“Fair point, well made,” Artur conceded. “And I won’t insult our friendship by offering you rent money for it.”
“That is very big of you,” Dan said.
“That’s me all over, Deadman. Small of stature, big of heart,” Artur said. He grinned at Ollie and waggled his bushy green eyebrows. “That’s not the only thing that’s big about me, either.”
Ollie stopped sewing. She smiled and frowned at the same time. “Oh? What else?”
“Well sure, I’ve got a great big—”
“Ego,” Dan said, cutting him off. He flexed the fingers of his new arm and looked back over his shoulder at Ollie. “We done?”
Ollie looked worried, then proud, then concerned, then happy as she sized up her work. “Yes! We’re done. You’re all set.”
Dan got up from the chair and rolled his shoulders. The wound in his back and stomach where the Malwhere thing’s tail had skewered him was now sewn shut. It wasn’t neat, but it did the job. Shame the shirt couldn’t be repaired to easily. Even if the ragged edges could be stitched back together, the stains his black blood had left were never going to come out.
Straightening, Dan faced Artur. “How do I look?”
There was a rrrrip as the stitches tore loose, and the arm clunked onto the carpet.
“Mostly armless,” Artur replied, looking quite pleased with himself. He turned to Ollie. “Ye might want to go a little deeper next time, peaches.”
Dan sighed as he lowered himself onto the chair again, and braced his chest against the table. “And use the bigger needle,” he suggested.
“Bigger needle. Right,” said Ollie, picking up the arm. And then, she set to work.
* * *
After an hour or so of Ollie going a little deeper with the bigger needle, Dan stood up again. This time, his arm didn’t immediately fall off, which was a good sign. The angle wasn’t quite right – it turned slightly outwards, which would take some getting used to – but otherwise it was a pretty decent job.
“OK. Good,” Dan said, pulling on a fresh shirt. He fumbled with the buttons. New fingers were always a challenge to begin with, but he shooed Ollie away when she tried to help.
“What do ye say, Deadman?” Artur asked, peering expectantly at Dan over the tip of his drinking straw.
“I said, ‘OK. Good.’”
“I wasn’t asking what did ye say, I was asking what do ye say?”
Dan frowned. “What do I say when?”
“Now, ye big auld ballsack,” Artur said. “What should ye say now? Ye know, to the fine figure of a woman who just stitched ye back together like a ragdoll?”
Ollie blushed a little. “Oh! No, it’s fine. Pffft. No. It’s totally fine. My pleasure.”
Dan ground his jaws together. “No. No, he’s right.” The words rolled around in his mouth for a few seconds, as if struggling to break free. “Thank you.”
“Good. Well done. Manners cost nothing,” said Artur. There was a burbling sound as he drained the very last dregs from the bottle. Despite the volume of alcohol he had consumed in such a relatively short space of time, he seemed largely unaffected. “Now, ask me what my idea is.”
Dan looked up from where he was wrestling with the final button of his shirt. “What idea?”
Artur threw up his hands. “I haven’t feckin’ told ye yet, that’s why I’m saying to ask me what it is.”
Dan muttered something below his breath. It didn’t sound particularly complimentary. “Fine. What’s your idea?”
“Right. Brace yourself. I have a solution to our money worries that is going to blow yer arse off,” Artur announced. “Ye ready?”
“Just tell me what it is.”
“Death Derby,” said Artur. He crossed his arms and leaned back, grinning proudly. “Huh? What did I tell ye? Genius or what?”
“I’m not entering a Death Derby,” Dan said, returning to his button.
“Ye don’t have to. That’s the point. Ye already did.”
Dan managed to push the button through its hole before turning his attention back to Artur. “What?”
“Ye told me all about it. How ye went and splattered that biker guy’s brains all over the ground the other night, then were set about by his brother.”
Dan shrugged. “So?”
