HARVEST MOON - Harvest on Pandera

[Welsh Halfwit]

MEETING

There are some days I hate my senior in life. She makes minor scale abuses of me from time to time and now’s one of those times. It was just a standard thing. Take a message pod from her to one of her people in a coffee shop in Kelvarra, the third city on Pandera. It wasn’t anything of any real importance and Dakrin had been at college on a day visit to see if he liked it so I’d come alone, renting a small, inconspicuous, car that had been reserved by Harriet as it was something not likely to attract attention or blow her expenses budget out of the water so I’d driven something that could probably hit 90 with a tailwind over five hundred miles because it was cheaper than the air shuttle.


Kelvarra had been settled some sixty years ago by neo-neo revolutionists who decided to build in old fashioned styles, which indicated why the buildings seem to be a century and a half old and crumbling. They were built from stone that wasn’t from here. It wasn’t used to the weathering power of the dust storms that used to plague this area until the weather control stations were developed to reduce the storm frequency. Razor sand, they call it. A bit dramatic, perhaps, but it indicated the city founders were that rare breed. Complete idiots. They’d gone bust fifty years back but the locals and entrepreneurs kept the place going, building the newer suburbs from the local stone and woods that knew how to resist the sand. Then they’d started in the business of exporting sand for use in concrete elsewhere.


It means they’re a hardy bunch around here, able to crush you with a single look from behind the sun goggles they all wear in case the weather control breaks down at a pivotal moment. It sounds odd but it has happened. A city on the water, I think I recall. The control system over the water broke down and a wind storm blew up. The resultant wave half drowned three streets on the foreshore. The number of lost wasn’t recorded in the news. We still have our itinerants and, sadly, a fair few of them just wanted to catch some sea air. The scandal raised. The council did what they could. They fixed the system. And pushed the itinerants away from the shore, where tourists spent their money. It was a warning to all to invest in the weather control systems. As though that was needed, considering the near perpetual rain over Raitche’s capital.


It had taken seven hours to drive here from the spaceport and I was going to have to need stimulants to get me back to the port for the return journey, which is why I’m on my third triple strength coffee from some local concern called Delmundor. It’s not half bad. It’s got my tail frizzed anyway, waving about so much I’d never be able to pick a pocket with it. I had to apologise for whipping the Mican behind me on one occasion. Where was this guy? Ah, here came the nondescript Corvalla estate I’d been told to expect. The lead car in a couple of vehicles turning in to the car park as traffic buzzed past on the road behind. It was one of the main highways on Pandera, meaning it had been fitted with hover tech for vehicles so enabled. Another example of foolishness. No-one’s buying hover vehicles as they don’t work so well on the lesser roads and, apart from the main roads between cities, the roads are lesser.


Here he comes, a Mican I know by sight but not by experience. Raston Scourie. He’s the former owner of a space haulier company that operates out of Pandera Starport and I’ve just come all the way down here to meet someone who has offices where I landed? I hate my landlady. She had to know this. Harriet Thurso, my landlady, also happens to be in charge of Mican Intelligence in the patch so there are two reasons I, a noble Private Investigator and part time ignoble Bounty Hunter, am running a messenger mission for her. One. When the head of Mican Intelligence tells you to do something, there’s usually a good reason, even if that good reason is only what you suspect will happen to you if you don’t do exactly what she says. Two. We have a written agreement that she’s only allowed to pull this crikk with me twice a year. So far she’s stuck to it. Three… OK, THREE reasons I’m doing this. Three. If someone who runs a vast intelligence network is asking a lowly P.I. who, most definitely, isn’t on the books to do something, it’s because she doesn’t want to involve her own people. And that’s gotten me intrigued. As she knew it would. Darn her.


He sits with a black tea and puts his own little pot of long life milk substitute in to whiten it. He doesn’t like unsourced milk. I read that somewhere. It wasn’t interesting then and it’s not now. “Mister Mooney,” he asks.

Great. She gave me THAT as a pseudonym? A first DAY detective could get that in a minute flat when they were drunk. “Yes,” I say. “Rankor, I take it?”

“Only sometimes,” he agrees. “When I disagree with things.”

I look around at the others in the cafe this place claims to be. The family in the corner with the kid colouring in the maze on the table sheet. There’s one on my table too. It’s only half filled in, though. I got self-conscious. There’s an old pair been here near as long as I have but they have an excuse. They’re charging their car up on the service station chargepad. It’s cheaper but takes a lot longer. There’s a few others, from the local towns and cities judging by their fashion and accents that put a bit of a twang on their ‘h’s but there’s nothing threatening here. Which is probably a red flag. “Things are often disagreeable,” I remind him, making sure I was catching the waitresses eyes as she arrived to take our orders now that my ‘expected party’ had finally arrived. I ordered the Mac and Cheese on toast as it was ready to go in the warmer and he declined. The place didn’t insist on tips as they paid a living wage but, from the look on her face as she turned around, I was going to need to tip quite well. Plus she might not have been sweet but she CERTAINLY wasn’t sour. I need the loo. Three coffees.


Much more and I might have broken the porcelain. But it’s done and I return to the front to see he’s still there, checking things on his padd. Fair does. I checked my e-mails when I was in there. I had the time. Dakrin says he wants to be back at my side as the college wanted him in first thing in the morning to days out of the week. For first thing read ten am. Salara, my Afgar girlfriend, sent a message that probably shouldn’t be read before the kiddies are in bed and made me really want to get back to Caldera on an express liner if I could afford one. She could but I’m not going down that route with our relationship. Anyhow, business before pleasure. I sit and eat my Mac. This is definitely business rather than pleasure. Anyhow, I slip the item across under the table, using my lovely, lively, tail and put it into his waiting hand before we talk about sports he doesn’t understand and commodities I can’t afford. Like we’re old friends or something. After a while, he gets up and leaves.


