Harvest Moon, P.I.

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Welsh Halfwit
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Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Back to the stories.

Where most of my characters have access to facilities and ships, Harvest Moon does not. He's a below average Bounty Hunter and slightly above average Private Investigator. A Harvest Mouse, he defines bravery as 'running the wrong way when trouble comes'. He rents a one bedroomed flop in the cheapest area of a cheap city. He drives a car he got at auction for near nothing as the previous owner died in his own sick on the back seat. Since then he discovered it goes from 0 - 60 in about a minute and has enough armour to win a collision with a small missile as the car was used by a runner. Rarely has any money and the local Sheriff barely tolerates him. He also talks in the first person, present tense.

PART ONE.

They call Caldera the ‘vegetable plot’ of the patch, a meaning it’s earned due to having most of the growing fields in the first established zone of the colonial expanse. So they call it the vegetable plot because we grow Veg. Well, duh. Along with Pandera, it was one of the big success stories but, unlike Pandera, where they showed zero imagination with the name of the main city – Pandera City, Caldera showed… well, five percent imagination and called the capital Calderon City. Hey, I never said the founders were totally imaginative, did I? Anyhow, they quickly established that there was a problem in the entirety of a colony’s output being crops and meats. Things that grow in Summer don’t grow in winter and vice versa and, what with winter coming with the same regularity as the Sanctamas Critter – once a year, I mean – it tended to mean that there was about forty percent of the planet unused at any one time to start with for the first few years until they worked out ways to grow things properly all the year around. So they started looking for finance and business interests to come in but discovered that Pandera had beaten them to it and had the nucleus of the business power it’s come to be. But they still looked to Caldera for their secondary interests and cheaper taxes.

Which is why we have a vast number of Vidcall centres scattered about the big city. Building regulations has nothing higher than five floors tall so big businesses don’t like putting their head offices here as chief executives can’t have the entire top floor to themselves – seriously, at least two multi-planetaries have used that reason for not sending their CEO’s here – and there’s not enough green field sports for them anyway. We only got a golf course two years ago. I remember the opening day very well. I got involved in a hover buggy chase over the fifteenth and scored a knock out in one with a ball on the 18th. Then Head Sheriff Javey had to get me out of the clubhouse security room. She’d been reluctant to do it, not because I’d showed her up by capturing a suspect she’d been looking for for over a week but because she really hates me. She’s a by the books type cop who has to be re-elected every few years so has to keep out of the news as much as possible and toe the lines when it comes to rules, a epithet she drums into all her deputies. Private Eyes and Bounty Hunters don’t have to follow the rules so exactly – and half of them not at all – and she resents Private Eyes as wanna be cops who can’t stand the rules and Bounty Hunters as wanna be psychopaths who only aren’t because they can’t stand the lack of cash.

And I’m both. I’m a paid up member of the Hunter/Killer organisation – more on the Hunter than the Killer, if I’m honest – and I have the accreditation as a Private Eye. One of the few on the colony, in fact. Which is why I’m currently dyed brown with black ‘spectacles’ around my eyes as I do some work at Ardexa Galnet, the local Net provider. No matter who you’re with at your computer’s end, the Galnet access to the interstellar information and communication network goes through an Ardexa satellite system. They’ve got small scale call centres on a half dozen Patch worlds but Caldera is their big one. At least it is for complaints and the company wanted me to find out why so sent me in as a ‘business consultant’ from Head Office. I suspect they only hired me because it was cheaper than sending someone from head office to investigate. Also because I can do those aforementioned devious things to get information. Like bugging computers, which is what I did to the local chief of operations an hour back. I’ve got my suspicions that a certain amount of fraud is going on in here and I’ve also popped a bug into the main server, just in case. They’re showing me around, telling me how all the signals from every city on the planet come in here. If I knew what he was talking about, my brain would be leaking out of my ears but, as I don’t have a clue, everything can wash over me without causing any damage. But I know what I’m doing. It’s near the end of this investigation. I know what’s causing the troubles, I just don’t know WHO. What’s happening in certain companies, with perfectly good communications channels normally, are being compelled to upgrade to compete with the bigger companies. They’re being told they need to pay 35,000 credits a month for enhanced signal strength and bandwidth when larger companies are only being charged 30,000 for exactly the same speed and strength. It sounds like peanuts but, as far as Head office is concerned, everyone was being charged 30,000 a month. There are 12 Galnet providers in Caldera’s sector of the Patch and nine of them are what would be classed as ‘smaller’. Each of them passed on the extra cost to their users, increasing their costs by… ooh, a credit a month? So no-one really noticed as someone here took in 45,000 credits extra every month. When they noticed? They called the IOC on Pandera, who investigated on the QT with Ardexa there and discovered it was here. IOC don’t have a presence on Caldera. But they know a local Private Eye. And he’s turned brown, rather than grey. I’m also wearing skin tight furred gloves. In case you’re wondering they’ve got artificial DNA in the ‘strands’ that can be programmed to match anyone you want, provided you know what their DNA is supposed to be like, or just… anyone. It’s quite an expensive item that I bought for exactly this purpose. Which will go on my expenses. Fortunate, that, isn’t it?

The tour’s over and I return to my hire car to ‘put my briefcase away’. I don’t know why I put that in quotes as I actually DO put my briefcase back into the hire car from the spaceport. It’s a good way to get a few moments and link up to the Brickmobile a few blocks away. I covered it with boxes so it should be OK. Ah. Here comes my tour guide. Lunch already?

I have to learn how to program these gloves, it seems. Apparently the DNA was that of a seventeen year old Corgan Female. Security’s not best happy with me right now. They’re holding me and I don’t think they’ve called the Sheriff. Which might be the thing that surprises them when she turns up. IOC constantly requires updates and, if you don’t contact them on schedule, they’ll send the cavalry. In… about four hours. They’re not going to leave me four hours. So I might as well extricate myself. They’re probably waiting for me to try anyhow. I wander around and try the door handle. It’s nice. Smooth. Metal. Bit zappy but that’s probably the current model. There’s a camera up there too. I can get to it if I stand on a chair. So I stand underneath it for a moment and take off my shirt’s top button. This is something I rarely do as it always ruins my shirts but so do fists and I’m trying to avoid those. I pop the button in my mouth and start chewing. Thing’s a solid normally but, introduce it to the chemicals in saliva and it goes all Chewing gum and, hopping up onto the table, I use it to blind the camera. They probably expect me to escape now. I think I’ll disappoint them.

They come in five minutes later, three of them, and see the open air vent across the room that no-one’s small enough to climb through. But it still has them lured in as I balance atop the door frame they just passed through. As they make their way in, I drop down behind them and pull the door shut behind me as they turn. I don’t bother to damage the door, I haven’t got time. I just leg it as guards start searching for me and calling for people to stop me.

Five minutes pass and I make a swift exit through the rubbish chute and roll clear as energy blasts scratch the skips behind me and threaten to scratch me. They’re covering my hire car. I’m not going to get the deposit back. I make for the back exit. One I created last night with some clippers. It’s not going to take them long to find me. Mainly because they’re watching on cameras and they’re running after me. Where was that hole? Ah, yeah. I dive through the chain link fence and the hole I cut gives way, letting me through onto concrete beyond in a blind spot. Ow. Landings on concrete hurt, don’t let people tell you otherwise.

They’re a bit unsure about how to proceed now, on public streets, but that won’t hold them long and they’re going to wonder what I’ve been up to. I just hope the monthly payment from Keval Netcom on Keval came in on time. Before it gets sent on, the 5K would have to be stripped off and sent somewhere and the bugs should detect the transmission. But it’s still best to get out buttus intactus so I head towards the Brick at maximum velocity

I’m almost there when a Lappinean female in a bad state of repair collapses onto me from a doorway. I try to hold her up. It’s not easy for a Mican. “Help me,” she says, “they’re… trying to kill me.”
I look back to where guards are approaching. “Tell me about it,” I say.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Really like how this story looks to be starting off. Looking forward to more!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Two

It has to be said that Lappineans haven’t exactly had the best of years in the patch. A few months ago, a fair sized group of their people decided they were going to cede from the interspecies Council for whatever reason and set about achieving their aim through various dangerous means which no-one’s talking about. Of course, this means that everyone knows everything that was going on, or at least thinks they do. And those who barely think believe some equals all and are holding it against the general populace. It IS known that Council forces apparently engaged an invasion force in a small Panderan backwoods town but it’s not known what an invasion force was doing in a small Panderan backwoods town anyway. It’s rumoured that two Council ships engaged and destroyed a Lappinean ship in close orbit but the Council’s remaining tight lipped on the situation and, if you want to go ask Captain Postain? Good luck with that. Then there’s the sudden influx of cash from the Lappinean government, building factories and technology on planets they don’t own and guess who’s getting all the local jobs involved in making these places? That’s right. The locals. But they’re bringing in specialists from the core worlds and… well, about twenty percent of those are Lappinean. What matters is it’s their government and that filters down to the common folk as ‘Lappineans are taking over’.

Attacks on them have increased fivefold. Police and Sheriff departments have been stretched to protect innocent families and individuals. People who’ve done nothing in connection to the situation being beaten and attacked. Strong arm tactics against those without strong arms. But I have the odd thing that this isn’t what’s going on here. The Lappinean on my back seat rug, spark out, doesn’t strike me as a local. Her clothes, despite being ripped and torn, are slightly higher class than you can get in most shops here. You either have to go to the very rich shops or to Pandera for most things like that. Also the accent she spoke with as I got her into the car isn’t Calderan to my ear. And then there’s the language. Whoo, she knows some words. She knocked her foot on the door frame and uttered some expletives that shouldn’t come from a worker at the space docks, let alone someone looking like a lady. I would have asked her about that but there was at least one set of guards heading our way – my friends from the Galnet provider – so there was little time for chitchat. There was enough time to get her in after knocking my spare case to the floor, get myself in and reverse away from the scene at twenty miles an hour so as not to be seen.

Now I’m on the highway, looking for anyone looking for us whilst trying not to put the brickmobile through any other vehicles or, indeed, walls. It’s a fairly well known vehicle here in the city so I often have to park it several blocks from where I need to go and I’m giving thought to a nondescript car for general use. I’m hitting thirty right now and I think I’ve seen the enemy. Two identical shining silver Sports vehicles have appeared to my left side and I notice the figures in the back, where both have at least two occupants. My senses warn me that they’re looking into the vehicles they pass so I slow the brick and they pass by faster than they’d intended. Two Celican drivers. What was in the back of each I couldn’t quite tell but I need to turn off now. Which I can’t do as there’s no junctions here. It’s just paranoia, I know, but I do have the feeling they might have noticed me driving oddly. They’re probably not even after… They’re slowing down so I can go past them. Right. Time to avoid them. I move out behind them before I catch them up and indicate that I’m turning right at the next junction – which is no-where near so I roll my eyes and turn the indicator off as if I’d just made a mistake. She’s coming around in the back.
“Stay down,” I tell the groaning Lappinean, “I’m trying to lose someone who’s in front of me.”
She sobs softly and starts to sit up.
“Stay DOWN!” I shout back. “I don’t know if these are the people after you or not!”
She yelped slightly and stayed down. “Heya,” I said conversationally, keeping my eyes on the dark rear window in front. I knew what they’d try next. “Um, can you pull that rug over you for a minute or so? I think they’re going to try to look in here.” I see her struggle to pull the crumb bedecked fabric over herself as the lead vehicle moves into the slow lane and starts drifting backwards. “So what’s your name,” I ask, trying to calm her as the smell of my car changes. Great. I don’t think I’ll tell her the last owner died on that seat in his own vomit. That’s why the rug’s there. It’ll need cleaning again. Never mind.
“Harmony Grigger,” she says from under the rug and I start thinking of where I go from here. She’s been missing a week and a half, from one of the Lappinean colonies near here. I know this because it was on the news but the Lappinean they showed there didn’t look like she’d gone three rounds with an Equinna, then had their ears battered by a rolling pin. She’s a fairly high profile disappearance as things go, Her dad’s a big thing in cosmetics, establishing the company’s central office on Vallon, taking advantage of some very generous tax breaks. He’s not exactly filthy rich but he IS quite well off. But… not well off enough for this. They’ve put out the information on the net, of course, but the local cops are sure she’s still on the colony. So what is she doing here? I’ll ask later.
“I’m Harvest,” I tell her, “Harvest Moon. Welcome to Caldera, Miss Grigger. Sorry we’re not making a great impression.”

The car’s slipped behind us now, moving into position as the right turn approaches. I need to take it, even though it’s going the wrong way for the hospital and only roughly back to my palatial bedsit come office. It actually leads to the local land rail station, a ramshackle affair that shows the importance of rail on this colony. It’s the main city station and it’s a Portakabin on wheels with a bus shelter. Huh. The car behind me is turning with us. Wonderful. We start down into the car park and I start to park up. Telling my passenger to stay put. I slip my credit card blaster from the glove compartment and into my pocket, I step out into the breeze and step around to the back as the car pulls in beside me. A casual glance at the registration tells me it’s a rental and which company rented it. It could easily be innocent but people don’t come here for the rail. And they time it better when they do.

The Celican steps out and the back doors open, releasing the passengers. They’re Felines. Now my hackles are up. Three predators wandering the car park. “Good afternoon,” one says in greeting.
“It’s not a bad day,” I agree, looking up at the clouds, “looks like it might rain later though.” I straightened up. “Headed anywhere interesting?”
“Oh, just seeing what’s about,” the Feline lies. “Making plans.” I can see his litheness moving underneath that suit, danger stretching its claws. “How about you?”
“Oh,” I say politely, “I’m not going anywhere really.” I open the rear door opposite from them and reach in to grab that spare case. She squirms slightly under the covers and I have to hold my gaze tight so they don’t guess. I grip the case and pull it out, holding it up for the others to see as I lock the car up “My mate works here. She forgot her lunch.”
“Careless of her,” the Feline says as the Celican takes an interest in the car. “Well,” I say, gesturing towards the entrance, “I suggest we go in. After you?”
“We’ll follow you,” the Feline replies. “You’re the local.”

What’s that saying about Raitchians and traps?
Commander Hawle. U.S.C. Loper. By the talented DDeer.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Hope he will be able to protect her. It certainly doesn't bode well at the current moment. :(
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Three.

The twelve fifteen to Yumal City is right on time as usual, what with it being eighteen minutes past one as we enter the station. We enter, me feeling the Feline eyes and wondering how long they’re going to be staying on the platform. I sincerely doubt it’s going to be long. I glance in the mirror above to make sure he’s not drawing back a fist or a weapon. He peeks back to his ‘chauffeur’. At least my plan should get me back out before they realises there’s few ways of breaking into the brick that don’t involve diamond drills or heavy cutting lasers. Even they don’t work half the time due to the laser reflective coating. But it’s still vulnerable to dextrous attacks on the lock. Probably. I note, with some relief, that it’s Charlie in the ticket office. He knows me quite well. His smirk says he’s seen through my ‘cunning’ disguise so I step over. “Heya, Daniel,” I say, deliberately getting his name wrong. It’s kind of a signal between us that tells him to shut up and agree with me. “I brought Charlie’s lunch.” I hold up the case.
“Uh, she’s in back,” says the amateur actor, overhamming it by about ten percent. “I’ll take that.”
I hand it over as they ‘read’ the electronic board. “Thanks, Daniel. Tell her I’m making pasta tonight?”
“Uh, still to cheap to eat out?”
“Nah. Too broke.” I primp my collar. “I’d better get back to work…”
“At the, uh, stunt show?”
I frown. I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about but something tells me ‘no’ would be a bad answer so I avoid it by saying ‘yes’.