“So, I happen to know a thing or two about a thing or two. And one of those two things I know is that if ye killed what’s-his-name during the derby like ye said ye did, then ye should have a great big whack of prize money sitting there with our name on it.”
“Why would our name be on it?” Dan asked.
“Well, ye know what I mean. Sure, I’d only take a small finder’s fee. Let’s say ten per cent.”
“Ten per cent?” Dan snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, that’s very generous of ye, Deadman. Fifteen, then. I appreciate that, I sincerely do,” Artur said, tapping his forehead in a tiny salute.
Dan folded his arms, which was a little awkward with the slight turn in the left one, and leaned back against the table. “I did beat him. The announcer guy did say I was a volunteer. You could be onto something.”
“So… what happened?” Ollie asked. “What are we talking about?”
“Yer man there got involved in a… well, let’s call it a gameshow. And he won, which means he’s entitled to the prize money.”
“Oh. Well done,” said Ollie. “How much is the prize money?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really pay attention,” Dan admitted.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Artur said. “Let’s get out there, find the organizers, and get what’s rightfully ours.”
“There won’t be another derby for weeks,” Dan pointed out.
“So, ye’re a detective, ain’t ye?” Artur said. “That’s what it says on the door, anyway. Get out there and feckin’ detect.”
Ollie yawned. “Can it wait until morning?”
“No, it cannot,” Artur said. “Anyway, it’s best if ye just stay here, peaches. This could get ugly.”
“You can both stay here,” said Dan, removing Mindy from a charging dock and sliding the weapon back into its holster. “I’ll go ask around.”
“What? Me bollocks!” Artur protested. “I should be out there with ye, noising folks up until they spill the beans or what have ye.”
“You’ve done enough for one night,” Dan said. “Stay here. Keep an eye on her. Shornack’s collectors could still come back. I don’t want her here alone.”
“She’s a feckin’ demon – no offence, peaches.”
“That’s OK. I mean I’m not exactly a… But that’s OK.”
“She can handle herself just fine.”
Dan pulled his coat on over the holster, then reached for his hat. He squashed it between his hands, trying to bend it into some semblance of its original shape. “Stay here. Both of you. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Artur belched so loudly some of the paperwork beside him on the filing cabinet fell off and fluttered to the floor. “And that,” he announced, “is what I think of that.”
* * *
When it came to what you might call ‘detective skills’, Dan hadn’t been particularly blessed. Like Artur had said, the sign on his door said ‘Deadman Investigations’ but the actual investigating part had never really been his strong point.
Sure, he’d heard about DNA profiling, he was aware of the concept of fingerprints and he actually had a bit of a knack for figuring out how long a body had been dead for. He relied on none of those things to get the job done, though. He favored a more… direct approach.
By the time he’d finished in the third bar, his new knuckles had been well and truly worn in. It had taken almost forty minutes to beat the information out of one of the local scumbags, but he’d finally been given an address.
Dan stood outside a run-down hotel in one of Down Here’s less glamorous sectors. Considering how unglamorous the rest of them were, this was really saying someth
ing. He hadn’t seen a Tribunal car in ten blocks, and for the first time in as far back as he could remember, he was genuinely concerned that someone might try to steal the Exodus when he wasn’t looking.
Still, good luck to them. He left the doors unlocked, just in case.
The hotel was mostly in darkness, aside from a couple of lights shining in windows up on the top floor. A sign above the door read No Questions Asked but Dan wasn’t sure if that was the name of the place or its motto.
Shapes watched him from the shadows of the doorway across the street. Foreboding prickled at his dead skin in a way that nothing else did these days. There was a reason the Tribunal avoided areas like these. Coming here was an elaborate form of suicide.
But then, death wasn’t high on his list of concerns.
From back a way along the street he heard a scream and a flurry of blaster fire. Both stopped very quickly, cut short by the triumphant squeal of something monstrous. Monstrous and… familiar, maybe?
He shook his head. It was a big city. No way whatever had come out of the Malwhere would be somewhere near here. The odds were… Well, it’s was highly fonking unlikely, put it that way.
