the strange military jacket he is wearing.

  ‘Are you OK, ma’am?’

  PC Ryan’s question snaps DI Lockett out of her thoughts and she realises that she is resting her forehead against the glass. She stands up straight and turns round to find that PC Ryan has with him a grey-haired man with thick-rimmed spectacles and a rodent-like face. He is wearing a plain grey suit and carrying a briefcase.

  ‘This is Dr McGowan. He’s the child psychologist I was telling you about,’ says PC Ryan.

  DI Lockett shakes Dr McGowan’s hand. He has a weak handshake.

  ‘PC Ryan has briefed me on the situation,’ he says. ‘I read about the boy’s disappearance in the papers, of course. It sounds like a most interesting case. I understand he has an extremely vivid imagination.’

  ‘Yes, it’s certainly an engaging story,’ says DI Lockett.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if I were to speak to him alone. An environment such as this can be extremely intimidating for a child.’

  ‘No,’ says DI Lockett forcefully. ‘What I mean to say is that I’d like to hear the rest of the story myself before we ask you for a professional opinion.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Dr McGowan.

  ‘You can sit in on the rest of the telling, if you like.’

  ‘That would be most useful, yes.’

  ‘Would you like to know what’s happened so far?’

  ‘No, I’m sure I’ll be able to fill in the blanks. After all, filling in the blanks is my job.’

  ‘OK, come in with me then. I’ll introduce you, but can I ask you not to interrupt the story? I believe it is doing him good to tell it.’

  PC Ryan holds open the door and all three enter the room to hear the next part of Stanley’s story.

  .

  30

  ‘If I were to go worrying myself about rights and wrongs, you think I’d be in the marauding business?’

  ‘Let’s flay him.’

  ‘Let’s fry him.’

  ‘Let’s pull out his eyes and use them as marbles.’

  The picaroons jeered at Stanley and prodded him with the ends of their agonisers. It felt like a nightmare. Only worse.

  ‘If any of you lay a feather on him, you’ll have me to answer to, you squalid squawkers,’ snarled Captain Flaid. He waved his own agoniser in the others’ faces and they recoiled.

  ‘Who are you to say what we does or don’t does?’ said a red-feathered picaroon who Stanley recognised from Dram’s ship.

  ‘I am the captain of this here vessel, that’s who. And while that remains the case, Mr Conur, you nefarious no-goods will do what I says.’

  Many of the picaroons cheered at this and clacked their beaks approvingly. But a significant number, Stanley noticed, the red-feathered bird included, remained quiet.

  ‘Why have you brought me here? What do you want with me?’ asked Stanley.

  ‘Why?’ said Captain Flaid. ‘I thought that would be obvious. Your price has gone up. You’ve got as much riding on your head as I have now. After all, you is the master criminal who killed the president.’ He ended this speech with a mock bow.

  ‘I’m not. I didn’t. I’m innocent,’ protested Stanley.

  ‘Now, what you’ve done there is gone and mistook me for someone who cares.’

  The picaroons laughed.

  ‘If I were to go worrying myself about rights and wrongs, you think I’d be in the marauding business? No. You sees, marauding isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s about loot. And right now you is worth a rather lot of loot. Now, Hal lad, take the little one with you and keeps an eye on him.’

  ‘Why’s Hal get to look after him?’ said Conur, the red-feathered picaroon.

  ‘Because he’s the only one I trust. I certainly trust him more than you, Mr Conur.’

  The red picaroon snarled threateningly at Captain Flaid, but Flaid held his ground and eventually Conur backed down.

  ‘Now go about your business. That goes for all of you,’ yelled Captain Flaid. ‘Fire up the cutspace drive, check the weapons. We’re going to the Z1 sector. And, Hal, don’t let this one out of your sight. I don’t want him escaping and I don’t want any of them pics touching him, neither. There’s a whiff of mutiny amongst these old space birds and I don’t want to give them any encouragement.’

  ‘Yes, Captain,’ said Hal.

  ‘Good lad.’

  ‘Come on.’ Hal grabbed Stanley’s shoulder and led him off the bridge, holding his volt-dagger at arm’s length and waving it threateningly at anyone who got too close.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ asked Stanley.

