Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel Read online

  Dan relaxed his fists, took another look around the room in case anything jumped out at him – hopefully literally – then muttered a, “Fonk it,” and headed for the door.

  Outside, most of the rioting had been replaced by some good old-fashioned police brutality. The crowds had thinned considerably as the rioters realized what way the wind was blowing, and quietly fled through one of the many doors.

  “I’m not sayin’ it in a pervy kind of way, Peaches,” Artur said. “I just think, for health and safety reasons, ye should get out of them clothes. Only, ye know, slowly so ye don’t flick brains and shoite all over the place.”

  Ollie, who appeared to have been considering this, turned away at the sound of the bathroom door closing. She hurried to intercept Dan. “Well?”

  “She’s dead, all right.”

  Ollie nodded. Despite her naivety, even she’d been able to figure that one out. Still, she shrunk back a little, like having it confirmed had poured salt in the wound.

  “If it’s any consolation, she probably didn’t suffer,” Dan said.

  “She was making this sort of squeal. Sort of screaming, but not really able to,” Ollie said. “Then it smashed her against the walls.”

  Dan looked like he was about to offer some counter-argument, but then changed his mind. “Well, in that case, she probably did suffer. Sorry.”

  “So she was sucked down the bog?” Artur asked.

  Dan nodded. “All of them. Five people. Gone. Just like Bonbo.”

  “Bonbo?”

  Finn sat up, one hand clutching his head, the other arm wrapped around his ribs. He winced when his feet touched the floor. “Bonbo Rolan?”

  Dan shrugged. “Fonked if I know. Little rat-faced guy. Drank in a bar over by the east docks.”

  “Grimster’s,” said Finn. “I know that guy.”

  “Knew him,” Artur corrected.

  Finn’s bronzed brow creased. “Huh?”

  “He was kebabbed up the arsehole,” Artur said, in a tone that suggested this should be a full and frank enough explanation to set the matter to rest.

  Clearly, though, it wasn’t.

  “Wait. He was what?”

  “Something came out of the John and killed him,” Dan explained.

  Finn’s frown deepened. He flicked his gaze to the door behind Dan. “Why was he in the ladies?”

  “No, not here. Yesterday. At Grimster’s.”

  Finn lowered himself onto the edge of the table. “Bonbo’s dead? Aw, brah, that sucks.”

  “I take it you knew him?”

  “Yeah. We used to work together.”

  “Well, sorry for… Wait, what? Doing what?” Dan demanded.

  Finn shook his head. “Uh… nothing much.”

  Artur squinted up at him. “Ye worked together doing ‘nothing much’? Sure, maybe ye could get me a job with ye, too. Sounds right up my street, that does.”

  “Artur, take Ollie and get her cleaned up,” Dan instructed. “Ollie, if he tells you he has to watch, tell him ‘no’. Firmly, like that. ‘No.’ Got it?”

  “Feckin’ spoilsport.”

  Ollie nodded. “Uh, yeah. I got it. Where are you going?”

  Dan clamped a hand on Finn’s upper arm, his grip tightening like a vice. “Me and the kid here are going to go and have a little talk.”

  SIX

  “LOOK, brah, I don’t know anything about that stuff. I swear!”

  Finn was pressed against the wall of Dan’s pod, the detective’s hand pinning him by the throat. Dan still didn’t have his gun, but he had found a pen. It was amazing, he’d explained to Finn, the damage a pen could inflict, if you know what to do with it. He hadn’t demonstrated this yet, but the emphasis was definitely on the ‘yet’ part.

  “You said yourself, you worked for Krato,” Dan growled. “You must know something.”

  Finn managed to shake his head, despite Dan’s death grip. “N-no, dude. I mean, I heard about the mall thing, but through the TV or whatever. Some bomb or something, right? People died?”

  “One-hundred-and-thirty-four people,” Dan confirmed. “Thirty-eight of them were kids.”

  “Shizz. That’s harsh,” Finn wheezed.

  “And it wasn’t a bomb. Best anyone can tell it was some kind of frequency resonator.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Finn coughed.