They’re still looking at me as I head out, their concern obvious, and I wonder exactly why they seem to be considering me a liar. They’ll be out in a moment, I reckon. The Celican ‘chauffeur’ looks up as I approach. He’s been sniffing around the back of the Brick. “Don’t see many of these,” he says pleasantly, with just a tinge of murderous intent as an undercurrent.
“No,” I say, “the acceleration’s shot and she handles like a tank.” I open the door to get in and wave away the smell. “And the air conditioning’s shot. Can’t afford to replace her,” I tell him, sitting in the stench… the driving seat, “and spares cost a packet. Wouldn’t mind yours, to be honest, but I couldn’t afford her. Nice to talk with you,” I finish, before he can say anything. “Gotta get on.”

I have about thirty seconds, I think, between myself and the Feline’s return and I use it quite well. I take a picture of their licence plate by the dashcam as I reverse back out, encouraging my cargo to stay down. She’s crying quietly and, possibly, struggling to breathe under her own, overwhelming, scents. They’re stalking out of the Railway information building even as I pull away so I head around a couple of corners and park up in a partly hidden alleyway, hoping they’ll go straight past. Just out of paranoia, I get out of the car and quickly check under it for any homing beacons. Can’t see any, but I’m looking out from under the car when I see wheels go by. I HOPE they’re talking with that other car I saw and telling them the ugly old car has nothing to do with them. They probably aren’t. The way the Celican was poring over the car makes me think he’s halfway sure he knows who it belongs to so going home’s not in the book right now. I’m getting the disturbing feeling that these guys are organised too, so they’ll either panic now and react and run or they’ll stake out the Sheriff stations and see if Miss Grigger turns up there. Time to shift to plan ‘C’. And that was even before I’d thought of a plan. I get back in and start up, heading back up to the bypass.

After ten, I pull to a side road and park up. “I think you can sit up now, Miss Grigger,” I say and the shuffling mass sniffles her way to a seated position.
“This… this car’s a mess,” she complains through choked breaths.
“Well, it smelled better a little while back,” I reply, reaching over to open the passenger door. “You want to get in the front? The seat’s dry. For now.”
She hmphs at me but deigns to shift into the front after putting a hand on the seat beneath her. She shrugs with disdain as I assist her with her seatbelt but her eyes tell me this is just how she’s coping. “So,” I ask, “who are those people?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” she sniffs. “I just… just want to go home.”
I tell her I get it, I do, but they’re trying to work out her next move right now and getting home would be it, although I assure her I plan to get her home as soon as I possibly can and she looks at me in total confusion until I remember that I said WHO I am and not WHAT. I apologise and look for my business card, before I remember that they’re all at home. Why would I bring them on an undercover op?
“Sorry,” I repeat, “I’m a Private Investigator. I was doing an undercover op when we met.” I can see the scowl in her eye. “Yeah, I know. We’re worse than the Newsvid rats. I’ve done cheap stuff but I do stuff for good people too. I know how to hunt but I’ve not been hunting you. Now, those guys are organised and dangerous which doesn’t make total sense.”
She swallowed. “I don’t CARE,” she re-iterated, “I just want to go HOME!”
“And I want to get you there,” I assure her, “but safety first.” I ponder. “They could be watching the ports and the local Police… So where?” It’s easy to forget you’ve already decided where to go when surrounded by smells and a noisy Rabbit ten seconds the other side of a meltdown. “I think I know,” I remind myself.

My last experiences with Lappineans was during that time I mentioned, when their rebels attacked and it kinda ended with me on the run until it was all sorted out and I was assured they weren’t still after my fur and the people whose information I’d stolen weren’t in any place to try and sue me for it, due to being in the Sheriff’s clutches for things I don’t need to know about, even now. It’s reassuring to be low in the food chain. So they know me at the local base. I stayed there for a few weeks a couple of months back. “I’ll take you to a safe place I know,” I tell her.
She sniffs. “Safer than… the Police?”
I grin. “It’s the Army,” I tell her. She seems to accept that for the moment. “It’s something they probably won’t expect. Plus they know me there.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re pulling up at Garrado Base. The guard lets me in but I can’t help but notice the troops are gathering around the car and have their weapons close. “It seems they remember me,” I say, recalling there’s supposed to be a new Chief. They probably want to impress him. Or her.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Enter a couple of familiar faces for a cameo.

FOUR

Well, here I am again, sat in the security guardroom, waiting for Kavan Moulton, the senior security officer, to come in and tell me how much he hates me. It’s a military base, you see, and, when I last stayed here, I wasn’t totally military about it. In fact I was decidedly irritating, probably. I’d retrieved some information for the Council bigwigs in the IOC and had been targeted by some Lappinean killers and I’d needed to ‘lay low’ for a while. They’d thrown me off the base after a fortnight. It would have been sooner, probably, but no-one thought to tell them the danger was over and the chief git in the mix had revealed himself to be on our side. Sort of. Anyhow, he hates me for it and I think he’s dealing with my guest first, not having my car valeted and letting me stew for as long as possible to make up for what happened in the N.C.O’s mess last Sanctamas Eve. It wasn’t my fault the company shield got damaged. That stair moved without me seeing it. The six pints had nothing to do with it. Anyhow, the room’s not changed much. Still got the paint flaking off the walls, designed to make you underestimate the company and their finances. There’s a camera up in the top corner and an observation room behind the mirror. There’s also a truth detection system set up in there too, designed to read the pulse of the person sat on the pad (which is hidden in the chair I’m sat on, which is why they always insist you ‘sit down’ if you stand up during an interview). The base doesn’t have a telepath though – or maybe it does and I’ve been made to forget – so I don’t need to wonder about that.

What I do need to wonder about, of course, is my passenger. The fact I met her is pure happenstance but her being here isn’t. Someone abducts her, then smuggles her from world to world. I have the feeling they haven’t finished their planning by a long way. They’re still up to whatever they were up to. One of the usual things people forget about long term kidnappers is that they prepare. They get in food and supplies for the length of time they anticipate holding the person and one of those things they buy is clothes. Your clothes speak to your individuality so, if they want to hold you for a time, they change your clothes. Their way of enforcing control, I suppose. Also comes in useful if you want to supply ‘proof’ that you have someone, I suppose. My concern is to do with the fact that the only reason they’d be hunting as hard as they are for her is that they fear she knows something that leads to them. They’re going to keep it up or cut their losses and I’m worried that they may have been doing this for a little while so cutting their losses might involve… cutting. It’s not entirely altruistic, of course. Ten minutes online will bring the car up and lead them straight to my door. It’s odd how your thoughts get self involved when there’s someone after your neck. I’ll have to talk to her later.

I’m not actually under arrest here, per se, but I get the feeling that leaving this room would incur some extreme displeasure on… OK, the door’s opened but I don’t recognise the figure standing there. Not that I’d be that intimidated by a child anyhow but she wasn’t here when I was living here. She’s a child of two worlds, I can see. Felis and Mica are both present in her ice white frame and she smiles as I make a face. Doesn’t say anything, though. She’s shuffled out as her dad – at least I assume it’s her dad, he certainly has the Mican part in him – comes into the room. “I need to talk with this gentlemouse, Cally,” he says, tossing her a credit chit, “go get something from the machine, yeah?” He steps in and I try to judge if I’m in trouble. He smells like a Wolf, despite his look, and all the Wolves I’ve met have been trouble. Kinda small though. He doesn’t even tower over me as I stand up. “Name’s Gerry Hav,” he says. “You’re the infamous Harvest Moon, I assume?”
“Infamous,” I ask, offering a hand that, after a few seconds, he chooses to take.
He chuckles. “It’s not a good thing,” he assures me. “The notes left by my predecessor indicate it’s smarter to shoot you on sight than let you on this base.”
“He really doesn’t like me, I know.”
“I’m open on it. Of course we have had to make sure you’re really you, what with the dye job.” He walks around the table and drops an empty file on the table to make a noise. “We can’t just rely on Kalla’s statement of ‘who else would drive this heap’?”
“He’s never liked my car. So I check out then?”
“IOC Pandera say you have something for them?”
“It should be uploading now,” I tell the white Wolf. “Well, I say that but it should have uploaded about half an hour back. I’m more concerned about my passenger, though. How is she?”
Hav sighs and sits himself down. “Shaken and distraught. The Sheriff’s on her way. Why didn’t you take her there?”
I honestly don’t know, I tell him. “I’m improvising. Making it up as I go along. Plus I figured they’d be watching the law to try to reclaim her.”
He looks intrigued. “You don’t think they’d give it up as a bad idea?”
I tell him about the felines and the Celican and their near obsessive interest in my car and what was inside it. They weren’t running, I tell him, they were hunting. She could harm them somehow and they weren’t going to let her. I emphasise that fact to him. She’s still in danger until they’re caught or time has passed.
“She must be still concussed,” Gerry tells me, “she’s asking to see you.”
“Has she been fed yet,” I ask him, only semi joking.
“And showered, yes.”
I stand up again. “I suppose I’m safe, then?”

he escorts me down to the temporary accommodation block where he knocks on a door and another guard lets us in.

She’s looking better now, all cleaned up and wearing new clothes. She moves in them like she’s not used to trousers and shirts, especially not in soldier green but there’s no denying she looks happy to be out of the dress she’s been wearing. Hopefully they’ve sent it to forensics to see what they can get from it – although I think it’d be better to burn it after. She clears the room in about three seconds and grabs me into a tearful hug. I can smell the salad sandwich she’s just had as he head lands cheek to cheek with mine. My toes prod around to see if they can find the floor. They can’t. She’s thanking me. Rather profusely as it happens. I don’t know if I deserve it, I just happened to be there at the right time. But I can’t tell her that. Because she’s kissing me thank you too. Makes a change from screaming at me, I suppose. I go along with it. I don’t know if I’d call her totally beautiful as she’s not a Mican but, when you’re a P.I., there are two types of people you don’t mind kissing you. Rich people and Rich People who need a P.I. I’m not sure which she is so I hug her back and just let her kiss out all her fears and thanks. Sometimes it’s a rough job.

“So,” I ask her, sitting in her room’s chair as she takes up a yogic position on the bed, “how long had you been running before we met?”
She looks hard at me, trying to judge what I’m asking. A minute passes. “Not more than a minute, I think,” she replies. “I… wasn’t feeling strong.”
“I can imagine not,” I tell her. “Look, when they ask, and the Sheriff will ask, don’t fight to remember things, yeah? Just let the things come to you when they want to and tell them then. Do you recall anything about the last week?”
“Not much,” she said sadly, using a hand to push up an ear that might now be permanently droopy at the tip. “I remember being in a club on Vallonn then… noises. I can’t… I can’t…”
“Think of something else fr now,” I urge her. “Just for now. Think on your dad’s face as he sees you again. Think of…” I shrug. “Think of happy memories.” I grin. “Think of how, if anyone can make the drooped ear look stylish, it’ll be you, yeah?”
Despite herself, she allows a smile to break through. “So, you’re going to be investigating, eh?”
I nod. “It’s literally my job. Even if the Sheriff says not to. Especially when the case finds me.”
“I’ll sort out any expenses,” she offers.
I think I’ve just been hired.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I love your work on this now! Awesome job!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Five

I’d be proud to say that Sheriff Javey was delighted to see me, rushed forward to embrace me and saluted my bravery, courage and dedication to to profession but, frankly, I don’t want to start lying to myself now. The Feline’s actual reaction to seeing in is rather different. She walks into the interrogation room – where I’ve returned to to wait for her – rolled her eyes as no-one told her I was involved and thought about walking out. “No-one told me THIS is the witness,” she cried to Chief Hav as I grin behind her back and waggle my fingers at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Hav gestures to me and I’m thankful she doesn’t have a weapon on her as he drops me right in it. “He suggested you’d send a deputy if we told you he was here.”
“He’s probably right,” she admits. I can see her hackles are up from here. I have to remember not to try my ‘professional smoothie’ turn on her. It just winds her up more and this cat most definitely has claws to spare. I’ve seen at least sixteen of them up close. Don’t ask about the foot. I don’t swim in those baths any more.

She takes the seat opposite me and glowers. “Moon,” she says simply.
“Sheriff,” I reply brightly. I cross my legs. “Been having a good day?”
She looks like she’s been punching bricks for the last hour and it’s been responding in kind. She’s been dealing with the stresses of leading a sheriff’s department that controls the largest city on the colony in election year. Her wrists twitch. “It was,” she tells me, “up to about half an hour ago, when I’m told Harmony Grigger’s turned up at Garrado base and can I come and get her?”
“I’d rather you left her here,” I advise. Hav grimaces as Javey’s claws pop out but she concentrates and, rather than putting them through my skin, takes them back into hers. I repeat what I told Hav about my suspicions of lingering threat and, despite her feelings, she’s forced to accept that it would be better to have her protected by the Armed Forces for the moment and I hardly think she’s thinking about the potential votes lost if there’s a kidnapping or a shoot-out involving her staff. The last one thought that way. Him I liked but couldn’t respect. This one I respect and loathe. Can’t have it both ways, it seems. Anyhow. She’s smart. She can see that look in my eye as I tell her of Harmonys’ blocked memories and fears. She asks me about the Feline I saw and gets me to put a physical description and face fit on the datapad she takes out of her pocket. And the Celican. Can’t forget that guy. Fortunately the Feline was pretty much a standard tabby and my old mentor did teach me how to memorise fur patterns for identikits so I can get him down pretty well. Not so much the Celican. With them it’s more about physical stature and musculature rather than lines on a face as they’re pretty much all the same. Mainlanders are Orange with white undersides and black limb extremities. Polars are White with small ears and Fennikin are straw coloured and small with big ears.
“I’ll tell you once,” Javey tells me – once “to stay out of this. We’ll take what we know and we’ll run with it. We’ll investigate and co-ordinate with the Vallonian police and IOC and do what we do. Which doesn’t involve you.”
I pick my teeth for a few seconds before replying. I consider asking if I can borrow a claw to complete the clean but decide against it. “It’s a good job we’re at the ‘only tell you once’ stage,” I say with a sigh, “’coz it means I only need to ignore you once. I don’t mean to offend – and I really don’t – but I’m in this up to the brim of my hat already. It’ll take them no time at all to find out whose car that is and then they’ll be on me. If anyone’s going to be doing the hunting in this situation, I’d rather it be me.”
“You DO have the licence,” she says sharply, reminding me of what she thinks of that.
“I do,” I reply evenly, “but it’s more about necessity and a stubborn refusal to keep running than it is about cash. Plus, you know there’s something wrong with this as well as I do, Sheriff. There’s more under the surface. This is too much work for a kidnapping and they never bothered to make a ransom demand? Nah.” I shake my head.
“You think we’d tell the press if they had,” Javey tells me derisory.
“Did they,” I ask. I know she’d have contacted the Vallonians immediately she was told, just to update them before the press did. She has the dignity to look awkward as she mixes lies and truths, telling me that, when she talks to them, I’ll be the last to know. I’ll just have to go route one, then. Talk to the father direct. I’m hoping he’ll take my call. Taking a trip to Vallonia just to ask a few questions would be annoying. And make a mockery of my expenses. “Just let me know if I can help you more, Sheriff,” I say happily, standing up, “and I’ll do what I can.”
“It’s you ‘doing what you can’ that gets you into trouble.”
I can’t resist it. “Oh,” I tell her, “you know I only get in trouble because I want to see you again.” I’m towards the door but I wait for her reply. It’s only polite.
“Make appointments,” she growls, “I’ll be sure and be late. To them. I could always put you in protective custody,” she says, warming my cockles (you dirty minded lot) as I note that she doesn’t appreciate the idea of me being dead. My sister might go along with that.
“I have too much respect for your budget to waste it on me,” I tell her, before heading to the canteen. “Um, any chance of getting the car cleaned,” I ask Hav as I pass.
“That’s not in our budget,” he tells me. I can tell he’s grinning under that expressionless facade. At least, he might be.