  ‘To the kitchen,’ replied Hal.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Becaus
e I’m Flaid’s cook and it’s dinner time, that’s why.’

  ‘But if the captain trusts you more than any of the others, why are you working in the kitchen? Shouldn’t you be first mate or something?’

  ‘Conur is first mate.’

  ‘But he doesn’t seem to trust him at all.’

  ‘The captain believes in keeping the ones he least trusts nearest to him so he can keep an eye on them. The ship is full of pics ready to take his place, and by day the captain can fight and win against any of them. At night he sleeps behind a locked door with a knife under his pillow so they can’t get him, but he can’t fight poisoned food, can he? So he needs someone he trusts in the kitchen.’

  ‘But why does he trust you?’

  ‘Because I owe Captain Flaid my life. Now, get in here and quit asking questions.’

  Hal shoved Stanley into the kitchen.

  .

  31

  ‘That’s when I saw the hole. It was like a black dot floating in front of me, but somehow I knew exactly what to do’

  At home, in the poky flat above the grotty pub in south London, Stanley’s kitchen could get pretty dirty at times, with piles of washing-up in the sink and overflowing bins. But that was nothing compared with the kitchen of the Black Horizon.

  There were thick layers of grime and filth. If there were bins under the mounds of rubbish, they had long since been lost. The crockery and cutlery were a revolting browny green colour. In the corner of the room was a TV screen so grimy that the newsreader on it was barely visible. But the most disgusting thing about the kitchen was the infestation of creatures that looked like a cross between a cockroach and a rat, but were the size of a medium-sized cat. As Stanley and Hal entered the room the creatures stopped nibbling at leftovers long enough to assess that they were no real threat, before carrying on eating.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Stanley.

  ‘Rottlebloods,’ said Hal, pushing one out of the way and grabbing a steel pot.

  ‘They’re disgusting.’

  ‘There are worse things.’ Hal filled the pan with water and placed it on a counter, crushing one of the rottlebloods as he did so. It made a crunching noise as it died. The others moved away from Hal, but made no effort to hide. ‘I try to keep the population down, but they’re harmless and they serve their purpose.’

  ‘What purpose?’

  ‘They eat all the leftovers, which means there’s never enough food to tempt something really big in here.’ Using his knife, Hal skilfully flipped another rottleblood up into the pot of water, which was now boiling. It screamed as it hit the water and tried to get out, but Hal slammed a lid on and it sank into the water.

  ‘You’re going to eat it?’ said Stanley, revolted.

  ‘There’s not a lot of meat on them, but they add a bit of texture.’

  Stanley found a stool and sat down to watch as Hal pulled ingredients from sealed jars and threw them into the pot. Stanley could feel Spore moving around in his pocket, obviously excited by the smell of the food, but when Hal chucked in a handful of mushrooms, Spore suddenly went very still.

  Perhaps it was because Hal was more interested in cooking than in intimidating Stanley that he started to feel more at ease.

  ‘I’ve got a question,’ said Stanley. ‘We came through cutspace to get here, I know, but I thought you had to have a spaceship to do that.’

  ‘Most people do.’

  ‘Why not you then?’

  ‘Because I’m a stepper, ain’t I?’

  ‘A stepper? Is that the planet you’re from?’

  Hal was slicing a vegetable that looked like an enormous marrow. ‘For a master criminal you don’t know much, do you? Stepping’s an ability.’

  ‘How’s it work?’

  Hal shrugged. ‘I let the scientists worry about the physics of it. I just do it.’

  ‘But you must know how you do it.’

  ‘How does anyone do anything? How do singers sing? How do dancers dance? They don’t know how. They just do it. All I know about stepping is I see a hole, clap to make it big enough, then step through it.’

  ‘Have you always been able to do it?’

  ‘No. I made my first step a couple of years ago.’ Hal put down the knife and turned to Stanley. ‘We had boarded a merchant ship and were looting and pillaging when a private security force burst out on us. They’re our biggest problem these days. The AIP officers don’t bother us so much, and everyone else knows better than to fight back, but these private armies don’t take any prisoners. So I was down in the cargo hold with a couple of other pics when we heard the captain give the order to get back to the ship. But we were trapped, see?’

  ‘Flaid left you behind?’