So does the red car that came in with him. I pay digitally and add a twenty credit note I keep for emergencies as the tip to make sure the waitress gets it. Then I go for my car.

[Amazee Dayzee]

This does seem like a very interesting start to the story and it will be great to see where we it goes next! Nice opening chapter!

[Harry Johnathan]

These neo-neo-revolutionists sound like my kinda guys.

I too like old buildings and am a complete idiot

[Amazee Dayzee]

Oh come on don't sell yourself so short!



...You aren't a COMPLETE idiot.

[Welsh Halfwit]

I agree with Dayzee, H.J.

You're a lovable nitwit at worst.

Anyhow...

ROADWAY

I’d love to say this thing roared out of the parking lot in pursuit of the red car and the rich Mican it was after but that’d be a lie. If I’d done that, I’d have been flattened by an eighteen wheel behemoth delivering quality Human style Carrots for export across the patch. And that was what was written across its trailer. I’ve eaten that brand before. If they’re quality, it’s low. Hydroponics and laboratories and artificial flavour that would never convince anyone who had a memory of eating the real thing. Which is how they get away with it. Barely anyone out here ever HAS eaten the real thing and most of them are used in recipes that subsume the carrot anyhow. Anyhow, there’s one of their autodriven behemoths in the way until I overtake it with a manoeuvre that would have gotten me banned if any police vehicle had been on the job. Or drone in the sky. Or monitor in the… Ah, you get the idea. Even Dakrin wouldn’t try undertaking an eighteen wheeler at almost twice the legal speed to… who am I kidding? He’d TOTALLY do it and I’d be holding onto my hat – which is on the passenger seat, by the way. It’s a new hat. Still cream coloured, like myself at the moment, thanks to a Dakrin prank that had me deciding he’d try that school. Unlike me, though, this hat has a special feature. A chromatic shift function powered by a hidden button that changes its colour in a second flat. People pay attention to hats these days. ‘No, officer, the hat was black, not puce. It can’t have been him breaking in’. In my dreams. Might happen, though.


The red car and the blue car are racing and, all of a sudden, I’ve got an ancient advert from Earth stuck in my head from when Dakrin showed me the ‘Earth’s catchiest adverts of their 20th century’ he’d found on Galnet. I’d been surprised. Not only did they have cars back then – Petroleum fuelled things that obliterated their atmosphere rather than the treated stuff we have now – but definitely cars. And they might be a little carnivorous depending on the make. Still, they’re past that now, aren’t they? Well, I don’t see any adverts where cars eat prickly trees. Who needs radio when your imagination runs 24-7 in quadrophonic sound in your skull? They’ve gone past the Laverrnia Valley turn off so they’re not going to the Yakkaville distribution plant. Yeah, I know some things about the guy they’re chasing. Information is my business and I think he hired me once, way back in my bounty hunting days. Legal Bounty hunting days. I keep the licence up to date for certain reasons. Mainly the fact it entitles me to keep certain weapons on me wherever I go, as opposed to the PI licence that only covers me for Calderon. This is why I have a Jackeron Energy pistol in the glove compartment, a set of electro dusters and a traditional tainted knife. Many bounty hunters poison the blade with quick acting toxins with the aim of killing quickly. I, however, dose mine with copious amounts of cleaning fluids and a moderate level narcoleptic to encourage drowsiness and the ability to sleep during a knife fight. It’s much easier to ask questions of the living. It doesn’t involve emery boards, a medium, twenty minutes in the dark and don’t ask. It’s an evening I’ll never get back and gave no answers I could use in court. Told me a lot about my employer though.


They’ve taken the Sappertin turn off and I follow, hoping that they were, indeed, following Scourie or I was following and, possibly, intimidating a car full of completely innocent people. They pull into a lay by and stop and I have to consider that I might well have been wrong about them but I can now see the blue car of Scourie in the distance now so it’s not something I trust. So I find the next pull in and, well, pull in to hide behind some bushes. Yup, there they go. Let them get a little ahead. Although there’s not exactly a lot of cover out here, on the one lane, straight, road that doesn’t seem to have any turn offs from here to the horizon. We ride the exciting chase up the curve of a small hill and I can see them having parked sideways in front of the blue car and getting out as he tries to back up and turn around. They’re doing the entirely unfriendly thing of shooting at him to try and make him stop, which gives me a little hint that they’re not Police. They usually say ‘please’ before they try to kill you. I pull over to one side of the road to let the rather annoyed rich person escape in his energy dissipative armoured vehicle. Then, pretending to be an innocent, oh my goodness, it’s a firefight, I could get killed, motorist, I floor it past them, making the driver and one passenger dive out of the way as I crashed through two open doors, bending the metal badly out of frame as I, panicked and totally not smiling, career past them and over the bridge as unfriendly people try firing at me. I’ve probably lost my deposit. Or, rather, Harriet’s deposit and she’ll tag it off the money she’s not paying me for expenses. I stop about half a kilometre past shooting range and comm the local cops. It’s what innocents would probably do. The gabbling performance, practically being hysterical about the situation and people shooting and trying to kill me and giving them a breathless, almost panicked, description of the red car and the entire plate and the fact it’s doors were hanging off wouldn’t fool anyone who actually knew me or anyone who checked my record but I reckoned Scourie’s best chance was for the cops to intercept the tail Scourie didn’t want attached to his spine. They take the call, advise me to calm down and accept the upload from the onboard camera system that I had start from just after I’d pulled from the lay-by. I hang up and call Harriet.