It’s a Coffee from Celica that they serve here, what with it being part of a deal the Council has with the company to supply their bases, and it certainly lives up to their reputation as hunters. It tastes like they drowned something in boiling water and bottled it. The food’s not that much better but at least they have grains and seeds and meats that have already been killed and cooked. I’m only here, wasting time, because I had an idea on the way out. I’d spoken to the person running the motor pool and called in a favour he owed for something I’m not going to talk about. The Brickmobile’s in for a respray. It’s going maroon red, which I’ll tell the registration lot about later. I just need to get it home. Then take the bus to one of the hire places that’ll hire me a car without demanding my soul as collateral on the deal. Then, I’m going back in to town to look up a few things...
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Great work as always! What a really good installment!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by DDeer »

Crikey! You write quick, read the first instalment, getting interesting, now have to try and catch you up!

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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

At the moment I'm doing a page and a half a day. Sometimes more.

SIX

I park the newly red Brickmobile up in the usual spot, the halfway secure parking zone behind my apartment and, checking the area is free of people wanting to accost me roughly about the bonce, step out. I say it’s halfway secure because, although it does have a security camera and a combination access code covering the entrance, the camera is solar powered, so only works on sunny days, and the combination code for the access barrier is 1234 so Mr Mickelover on the ground floor doesn’t forget it when he parks his bicycle out back. Which, as we keep telling the landlady, he never does. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t like change, you see? Which is why the hall and stairs still have the same sodden patches on it that we’re supposed to claim is rain if anyone asks when we know the closest it’s been to rain is leaking out from someone. I personally reckon the only reason she hasn’t replaced the carpet is because it would expose the need to dig up the concrete underneath as well. The carpet on the stairs is still a great deterrent to intruders with how it slips and slides with every intent of trying to wound you. We’d complain but the rent is cheap and we know the ways around it.

Miss Lorin opens her door as I head up and almost hurls something at my head before she works out it’s me. “You’re looking browner than usual,” the old Human tells me.
I look myself over. “Yes,” I say, “I need a shower.”
“Leastways that Dye remover your sister bought you for Christmas will come in useful.”
It’s some sort of Birth celebration, where Miss Lorin comes from. Someone got born in the summer, she’s told me, so they celebrate his birth during the winter so as not to offend other religions. Or something. Still, it sounds a fair idea. Kinda like Sanctamas which, now I come to think of it, is also celebrated in Winter on the Council Headquarters world and seems to have been invented by the Council. It’s also the official thing with the Sanctamas Critter (or local rep) scurrying around, giving presents to the kits and Pups. None of which is relevant but I do remember to remind June of the correct term. Still, can’t blame her for not remembering. She’s only been here twenty years. “Anyone been past,” I ask cautiously.
“Only the postie,” she replies. She hands me a letter from a solicitor on Osira. It’s testimony to the power of the post unions I suppose that, in a time where Galnet can send messages across the entirety of known space in minutes and 3d printing is a thing, the physical post still exists, delivering letters I don’t want to answer or open but they sent it recorded this time. So they know someone’ll give it to me. I tell her that I’ll open it later and traipse up to my salacious abode, where a moth eaten sofa no longer resides after it got thrown at me by a much larger person and smashed against the wall. Now I have a battered two piece that’s just as cheap but much lighter to throw. I sit in it and toss the envelope onto the small pile of similar envelopes. I said I’d open it, I just didn’t say which year. There’s only one thing it could be about and I don’t want to know. Miss Lorin once told me that ‘denial is not just a river in Eegypt.’ I had to look that up to get it. And I had to update my Earth languages dictionary pack. Another 100 credits gone…

Anyway, it’s a good place to take a breath and wonder on plans before locking things up and hitting the shower. The brown’s going to take a lot to get off. And you have to make sure you get it all or you can end up looking blotchy. It doesn’t matter so much when clothed but… well… you’re not always clothed, are you? So I’m under the shower head for about half an hour, eyes closed and curtain drawn. Eventually I feel I’ve done enough and turn the hot water off. Wow. All of a sudden it’s freezing. I reach around for the towel to do the initial drying – from out of my eyes and ears – and I thank whoever just handed it to me. And then I think on the fact that someone just handed it to me. I open the curtain and there’s a faintly muscular Mican looking at me. He glanced down, then back up. “I heard you weren’t all that much,” he insults me with an annoyingly lilting accent as I decide if I should attack him or not. “You should get dressed,” he continues, nodding to the room outside. “The lady wants to talk to you.”
I decide I probably shouldn’t attack him. He’s armed, suited in a suit that I couldn’t afford in a month and had the stink of officialdom about him.
“She does realise it’s a studio apartment,” I ask as I finish dabbing off my face. I don’t listen for a reply as I step into the updrier to puff up like Dryer lint. “I mean, I’m no prude but my clothes are…” He silences me by throwing a pair of Human boxer shorts my neighbour bought me in one of her melancholy drunk phases at my head. I put them on backwards, slotting my tail through the slit, and step out. I know who this has to be and, being honest, I’m kinda glad I tidied up this morning. She’s not a very nice person, if it is who I think it is. She’s steel evil in a velvet jacket. She’s poison in a cup cake. She’s… Not one to be kept waiting.
“You appear to have caught me with my pants down,” I say to Harriet Thurso, head of Mican Intelligence in the patch. We’ve met before. I got caught in one of her plots and it was one of her interrogation techniques that redecorated my wall. I thumbed to my drawers. “Do you mind?”
“You have nothing I haven’t seen before, Mr Moon,” she says, sipping brandy from a glass, which surprises me. I didn’t know I had any good brandy. Or clean glasses. It’s definitely mine, though. Hers wouldn’t be chipped. “And I imagine you spend a lot of time in the shower, living in this place.”
“I take it you’re not here to insult me or threaten me this time?”
“No,” she said simply. “I think I may threaten your slumlord, though. I normally travel with TWO bodyguards. First time one’s ever been wounded by a carpet.”
“Surprised you don’t take that as a possible ‘accident ‘ scenario,” I say, pulling myself into a blue shirt and rooting for my pants.
“We might,” she admits. “I take it insurance didn’t pay out on the last sofa?”
“It’s hard to prove a musclemouse broke it by throwing it at a wall,” I admit. “At YOUR command. What’s with the visit?”
“I understand you’re responsible for the rescue of Harmony Grigger,” she tells me. Not that I didn’t know anyhow. “We have an interest in that scenario.”
“Why so and how much are you paying for the information?” I slip into the other chair and look at her impassively.
She gestured with a hand. “Isn’t not breaking things enough?” She smiled slightly and took another sip of her brandy. “Very well, I propose gifting you money to do this place up a bit. “ She growled. “I will also ‘speak’ with your landlady – without invoking your name – and ‘encourage’ her to clean up her sty. Because, you see, Mister Moon, Harmony Grigger is NOT the only person missing.”
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Harry Johnathan »

Enjoying this adventure! Keep up the good work!

Also, good idea to do a schedule!
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But [The LORD] said, “Yes, you did laugh.” - Genesis 18:15 (NIV).
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

You can probably trust someone who claims they're not your friend...

SEVEN.

I look death in the eye and attempt to see if she’s lying. I can’t tell. She’s a professional liar who speaks truth to power and whenever it suits her. The rumours about her being banned from poker tournaments are probably true, even if her name is only mentioned in whispers and deniable cries of pain. The other guy in the room is armed and could snap a canine in two with his left arm tied down and SHE’S the dangerous one to watch. The world spins to nothing as I try to figure out why she’s telling me this. She deals with top of the range operators. Licence to kill types… Better licences to Kill than the one I have, I mean. She deals with the ones that Governments’ deny, not local sheriffs. “Do I have something in my teeth, Mr Moon,” she asks carefully. “You’re staring.”
“Your reputation precedes you, Miss Thurso,” I tell her.
“All bad, I take it?” She smiled slightly and took another sip from her drink as the other moved over to peek out the window. The blue and red lights that had burgeoned in the street snapped off and I guess that the ambulance has arrived for the other agent.
“I should go down,” he says, glancing at me after looking at her. “If you allow, of course, Ma’am?”
She waves him away. “It’s not like Mr. Moon is going to hurt me. For one thing, I’m between him and the weapons hidden in his computer and, for another, I’m offering him a commission. I believe it’s not done to attack the money?” She looks to me as though for confirmation. I’m being played with by an Anaconda in a white fur suit. Just what every coward wants. Oh, believe me, I’m a coward. It’s just that, when it comes time to be a coward, I’m afraid of doing it badly.
“That is true,” I say so he can go. “But it begs the question of why me, Miss Thurso. You have all manner of people you can use. Why me?”
“Because you’ve already got your tail in the machinery, Mr Moon.” She looks around and disdain is obvious on her face, “I wouldn’t be here otherwise. There is also the fact that the situation is NOT vital enough to allow for official forces to intervene.”
I shift forward in my seat. “And what IS the situation,” I ask, clasping my hands together.
“I am aware of three youths that have vanished in the last three weeks. Marius Kohl, a Human boy from Jacincta II. His father is a coming thing in architectural construction, apparently.” She pushes across a picture of a pale toned Human with black headfur… Hare, I think they call it, and quite a pronounced contusion in his throat. It might be some sort of medical deformity. He’s probably taking medication for it. The second picture she passes along is a Mican girl, about fifteen if I have it right. Something about her looks familiar, as though I know this one. “Sonia Hardcastle,” she says. “Daughter of Marina Hardcastle, a Vehicle manufacturer and importeron Pandera. She’s the niece of former General Hardcastle.”
That’s where I know her from, I think. She looks like her uncle. He died in the fighting about ten years back when ‘agents’ conned a neighbouring power into a war with the Council. A shopping mall fell on him, as I recall. A twitch in Thurso’s eye tells me this might be why she’s here. There’s a personal connection. But I’m not going to say it. Saying might make her decide to tell me but it might lso make her mind up a different way and have her throwing me out of the window. So I simply nod. “She was taken on Pandera, of course. The Police are conducting house to house searches, just as they are on Vanos for Kayvan Ossetia, son of Sports organiser Jannavak.” Before she passed the photo across, I knew it’d be a Celican boy but I wasn’t quite prepared for it to be an eight year old cub. It’s the style with Celicans that you have a first name that you can drop the last section of to provide a better name. Kayvan would be ‘Kay’ to his friends.
I can get why you think it’s all connected,” I say, “as kidnappings are kind of rare out in the patch but you think they’ve been brought here?”
She shrugs slightly. “I have no clue if they’re here or, indeed, if they’re connected, but I have been keeping an eye on the situation-” Again I catch her eye flitting to Marina’s picture. “- and I want to act before it gets to IOC levels. It’s nothing I can officially intervene in so I was hoping…”
“I’ll need a confidential line to you or one of your people,” I tell her, “so I can pass on theories and what evidence I’ve gathered. It’s also reciprocal. You can tell me anything you find out. You make calls all the time so that’ll be fine if anyone sees you. I don’t officially work for you as that would really put me on the target for some of the criminal types. I’ll let you hire me a nondescript car, preferably something you loan to special agents as the Brickmobile’s already been scoped by at least one of the people involved. But I probably won’t need hidden machine guns.”
She allows herself a small chuckle. “I don’t think we do heavily weaponed automotives any more. The ‘death races’ films put paid to that. Not to mention those old Celican special agent films. They made a joke of the vehicles. I’ll sort you out a vehicle.”
I stand and look out of the window. The ambulance is pulling away as another vehicle that doesn’t belong here pulls up. A black Campasso with tinted windows that’s rather too close for comfort. “If that car’s yours for me, you work quickly,” I say. “If it’s not, you might need to MOVE quickly.”
“Oh, it’s probably for me,” she admits, standing up with a sigh. “Might I use your bathroom?”
I shrug and point it out, spending no time at all wondering if I’ve left any sort of smell or soaked towels in there as I step over to my ancient looking computer and extract the blaster, a few balls and the toxin stained knife from the over sized base unit. I check they’re ready for use and quickly call my Human neighbour to tell her to keep down for a few moments. I hope she thinks to use these few moments to call the sheriff because I didn’t as the firing starts. The agent pulls back, into the flat as I nip out and toss one of the balls down the stairs. It bounces off the wall and down the next story as green gas billows out. “Poison gas,” the agent asks?
I look at him. “What do you think I am,” I ask, readying my gun, “someone who kills my neighbours? But I still wouldn’t breathe,” I warn as the noxious odours of the stink bomb filter upwards. I fire down, leading the way and shooting into the green gas to incapacitate or end the opponents. They’re a mixture of Micans and Canines that drop to my fire. It’s a few seconds before I realise I have no back up. I’m heading back up when I hear a ‘clonk’ from behind. I turn and see Miss Lorin standing over a clonked Canine with a frying pan and a scarf over her face to protect her nose. I grin to her and run back upstairs as I hear a shot ring out. I dive into my flat and roll into the couch. I look into the dead eyes of the bodyguard, his firearm in his hand but not much left of his chest.
“I suppose I need to hire better bodyguards,” Harriet Thurso says, stepping from the bathroom and cleaning her clip blaster. I don’t have much time to study the corpse but there’s no way the clip blaster made that impact. “One less murderous.” She looks to me. “Shall we take their car?”
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Harry Johnathan »

Great as always!
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But [The LORD] said, “Yes, you did laugh.” - Genesis 18:15 (NIV).
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Things are about to move...

EIGHT

There are times I love satellite navigation. When I’m nowhere near home, for example, or going to an address I’ve never been to. Or when I just want to hear someone’s voice. Well, not that last one as it makes me sound quite lonely and miserable and I’m not. I have an active social life in the breaks between boring work and people trying to kill me work. There are also times I loathe satellite navigation. When it gives me redundant information like ‘you have arrived at your destination’ when you go past a house that’s down a siding next to you and the nearest junction to GET to the siding is a mile down the road.

Then there are days like today when the satellite navigation is a dangerous woman in the back of the government supply car who probably has a gun pointed at my back. Just like she obviously had an explosive implanted in her own bodyguard’s chest in case of betrayal. She’s directing me to what is probably a safe house and not her control centre. She’s already weaselled her way out of getting me a hire car as she says she’ll have the car the would be killers came in added to the lists and immediately assigned to me. I wonder if she’ll advance me the bus fare back to my place?