  ‘That’s how marauding is,’ said Hal. ‘You work together because there’s strength in numbers, but when things go wrong you’re on your own.’

  ‘But you must have been angry,’ said Stanley.

  ‘Maybe I was. Maybe I thought I was different. Maybe the knowledge that it was going to be him that killed me made my blood boil. Whatever I felt, that’s when I saw the hole. It was like a black dot floating in front of me, but somehow I knew exactly what to do. I clapped and stepped and the next thing I knew I was stepping back on board the Black Horizon, watching the merchant ship get blown up.’

  ‘What happened to the other two pics you were with?’

  ‘They went down with the rest of the ship, I suppose. Anyway, since then I see holes everywhere I go.’

  ‘But if you can go anywhere, why do you stay here?’ Stanley couldn’t see why anyone would choose to stay more than five seconds on this ship.

  ‘Because this is my home.’

  ‘But you can’t like it here.’

  There was a pause before Hal replied. ‘Most people don’t trust steppers, but on the Black Horizon no one trusts anyone, so I’m the same as everyone else.’

  ‘Why don’t people trust steppers?’

  ‘Because we can go anywhere in the universe. You can’t lock us up. We make the best criminals. We can step in and out of banks without trouble. That’s why steppers have to be registered by the Armorian government and why lots of us are employed as spies. The ones who ain’t belong to a secret society and spend their time hiding their ability. But I’m not on any register, I ain’t no spy and I ain’t a member of no society. When you’re a marauder you don’t have to follow anyone else’s rules but your own. You can do what you want.’

  ‘And that includes cooking the captain’s dinner? I tell you, if I could go anywhere in the universe with a clap and a step I certainly wouldn’t be cooking someone else’s food in a kitchen filled with horrible creatures on a ship of vicious bird-headed pirates, but maybe that’s just me.’

  Hal smiled. ‘You know, I’m getting to like you, Stanley Bound. Which is a pity, because there’s a good chance that one of those pics is going to kill you when we try to get to the captain’s cabin to take him his grub.’

  .

  32

  ‘Good. There’s a fight on’

  ‘Can’t you leave me here?’ asked Stanley, who wanted to have no more encounters with the picaroons than was absolutely necessary.

  ‘You heard what the captain said. I’m to keep my eye on you. Now, hold this.’ Hal handed Stanley a large cylindrical container with the broth inside. ‘Mind you, don’t let anyone near it. The captain is your best chance of getting off this ship alive. The rest of these scoundrels will kill you just for the fun of it.’

  They made their way along the corridor. It was dark, dirty and alive with humming, clunking and rattling as if the ship was going to fall apart.

  Hal stopped in front of a door. ‘The captain’s cabin is through the crew’s sleeping quarters. It can get pretty nasty in there so keep your head down, walk quickly and do what I say. Got it?’

  ‘Got it.’

  The door slid open to reveal a large hall with rows of metal bunk beds. In the middle, hundreds of picaroons were gathered around an elevat
ed area cordoned off with rope like a boxing ring. Their excited shouts and cheers echoed around the hall.

  ‘Good. There’s a fight on. That should keep them distracted,’ said Hal.

  Inside the ring were two particularly big, vicious-looking picaroons, one with purple feathers, the other with green. Both were stripped down to the waist and they were fighting each other with bare fists and snapping beaks. With their tops off Stanley could see that feathers covered their bodies, although they had worn thin in places.

  ‘Stay low and keep moving.’ Hal led Stanley along the far wall, behind a line of bunk beds. Stanley kept an eye on the fight as he crossed the room. The purple picaroon had the green one pinned against the ropes. Green kicked back, sending Purple soaring over the ropes into the crowd. Green looked down and saw a bare patch of raw pink skin on his chest where Purple had torn out a fistful of feathers. Angered by this, he let out a blood-curdling scream and flew at Purple, who had climbed back into the ring. The crowd roared in excitement and waved their fists in the air.

  Stanley and Hal were halfway across the hall, but Stanley was finding it difficult to take his eyes off the spectacle. With the crowd jumping up and down he lost sight of what happened next, until the green picaroon emerged with his hand raised in the air, in a gesture of victory. Inky black blood dripped from his hands and beak.