It’s more terrifying than calling the local fuzzys. Calling a ‘landlady’ on another planet and telling her about the fact that someone had been following. After a moment of muted communication that probably involved several curses and invective enough to stun an Equinna at thirty paces, she returned to the comm and listened to the actions that had followed. I’m certain I heard the grumbled words ‘add it to the bill’ when I mention about ramming the door. But she generally applauds me and tells me where I can get back in contact with Scourie and where I can get the car repaired on the cheap with no questions asked if I say Auntie Drwg sends her compliments. I ask her to spell it. She tells me to sod off and get back to Scourie. Apparently what he’s got is important. Apparently governments would want to get their paws on it. And they were ready to do extremely not nice things.


Of course, I add mentally as I manage to get back to the highway, where a handful of highway types have pulled over a red car to have several words with the inhabitants, the government involved in this appears to be ours. Micans. The people she works for. The Micans being chatted to certainly appear to be official, the way they’re trying to take control of the situation. I wave to them as I pass. After all, I’m in it deep enough with them already, might as well make it personal. I’m away before they start pointing and hollering.


What the heck am I involved in now?

((And, so you can see what he's on about at the beginning... https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=Y4drNFXd6dw ))

[Amazee Dayzee]

Does this mean that at some point the red car is gonna go over a cliff and plummet to its death? That is what I got from the commercial.

Anyway a really brilliant chapter as usual!

[Welsh Halfwit]

He's in Pandera City. Did you think one of them wouldn't make a cameo?

NIGHT LODGE


One thing you should know about me is that, apparently, I am sometimes magic. Sometimes impossible things happen. Like right now where, whilst I’m concentrating on driving towards Pandera city and my comm beeps to tell me my reservation at the Ceturia South Mototel has been confirmed and it’s on a nightly basis. On my credit chit. At least I thought to book a room in the cheapest, worst rated, flop pit in the city according to the advisor sites. I also get a comm from my bank confirming the purchase. And I did all that without even accessing their site. I wonder if I’ll write a review for them too? It does establish that I am predictive, though. I looked into that mototel this morning and decided that, if I was going to stay anywhere overnight, it wasn’t going to be there.


There’s another car there when I arrive and the receptionist tells me it’s my rental as arranged and there’s a letter for me. She hands the envelope over and I think about how Dakrin would probably try to date her, chewing gum and all. The note said my car needed to be unbroken for Scourie’s benefit. It gave a time and his details and told me that if I broke THIS car, she’d have me beaten to a pulp and, some point after I got out of the hospital, bludgeoned to a mush. I close the envelope and ask bubbles if there’s anywhere decent nearby for dinner. She tells me there’s a grocery store a couple of minutes away and a cheap burger joint if I wanted to drive. After nearly 14 hours of driving, I really don’t want to drive so I decide to try the grocery store for stuff I might be able to heat up in my room. First, though, I check my room.


It’s not a fleapit. I’m pretty sure fleas wouldn’t live here. Under a blacklight it probably looks like something Ryrdrian would have done in his ‘Mad colours psychedelia’ phase. I add ‘industrial strength anti-vermin powder’ to my shopping list as I make sure I have my licence and weapons on me. I’m not leaving them in the car and I’m certainly not leaving them in the room where the local stray nonsentient rodents could steal them. I hide the blade and gun around my body and put my raincoat on to make sure everything’s hidden and, after locking the room and wondering who’d break in as the key was probably the most expensive thing about the room, I head out.


It’s a still night and weather control is working to keep the rain off and that’s quite a fair size convenience store I’m coming up on. It’s one of those places that doesn’t have a coffee machine inside, it has a coffee shop. Or so I hope anyhow. Other than that, it’s sandwiches and pocket pizzas and the nutritional equivalent of a depth charge to the dietician. I reach the doors and the world inside opens unto me as I cross the threshold into the vanillaish scented inside. I wander to the coffee first as I need something good for the kettle and cafetière I also need to buy. I pick up a pouch of something and look at it. A voice takes me away from it for a moment as it says ‘this is better, Harvest’, puts a pouch of the same stuff I had at the diner earlier in my hands and sashays away. My slightly startled brain only catches that the Raitchian female said my name after a few seconds and she’s too far aay for me to make a scene now so I just watch her familiar looking black suit jacket go and smile as I almost know who she is. I’ll probably get it in a few hours. I put it in the basket. Hey, a recommendation’s a recommendation.


I’m on the way back to the ‘hotel’ and wishing I’d taken the short journey in the car as I’ve bought rather more than I’d planned, including a device that checks electricity flows as I’m not totally sure about the power points in my room. I think about getting my landlady to arrange for health and safety to inspect the place but I think of little miss bubblemican on the desk and think she’s done nothing to make me lose her her job and I let the thought pass. Unless she asks me to, of course. Then I might be generous. I’m midway through grilling a cheese and grain sandwich on a multi-function microwave plate when my comm beeps and a voice I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t said a dozen or so words to it earlier today talks to me. ‘This is he,’ I say, in response to the obvious question.

“I...I’m told you saved my life earlier,” he says through the comm. I’m assuming you know this which is why I’m not doing the ‘less than/greater than’ nonsense.