“I noticed, of course,” she says as I turn right at a roundabout, “that you didn’t mention anything when I mentioned Sonia Hardcastle. I know I gave myself away there.” A glance in the mirror doesn’t tell me if she’s got a weapon, just that she’s watching my eyes in the mirror. I look back to the street ahead and move to overtake someone in a much worse car than this one. It might be the Colony President.
“I wasn’t sure you’d appreciate me mentioning it,” I tell her carefully. “People don’t like giving away secrets.”
“I can appreciate that,” she says, “but you’ve earned this truth. She… Left here.” I take the turn. “You’ll need to take the next right now,” she says. “I was saying she left here under a bit of a cloud last time. She’s my niece.”
I roll my eyes at my own mistake and take the right. “Which is why they can’t let you investigate officially,” I guess.
“No,” she responds, “It’s why I can’t tear the planet apart with agents. And it’s probably a good thing too.” She hits with the voice of darkness now. “It would have been the wrong world.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s about,” I ask.
“It’s not about me, if that’s what you’re asking. One week. No ransom. No active signs of kidnapping. It’s only the fact that three other teenagers of industrialists going missing – also with no ransoms demanded – that tells me something’s up.”
“Four including Miss Grigger,” I remind her. She inclines her head rather than shooing me. That’s how I know she agrees.

Ten minutes later, I can breathe easier. I’m at the bus stop and my place is on the route. I’ve got the would be assassins car keys in my pocket and ten credits added to my chit for the bus. There are people clearing up the bodies in my hallway and the landlord is going to be ‘influenced’ by a nasty person to spend some cash. The things are coming up Harvest. In a very odd way. This is usually when things turn around and I really hope the fact that the bus is practically a metal box containing a heaving mass of bodies that almost doesn’t need to say ‘standing room only’ right now isn’t a sign. I slot in, somewhere near a corner, and try not to breathe in. The benefit of being small is I take up less space. The downside is I’m near everyone’s rear end. I take the twenty or so minutes of travel to plot out what I’m going to do next and wish I’d worked harder on holding my breath. Someone has been eating Onions a day or so back. I think my nose is going to melt.

I step into the sweet air, with it’s aroma of fast food restaurant garbage bins and vomit, and saunter towards my apartment block as though it was the most normal thing in the world. I pass by the usual building sites, rebuilding the cheaper parts of the city that were destroyed when a small starship crashed into onto them during the war I keep mentioning. The scabs will heal over one day, I’m sure. It’s half a mile from here to my place and I spend a few credits on a Calzone pizza for the walk and I’m just about finishing it when I arrive on my street in the middle evening. A bare glance on either side of the street tells me there’s no unusual cars nearby so I carry out a close check of the car I’ve been ‘loaned’. Nothing that goes ‘bang’ seems to be in close communion so I decide to drive the mid ranger off the block towards where I’d been this morning.

Ever conscientious – and not wanting a ticket – I park up in a parking lot a quarter mile from the initial contact point and make my way to the closest bar. It’s an unwritten rule that there’s always someone in a bar who knows the local goings on like the fur patterns on the back of their hand and, when you live in the small city, you tend to know who knows. In the case of the ‘Rack of Meat’, it’s an old Canine porter from the wrong side of the spacelanes. He charges in drink and chat so it takes me half an hour to find out that he hasn’t actually seen anything but he has heard a rumour that transports were seen on Packard Street at half past twenty-four… why can’t he just say twenty-four thirty… a few nights back. The factories there do have night shifts but that one, according to Lorius here, is supposed to be a new company setting up and they don’t tend to deliver at night. It’s also about ten minutes from the initial point of contact. This’ll be a fun addition to my expenses.
The wind’s whipping up a storm as I climb a neighbouring factory’s roof and skitter along in the dark to the very edge of the roof to take a look through my monocle. It’s a thermal imaging item that slots into my shirt pocket. That’s why it cost as much as a set of similarly enabled binoculars. There’s a lot of yellow things in that warehouse. And a number of red blobs walking around. Some of them aren’t. They’re lying down or kneeling on the floor. One or two are in chairs. I have this feeling that their hands being together doesn’t mean they’re praying. I think about sending Thurso a text but I don’t have her number. The Sheriff wouldn’t believe me. And she’d need a warrant. So I send a text with the address to Harmony and tell her to tell her dad and get him to talk to exactly who he did before. The leak that brought Thurso to my house came from him or her. It might work again. But they’re grabbing the ones who weren’t moving now. They’re pulling them towards the loading dock where a van is waiting. If I want to hold them, I have to do something irrational.

Now.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I really like where this is starting to go! Great chapter that you uploaded here Welshy!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

The obligatory fight scene...

NINE

I head down the fire escape with a plan formulating in my little brain. I’m going in against an unknown number of armed hoods on their turf and with one gun. It’s not such a great plan. I need to change it up a little bit and I do so whilst I’m on the move, slipping in through a hole I just made in the fence. I’m fortunate in that I’m small and, thus, largely silent but I’ve probably been picked up on any motion detection systems and, if they’re not too busy moving the prisoners, they’re going to be coming out after me immediately. My trick might not work out in time. I push myself against the wall close to the truck. It’s a standard four wheel thing with the doors at the back and a driver not paying attention at the front. He’s easily ignored. I can hear people moving inside the building so I have to be quick. One stab each to the back wheels is applicable here and I thusly apply the pressure to cut through the rubber and the tubing inside as the midnight shuttle takes off behind me. It’s late. Oh, and it’s not the shuttle. The door’s opening behind me, meaning it’s time to nip into the shadows. Well, behind the door anyhow. I watch as four hoodlums ‘escort’ several physically restrained people from the interior and I grab the door handle to keep the thing open and, thus, covering me from their direct view as the driver opens the back for them.

The Feline’s there, I can hear his voice as he tells someone to get in. Interestingly, they’re masked so the captives can’t see their faces. This is a good thing. Removal of mask usually guarantees death is the outcome for the captive but they seem to want them alive. But I need to take a chance now, before he turns and sees me. I need to hope that there’s no-one tailing them who has yet to come through the door. I swing around the hole and in as they’re all fighting the captives into the back. It’s swift. It takes a second… and someone calls out as the door shuts. I sprint away from the energy beam that smacks into the wall the right side of my left ear – that is, the side NOT between my ears – and hope the call I made before coming in pays off.

They’re running behind me and I’m sure there’s one ahead of me somewhere as I zip through corridors and open plan rooms. I fire backwards, identifying my location but making them think for a few seconds. There are no cameras in here, fortunately – well, none I can see anyhow. I wonder what the pursuer has planned? Has he gone out to the others and told them of an intruder? If so, they’ll probably be straight back in here. Of course, if my pursuers DON’T go and tell them, they’ll be back in here in a few minutes anyway as someone knackered two of their tyres. Either way, it was a good idea at the time. I vault some sort of assembly line as my friend makes his decision on what to do. Shoot me. I fire a totally accurate shot back at him that probably misses completely and head down the passage. It’s one guy, it seems. Why would they leave one guy behind?

And how have I ended up in one of the offices? I hadn’t planned to end up in an empty box with one way in and out. Then again, it’s not like I planned any of this exactly. I hide in a closet and duck right down. I hear someone… some ones perhaps… enter the room. I can’t see them from down here but, after a few seconds, I’m pretty sure I know where they are anyhow. They’re moving quietly. Which means either they’re not here or they’re about to open fire on this cabinet. So I show how law abiding I am by opening fire without warning and following the blast out. The shot melts through the metal, half dazzling me in the second before it cuts through the metal and into the shoulder of the Celican who’d been hunting me. Is it the same one from earlier? Flipped if I know. But he’s dropped his gun due to me blasting his arm off at the shoulder and he must be on some sort of adrenaline rush or narcotic as he’s not dropped dead with shock. I’m pretty sure that would be MY first reaction to the situation. But maybe I’m just a wimp as this guy grabs me with his remaining arm and throws me into a wall. I roll with it and take it shoulder first, causing my arm to go into shock and reflexly fire a shot out the window before dropping the gun to the floor. I pull my only slightly legal knife kinda woozily as the one Celican suddenly explodes into three hundred for a few seconds as he comes towards me. My head’s swimming a little. My eyes can’t be trusted. Trust the nose. It won’t let you down unless it’s filled with blood and that hasn’t hit my nostrils yet so I try a rolling slash with the knife and hit… something as I move. Ordinarily I’d say he’d be dropping in a few seconds from the toxins on the blade but this guy’s got all the drive of a starship. He’s coming back into one now, which means I’m able to dodge most of his backhand slam attack and he only becomes ten now. When are his friends going to get here and kill me? When are MY… Oop. A downward swing from his fist almost lands atop my head. I dodge aside and punch out with my knife again. He takes it through the hand. Through it. And I’m still not sure he’s feeling it. He’s got to be hopped on something. After it passes he’s going to drop as dead as a stone but I don’t want to go before him! He twists and sends me skittering across the floor. He does realise it’s something of a mistake though, as I land by his severed arm and pick it up. I can’t get his gun free from his grip, it’s too tight and I don’t have time. Fortunately I don’t have to. It’s a bit awkward but I manage to aim with his finger still on the trigger and pull as he looms over me. It beeps. It has a DNA recognition system. That’s lucky, I think, as it recognises his DNA around the handle and blows a hole in his chest that I could fit a fist through. He teeters for a moment. He’s actually quite shocked as I double the cliché. Using his own hand against him and shooting him with his own gun. Well, it’s not a good thing. I’ve got a few seconds so I pull myself up as he falls over and reclaim my gun and pull my knife out of his hand. Then I think again and take his gun and arm too. Waste not, want not. Plus I’ll be needing to identify him later and, rather than pull the whole lot of him around…

I return to the corridors, touting this guys arm like a rifle between my left arm and my side. The lights outside indicate that the department might just have believed the anonymous call about an intruder at this location and shots being fired because there seem to be more than one set of them that I can see as I track back along the offices and makeshift cells. Trouble is there’s more of these that have been used than could fit into that van out there. I have to think this can’t be over. I also have to wonder why they didn’t retreat back into here. It’s something that gets answered by a look outside. They made it halfway across the yard before they realised the tyres were down and were halfway back when half the local Sheriff’s armed response team arrived. Three of the group are caught that I can see. Weren’t there four? I turn and the Feline’s looking at me. His eyes narrow and he growls as he sees the weapon ‘I’m’ holding.
“You,” he says, trying to put as much chill as he can into his tone. I’m a Mouse. He’s a Cat. It’s not hard.
“If you want to live,” I tell him, hoping my knees aren’t knocking, “you should surrender now.”
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Good work on writing this chapter once again! I'm sure his knees aren't knocking but he has to pray inside that this gambit will work!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

TEN

He approaches, stepping carefully, keeping his eye on the Celicans’ gun in my hand. “I knew we should have killed you this morning,” he says.
I nod slightly. “It would have made my day shorter,” I agree, keeping my distance from him. I turn so he’s not looking down the corridor behind him so he won’t see any deputies if they ever decide to show up. Gone midnight in a factory complex with a Feline. Two of my least favourite things in the universe and it’s past midnight. I’ve always hated the machinery processes in factories. It goes back to the life of my father and how depressed it made him that he couldn’t get a job on the factory line. He used to tell of the hundreds of peoples who’d work the production lines and it always struck me as totally uncomfortably cramped and invasive. Of course we never had any money. If we did, we’d probably have been in the management of any factory and that wouldn’t have seemed so bad. People say money doesn’t change you? Feh. Anyhow, back to the subject. He’s angling for something. I’m just looking to get him to stand down. “You’re not getting out, you know?”
“I can at least make sure you don’t either,” he threatens.
I nod to the gun in the hand that’s going cold, getting clammy and feeling heavy. “Does this thing have a stun setting,” I ask as Deputies appear behind him and stun him in a flash of electricity. His mouth opens into a pained ‘o’ as his eyes cross and a hand goes towards his back before losing the impulse in his fingers and his knees sagging to drop him to the floor. He twitches and lies still as I raise my hands in surrender, realise I have three hands and put the spare down on the floor.

Somehow Sheriff Javey looks even more peeved than usual. She still has bedheadfur. I think she’s washed but not had any perfume added to boost the tiredness of her scent. This is going to cost me. She looks at me across the courtyard as the people they were moving get checked out by medical professionals. I hope they don’t get charged. Normally, emergency medical procedures are covered by the colony but there have been rumours of cuts meaning they need to get money back in other ways. I’d need insurance. From the Sheriff for one thing. She gives me a friendly snarl. “You reported yourself breaking and entering,” she declares. “And weapons fired.”
“I used ‘affecting an entrance’ and said I ‘THOUGHT weapons had been fired,” I say defensively. I nod to the captives. “I think it was a good thing, yes?” I step over to one of the ambulances where a scared looking boy of the Human variety is looking wide-eyed at everyone. “Mr. Kohl might agree, eh,” I ask. He doesn’t respond.
“We think the translation engrams have been neutralized somehow,” the paramedic advises, looking up.
“We’ll need to get those restarted before we can talk to him.” Jacey agrees, “unlike the rest he doesn’t have Galactic standard as a second.”
I ring Mrs Lorin, apologise for the hour and tell her a deputy will be coming by to pick her up. I tell her the siuation and apologise for the hour and she makes me apologise for the hour again and hand the comm over. I put her on to the boy and she speaks to him. Because the microbes I have implanted are working perfectly, I hear him telling her how he can’t understand any of us and he’s scared and just wants to go home. He looks to me and hands the comm back. Mrs Lorin’s on her way. I just do what I can to keep him calm and, finding a translation app on Gal-net (guess which supplier I’m with), I manage to, just about, open up a dialogue with him. At the start he keeps asking for the phone so he can answer but I type out that I can understand him so he can just speak. That has him confused for a moment, then he gets it and laughs slightly, that throat deformity moving hypnotically. I ask him about how he was taken and he says he was out with his friends and got seperated and why is that Feline lady watching everything I type?
I have to confess that she’s the official one. I have to retype it after I apparently got the word confused with ‘nosey’. Can’t think how that happened. Not like Mrs Lorin’s been teaching me a few phrases on the odd evening, is it? I can’t get my jaw around the speech but I’m getting on OK with typing. I wonder what we sound like to him?

I keep an eye out over the next few minutes as Jacey tries to get me to answer as to how I knew the boy’s name. I just tell her it came to me over a drink and that’s not entirely a lie. It WAS told me over a drink but I wasn’t the one quaffing. Was I? I notice she’s not here yet, to further complicate matters. She’s probably going to ambush us at the station and swoop in to recover her Kinsmouse Marina from the interrogation cells. And that’s going to be trickier than she thinks because Marina’s not here. Marius is here – Kayvan too, thankfully, but she isn’t. There’s also another Rabbit youth, a Canine and a Feline. Oh, and a Raitchian. I almost think about telling Jacey I’d want my cut of the reward money as I have a feeling the cumulative rewards will be quite high but I don’t ask. I’m too annoyed. I know what’s going on here – or I think I do anyway – and it’s something that makes me sick to my stomach. They’re smuggling people. Kidnapping them on colony worlds, smuggling them elsewhere and selling them to people who’ll ‘add the price’ to any ransom demands. It’s the work of evil and these rescued aren’t the only ones. There’s more ‘cells’ back in that factory than were needed here.