  “No, me neither. But I know what it does. I’ve seen it,” Dan said. “It vibrates your insides until they become your outsides. They come out through the eyes first. Down the nose. Out your shizzpipe.”

  Dan leaned in closer. Finn’s attempts to recoil were somewhat hampered by the wall behind him.

  “Then your skin splits. Just splits wide open, and whatever’s left of you just flops out around your feet. Just flops out onto the floor.”

  “Whoa. That’s… I mean…”

  “One-hundred-and-thirty-four people. Thirty-eight children,” Dan said, putting emphasis on almost every word. “I think Krato either deployed or sold the weapon. But I want to be sure.”

  He jerked Finn off the floor. “So, let me ask you again. What do you know?”

  “N-nothing,” Finn gargled, his face reddening. “Only m-met him once. I swear, brah.”

  The pod door opened, revealing Gunnak and Tor.

  “Fonk off,” Dan warned them.

  Both men quickly about-turned and left. Dan waited for the door to close again before continuing.

  “Maybe I didn’t tell you about the pen,” he said.

  “I s-swear. I don’t know anything!” Finn insisted. “I’d tell you if I d-did.”

  Dan stood motionless for a few moments, watching him gag and splutter. Finally, he released his grip and let the kid crumple to a snot-sputtering heap on the floor.

  “If I find out you’re lying to me… Well, let’s just say I’ll be unimpressed,” Dan warned. He squatted down. “And you do not want to see my unimpressed face.”

  Finn quickly shook his head. “I swear, brah. I don’t know anything about the guy. I just dealt with Bonbo. The guy had a job for us. Just one job. That’s all we ever did for him.”

  “What was it?” Dan asked.

  “He wanted us to…” Finn’s voice trailed off. His eyes darted from side to side, as if searching for something. “He wanted us to…”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t remember,” Finn said. He flinched when Dan raised the pen and clicked the button on the bottom. “No! I swear, I swear, brah. I met Bonbo out by one of the docks, then we drove to this… I don’t know. Office, I guess. There was a guy there. Said he was Krato. Tall and skinny. And red. He was red. Friendly, but kind of creepy at the same time.”

  “Sounds like him,” Dan confirmed. “Then what?”

  “Then… I don’t know,” said Finn. He frowned in concentration. “It’s foggy. I think maybe we got drunk, or something. I remember… bright lights. Like headlights, maybe? Or a crazy bright torch.”

  “What else?”

  Finn’s eyes darted around again, then he shook his head. “Nothing. There’s nothing else,” he said, sounding more than a little weirded out. “Next thing I remember is waking up with some cash in my pocket and a hangover that wouldn’t quit.”

  “And when was this?”

  “Week ago, maybe? A little less.”

  “I swear, kid, if you’re lying to me…”

  “I’m not, brah! I swear on my life.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Dan said. He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth a few times. “This office? Could you find it again?”

  “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I think so.”

  “Good. You can take me there,” Dan said.

  “Uh, OK. Yeah. Sure, brah. No problem,” Finn said. “Now?”

  “No. Later. This afternoon,” Dan said.

  “I’ve got work this afternoon.”

  Dan tutted. “Can you get time off?”

  “Maybe. I mean… yeah. I can.”

  “Good
. Write me down the details,” Dan said. He stood up, unhooked his hat from the end of the bunk beds, and pulled it on. “Right now, I’ve got a monster to kill.”

  ARTUR PEEKED around the doorframe into the room, where an old woman sat behind a semi-transparent barrier screen.

  “Sure, I don’t know why ye can’t just get her told,” he whispered. “It’s my stuff, give me it back, ye saggy-faced auld bastard. Like that, ye know? Diplomatic, yet firm.”

  Dan shook his head. “Not going to work. I’ll keep her busy, you get what we came for.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” Artur asked.

  Dan tutted. “I told you. We went through this.”

  Artur grinned. “Ah, just messin’ wit’ ye, Deadman,” he said. “Little round gizmo on a chain. Bottom drawer. Right?”

  “Right,” Dan confirmed. “You get it, and I’ll keep her talking.”