“Did I do that,” I ask, reining in my natural exuberance for effect.

“I’m told it was you,” he replies. “By our friend.”

“Are you calling to thank me for something I might not have done?”


He’s not sure about the line but he invites me to come and see him at his office now, rather than in the morning. He has things to tell me. Explanations he needs to make before certain powerful people kill him. Because, he says far too calmly, he knows they’re coming for his tail. I make an agreement to meet him in a half hour and disconnect the comm. It’s something that has me sniffing… sniffing? Oh! My sandwich! For the drink, I’ve had the water strained through a purifier into the travel kettle with the 240v adapter and I’m using the little pot of instant stuff rather than the bag Adriette… Adriette Beran! I KNEW I knew that tail! I knew she lived on Pandera – she works here for IOC – but she lives around here? I shrug as I pour the hot water over the ready ground beans and add a little pot of UHT Milk to cool it down. It makes a swirly pattern in the black as I stir with the broken piece of an ancient vid antennae I found under the bed when liberally throwing the disinfectant stuff around. I’m sure the carpet hissed at me. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure it’s bubbling more than my cheese.


I have a half hour so that allows me the chance to do a few things before leaving in the night to meet this person and I do them and one involves flushing. After that I have twenty minutes and I get to the office to find no-one’s in. Well, the lights aren’t on anyhow. I’m not knocking. Something doesn’t feel right so I stay inside my original rental. No sense in risking the other one yet. There’s a light flicked on. Someone’s waiting on me now. I get my weapons ready. This isn’t Scourie. I’m sure of it. Someone else knows I’m here and it’s not Scourie. I called Thurso and she told him my name was Harvest Bond. I don’t know where she gets these names from.


For the sake of anyone watching, I make out that I’m too clueless to find the front door and slip around the back to see it there’s any way to get up to the second floor without using the doors. Maybe surprise to ambushers?

[Amazee Dayzee]

Well naturally if you make something from an instant bag that you think is disgusting you are gonna be on the toilet. Hope he doesn't do that again. Great chapter!

[Welsh Halfwit]

But... he's not sick. It's the carpet he thinks is bubbling!

[DDeer]

These neo-neo-revolutionists sound like my kinda guys.

I too like old buildings and am a complete idiot

It’s good to have buildings of different age architectural styles. I always find it strange in sci-fi when all the buildings on a planet look like they were built yesterday. I’d imagine that there would be old buildings and style revivals just like our own civilisation for example mock Tudor or Romanesque.

Crikey! That advert is a blast from the past, a classic!

[Amazee Dayzee]

If it wasn't him in the bathroom with stomach issues, where did the flushing come from? My second guess was that he shoved the guys head who he was meeting with in a toilet. When I see flushing in anything, I automatically think toilet. LOL

[Welsh Halfwit]

If it wasn't him in the bathroom with stomach issues, where did the flushing come from? My second guess was that he shoved the guys head who he was meeting with in a toilet. When I see flushing in anything, I automatically think toilet. LOL

This is true. But he just needed the loo. It has been several hours and a lot of driving and coffee.

[Welsh Halfwit]

MIDNIGHT IN THE OFFICE


What am I doing out here, you might wonder, hanging from the guttering by my tail and peeking in from the top of a window to see who’s inside a darkened room in the middle of the night when I know this is, almost certainly, a trap. Well, I’m abroad in territory the enemy knows a lot better than I do and, if there’s no way to take it to home ground, you might as well skirt the enemy base knowing it’s a trap and do your own reconnaissance under their noses. There’s no-one in this room and the little top window was open. With my tail holding to the gutter so I didn’t fall twenty feet onto my head with no convenient pile of boxes on the concrete, I needed to use another option. Which is another reason I have the trenchcoat. Carefully, I put my hand into the lining of the pocket and draw a long piece of metal from the hem and, holding on to one end by my mouth (as my other hand was on the top of the sill, I’m no fool), I shape the one end into a hook and fish it into the window to hook the opener to the main windo. It’s a real old fashioned latch thing at the base of the window and it comes loose easily. Of course, that doesn’t mean the window opens, does it? Oh, no. Plan B. B for bewildering. I drop the rod and grip the top of the frame before releasing the guttering and realising I was going to end up with my back to the window and… yep. Ow. The weight’s just trapped my fingers. Owie. But my feet are on the bottom sill and my back is arced like a professional feline pushing out their stomach. But I’m able to pull my sore fingers outon my left hand and able to twist around so those bruised fingers can grab the side of the sill and extracy my other poor pinkies. Fortunately I bought soothing hand gel for this sort of thing earlier. Unfortunately it was back at the hotel. Still had my hat on, though. The understrap saw to that.


Another minute and I’m in, wondering what any observers might think of the acumen. Lithe, athletic, dumb as a rock comes to mind. Six out of ten. A sniff tells of only stale scents. No-one’s been in here for hours. I close the window as it’s cold in here. There’s no heating on. It probably only turns on a half hour before people come in to work. The well off are often frugal. Hmm, there’s an unopened can of drink on the table. Its coolness is natural. I pocket it. You never know if this sort of thing will come in useful. I peek out of the door at the passageway. Someone’s crouched down, waiting on someone to come up the stairs. My fingers are throbbing like pile drivers. It doesn’t feel as though they’ll fit in the trigger guard of the pistol. I pad back across the room and pick up my metal hook. It takes a moment that allows my fingers to throb out a samba but I’m more ready to engage now. I open the door quietly and shoot the guy in the back with my gun. Heroic? No. Good guy tactic? No. Sensible? You bet. Plus I have this thing set to stun. I hope. I check as he grimaces and falls forward. Heavy stun. Why do I never check this thing after I let Dakrin use it? I close the door as he makes a fair bit of noise falling, muzzle first, to the floor. At least it probably proves no one was watching my entrance.