The front door was locked and reinforced. Back one, too. If the hotel was still in business, it sure had a funny way of showing it.
As Dan made his way back around the front, something moved in the dim blue light overhead. A sphere floated down until it hung in the air around ten feet above him. A silver logo on the front revealed it to be a Loudmouth speaker system. Dan pushed back his hat and listened as a man’s voice crackled out.
“You are trespassing on private property,” it announced. “Leave immediately.”
“I ain’t trespassing on shizz. At least, not yet,” Dan replied. “This the Death Derby place? You guys owe me money.”
There was a moment of silence, as if the person on the other end was considering the question.
“This is a one-way communication system,” the voice declared. “Any response from you will not be heard. You are trespassing on private property. Leave immediately or we will take steps to protect ourselves.”
“Good luck with that,” Dan said. He drew his gun. “Mindy. Explosive rounds.”
With a squeeze of the trigger, the door erupted in a ball of fire. The flames flickered for a few seconds, before evaporating into the air. Besides a scorch mark on its surface, the door appeared to be largely unaffected.
“Damn it,” Dan muttered.
“You’re wasting your time,” said the voice on the Loudmouth. “Leave immediately, or we will be forced to—”
The wall beside the door, it turned out, wasn’t as sturdy. It erupted inwards, spraying glowing shards of stone and clouds of dust into the hotel lobby.
Dan swung Mindy up towards the Loudmouth. “Have my money ready,” he said, then he squeezed off another round and the speaker system went the way of the wall.
The hotel lobby was in darkness, but Dan’s night vision had improved dramatically since his death and reanimation. He could make out a mish-mash of old furniture, a scattering of alcohol bottles, and a carpet that hadn’t just seen better days, but better lifetimes. It was polka-dotted with crimson stains, each one suggesting something large had lost a lot of blood on those spots.
There was an elevator and a staircase side by side in the far corner. Dan pressed the ‘call’ button, then tucked himself in against the wall beside the elevator door.
“Mind. Stun shot.”
The elevator clanked down to the first floor. There was a ping as the doors opened, then a spray of blaster fire and some panicky shouting erupted from within. Dan allowed himself a grim smile. Amateurs. Excellent.
Once the gunfire had stopped, he swung around the door frame, fired three shots, and watched as the occupants of the elevator car all slumped to the floor.
Moving quickly, he dragged two of the three men outside and left them in the lobby, then used the third to wedge the elevator doors open.
That done, he ran heavily up the first few steps of the staircase, the old wood creaking under his feet. From somewhere in the darkness above he heard whispering and the clicking of safety catches being removed.
Side-stepping to the edge of the steps, he retreated silently back down to the bottom, stepped into the elevator, and pulled the unconscious gunman in with him. He heaved the man – a stocky, hirsute gentleman with an impressive horn sprouting from the bridge of his nose – into what passed for a standing position, and thumbed the button for the top floor. Then he thumbed the button for the floor below it.
Shuffling in against the side wall, he held Horn-Nose upright beside him, so he was the first thing anyone would see when the door opened. In an ideal world, the door wouldn’t open until he was near the top, but all it would take was someone pressing the call button on one of the other floors to mess things up.
With any luck, at least half of whoever was up there would be watching the stairs. As he had no idea how many people were up there, though, Dan couldn’t afford to get sloppy. He could take body shots all day long, but one blast to the head, and even he wouldn’t be getting back up again.
He tapped Mindy against the side of his leg and hummed quietly as he watched the numbers above the door creep up. Fourth floor. Fifth. Sixth. Going well, so far.
Just after it had passed the seventh floor, the elevator slowed. Dan stopped humming, and pressed himself tighter against the wall. He raised Mindy and took aim at the wall beside the elevator door, roughly at head height.