The morning comes and I’m still in the Sheriff’s headquarters, having bunked down in a cell at her insistence as she’d been forced to arrest me on the ‘affecting an entry’ thing – although she was sure no-one would be pressing charges and she’d dearrest me in the morning. The morning meal is something quite uninteresting alongside something quite appalling and a mug of Coffee that’s just about drinkable. There’s a toilet in thr corner that I don’t want to touch and someone left a book in here that I don’t want to read. It’s poetry.

Eight thirty and checkout time. Or not, I tell myself as Javey calls my name in annoyance. It seems someone’s figured this is an inter planetary thing and called in IOC, who’ll be here at some point but the Feline, called Makawber, says he’ll onlt talk if I’m in the room. So I’m in the room with orders to keep my mouth shut.

He talks a fair bit – mostly about me. But he knows bits and pieces that might be of use if a judge got to hear about it. Now I know why he wants me here. I’m the independent witness. Some elected law officials – i.e. Sheriffs – have been known to make deals for information and then ‘lose’ the recording of the deal. If Javey pulled that sort of thing – which she wouldn’t – the defence barrister would subpoena me and she’d hate me more.

Of course, I’m also listening in to everything he’s saying, recording it on a pen device I’m totally not carrying. I’ve done a fair bit – even intentionally - but it’s not over yet...
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

ELE|VEN

…..Personal musings…..

It’s funny how all space ports look the same, isn’t it? All concrete and steel when you get in close, flanked by roads designed for wheeled vehicles as they’re all cheaper than hover types. Of course, hover vehicles and the roads to use them on are coming in as finances allow. That’ll please my dad. He’s one of the big hover vehicle suppliers on Raitche and he’s been looking to expand into these systems for a few years. He’d have some luck out here if he can. For some reason the other systems don’t trust us as much as they might do. It’s a bit unfair if you ask me. It’s not like we haven’t had an anti corruption police fore for almost thirty years now! We’ve even started getting officers in the federal police now, which is where I come in.

Oh! Sorry! Hiya! (I’m waving here) I almost forgot you don’t know who I am, do you? Well, I’m Harmony. No, not that one. She’s just been rescued on Caldera, which you know as that’s where you came in. But it’s not really where I came in so…

I’m Harmony Whitestar. I would be Harmony Noisette but it’s very hard for people to take you seriously as an agent when you’re named Agent meat so I got it changed a few years back. I’m a rather lithe, fit, and attractive Raitchian of the Noveggan type with shining black fur and bright eyes. I like jogging, gaining finance legally (gasp), putting away bad guys and filling out dating site application forms. My hates are Peas, con artists who aren’t my family, prejudice – except against Celicans coz they ate my great grandfather once… Why do I say once? Not like they could do it twice, eh? Oh, and not getting replies to my dating site applications (insert sad face emoji here). Anyhow, how did I get here?

Well, I’m Raitchian – obviously,, so they’re not trusting me with prime assignment locations yet and, with Adriette Beran being a high ranking Agent, being somewhere near her seemed a good way to get promotion quickly as they know we’re serious. So, after a year in the Raitche Office, I applied to join an Briannic Expanse (known as the Briar Patch for some reason) team. I wanted Pandera, where all the shops are but I got Vallonia, where they aren’t. I also got a boss who doesn’t like any Raitchian agent who dresses better than he does on a lower budget. I just know how to economise is all! Honestly, everyone thinks we’re corrupt! I just have an innate ability to find the best, cheap, shops in any colony. Oh, and spot fakes. And people who don’t know me tell me things about nefarious goings on as they think I’m a fraudster, not an agent. This is a good thing, even if the boss did slap me down for getting the cheap import Whisky he likes even cheaper than he’d found. I suggested he keep an eye on the import business I’d got it from as they seemed to be avoiding duties on certain things (Whisky unproven, of course) and, three weeks later, he took the credit for their capture. So, when it came to Harmony Grigger, muggins was mainly in charge of the filing and asking follow up questions on the vid and getting a sore ar...m (what did you THINK I was going to say, hey?) from holding up my creds every five minutes. It’s mostly supporting the local forces and correlating reports. We’re involved – quietly – because of the Lappinean thing. Across the patch, aggressions against them have gone up three fold in the last few months and we’re not totally sure that they’re not connected. So, when my boss, who’s a Feline/Celican cross by the way – NOT why I don’t like him! - heard that Grigger had been found on Caldera of all places, he assigned me to go get her. Or, to put it more accurately, he said “Whitestar! I can’t stand you sitting on your butt all day so get on a cargo freighter to Caldera and talk to Harmony Grigger! Cheapest ticket you can get!”

I don’t know what he calls a cheap ticket but I’m not on a cargo freighter, I’m on a scheduled liner flight. I made friends with several of the sector pilots as soon as I arrived here. They often need an ‘agent aboard’ type thing so I fly for free. And, when I was partway here, Sector Chief Feldar Jones wanted to talk to me. To ME! Squee! It seems there’s more going on here than one kidnapping and I’m to liase… laise… liaise.. Got it! I’m to liaise with Sheriff Javey, Security Chief Hav at the Council base and a Field-mouse. Apparently, a P.I.’s gotten himself involved in everything somehow and I’m to keep him in the loop. When Chief Jones told me that, someone behind him growled that, if the Mouse got hurt, I was to notify Pandera immediately and then tell the coroner that bodies were coming. Even over millions of miles Wolves can be scary when they’re on your side. I think she’s on our side. Why else would she be in the command room? She does say she doesn’t like his hat, though. Which is a bit odd.

It took a few minutes to pass through customs and another five to meet up with the pilot and get my gun back before hiding it away under arm in the holster and visiting the shops for a local coffee. It’s said to be one of the better parts of Calderan culture – such as any world here in the patch HAS culture – that they can make good coffee and, fair enough, it’s better than most Vallonian stuff. But so is the pond sludge on occasion. The clothes were almost as bright as the lights and designed to get you to spend money. I bought a Calderon guidebook and put it in my go bag before comming ahead to the Sheriff’s office to say that I was coming in and can she have a car ready for me to use and please call the Private Detective in. Why she smiled, I didn’t know.

Sorry if I’m mixing tenses here. I don’t often narrate my notes like this. I seem to have picked it up somewhere. I’ll try not to let it affect my notes but I didn’t know if it already has. ;-P

I hailed a cab and, after showing my badge once again when he joked that I must be going to hand myself in, he decided to make it an ‘on the house’ fare, probably hoping I wouldn’t notice the very, very, naughty cigarette that contains very, very, naughty things that he hasn’t lit up yet down the side of his seat. He’s right. I won’t. I have no jurisdiction over such things here so there’s no way I’m getting involved. Of course, I might just mention it in passing with the Sheriff and his licence number too, which I noted as he noted mine. He talks about the local sports and how they’re doing and what the weather’s been like and a dozen other subjects I know a bit about as I looked them up on the way here. He tells me that there was some sort of heavy Police action last night and asks if that’s what I’m here about. I tell him I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be allowed to tell him if I am and he understands that I just said yes without saying yes.

He pulls up outside one of the nondescript buildings in a nondescript part of the city and the image of a six pointed Sheriff’s star (one point each for Raitchian, Mican, Canine, Celican, Lappinean and Osirans as they were the big six races to start with) is the only thing that marks it out as a law enforcement establishment – with the exception of the similarly starred car parked in the bay next to us, of course. I get out and note the licence plate as he zooms off at barely legal speed. I add it to the mental note of his name and carriage licence and jot them down in my notepad – real pen and paper, people! - for a physical note before I walk in to the shop.

There’s a light hum coming from the ventilation system and I think I catch the faint hint of Paldakas Flower in the circulation. They probably added it to make people act a little calmer. It just makes me sneeze which isn’t the best way to attract the attention of the desk officer who just looks at me as I put my hankie away. “Minor allergies,” I sniff, making my way over to him. He’s a Canine of the Malina type and probably comes from a long line of law enforcement. “I’m Agent Whitestar,” I repeat, showing my badge before he requests it. What is it about a Julla Raquinna suit that makes people think an Agent can’t afford it? Never mind. It’s the price tag.
“Certainly, Agent,” he says, still looking at me like I’m here to swipe his lunch. Or Dinner. I don’t know what time it is. In my mind it’s still last night. “What do you want?” He relaxes slightly, making him look like he’s only going to arrest me rather than pounce on me.
“I’m here to speak to the Sheriff with regards Harmony Grigger and the kidnapping ring?”
He sniffed and called back for his boss.

That’s how I got to meet Sheriff Javey. And a certain Field-Mouse...
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Glad that you are continuing with the story as fast as possible! I love reading it even if I don't comment on it!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

TWELVE

Personal musings…

I wonder how’s best to describe Harvest Moon?
If I were talking specifics then he’s a FieldMican of about average build and weight, quite pale furred for his people, wearing a coat that stretches down to his knees, with a slit at the back for his tail, which is probably prehensile. I did my reading at Raitche University. I wanted the tail like his, to use as an ‘extra’ hand. But I also wanted the head rack of an Elaphan and I’m not getting one of those either. They’re almost as rare as a brave FieldMican. One colony of the Deer people is known to exist and I’ve never met one. Anyhow, Mr Moon also doesn’t seem to be wearing a hat so I can see his whole head and eyes that need some coffee.

If I weren’t talking in a professional manner I’d say he’s a scruffbag. He holds himself like it’s an offence to be anything other than a fieldMican and he’s not brushed today. There’s a stain on his coat. His shoes are scuffed and his trousers have seen better days. I don’t want to know if he wears socks. All in all, it makes him look totally down at heel and uneducated. Which is probably what he’s going for. It lets people underestimate him, which is what smart people do. Of course, idiots do it too. Which this guy is I have to find out.

The Sheriff introduced herself and went off to her office, which I thought was a bit rude, leaving the unofficial person in the enquiry being the one to tell me what was going on.
“We have a friendly loathe/hate relationship,” he tells me as he gets me a cup of tea in the kitchen. I told him I wanted Coffee but he said that I really didn’t. I suppose I know what he means. Police stations that have good coffeemakers have cut budgets elsewhere. Might mean the Police here are OK. “The Sheriff and me, I mean.’ he added. “She’s never happier than when she’s telling me to get out of her office, her city and her life but I can do the odd things she can’t – and you shouldn’t know about officially – and I send things her way.” He shrugged and sat down. “One day she might reciprocate. Anyhow.”

As we drank the drink, he caught me up with what had been going on. Wow, it seems a few things have gone on since I took off. Now I get what Agent Jones meant about ‘taking charge’. The little ‘suicide squirrel’ opposite me – I don’t know why Rodent P.I.’s often have that nickname – seems to have opened it up wider than any one planet and there’s no IOC here save me. So, I get to be senior. Of course, that means I’ll have to work with the Sheriff or Mr Moon here and the Sheriff isn’t that interested. Probably because she knows I’m going to be… summoned into her office right now, apparently. That’s rude. She shut the door in Mr Moon’s face.
She tells me the facts as she knows them. Mr Moon made the breakthrough totally by accident after Miss Grigger escaped and ran into him on the street. By lesser things have greater cases been cracked and all that but I suspect there’s probably a little more to her escape than blind luck. No-one else has escaped yet. She makes me aware that she has a very finite budget and has to make it last until the end of the financial year so the more IOC spends on it rather than her the better and she has a lot of people to return to their homes. She tells me that the Field Mouse took her to the Council base to the south of the city and, after I tell her I’ll go to talk to Miss Grigger, she tells me that the girl doesn’t know much but sure. I can take Harvest with me and he can show me the way. She also told me that, pest or not, Mr Moon is HER pest and she would be somewhat displeased to have to go to the effort of burying him and investigating his murder so I’d better keep him in one piece. Relationships are confusing. She seems to like having him there to hate.

“It could be worse,” Mr Moon tells me as we headed towards… Well, I don’t know, really. I look at him. “You could be your boss,” he says. “He’s rather anti-rodentia, isn’t he?”
I grimace and wonder how he knows this as we pull into… a warehouse with a deputy guarding it. I look at him and he pre-empts the question. “I know you want to talk to Harmony, Harmony, but she’s safe and this is the scene of last night’s troubles. I figure you should take a look.”
“Why now,” I ask, getting out of the entirely comfortable vehicle and waiting as he took something he’d asked the Sheriff for from the back seat and pulls on a silly widebrim hat that he sets at a jaunty angle. It’s the same colour as his coat and has a feather in it.
He looked at my shoes. “Are you sure you want to wear those,” he asks, not answering my question.
“Yes,” I tell him.
“It’s a crime scene,” he shrugs. “Forensics haven’t been here yet. There’s one SOCO on site carrying out tests. Might want to cover them,” he finished, tossing me a pair of plastic overboot bags to tie on. “And I want to do it NOW because there are things I’m looking for. Like narcotics.” I look a bit confused so he elucidates. “I shot the arm off a Celican in there last night. He then proceeded to start trying to kill me.”
“So,” I ask. “Sounds a bit strange.”
“A bit strange? I think the normal response to having your arm blown off is to quickly die of shock, not try to put someone through a table with your good arm!”
“OK,” I agree, “it’s a lot strange.”
“There’s very few drugs can do that,” he tells me, as though I don’t know. “and none of them are here in any great amount. Too expensive,” he adds as he walks towards the deputy. The Canine holds up a hand to stop him but Harvest thumbs to me. “I’m with her,” he says, ducking under the arm as the Canine looks to my badge. He scans it and it comes up fine so he lets me in after I’ve bootied up and I follow my assistant in. (I’m in charge, remember?)

The place stinks. Rancid meat, faeces, rot and just plain staleness assails my nostrils and I wish I could gag. I’ve been thinking about having an automated gag ability installed in case anyone thinks of poisoning me but they cost a small packet and I don’t even have a tiny one yet. I follow Mr Moon as he says he’s headed for where the Celican came from. He also, anecdotally, tells how he got around the padprint reader on the gun and it pulls me up. “Hang on,” I said, “he had a pad-print weapon?”
“Yeah. Jayey’s working on the thing now,” he told me, “and getting his prints. I gave her a hand there.”
I groan as we reach something that looks like a security office with cameras and cold coffee and everything. They’ve all been cut off now, none working. Mr Moon’s looking through drawers and over the tables and even sniffs the coffee. “Paltaean Blend,” he tells me, “from the Tropical regions on Pandera.”
“You can tell that from the smell?”
“No,” he says, picking up the waste basket, “it’s on the packaging.” He pulls a packet out from beside the coffee packet. It’s got some powder in it. “And I wonder if any Doctor prescribed this?”
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Love this chapter more than the previous one! Good job! :D
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

THIRTEEN

When I first moved here, some three quarters of a decade back, I wasn’t quite as confident in my ability to subsist on a breadline wage from being a P.I. so I branched out, slightly. I started teaching at the local University. Stop sniggering. I was a lecturer on ethics and law enforcement – stop laughing! I was able to carry it off for a term or two but it became unmanageable due to someone else's extracurricular activities and I ended up having to give it up. But I did learn some things whilst I was there, like which other junior academics had things to hide, like Junior Professor Makrik of Cana in the pharmaceutical department, who didn’t reveal to the University, on application, that charges against him for making certain illegal pharmaceuticals whilst he was studying on Cana got quietly dropped when it was revealed that one of the people he’d actually been supplying was a local senior judge. Since he’d been here we’d made something of a bargain. He’d supply low strength stuff only to the students, thus keeping the idiots who want to try that nonsense safer than other suppliers for cheaper than other suppliers could match. In response I’d not supply certain evidence I had on him to the Sheriff and destroy his life completely. I don’t much like the deal but remove one supplier and two more will take it’s place. This way it’s controlled.