Vids would have you believe the hero moves quickly from room to room in a situation like this but there’s an amount of nonsense in those things. It’s dramatic but not quite true. First thing the hero should do is establish a defence point and escape route. Then reconnoitre the area. Or they could do what I’m about to do. There’s been no sign of anyone coming so I open the door, glance around, grab the guard by his feet and haul him into the room so I can search him.


Fifty credits. A fur comb. Two spare clips for his gun – which I take along with the gun. A comm that I switch off and a biometric driver’s identity card that tells me he’s Grovan Halkirk. Possibly fake. I slot it for now and leave him with the credits and comb. Wasn’t planning on coming back through here anyhow. I open the door again and cross to the office I was requested to attend. I open it, crack the can and throw it into the room, spiralling brown liquid behind it. Someone scrambles and dives as though I just chucked a grenade into the room. I practically jump into the room sideways, firing like a total moron as I land on my arm. Yup, that’s a dead arm for the moment. The gun’s in my other hand and I just about manage to keep a hold of it as the shock passes through me, sending out a new shot by impulse that smacks the opposition gunner smack on the snout as he pulled himself up from cover to shoot me. His shot burns past my coat and chips a hole in the wall. His weapon wasn’t on stun.


Then again, it barely mattered that mine was. I just delivered a stunning bolt of energy and electricity straight to someone’s head. If they ever come back from that, they’ll be lucky. I can hear someone getting out of a car down below. They probably saw the shots. So I seep over to rifle his pockets and come up with more ID. These guys weren’t expecting much trouble from me, it seems. They’d felt no need to hide their identities. The door below just slammed shut. In the day I wouldn’t have heard it but it’s night right now. I sprint back across the hallway and slide into the first room, accidentally booting the first guy in the face, just as he was beginning to come around. The crunch of nose on boot makes me cringe but puts him back out as I pull myself back up and scramble behind the door. Someone’s running down the hall, calling for Mitch. I wonder if that’s the one I’ve just fried for life or the one I just booted in the teeth? It probably doesn’t matter. He scrambles into the other room first, then calls out and runs into my room, past me. I let him check for a pulse before I raise my weapon. Hmm. Heavy stun’s out of power. Light only left now. “Gun down, please,” I say, pushing the door whilst I cover him with the weapon. He starts to spin so I hit his hand with the charge, knocking his gun away and giving him a dead hand for the moment. “He’s stunned. The other guy took one full in the face. Wasn’t meant but, as you appear to be trying to kill me I think I’ve gone easy on you.” I aimed at his Canine head. “Should I re-evaluate?” As bravado goes, it probably covers the knocking of my knees and the throbbing of my fingers.

He scowls at me. “You have no idea what you’re involved in, Mouse.”

I shrug. “I very rarely do, at the start,” I tell him. “At the end, I have a complete picture.” Then I shoot him.


I don’t know what they might have done to my rented vehicle so I steal their activation disk and take theirs, leaving it in a certain superconvenience store car park before walking back to my flop. I doubt those people are going to be there in the morning. I wonder if they’ll have cleaned up the blood?


I wonder if they’ll have cleaned up the soda?


Time for finger gel. I wonder if it still hurts?


Well, I know the answer to one question at least. Ouch.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Guess he better not poke and prod his finger while it is healing then if he doesn't want to feel that pain. LOL Great work on the chapter.

[Harry Johnathan]

It’s not a fleapit. I’m pretty sure fleas wouldn’t live here.

Ouch.

Under a blacklight it probably looks like something Ryrdrian would have done in his ‘Mad colours psychedelia’ phase.

Let's just say Rydrian was just starting out and didn't yet know what "color theory" was. Or what "coloring inside the lines" was. Or what taste was.

[Welsh Halfwit]

MORNING MEETING


Before going to sleep, I followed the standard parameters when you’re pretty sure you’re up a creek with a car whose history can be tracked by murderous hoodlums out to remove me from the board before I’ve even really stepped onto it. Lock the door. Put something heavy in front of it. Don’t lie somewhere you can be seen properly from the window, check your ammunition is ready and gun recharged. Knife loaded up with half a dozen kitchen liquids and some of that finger gel as dang, that thing hurt. I pulled the mattress off the bed and onto the floor, starling several insects that wouldn’t, hopefully, come within to feet of me due to all the pest repellent sprays I was wearing. I’m sure there was one taking a shower. I can see it in my mind’s eye. A bug ith a back brush, and shower cap on. I either have to rein in my imagination or stop watching animated vids. I lie on the mattress and decide I don’t want to risk using the duvet. It’d probably irritate what was in it, having to share with a fieldmican. I send a text to Harriet, saying that, if I get something from being bitten, she’s paying for my hospital bills.

She responds that Caldera operates the socialist style of medicare. She’s right. We pay higher taxes so the medical assistance is free at point of service. Unless you go private, then you see the same Doctors, you just pay for speed.

I think I shouldn’t be able to see the stars from inside. Or even, with light pollution, from outside. I can’t. They’re either recessed microlights or lightbugs. At least they’re not vampiric. I decide I no longer have any choice. I send another text to Thurso and she sends back that Health and Safety will do a surprise inspection there at eight in the morning.