The elevator jerked to a stop. There was a long pregnant pause before the doors started to open. They’d barely made it twelve inches when a blaster bolt plastered Horn-Nose’s intestines onto the back wall. Several other shots tore through him almost immediately, peppering him with scorched-yet-gloopy holes.
Four shooters, Dan estimated, as the crescendo of gunfire sputtered out. He stepped sideways into view and snapped off four shots before the off-guard gunmen could raise their weapons again. The stun shots tightened their muscles, and Dan saw a brief flash of agony on the face of one of the men as he bit through his own needlessly long tongue, before all four of them sunk to the floor, unconscious.
Shoving the remains of Horn-Nose out into the hall, Dan grabbed himself another stand-in – although not the tongue guy, because he was bleeding everywhere – and resumed the position. The elevator door closed again, and the car swept upwards towards the top floor.
It continued uninterrupted this time until it reached the floor one from the top. Dan propped his replacement patsy against the back wall, the man’s rigid leg muscles making it relatively easy to stand him up.
Once done, he stepped out of the elevator into a short, dimly-lit corridor, and waited for the doors to close.
“Mindy,” he said, bringing the gun close to his mouth and whispering. “Explosive rounds.”
The gun’s cylinder spun as the elevator closed its doors and rose towards the top floor. Dan glanced up and down the stairwell and saw no-one in either direction. There were voices somewhere further down, high and panicky. Amateurs jumping at their own shadow, no doubt.
He heard the elevator reach the top floor, and the ping as the doors opened. Blaster fire erupted above him and a little to the left. Dan took cover behind the edge of the stairwell, then fired twice at ceiling in front of the elevator door.
It came down in a thunder of smoke, dust and screaming gunmen. By the time they’d hit the floor, Mindy was back in stun mode. All five dust-covered figures grunted as the stun bolts hit them, then lay still and silent in the rubble.
That done, Dan took to the stairs and headed upwards. A few stories below, the panicky voices came again, then the scream of blaster fire. There was another sound, too. Something low and guttural that made Dan hesitate near the top of the steps and look back.
“It can’t be,” he muttered, then a flurry of movement from ahead of him made him turn. Something solid went crack across his skull and darkness poured in. The last
thing Dan saw was the leering face of someone big and ugly, and then his thoughts became mush and he toppled backwards down the stairs.
3.
Dan woke up. That was something of a surprise.
What was also a surprise was that he hadn’t woken up in a shallow grave somewhere in the waste ground beyond the city limits. Instead, he was tied to a chair in what seemed to be an office of some description. The only source of light was a single lamp in the corner, which cast the three other occupants of the room into silhouette. Or the three other occupants he could see, at least. He could hear someone breathing behind him – big and heavy, so probably the guy who’d cracked him across the head.
Pain throbbed through his skull in a way that made thinking difficult. He wasted a moment wrestling against his restraints, then gave up and turned his attention to the two women and one man standing in front of him.
The guy he could deal with. Short, slight, and with a bouncy, floppy hairstyle that immediately disqualified him as any sort of threat. Thanks to the shadow, Dan couldn’t identify his species, but humanoid enough that his pain and pressure points would all be in easy to reach places.
The women were more problematic. From their outlines he guessed they were Botanians, a race of living plant-people who were functionally immortal. Cut one in half, and two would grow in its place. Fire killed them, along with some harsher chemical compounds, but even then they didn’t go down easily.
As for the ugly big bamston hiding behind him, Dan couldn’t wait to get his hands on that guy.
“Who are you?” demanded the floppy-haired man. Dan recognized his voice immediately. It was the voice on the Loudmouth – the same voice that had commentated on his Death Derby fight with the von Haffs. “What are you even doing here? You’ve killed my guys!”
“Didn’t kill anyone,” Dan countered. “Stun shots, that’s all. Maybe some broken legs. If any of your guys are dead it’s because your other guys killed them.”
Or because something else had.
“Actually, no. That’s not quite true,” Dan admitted. “I did kill someone. And that’s why I’m here.”
Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories Page 3