  “How? Ye’re not exactly a sparkling conversationalist,” Artur said. “I mean, I’m yer best mate, and I can barely stand talking to ye.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Removing his hat, Dan held it low to the floor. Artur hopped inside, then braced all four limbs against the material.

  “Eurgh. It stinks in here, Deadman, ye smelly-headed bollocks. Ye owe me one for this.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dan grunted, then he picked the hat up, strode into the room, and approached the old woman behind the glass. His filing cabinet and boxes were still there, which was one of those rare examples of things actually going his way.

  “Well, well, well,” said Notty, looking up from where she was idly drawing on the top of her desk. “If it isn’t Mr Verbal Abuse. What brings you back?”

  “Well—”

  “You shizz-flavored fonkwit humper.”

  “Well,” Dan tried again. “One of the guards told me I had to hand in my hat.”

  Notty’s eyes flicked to the fedora in Dan’s hands, just briefly. “You call that a hat?”

  “I do,” said Dan. “And they told me to hand it in. For quarantine.”

  Notty leaned forward and clasped her hands in front of her on the desktop. “Oh, did they now? Is that what they told you?”

  “It is,” Dan confirmed.

  “And so you just did it, did you? You just did what they told you, like a good little boy?”

  Dan tried very hard to keep his cool. “Yes. It seemed like the best course of action.”

  “Oh, did it? Did it seem like the best course of action, you gelatinous retard?”

  Dan came very close to questioning the insult, but remembered what had happened last time.

  “Yes. It did. So, here’s the hat.”

  Notty eyeballed him contemptuously for several long moments, then tapped a button under her desk. Dan braced himself for the alarm, but then a small rectangular opening appeared in the screen, and Notty’s hand tore the hat from his grip.

  “It stinks,” she said, tossing it onto the boxes behind her. “You’ll be lucky if we don’t just burn it. It’s not even a hat.”

  “Well, it definitely is a hat, so…”

  Notty glowered at him. “It’s not a hat.”

  Dan considered arguing, but suspected that’s what the old woman was hoping for. Instead, he decided to blindside her.

  “Hey look, Notty, we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. He held the old woman’s gaze, resisting the urge to glance at the movement in the box behind her. “You said some things, I said some things…”

  “I had you beaten unconscious…” Notty continued.

  “Ha. Yeah. That too,” Dan said, forcing something like amusement into his voice. “I mean, kind of unnecessary, I thought, but… My point is, I’d like us to start again. You know, wipe the slate clean. A fresh start.”

  “It’d be the only clean and fresh thing about you, you manky ball-munching—”

  “I’d like to take you out,” Dan said, interrupting her. Notty leaned back suddenly, and Dan felt the urge to clarify. He put a finger to his head like it was the barrel of a gun. “Not… take you out. I mean…”

  He took a deep and wholly unnecessary breath. “For dinner. Or whatever. Outside. Not here.”

  It was around this point that Dan realized what he was saying. He’d been aiming to find some way of keeping conversation going between them, but was starting to suspect he’d vastly overshot the target.

  “I mean… Now that I say it out loud…”

  “Yes.”

  Dan blinked. “What?”

  “Yes, I’ll go out with you.”

  Shizz.

  “Uh… OK.”

  Notty leaned forward eagerly. “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are we going out? Tonight? I’m free tonight.”

  Double-shizz.

  “Are you sure?” Dan said. “I mean, I’m not much to look at. And you said yourself, I have a certain… odor.”

  “Do I look like I’m being inundated with offers?” Notty asked him. “You know when the last good hard fonk I had was?”

  Dan found himself taking a step away. “Uh, no. No, can’t say I—”

  “Tuesday,” said Notty. She tapped a chipped fingernail against the desktop. “Here on this desk.”

  “Um. Well done?”

  “Tuesday. Today’s Friday,” Notty said. “So when? Tonight? I can do tonight. We don’t even have to go out, I can just darken the screen. Or not, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  “Out the road, ye mad old bastard!” cried Artur, flicking a switch under the desk as he clambered up on top.

  “What the hell?” Notty yelped, shoving herself back from the desk. Her chair rolled back until it hit the open bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, then it toppled over, depositing her on top of the boxes containing Dan’s stuff.