So I’m awake at six and chatting to the beleaguered receptionist at oh seven thirty. She says that, yeah, it’s a hole but the boss has someone on his side in the local Health department who always gives him a heads up when inspections are coming so they can deep clean. She wants to tell but he also has a cousin in the local cops so who would she tell? I advise her that there’s a thing about friends in high places. She chews gum for breakfast and asks what that is.

“Sooner or later you’ll find someone with higher friends than yours.” I tap my nose and tell her she may want to take a breakfast break now.

I’m pretty sure she took the hint as I see her heading down to the shop as I make sure my new car doesn’t have any tracking or exploding devices attached to it before walking ten feet aay, getting behind a pillar and unlocking the car with a press of the fob. It doesn’t go bang. I suppose I have to open the door so… oh, wait. This model can do that by the fob? Cool. I press that stud and the door swings open so I can check things inside before getting in, belting up, choosing an easy listening station on the inbuilt radiocomm and adjusting the pedals for Micans. As I head out, Health and Safety is heading in. In full force.


The car isn’t a disgrace to Scourie’s house as I pull up and announce my presence as Bond, Harvest Bond to a driveside speaker so the gate will open. I can see a guard in the bushes and there’s one stationed on the verandah of the house as well, There’s probably several I can’t see skulking about and a butler trained in fifteen martial arts inside. Reminds me not to make a pass at the serving girls. They could probably snap me in two. I park around the back. Servants and tradesmicans entrance. Probably. It also gives me the chance to see there’s several gardeners out here. More than usual for autumn. Or is it late summer? I’m not sure these days. Weather control takes all the sunny days and lightning storms out of life. I get out onto gravel that costs more than everything I have in my life except Salara (my girlfriend) Her family probably play Sagrid with the people here from time to time. And other indoor games too. I knock the door and the snootiest Raitchian I’ve ever had look down his nose at me looks down his nose at me as I tip my hat. ‘Ye-es,’ he says somehow drawing seven ‘e’s out of three letters.

“Harvest Bond to see Mr Scourie,” I say, by way of introduction.

“Ah, yes, the master of the house is expecting you, Mister Moon. This way. And remove the hat.”

“Of course,” I say, “it’s only right as we’re indoors.” He tells me it’s not that. Scourie has a nonsentient Canine that’s got a thing for hats. It attacks anyone wearing it and, as this thing’s built like a four legged Equinna, it’s not wise to take the chance.

We enter into the lounge and the Ratler tells me to make myself at home in a tone that tells me I’m allowed on the sofa but, if I touch the mini bar, he’ll smack me one in the face.

It’s a bit early for me anyway so I help myself to a soda and sit back on the sofa until I’m almost flat on my back. I’d have spilled my drink if I wasn’t such an expert drink holder. I manage to sit up properly before the same gentlemouse I met yesterday enters the room, wearing a suit so sharp it could cut steel. He laughs and explains it’s the price of being a small species in business. You have to buy furniture two to three sizes too big. So the Canines can sit on it. I ask where all this protection had been yesterday and the smile fades.


“You don’t know what you’re involved in right now, do you?” I point out he’s not the first to say that to me in the last twelve hours and he asks what I’m talking about, so I tell him of what happened last night in his works office and he swears in a very un-upperclass way and tells me that this tells the capabilities of the people we’re up against. I like how he assumes the ‘we’, not ‘he’ in this situation. Apparently they’re people who research things. Like he had, I reason, remembering that the Ratler had used my real name, not the joke one Thurso had made up for me.

“Who are they,” I ask.

So he tells me. Oh, great. It seems there’s a split in Mican Intelligence. Something’s happened outside the patch that’s got things in a turmoil. And both sides are making a power play...

[Amazee Dayzee]

Both sides making a power play is probably gonna get messy. Hope Harvest knows what he is doing if he gets deeper into this.

[Welsh Halfwit]

MISSION PLAN.


It seems there’s a universe outside this patch and it’s just as annoying and back stabby as life within the patch. Some Admiral called Dartington or something recently led an assault force to try and seize control of some planet that had access to some sort of super weapon an informant had told them about. The fact this world was inside the sphere of influence of another space empire was being blithely ignored and that, to be Frank – or even Stephen – terrified me. You see, I remember the last time this happened.


It had been almost ten to fifteen years ago when pirates had ‘stirred the pot’, making out they were the U.S.C. and attacking Star Council interests. Their response was to send a fleet. Ships were destroyed, the IOC building here in Pandera City was destroyed, shipyards were devastated and part of Cabbary station, the main space station in the patch at the time, crashed down on Calderon with the few survivors of the suicide attack aboard it. I’d been nearby at the time. I found and helped the survivors. We lost over thirty thousand people in the patch in one day. They sent an explorer class ship, under the command of a Human Admiral to talk to the Star Council. Yadda, yadda, yaddah, something to do with a Raitchian super destroyer hunting the pirates and peace was achieved through blood. They’re still rebuilding part of this city following the last attack.