He’s also been able to help me with identifications over the last few years, what with his access to advanced scientific equipment and I think he thinks he’s on the right side of the law these days helping the kids out and assisting me too. I think he’s somewhere in the grey but I’m not about to tell him that. My biggest concern is the girl in the passenger seat. She’s the sort that’ll be looking to make this official and introducing herself as an IOC agent isn’t going to go over well with the local kingpin, is it? She’s already a bit annoyed as I haven’t taken her to Miss Grigger yet. I tell her that Miss Grigger’s not going anywhere and, if this is what I think it might be, we need to know quite quickly. She gets why, I see it in her eyes. The guy wasn’t a local thug as his prints aren’t in the local system. It’ll take time to work out where the translation engrams were encoded so the best way is to follow the drug. It’s expensive but he’d been on it a while so he probably found a way to bring it in. We need the importer.

I pull up outside the science wing and jog around to be a gentlemouse and pen the door for Harmony. She grimaces that she could have gotten out by herself but I only did it to get close to her for… Never mind. I lead her in and urge her to keep her voice down and she looks at me like I’ve got food in my teeth. “Do you think I’m going to shout,” she asks curiously.
“No,” I tell her, “but contacts generally only deal with one person in a team and he’s my contact. We’re just here to ask him to do a favour is all. Then,” I promise, “we’ll go see Miss Grigger whilst he works.”

We’re out in ten minutes and she’s fuming a little. I had to introduce her as my assistant and she wasn’t able to argue due to having no identification on her at the time. “I want it back,”she fumes at me as we walk back down the passageway towards the door. “How DARE you!”
I flip the badge from my pocket into my hand and hand it over. “It probably wouldn’t have been wise to use that back there,” I tell her. “Some of the stuff he does is technically, if not actually, and it probably IS actually, totally illegal. He’s not going to say anything in front of a federal.”
She thinks that over and it cuts a wedge in her anger. “Your assistant? Couldn’t I have been your partner?”
I chuckle. “Wait until you see my office,” I tell her, “you won’t want to be a partner!”
“You do that again,” she warns, “And I’ll arrest you!” I give her the remaining half of the powder in a protective bag so it’s in the official chain now and ask her if she wouldn’t prefer cracking a major pharmaceutical smuggling operation and, possibly, finding the leader of a people smuggling operation. I don’t know why, call it an itch, but I have my suspicions that someone important is lurking under the surface here on Caldera.

She’s looking out of the window as we go through town and I get the feeling she’s wanting to go shopping. I’m patently aware that Raitchian IOC agents aren’t likely to risk their careers shoplifting and her suit’s older than it looks. Probably fooled that nit boss of hers but she was wearing it when her picture went up on the Bounty Hunters site last year. Tells me things. She knows how to look after clothes to keep them ‘as new’ when actually being worn. She’d probably have more than one if it were a cheap fake but I don’t get that feeling from her. Yeah, the guild does keep secret files on IOC and senior law enforcement in the area and, even, in the core systems. It’s important to know who you can trust and who’s going to stab you in the back first chance they get. Anyhow, perhaps I’ll head to the shopping area after we’ve spoken with Harmony. The Grigger variety, I mean. I’ve got the feeling she’d much rather be here than on Vallonia. Then again, when it comes to Vallonia, the only people who prefer it there probably haven’t been off the colony.

We pass into a section of torrential rain and she remarks on it. I tell her it’s the usual malfunction in the weather control systems. Two miles of the city has had torrential downpours for two days and it’ll continue for three more until they get it sorted, based on prior occasions. The whole thing needs updating, I tell her. She doesn’t ask what a Mouse like me is doing in a business like this, which I’m happy about. Everyone wants to know that. It’s not like it’s some big secret. It’s just of no interest to anyone but myself. I turn the ‘borrowed’ motor into the Council base and let her exercise her arm to show her credentials. I think it makes her feel important so why not? I park up in my usual spot and, ignoring the calls about how I can afford the new car and was the paint job on the brickmobile really that bad, I lead Harmony in to see, er, Harmony.

Twenty minutes later, she leads me back out again. Officially she’s just here to escort Miss Grigger home but Miss Grigger doesn’t want to leave yet. Its to do with not believing herself safe and nothing to do with anyone shaking their head behind Agent Whitestar’s head, oh no. Miss Grigger’s able to add a few new details to the tale she told the Sheriff, though. I compliment her on that to Agent Whitestar as we head back to the car. “You want her to stay around,” she tells me. It’s not a question. She gives me a light grin.
“I find it’s probably safer for her here,” I protest as we wait for the guard on duty to let us out. “Surrounded by soldiers after…” I fall silent as I see the delivery guy trying to get a package in. “..All,” I finish, trying to keep my composure. I’ve seen this Celican before, I think. I think he’s the Chauffeur.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

FOURTEEN

I’ve never been hauled back, out of sight, by a Raitchian female before and it’s an interesting experience. I hope it looks like she was pulling me back for an around the corner ‘assignation’ and not because I was spotted or something. “Are you sure it’s him,” she asks in a whisper that everyone can probably hear.
“Ninety percent,” I hiss back. The thing about uniforms is that, even when they’re NOT military, they distract from the face and, when you have pretty much identical faces, it’s difficult to be sure. “OK, seventy,” I amend.
“I’ll take that as a ‘not quite’,” she tells me. She risks a look back around the corner. “He’s still there. He’s trying to get the guard to sign something in.”
I pass her the key to the car. “You can drive,” I say. It’s a question, not a statement. She nods. “Head out to the car. I’ll follow in a moment. Be ready to follow him if I ask.”
“Who’s in charge here,” she asks.
“You are,” I say, smiling a hopefully charming smile at her. She heads out. I wait a moment and call someone over, hissing at them to get whatever package came through into secure storage for checking. Fortunately, I pulled over Mr Hav so he knows I’m not a lunatic. Well, suspects anyhow.

What might the Celican be doing here? Is he hunting Harmony still? Is he on the attack? Is he a Courier in his nine to five job? Is it the same guy? It’d be embarrassing to put an entire barracks on red alert over a packet of Coffee pods. Time to put things to the test. I hear him trying to convince the security guard that the packet was for a Miss Grigger and she’d made the order five hours ago. I roll my eyes. She’s just innocent enough that it might be true. The guard, good to his job, continued to insist there was no-one called Grigger on his books and it wasn’t coming in. Couriers don’t normally argue this vociferously for this long. I walk towards them and tip my hat, deliberately using my tail to do it so they can see it. “See you, Oren,” I tell the guard. “Nice to see you again, too,” I say to the courier.

There it is. The flash of fear that widens the eyes and darkens the lower extremities. Predators are never that good at hiding it when they become prey and he’s pretty bad. So bad it takes him a full five seconds to reassert himself and deny knowing who I was. I apologise and continue on my way.

“It’s him,” I say to the other Harmony in my life as I get into the car. “I have to scooch down in the back so he won’t see me.”
“Just hide under the hat,” she cheeks back.
“He saw that too.” I lie down on the back seat. “But what is it they fear she knows,” I ask. This much attention to getting back a prisoner. “Do IOC have any telepath’s in the area,” I ask.
“I believe there’s one but she’s ship bound,” She tells me. “You think she knows more than she knows?”
“I think that, if she does, we need to know as fast as possible. We need to find these people quickly.” The car starts up. I think the Celican’s on the move so so are we. I hope she’s trained in pursuit techniques. “Before all heck breaks loose.”
“Why do you say that,” she asks, turning right and sliding me across the car. Heck with this. I sit up and click the belt on.
“One of the people we didn’t get back was a Mican. Name of Sonia Hardcastle.”
“So,” she asks, taking a quick right turn without indicating.
“We’ll lose him if we get pulled over by the Traffic Cops,” I warn, before getting back to the subject. “Her god-Aunt wants her back.”
“Is that a thing?”
“It is and that God-Aunt happens to be Harriet Thurso.”
She glances back at me and I shout at her to keep her eyes on the road. I doubt this thing can take the damage the Brick can and I don’t want to be killed by a cliché! “Harriet Thurso,” She spat. “The head of Mican Intelligence?”
“That’s the one.” I rub my wrists and yawn. Haven’t had much sleep in the last thirty-six or so hours. “She’s making plans to tear the place apart. We’re the stop-gap measure.”
“You mean YOU are,” Whitestar vuts back. “She doesn’t know about me!” She overtakes someone innocent with the ferocity of a Celican hunting a distant Molian and I have to advise her the speed limit’s fifty. “He’s breaking it,” she protests.
“He’s about to run into roadworks,” I advise. “They’ve had this up to install hover capabilities for three months. He’ll have to slow.”
“Where are we going, anyhow,” she asks.
“Want to pull him over and ask,” I respond cheekily.
“Oh, go bite your hat!”
“We’re headed for the upper class areas. Sigwich, if I’m being exact. Original settler town sort of thing. Not the place I’d be allowed to be seen dead in. Seriously, they’d tip me in the river and allow me to be found further down. You might get in for a visit. Faded cash they understand and you look like it.”
“AND I have a badge. Unless you’ve stolen it again.”
Oh, that’s not going to go away anytime soon, is it?

We pull up close to a gated area as the Celican’s van pulls in. It doesn’t belong here. These people don’t work, they have money that does that for them. They have gates and auto guards and we have a badge. And no reason to investigate them. I scan the address and run it through the logs. It’ll have a readout by the time we get back. “I wonder if he lives there or if someone else does,” Harmony asks.
“I think we should pick this up tomorrow,” I say, shifting in my seat. “I can take you to a hotel if you’d like?”
She laughed. “No Hotel, Mister Moon,” she said. “I’m not letting you out of my sight because you’d come back and do something stupid and illegal. I’ll bunk at your place. I assume it’s clean enough?”
Ah, ****...
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Nice job as always! Sorry I haven't been around to read this and comment as much as I used to. I was getting over a headache.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

No worries, Dayzee. Headaches demand preferencial treatment. (might have a reference to one of the other stories that you'll like in a later part...)

FIFTEEN

Personal Musings.

He’s right, of course. Mister “I’m a noir Detective” Moon. We just don’t have any proof of… anything to allow me to walk up there, flash a badge, and gain entrance. We need to know more about this. He complains that he wasn’t able to set up some sort of camera as his equipment’s in the ‘Brick’ or whatever and takes over the driving to head back to his place. I wondered what the Brick is. It can’t be code for something. It must be a nickname. I asked him about it and he just chuckles and says I’ll know it when I see it and am I sure I don’t want a hotel? I assure him that I’m trying to keep a cheap budget and he assures me I’ll be able to apply for danger money after this. I didn’t like the way he says it.

The lights are sparkling in the city as we head through dusk and into the evening as we pass though the rainy sector again. The water runs down the gutter and Mr Moon pushes through to a dusty, dry section of the city that includes a number of low class joints and take away restaurants. “We’re in luck,” he says, “the Wannak Carton is open. It’s fairly decent.” It’s an honest opinion, I think, and I suspect he has a menu in his office, which must be nearby as we turn off the main road. I’m a bit surprised by the fact we immediately turn again, into a half pitted parking lot, where he parks up close to a monstrous red lump of a car. “That’s the brick,” he said by way of introduction. “She’s a couple of tonnes of solid protection and acceleration that’ll break your foot if you try too hard.” He actually sounds proud about that. “She’s lined with titanium. I got her cheap.” He nods to a welt in the side. “Missile strike,” he says. He can’t possibly be serious.

I’m rethinking the hotel as we head through one of the most desperate places I’ve seen – and I’ve seen slums on Raitche! The light works and sparks illumination as we walk through the ground floor to the stairs. I take his advice to ‘be careful’ seriously as I can see the bloodstains on the stairs where someone came a cropper. From the smell it wasn’t too long ago either. He stops on the first floor and knocks someone up. An ageing Human opens the door – I think she’s ageing anyhow – I’m not totally sure with the fur-free ones – and smiles down at Mister Moon. “Hello, Miss Lorin, this is Harriet Whitestar, IOC againt. She’s, uh, allowing me to assist in the people smuggling case.” The Human offers a hand and I accept it as per regulations as he tells me Mrs Lorin helped out with the Human boy last night. It’s another bit of information I didn’t ave. They can disable the translation implants. Wonderful. Standard’s a basic language. It loses a lot of the nuances of natural language. He asks how the boychild is doing and I thank her for her service before remembering that that’s for the military and changing it to thanking her for looking after the youth until the translator could be reactivated. She smiles and thanks me for thanking her. We head back up to his rooms.

I enter into a place that’s spotless in it’s depressive nature. The sofa looks like it’s seen better days, there’s a sink full of washing up and there’s mould on the carpet. Mr Moon invites me to make myself at home – as much as possible and the bed is mine for the night if I want it. I dread to think but… Oh. It’s quite tidy in here. The bed’s made and there’s nothing out of place in the room except for a boot on the sideboard. I’ll have to ask him about that. He’d gone over to the old computer and turns it on. Ah. I wonder if it IS an old computer? Sometimes these people are a bit tricky. Just look at the DNA gloves he’s got draped on a bookcase… A BOOKCASE! With actual books! Goodness! I’d never seen the like. He can see me staring. “I need the computer’s memory for other things,” he says. “Running through licence and House details. It’s taking a moment as I’m going through the central H/K Database.”
“Why,” I ask, taking up a couple of clean mugs and wondering where the Coffee is.
“Simple,” he replies, “under the sink.” I look up and he clears it up. “The Coffee. Under the sink. I’m going this way because, should anything occur to us, there’s a digital track Javey can access and so can other hunters if need be.”
“Bit fatalistic, isn’t it?”
“Fatal isn’t foolish,” he says to me, “and it can’t be final either, in this case.” He steps over and activates his home vid’s answering machine. His ‘friend’ from the laboratory spoke up, telling us that the drug was along the lines of what Mr. Moon had feared, a compound called Metaraxiana Kallumide, Meta for short, that’s been coming in in small but increasing amounts recently. It might have had its effect throttled in some locales by the Sheriffs and the IOC but it was slipping through the cracks on some worlds. I’d heard of it, f course but, where I’m based, the price would be too high. According to the criminal on the message, though, the price is dropping. Mr Moon looks concerned at that. There’s an idea forming as the foam drops on the coffee with the just in date whitener.
“Bit risky,” I say as I bring the drinks over to him. “Wouldn’t someone be able to intercept the message on the machine?”
“Yeah,” he says, “if it wasn’t just an interface. The message isn’t stored in the machine and the relay only responds to me.” He sighs. “I have vague thoughts as to what’s happening here but there’s nothing I can put my fingerpad on…” He raises his hands wide and slaps his legs. “We’re a day into this and there’s a clock ticking and we’ve got… fragments! Fragments of dust.” He sighs again. “I hate this part, Harmony,” he confesses, “the part where everything relies on waiting and pondering and…”

The computer dings and he sits back in front of it. I look over his shoulder despite him asking me not to. He also requests I don’t open the door behind me, despite the fact my backside is nearly resting on top of the door handle and it looks like it swings inward. Hang on, isn’t that the back wall? “Hmm,” he muses, “that makes it a bit more clear, possibly…”
I look on the computer. “A shipping C.E.O,” I ask. “How does that clear things up?”
“Because it works in the theory I’ve just been formulating.” He sits back. “But we need more information. Do you know what would really help out, Agent Whitestar?”
I almost glower at him. “What?”
He chuckles and takes a drink from the Coffee. “Better than usual. In a few minutes, you can order from the Wannock Carton. Menu’s over there by the phone. You’re paying. Order for three.”
I look from him to the phone and back in total confusion. “How’s ordering food going to help,” I demand.
“Well, I’m hungry, I don’t know about you and, as what’ll really help is Miss Thurso calling in the next thirty seconds, she’ll be hungry when she gets here.” He finishes talking and crosses his arms, looking at the phone. I must confess I’m waiting too, and I don’t know why. I look ready to speak and he holds up a finger to quiet me.