  Artur scrambled across the desktop, dragging Dan’s upside-down hat with him. The rectangular opening appeared again and he and the hat slid through. There was a solid-sounding thunk as they both hit the floor.

  “Tell me this is it,” Artur said, tilting the hat to allow Dan to see inside. An object a lot like a pocket watch lay nestled inside.

  “That’s it,” he confirmed, then he snatched up both Artur and the hat, and hurried for the door.

  “Wait, come back!” Notty shouted after him. “What time are you picking me up?”

  But the only reply was the fading clomp of Dan’s heavy, lumbering footsteps, and a palpable sense of relief.

  DAN HEAVED ASIDE the manhole cover, letting a gaseous green haze bloom briefly into the corridor before dissipating into the air, leaving behind only the distinctive aroma of raw sewage.

  “You sure you want to come down here?” he asked. He had left his coat back in his pod, in order to minimize the number of garments he would likely have to incinerate later, revealing the battered waistcoat and shirt he wore underneath. The pocket watch-like device was attached to the front of waistcoat like… well, like a pocket watch.

  Ollie nodded at him. “I’m coming,” she said. “Banbara was my best friend. Apart from you guys, I mean.”

  “She was literally the only other person I’ve ever seen ye even speaking to,” Artur pointed out from where he was perched on Dan’s shoulder.

  “Exactly. So, I’m coming,” Ollie said. “You’re not talking me out of it.”

  “I wasn’t going to try to talk you out of it,” Dan said. “I don’t have a gun. If we find whatever killed those women down there, I might need your help.”

  “Oh,” said Ollie. “Oh. OK, then.”

  “Everyone OK with the smell?” Dan asked.

  Artur shrugged. “Sure, we’ve lasted this long. Just stand downwind whenever ye can.”

  “The sewers, I meant,” Dan sighed, aware that Artur knew exactly what he meant.

  “Oh. That. It’ll be a breath of fresh air, to be honest.”

  “Fine. Let’s do this,” said Dan.

  There was a ladder, of course, but he chose not to take it. Instead, he
stepped off into empty space and landed with a splosh in the knee-deep sludge below.

  Artur immediately vomited down the front of Dan’s shirt. “Shoite. I take it back. This place stinks even worse than you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Dan said.

  Artur vomited again. This time, it splashed into Dan’s ear.

  “Oops. Sorry, Deadman, totally didn’t mean to—”

  He threw up for a third time, filling the ear all the way.

  “No, I can’t do this,” Artur groaned. “It’s the smell that’s the problem.”

  “I guessed that,” Dan said.

  “Ye be alright without me?”

  “I’m sure we’ll cope,” Dan said.

  Artur rubbed his stomach. “Actually… I might be adapting to—”

  Vomit erupted from his mouth and down his nose. “No. I tell a lie.”

  Dan grabbed him and looked up through the manhole entrance. “Ollie. Catch.”

  Artur yelped as Dan tossed him straight upwards.

  There was a moment of panicky flapping, a shouted, “Ya bastard!” then he landed safely in Ollie’s cupped hands.

  “Got you.”

  “Cheers, Peaches,” he said. He hiccupped, then violently retched. “And sorry about that. I appear to have thrown up in yer hands.”

  SEVEN

  IT WAS NOT Dan’s first trip to the sewers but, just like every time he’d been down here before, he hoped it would be his last.

  There were actually half a dozen or so different sewerage networks buried beneath Down Here, but no one could agree on an exact number, or where one ended and the others began. As the city had grown over the centuries, so too had the need to dispose of its growing mountains of waste. Most of the planet was ocean, and Down Here had been pumping their waste out to sea since before the history books started taking note. The method by which it did this had varied quite wildly, and at least three previous sewer networks had collapsed, imploded or, in a surprising development, shifted into an alternate universe in the past hundred years alone.

  What was left was a haphazard cobbling together of the old and the new. One minute, Dan and Ollie were trudging through tunnels of crumbling brick, then a couple of corners later they were slipping and sliding on an impossibly smooth frictionless metal floor.