Suffice to say no-one here wants to poke the Star Council or wants them to BE poked. Because we’re going to get the slap. Anyway, they failed. Thanks to a certain over angry Rottian and his ship, they ended up losing the attack, the weapon, the FLEET… They did, however, catch a scapegoat. They caught the Admiral, who’s going to stand trial in a secret location. A location Scourie was going to supply to one of Harriet’s trusted aides after she’d gotten certain documents to him. See, it’s somewhere on Pandera and Harriet wants to get certain information to the judge. Or, at least, the prosecution. Scourie doesn’t know what it is. I should probably find out. But then she’d kill me. Which is quite a co-incidence as the trusted aide Harriet intended to take the evidence from Scourie to the location is currently lying in a bed in Pandera City General hospital. Apparently his mattress is like steel so they’re keeping him decent by putting a sheet over his face and letting him sleep in a very small bedroom. Roughly as wide as his bed, in fact. So, what we have here is Harriet expecting me to do the rest of the job for her. For no pay. With no back up. And no clue who to trust. The only people who knew about her operation here were HER people and it seemed some of them were quite happy to act against her with murderous intent. And the one they were most intent on murdering right now was me. There was only one reason I could think of to take this thing on. One side is trying to kill me. If I run away now, it’ll be BOTH sides trying to kill me and, obviously, my landlady knows where I live.


He keeps talking and telling me things I need to know and find completely irrelevant. The fun, of course, is the fact that some of the irrelevant stuff I probably need to know and vice versa. My drink is gone. My host notes it and refills it, using some whisky – or whiskey, I can’t tell – that I couldn’t afford given a year as a mixer as he thought I’d had it in there the first time. He seems surprised when I tell him I’d not touched it. Apparently everyone else did and would I like to fill the hipflask in my coat pocket? I reply that I’d probably better not. The last thing I’d want would be to be pulled over by an intelligent Traffic Cop who knows his Whisk(e)y and that I couldn’t possibly afford such a bottle. He laughs politely and cracks open a bottle of the cheaper stuff – which is still a few hundred credits a bottle – and fills the flask with that. I thank him as it’s only polite and decide I’m only going to drink it after I’ve gotten rid of the stick he’s just returned to me. I ask the question of why can’t he do it? Well, it turns out most of the people guarding him were supplied by someone he knows – or at least recommended by her – so he knows who he can trust about as much as SHE does. I take that on whilst sipping a Whisk(e)y and cola that makes my whiskers stand on end. Is that the Canine, uh, dog, I hear shouting untranslated sounds in the distance or is it my brain reacting to the drink? I ask when he’d looked me up as the Ratler knew my real name, not the cover name. Scourie frowns and tells me he was only given the one name when she called last night.

I hate her sometimes. Why can’t she show her sense of humour in comedies?


About fifteen minutes later, I’m being escorted back towards my hat when I’m slobbered over by a great beast… who happens to have a great beast on a leash. I’m assuming it’s Scourie’s daughter Vanessa. She’s known for having no sense of boundaries when they come to other people. She calls me ‘delightful’ and puts her arms around my neck so she can pull herself in close enough to sniff my breakfast (a sandwich) beyond the drink her dad had just plied me with. She grins. “So, he gave you the good stuff, eh?” I’ve seen her pictures in the society vidmags. She’s not done any work, except on her body, a fact that I find I’m appreciating right now. I think the phrase is ‘Katana tail’ if you want to be decent about it, although it describes the wrong side of the body. She leans down as the non sentient sniffs my backside. Thankfully, she’s the one to kiss me. Softly on the mouth. I mean to protest but her mouth’s still there when I open mine so it takes a moment and I’m sticking to that story. She pulls back and tells me she’s always one to offer a freebie. I, hesitantly, reply that I’m always happy to accept one. I’m going to have to check myself for bugs and, this time, I don’t mean souvenirs from the Motortel. She could have hidden anything on me. Actually, with a tongue like that, she could have left anything IN me. At least the non sentient seems to be happy with me. I see the Ratler mouth the word ‘hat’ to her and she pulls the thing away before he gets it for me. “Do not read too much into that kiss, sir,” he advises, proffering the headgear to me. “She kisses the cable repair people that way.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I tell him. “Do you have a lot of problems with cable?”

He allows the glimmer of a grin. “Surprisingly, quite a few. Sometimes the fault is fixed before they touch the box. Once they turned up before we’d even called them.” He opened the door. “It is not my place to judge those I work for, Mister Moon. It is merely my place to serve them.”

I note he didn’t call them his ‘betters’. Good. I hate that. They may know more than him on business and finance but making their own ham sandwich would have the kitchen half destroyed and them eating sandwiches with the butter spread on the outside.


So, I ask myself after checking the car for devices and finding none except the one tracking device under the bumper that I didn’t find. Looks like I’m going south. About five hundred miles south. So I take off west. Why? So I can stop at a service station, visit the waste facility, get some takeaway lunch, research good hotels as I’m NOT letting Harriet choose again and slip the tracking device under the wheel arch of a Talka Rattara that could be going anywhere. It’ll probably fool some of them...

[Amazee Dayzee]

Really enjoyed the work put into this chapter! Nice work!

[Welsh Halfwit]

ON THE ROAD AGAIN


So I’m going south and further south and, after that, I’m going South. I’m going to need to use my credit chit sometime. It’s only natural. I need to eat. I need to sleep. I need to fuel this vehicle. I need to use a credit to spend a penny. Strictly speaking, I can do two of those in one location and a third in the car. And a fourth, although a bush would be preferable. The point is, it’ll still be needed and I would prefer not to use a highway station. Their systems tend to be high spec and show on the credit reports before you’ve stepped out of the shop. Village places at least give you a bit of a head start as they have people trying to figure out exactly where ‘Pawpocket springs’ is. Not that there’s anywhere around called that. It’s just an example of why I’m pulling off the high speed route and going down a path more associated with the four legged equinna, the two wheeled idiot brigade with tail protectors to stop them getting in the spokes and the quiet weekend drivers venturing out on the weekend.