Tens of seconds pass.

“Huh,” he says as nothing happened, “I was sure she’d…” I jumped as the phone rings.
He answers it. “You’ll be here in fifteen minutes and you’ll take a number 13,” he says.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

That sounds really enjoyable at least for me! I can't wait to see what that will be Welshy! Also really nice job on this chapter as usual!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by DDeer »

Up to chapter 8, things are getting intersting for our Mousy friend.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

They always are...

SIXTEEN

Miss Thurso is early And spends no time whatsoever on small talk, which is absolutely fine for me as I need her to put something into play on Vallonia immediately. She frowns but complies and she’s on the silent comm with whoever when Harmony reappears with our take out. The Raitchian looks at her and sputters. “How did you…” She says, pointing uselessly at the Mican as she produces a small, silver, flask from her inside pocket and pours the contents into a glass without so much as stopping talking. “I was only at the front door for a minute!”
“And I came in the back way,” Miss Thurso replied. Don’t ask me how I know because I don’t know how I know but she’s lying about it for some reason. She finishes on the comm and hangs up. “That’s set in motion,” she says. “Now, I want to know why I just set it in motion.”
“I’ll tell you fully if it so happens to pay off, Miss Thurso,” I say as I pick out my selection from the bag Harmony’s carrying. I’ve washed up the plates needed, even using a new bottle of washing up liquid to do it – I need to get a new bottle now. The cutlery’s clean too. So I set up to eat and put Fish and Chipped Potatoes on my plate. “I mean, at the moment, it’s just me running ideas and I have no clue if…”
“Tell me…” Thurso starts, then recalls Harmony’s there. Or is she sending a less than subtle statement? “Tell us,” she corrects, “and let us judge for ourselves.

It’s just a theory, it really is. A theory that happens to fit all the facts so perfectly that, if even one of the facts was changed slightly, the theory becomes complete nonsense. I tell them it comes down to what all these people have in common. The vehicle importer, the person setting up a perfumery empire, the person organising sporting events and others. The strict answer is that none of them have anything in common. At that, Harriet Thurso throws up her hands. She’s not happy. I don’t blame her. Until, I add, you take into account what Harmony and I learned an hour or so ago. I relay our escapades earlier, including how I’d seen the Celican on the Council base and where we’d tailed him to. I give Harmony credit for her driving skill, hoping neither can tell I’m fibbing, and tell her where we ended up. Outside whose house we ended up. She still doesn’t quite get it. I sense that Harmony’s twigging but, then, she does know the final piece of the puzzle.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to find Sonia last night,” I confess. “But,” I continue before she can interject, “I did have an engagement with one of this gangs goons in their offices. A Celican who’d been taking Metraxin… ah…”
“ Metaraxiana Kallumide,” Harmony put in helpfully.
“Yeah, that,” I say.
“Which your contact let you know is coming down in price,” she adds as I stick a piece of Federally paid for Fish in the hole in my face and chew.
“Ah, yes,” Thurso adds, spiking something in the box on her skewer and pulling it up. “The University Professor.”
I should have known she’d know about him. Although it might just mean she listened to the call earlier and got the telecoms company to reverse dial or something.
“It’s coming down,” I say, cheek still full of fish, “because more of it it coming in. It’s not made here and the places it could be made are regulated so it’s being brought in. And you have Majarra Bor here, sitting in Sigwich. Looking for ways to import mass amounts of the stuff.”
Harriet Thurso rolls her eyes. “And they’re all importing tonnes of material and people,” she says eventually.
“Pad a bit here, pad a bit there,” I say. “Make weight applications for two hundred litres of whatever chemical you need, ship one ninety with ten being something else. Five hundred tonnes of metal for vehicles or building, import four fifty. Stuff like that. If the weights line up on the cargo manifest when the shuttle arrives…”
“It doesn’t attract attention from customs,” Harmony finishes. “He’s quite intelligent really,” she tells Harriet. I have the dignity to look affronted.
Especially when Thurso replies that I hide it well. “What about the children, though. What were they planning to do with them?”
Thurso stirs her Brandy with a small stick before replying. “They’d probably have returned them after the first few shipments – assuming that’s what’s going on, of course. After the first few they always have the threat that they can grab them again or send reports to influential people if they try to back out. Exposure is more of a terror for these people than criminal procedures, believe me on that.”
I smile wryly. “You’ve used the ruse before?”
Thurso preened slightly. “I can neither confirm nor deny without shooting people,” she said. “And Miss Grigger’s Father might think himself in too deep already. Or they haven’t told him what’s going on. But you’re right,” she added, “he does have a delivery coming in tonight. I have someone on Vallonia going to be checking things out.”
“I could always contact my senior,” Harmony says. “He could help.”
I advise her against doing that. I have to be oblique about about it but there’s a simple reason. Those files I don’t have on IOC personnel? If they existed, they’d say that her senior officer isn’t one to be trusted. The official designation on him is ‘steals the credit’ and ‘comfortable on site’. No-one should be comfortable heading up a minor station as the wage doesn’t pay. The indication is that they’re getting supplementary cash from somewhere and shouldn’t be involved in a case where we KNOW there’s close links between the colony and Caldera. “The fewer involved the better,” I tell her.
She looked deflated through her noodles. “What CAN I do,” she implored.
I ask her what she thinks she should do. She demurs and decides that she should probably start looking into getting a warrant for The Kelta Mansion. Speak to Pandera and update them?”
I nod but tell them she should ONLY speak to Feldar Jones and get his advice. I already know Judge Fayden would be the federal judge who will approve the warrant but he’ll need the facts on Vallonia to pay off first. It all comes down to what’s discovered there right now.

And waiting really is the hardest part.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I love the way that this chapter turned out! Keep it up!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Ever make a mistake? Harvest did...

SEVENTEEN

Morning comes and I wonder what happened to half of the night before. Mind you, that’s not half of what I’m thinking. I’m thinking there’s someone taking a chisel to my brain, that I’m passed out on my sofa and that the warm, fuzzy, blanket underneath me isn’t a throw rug. For one thing, it’s breathing. My brain hurts to move, even to the extent of opening my eyes, but I have to, even if it’s just to make sure myself and whoever are dressed. A cracked eye tells me that, yes, we are and that I can be thankful. It’s not Harriet Thurso I’m cramping the style of. I remember a lot of waiting last night, wondering what had happened on Vallonia. I remember Coffee and… oh, boy, I think I might have made a mistake. I roll to my feet and fall to a knee, knocking over a plate onto the carpet and adding a fun, new, stain to the hodgepodge pattern on it. I stagger out to the bathroom and note the headache pills are missing and probably wouldn’t have been much use anyhow. I pull a smoke alarm from a useless spot on the wall and open it by twisting the cover. It opens a secret compartment with several anti-toxin capsules inside. I swallow one and it starts work with a splash of water. The chisel becomes a road drill. It’ll pass faster now. My legs feel less like elasto-plasts already. I stagger out to the kitchenette and lurch to grab two new cups from the cupboard. The cleanest I can find and I tip too much coffee in. Instant but super strength. Wake up powder. And we need to wake up quickly.

She groans and I know she’s a bare few seconds from a moan of pain. Yup, there it is. The cry of the wasted. I get the tablet over to her as the kettle fills my ears with sound. “Swallow this,” I say, wondering why my voice sounds like a distorted Canine’s. “Anti-tox.”
“What…” She puts a hand to her head. “What did I drink last night?”
“Coffee,” I said darkly. “Made by Harriet Thurso.”
She swallows and it almost looks like she’s going to pass out as the thing gets to work. “Why would she… ow… do that?”
I have a theory. Or, at least, I think I do. But my synapses aren’t quite firing yet. Aren’t quite making that final jump from y to z in the alphabet Miss Lorin keeps trying to get me to learn. Hey, those are the last two letters in it! Does this mean I’ve learned it? I’ll try later. What’s that sound? Oh, the kettle clacked off. I get back to the Kitchenette and add Coffee to my system. Cleanish mugs as a delivery system. Harmony’s sitting up and holding her head as her Raitchian systems aid the tablet in purging the knock out drops Thurso hit us with. “Hang on,” she says, “I smell of… of you. Why… Is this your fur on my shirt? What..?”
I hand her the Coffee. “She drugged us,” I tell her. The synapses are firing and it hurts. “She got that text, said it was nothing and drugged us.”
“Why do my eyeballs hurt? Did we..?”
I’m not going to get past this without going through it, am I? “Nope,” I say. “We had our clothes on, you notice?” I turn away. “Plus the fact that, even though you smell good and are very warm, you’re not quite the right species for me, Harmony.” I sip the Coffee. “Plus I don’t want to be fighting your boyfriend,” I add, fairly quickly, as my brain works out it’s the best way not to insult her.
She sighs and rolls her mug in her hands. “Haven’t got one,” she says. “I don’t think they like my look.”
I’ll admit, that floors me a bit so I turn back towards her. “Proves I’m the smartest guy you’ve met then. Thanks for that. Unless I’m still feeling the drug and you DIDN’T say people don’t find you attractive. I mean, you’re smart, funny – probably – and, yeah,” I add, gesturing with an arm, “you’re plenty attractive. So they must all be dumb.”
She snorts a laugh. “Thanks, Harvest,” she says, not calling me ‘Mr. Moon’ for the first time. “But I’m not feeling smart right now.”

I fill her in on what I think happened. I’m getting the feeling that Thurso got the nod from the Vallonia operation that we were, in fact, on the ball. We told her about Majarra Bor, the possible leader of the gang and his exact location in the city. She’s gone to get him, I assume. We might need to move quickly. I haven’t changed clothes in three days now. It takes me about five minutes to change and I wonder if I’m actually playing for Miss Thurso’s time? But, when done, I grab my gloves and lead the charge out of the door. I slide down the banister to avoid the death trap stairs. It gives me a moment to myself by the car. I say car because my new car isn’t here. Well, that’s peachy. I’m not trying to blend in right now and, frankly, it just didn’t have the unstoppable capabilities of the Brick. I’m getting behind the steering wheel as Harmony appears and gets in the passenger side. The old girl groans and grumbles as the new girl groans, grumbles and gets her belt on. The old girl stops complaining and agrees to move forward towards the road at her usual pace. Second only to a snail. But she’s thrumming quite nicely as I turn onto the main road.
“Why didn’t she sabotage this,” Harmony asks as I push the accelerator.
“She’s not out to harm me,” I explain. “US, I mean. She’d have done more to the coffee if she were. She’s had a few hours on us but she’s had to arrange a hit team. Her car’s faster than us. Odds are she’s done what she wants to already.”
“So, what then?”
“So then I call in a few markers and locate her,” I declare hotly. “Before she kills him. Open the glove compartment.” She does as bidden and I tell her to press her fingers to the top. A compartment drops open, revealing a pair of small energy pistols. Not exactly the best stopping power but the idea is they’re an emergency thing and you use them until you get a better weapon. Harmony takes one and puts the other in my jacket pocket. I hadn’t felt the normal lump in my pocket so I knew Thurso had my clip blaster. I figured that meant she had Harmony’s gun as well. The Brick hits fifty on the interstate shortly before we get to the right junction and head down to Sigwich. Another five and we’re close to the Mansion. I pull up outside the gates. There’s no reaction from the drones. There’s sounds from the house itself. “Back in the car,” I tell Harmony. She complies as I do. I get behind the wheel and start backing up.
“What are you thinking,” she asks.
“I think I’m going to knock,” I reply as we get about a hundred metres back. I grin, build up speed and hit the accelerator whilst activating the boost function. I don’t use it often. It costs me two hundred credits a time.

Nothing stops the Brick in motion.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Everybody ends up making mistakes but the important thing to do is make sure that they can't kill you. Tremendous chapter once again!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

EIGHTEEN

Personal musings.

I’ve been drugged and wish I could feel sick. I’ve got some natural resistances to poisons that our chemists worked on over centuries to create after an accidental toxin release nearly wiped out half the planet. I think the Micans had something to do with it but that kinda gets suppressed. Basically, our biology now works faster against poisons when they’re detected. It’s still unpleasant. We can’t gag without a very expensive implant and it has to come out some way so it gets torpedoed through our digestive system and out THAT end. But whatever Thurso used just brought about a whopper of a headache. Thankfully.

Then we have this… thing. Mr Moon calls it the Brickobile and I can understand why. It feels impossibly heavy, even when I’m sat in it. My natural ability to spot hidden slots in things – or at least consider that I know where they are – has detected five hidden sections in the old thing and I wonder what’s in four of them. I know what’s in the other, of course, as he had me open it and take out two guns. It’s a depressingly impressive slab, this thing, and it comes as a complete surprise that it can get up to sixty with less than a three mile run up. He’s pulled up outside the gated manor and I can hear firing as he gets back in and reverses. We’re going to get the Sheriff, I suppose or we’re calling in the ar…

Oh, boy. He’s not planning on doing either of that. He’s pushing the slab forward and opening a… That’s a turbo boost. He wouldn’t? He couldn’t..? Ok, I get thrown back slightly as the boost takes effect at thirty, powering the lump to 80 in a matter of seconds. I’m thankful I’m strapped in. Mr Moon is, naturally, really close to the steering wheel and pushing the pedal down as the gates get worryingly nearer and nearer and… Was there a gate there? Certainly felt like it as it impacts the car and flies apart with a deafening sound as Mr Moon keeps us flying up the drive, slamming on the brakes as we get to within fifty metres of the vehicles parked outside. Of course the thing STOPS like a brick too so we collide rather forcibly with the… Oh, it’s a shuttle. Just a short range thing but it’s definitely a parked aerial vehicle. I think we destroyed it’s thruster. He asks if I want to stay here as he puts those weird gloves of his on and readies his gun. I told him I was going with him. He shrugs and tells me to stay low.

We sweep up to the open main door and he glances in at almost floor level. Why am I doing this? Is it because I’m pretty sure that Bor is only in it this deep because we dropped him in it. It’s probably right. I make to announce myself but Mr Moon signals urgently. “What,” I ask.
“If you’re going to announce yourself,” he warned, “can you do it when I’m nowhere near you? It generally attracts incoming fire.” He scooted over to a fallen tough and put his gloved hand on the guys open wound. Oh, of course, they’re DNA gloves. Now he has that guy’s DNA so it can over-ride any detectors on the gun. He also needs to wash the gloves later. The firing’s coming from upstairs so I feel a bit braver. What? So sue me. It’s not my first shoot out and I’d prefer it not be my last. So I wait until I’m in a place that can’t be shot at directly from upstairs before I call out my identification. There’s a few seconds of silence so I knew they hear me but it starts up again before Mr Moon throws a small ball up onto the landing and runs after it. The thing starts hissing and pumping out a green mist as he gets to where the stairs divide and goes to the left. Figure I’ll follow him. I can smell the contents of that capsule and I don’t want to be tasting it. We sweep up to the landing and Mr Moon dives full length into what seems to be a study, crashes into a table, curses and fires at someone I can’t see. The figure cries out and Mr Moon gets up and engages in hand to hand before I even get into the room to crack the Celican on the back of the head with my little gun. He falls, stunned, to the floor. “Why didn’t you shoot him,” He asks.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not a monster,” he replied, kicking the Celican between the eyes as he reached for a weapon on the floor. “I have morals, you know? Besides, we might need him to talk.” I cuff him to a radiator and we move on after Mr. Moon disengages the sensors on the gun he’s carrying and tosses it to me. Instinctively, I catch it and remember it’s got wet blood all over it. For his part, he resets the sensor and repeats the gross trick with the Celican. He then disengages the sensors on that one too.
“How’d you know the code?”
Mr Moon looks at me and gestures. “Three digit code,” he mentioned. “Bosses never trust the intelligence of minions so they make it easy to disengage these things. The house number is 129 Boone Drive. Figured it might be that.”
I look at him with a shiver. “You GUESSED?”
“You’re arguing,” he asks as a figure in combat armour appears on the landing. So I shoot him in the legs as he takes aim. I think he’s a Mican security officer. I hope he’s going to live.
“Smart,” Mr. Moon compliments me as he moves across. I don’t think I should be thinking about the warrant I never managed to get right now. “We’re here on IOC authority,” he lies loudly, “to arrest Majarra Bor on charges of Kidnap and smuggling narcotics! Don’t fire on us!”
“I don’t have the warrant,” I hiss to him.
“Don’t tell THEM that,” he warns as someone calls out from behind the green screen.
“We have this in hand,” the voice calls. “Interfere with us and you die!” A moment of silence hung in the, uh, silence. It hung long is what I mean. Then the voice appears again. “We will not fire on you if you leave immediately. You have one minute.”
I hate when they give me ultimatums like this. We’re not allowed to leave as it’s an abrogation of power and… “We’ll take it,” Mr. Moon calls and I stare at him. He shrugs. “I’m not IOC and we’re here to save the missing, not this guy.” He nods to the Celican. “Grab him. I reckon the Chauffeur knows where to drive, don’t you?”
Which is how I’m carrying an unconscious Celican down to a slab so I can put him on the back seat and treat his wound. Life is fun.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

This story continues to be FIRE! Hope the flames never go out!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

NINETEEN

I get into the car in the driving position and look at Harmony, who’s got into the passenger seat with me. I raise an eyeridge at her and she asks me what this is about. “Wouldn’t you rather sit in the back,” I enquire, “with our temporarily comatose friend. In case he comes around and strangles me?” She takes the hint and shifts to the back so she can keep a close eye on the Celican. We’re going to need to wake him shortly, anyway, but I think it’d be best away from here. There’s nothing less conducive to answering questions than being in direct proximity to a slaughter of your friends. So the Brick grumbles its way to a layby roughly between the house and the interstate highway. I pass Harmony back some water and she takes a drink before squirting some in the Celican’s face. He sputters and growls and threatens that, when he gets free, he’ll rip out our throats with his teeth.
“Remind me not to free you,” Harmony says, making me wonder how much of my sense of humour she’s taken on by osmosis. “It’s a charming way to thank us for saving your life.”
He looks at her with a glare that could curdle milk. She matches his gaze with one that strikes me of a stomach after it’s had an antacid to deal with the effects. “You break into my employer’s home, you open fire and…”
“First point,” I cut in, “we didn’t break in, we merely followed the special forces team that did. Second point, they’re efficiently killing everyone they can. It was us got you out of there.” I smirk slightly. “It seems you lot kidnapped the wrong person and their very scary relative found out.” I quickly glance to Harmony but she’s got it together enough not to spill the beans on who exactly told the ‘very scary relative’ where to find them. “Of course, they’ll take your boss alive,” I advise him. “Because the hostages aren’t there, are they? So they’ll want to know where and there’ll be a second slaughter. Unless you help us.”
“Why, exactly, would I do that,” he mutters. I love Celicans. Think they hold all the cards because they have the teeth.
“Because, if you don’t, we’ll take you to Miss Thurso ourselves,” I reply, knowing I can probably sell the fib better than Harriet. “If you DO,” I continue, “not only will you have the warm, summery, knowledge that you helped stop a second slaughter but Agent Whitestar here will get you off world, to a safe place where you can tell IOC as much as possible about the operation and, possibly, avoid a lot of jail time by signing up for the Reclaim project and serving your time as an active member on a ship or…”
“I’m a driver,”
“...or at a ground station. Always drivers and fighters needed.”
“Reclaim’s for Pirates.”
Harmony shrugs. “Pirates, drug smuggling scumbags who kidnap children. What’s the difference?”
I could get to like her.
This. Is unreal. The Celican had one caveat before he made the deal. Apparently he has a brother in the warehouse or something so he’s quite interested in him not being shot to pieces. But, as he puts it, he’s a driver, not a navigator. It is, he says, easier if he drives. So I’m in the passenger seat of my own car, keeping a weapon on a hoodlum Chauffeur that I don’t totally trust whilst he’s geeking out about driving the slab and he knew it was the slab two days back but the others didn’t believe him. Turns out chummy here used to be a minor functionary in the same criminal gang as ran the runner that used to run this car – and that’s not easy to think, let alone say. But he’s quite happy. He says it was a tragedy what happened to old Simmy and then the car got sold cheap at auction because no-one could prove anything illegal about the car but the cops were at the auction. We get on the interstate and head south as he yammers about how he wishes his brother could see him now. I know what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to distract and bond with us in the hope he’ll get a better deal. There’s a reason he’s hand cuffed to the steering wheel. Harmony’s tracking us on her comm. And texting Sheriff Javey, probably. I’m a bit surprised she didn’t do it back at the house. I wish the thing went faster. Our lead, if we even HAVE one, is absolutely minimal. Bor’s going to give them the information they want pretty quickly and that’s even if Thurso doesn’t bring in a telepath to just rip it out in a split second, along with a fistful of other memories. She won’t care and, frankly, nor do I. Compassion here is merely a tool to advance the final moves, not something to feel for the bad guys. I can’t care if he really has a brother or not but, if he does, I can use that. If he doesn’t? Well, I’ll deal with that when it comes.

Twenty minutes crawl by until we pull up close to a run down factory site in the middle of nowhere. Well, I think, so far, so cliché. There’s not much point in running away after escaping here. There’s no place to go to. It’s a place that was left to rot after the planet tried to get into the sector beer market, I think. Several farms were turned over to Barley production but the other worlds did it cheaper so the factories were left to rot. Or it could just be a dead I.T. place. It’s really difficult to judge from the outside. So I decide to ask Chummy – Sakrin’s his name, apparently – or, as that’s the hero of some Young Celican adventure books (so sue me, I’ve read some of their novels. They’re a bit odd. Normally the violence is tuned down but, if anything, it goes UP in Celican kids books. Never read the Tigron who came to tea. Anyhow, I ask ‘Sakrin’ questions about the layout and movements and possible open windows. He knows a few things. He tells me a few things. I advise Harmony to give me five minutes, then let him speak on her comm to his brother. It seems counter productive but there’s one point in time when things are chaotic by design and that’s just as they’re beginning to get ready. People split off and lose contact with each other. They have breaks in communication as they run between sections. It’s easier to catch people on their own is what I’m trying to say. That’s what I tell him. I remind him that I have a stun setting, which I’ll probably use. Unless I mean someone hopped up. In that case it’s may the best Mouse win and, as I’ll be the only Mouse in there, that’ll mean me.

So I slip out of the Brick, letting harmony into my seat and pointedly taking the handcuff keys with me so Sakrin can see. Then I take the car keys too. I’d taze him but for two things. I don’t have a tazer on me and, frankly, I need him awake in five minutes. Now it’s entry time.

There’s a toilet window ajar. There often is. They’re small enough to keep most people out but I’m not most people. I’m a FieldMican. I can get in. Probably.
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

But the question is would you want to sneak in through a bathroom? Some can be downright sickening.

Anyway great work here!
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

Heh. Don't worry. I address that in the next part... (ew)
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Are we about to see the same thing that happened with Marion then?
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Re: Harvest Moon, P.I.

Post by Welsh Halfwit »

TWENTY

There’s a simple logic to why there’s usually a window open in the toilet blocks of places like these and it’s got nothing to do with stupidity. These places are pretending to be unoccupied and derelict and nothing attracts unwanted attention like power usage on a heat detection system. They’re very advanced these days so they want them to put out as little heat as possible. This means no ventilation and no extraction fans. That, of course, means that toilets truly stink to high heaven. The answer? Open a window. Someone always forgets at least one after opening and that’s what I’ve used here. One that’s a floor up on the fire escape. Paranoia, I acknowledge, can work for you. Of course, I’d prefer it if they’d actually flush the thing when they leave. I make a note to have a word with someone about their diet as I find myself doing a handstand on the cistern. Never, I remind myself, NEVER go head first if you can help it!

I avoid putting my foot down the bowl by virtue of an athletic flip and I have to say I don’t know how my hat stayed on when I was upside down. Perhaps it’s sentient and knew what was waiting for it if it fell off? I gag slightly as I’m STILL facing the bowl somehow and turn, trying not to slip on the wet floor. Honestly, these drugged up kidnappers have no sense of hygiene. I exit the room quietly. I can hear crying nearby, soft and sibilant in its tone. There’s someone moving along to my left so I duck to the right and look for a good ambush point. One pistol and a knife hidden in my boot. Thing is I have to try and be quiet right now and the gun’ll make noise. So, I sigh, it has to be the knife. And here I’d been hoping to end this without stabbing anyone through the heart. He’s coming closer, towards the crying sounds. He calls out that they should shut up and he’s close enough that I think I can smell his breath. Feline, I think. Great. Can’t let that distract me. My main hope is that the others are putting up something of a scent barrier as I remove the knife from my boot and grip it with intent to use. He tells the unseen hostage that their father hasn’t done his part and, unless it comes through, he’ll rip their neck open with his claws. It’s comments like that that make death strikes easier. It’s the fact that he’s ten inches taller than me and quite impressively built that make it harder. But he’s standing in front of me and I’m no hero and…

...He’s got a finger to his ear. Radio call. I freeze as he listens. I’m a second away from striking as he says ‘On my way’ and begins to turn around. I strike and, because he’s twisting his position, put my blade through his waist comm unit and into his side. He growls in pain and tries to back hand me but I’m already ducking away, pulling the knife free before his hand almost makes contact. I go low as he tried to call for back up and take out some of his tendons. He slashes down with opened claws and I’m going to have to get my coat repaired as he calls out. Whispering claws strike past my cheek and I’m probably going to have to get that repaired too but I’m inside his reach now and, pity for him, I’m quite happy to use that advantage to end this quite quickly with a thrust blow. Oh, nice. He’s got a knife proof vest on. He tries to headbutt me but gets the brim of my hat instead. I pull my blade back and put it up somewhere he doesn’t have armour. It’s not pleasant but it’s permanent. And now he’s fallen on me. He’s heavy. It takes a few seconds to push him off me. Great. Now even my HAT needs a stain removed. I push him off and check his pockets for anything that might be keys. He’s got some so I take them and move on, trying not to touch my cheek. He didn’t look like he did much claw hygiene work. Might have caught something.

I come across the snuffler. She’s locked in a room with a barred metal door across the entry. And she’s… not a Mican. She’s Feline and she looks about 13. They’ve even put metal glove restraints on her hands and feet. And she’s chained to the wall. I’m not feeling so bad about killing that guy now. I look to see if one of the keys fits the lock but then I stop myself. I have no time and she’s safer in there. “Psst,” I say, peeking through the bars, “how many of them are there?”
She looks up at me and blinks. She’s swallowing hot tears, I know and she tries to wipe the snot off her tortoiseshell face with a metal mitt. It’s not going to work and spreads the ‘fluid’ somewhat. “W..who are you,” she coughs.
“Private investigator,” I confess. “Detective,” I correct, knowing the unofficial title may inspire more hope. “Rescue’s coming,” I assure her, “but how many are here? I’m Harvest.” I look back down the corridors. Nothing coming yet.
“S...Sylvie,” she sniffs. “There’s uh… uh… about five of them? I… I think? That I seen.”
I give her a smile. “OK, Sylvie. You’re going to be OK. Mican special forces are on the way. Stay strong a bit longer, eh?” She sniffs and nods. I head on, almost reluctant to not switch to the gun right now. I’m not sure I want any of them alive right now but, as I said earlier, I’m not a monster. I look over the railing towards the ground floor. No-one’s down there but there are voices. One of them’s asking where Pavarl is. I can take a guess that Pavarl can’t answer right now due to him being on a lower astral plain right now. It’s going to bring them closer. I have to get into action. I have to try and pull the corpse into the passage. I have to be crazy to think that as I think they’ll notice the ocean of ichor and gore leaking from him. Am I leaving a blood trail. Ooh, yeah. Little dots of red across the floor. Ah well.

The stairs are calling to me. Saying ‘come walk down me’ and ‘you need to be here’ and they’re probably right. There aren’t any elevators anyhow, so they’re my only option. They’re well lit and smell like stale bacon. I begin to open the door on the ground floor and freeze with it open a bare fraction. I can hear someone talking. I can’t see them but, as they’re telling someone that they’re thankful the brother warned him and the second says his brother’s always been good like that. The first says they’ll have to hold the attack for as long as they can before escaping. I have a feeling he means the others will have to hold the attack off for as long as they can whilst he escapes. Well, that’s going to be hard for him to do. Especially when he’s out cold. The voices get closer to me and I flatten myself against the wall, only peeking out quickly. Two Celicans. One older, one younger. The older’s the leader, I think. He’s the one talking tactics to the others over the comm. He’s the one… sniffing the air… I fire as he slams a hand into the door, knocking it clean open and spinning me into the stairwell. My shot kinda missed, glancing his shoulder. He’s somewhat peeved at me. His arm’s dead to the world but he’s still coming for me.

And then he isn’t. He falls to the floor with such an angry look on his face as another stun bolt hits him from behind. The younger Celican. He looks so surprised. “Sakrin’s brother,” I guess, rubbing my arm where it hit the metal bannister.
“What? Uh, yes,” he said. “Sakrin? Really? He said to, uh, help you stun everyone fast.”
I shrug. “Seems he does like you,” I say. “We should move fast,” I add as the first explosion from outside is heard.

Harriet has arrived.
Commander Hawle. U.S.C. Loper. By the talented DDeer.
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