OK, I think as I watch a young Equinna in the fields, riding one of those four legged ones I was talking about, one of those is probably getting pressure sores and I’m not sure which. I almost edge into a ditch and stop in the layby as she laughs and trots up, before getting off. “It’s a common response,” she tells me, looking down from her mount. “Daddy imported some for breeding. I’m allowed to test them. Not so much when I’m older,” she adds, her ears flicking her black felt helmet.

“Well, you’re a perfect size for it,” I reply, not having a clue as to what I was talking about. “I’d offer to help you down but, you know, I don’t think I can reach.”

Again a bright smile with teeth as thick as my arm. I step out of the car and put my hat on so I’m protected against the sun that’s glowing from behind her head. “I’m planning on teaching, you know?” I said I didn’t but it was probably a good idea. I ask her the way to Chadrinton and the fuel station. She says she could probably take me faster by horse and I respond that I’d better take the car with me. She asks where I’m headed for and I tell her a wrong destination. Then she hops the fence, the hooves of her mount kicking up dust. She calls it ‘Clyde’, says he’s not supposed to be able to jump like that – which worries me as he landed right next to me and I’m thankful she didn’t say that BEFORE he jumped the fence – and trots on. I get in the car and follow, avoiding the hay laden, rose growing muck he insists on leaving behind. She pulls off before we get to the village and opens the nearest gate for Clyde to walk through into a field and I see the solar panels and wind turbines of a village that’s not entirely sure of it’s trust in the planetary power grid and that might mean they’re quite self sufficient. I should have shopped at that supermarket. Hindsight is always clear thirty minutes after it’s useful. I’m about to be overcharged for self heating coffees, sandwiches and fuel. I’ll keep all the receipts so Thurso can screw me out of expenses later and head into a shop where I’m watched like I’m the plague come to visit. I can feel eyes watching me through the shelves as I stock up on provisions and absently pick up Dakrin’s favourite biscuits. I put them back before they get the wrong impression about me. I wonder why they’re stocking biscuits made with a certain haemoglobin based ingredient but it’s foolish to assume no-one around here has that sort of attitude. The device is safe in an inside pocket, of course. I approach the cash desk, that thankfully says they DO take credit chits as I only have enough folding for these things at supermarket prices. Several sodas, a cold box, some ice in a bag, sandwiches and a few other bits and pieces. I grunt and lift the box up for scanning and the grizzled old Mican grunts, spits what looks like chewing tobacco into a bucket and asks me what I’m doing out here. Unplanned tour, I tell her, before asking why a country village store is selling bags of ice and cold boxes. Never know when some idiot’ll set out on an unplanned tour, she tells me. I shrug. There’s some truth to that, I suppose as I load everything into the box after paying on her antiquated system and I haul things out to the car before remembering I also wanted fuel so attached the plug to the system and recharge, using the premium system as it’s a little faster and a lot more expensive. And I need a receipt, which tags another few credits on as the lady really doesn’t like giving out receipts. It costs ink and paper and various other things that no-one bar her accountant really cares about.


I’m sleeping in the car tonight. I decided that after looking at the fuel bill. It cost more than that flop I was in last night. No wonder everyone goes to supermarket fuel stations if they can. But it’s done. It’s fine and I’m on my way again, headed down, out of the village and back towards a more southerly point of the highway and that’s definitely an eagle overhead. Except it’s not staying over fields. And it’s not flapping its wings when it flies. And Eagles don’t humm to themselves when you stop and listen. Someone’s on the ball. Just a pity they’re on MY ball. Unless it’s a local just out to annoy the shuttle spotters. Time to adjust my plan. Stay off the highway. It was quite hard to see a tail amongst hundreds of vehicles. Stay on the local class roads and you had less followers. It was also harder driving.


Despite what I say, I turn onto the highway. It’s not me being contrary, I just noticed that the local road I was on only actually went to the highway and I set off towards the next possible second route. I can’t look up or back but paranoia tells me the drone’s still there somewhere. I hear my comm sound and I pair it to the car comm to answer and engage the scrambler. “You were warned not to get involved, Mister Moon,” the voice says, modulated so I couldn’t tell if it was male or female.

“You didn’t warn me,” I reply, just a little irritated at the tone, “you tried to kill me. That kind of irritates me…”

“We did…”

“...Because,” I continue, talking over them, “I have no clue as to if doing what you want will result in you NOT trying to kill me. So the only way to stop you is to make it a moot point. Which is what I’m now trying to do.”

“You’re only proving our need to kill you, Mister Moon. That evidence will be destroyed.”

“Only if you catch me.”

“We will, Mister Moon. We underestimated you last night. That time is over.”

“How’s that one I accidentally shot in the head? Sorry about that, by the way.” He tells me that the guy might never recover from what I did. I lie and say I’m sorry for that. He doesn’t believe me and we part with a promise to meet each other at the end of this. Probably at gunpoint. It usually is. I turn the comm off and just about avoid crashing into a tanker. Now that would have made the news.


And I head south.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Make sure that you pay attention to where you are heading to avoid accidents! Not only would crashing into a tanker made the news but probably would have killed him.

[Welsh Halfwit]

Night and Morning


I’m awake, I’m awake! I haven’t been dr… Oh, it’s a gull. Rapping on the window like a professional. Thankfully, though, he can’t sing. He flutters off, leaving me to re-establish where I am. I’m parked up in a parking ares that has a three hour waiting period and I’ve been here two and a half hours. Which isn’t bad of oh one thirty in the morning. My neck hurts. The dangle factor of a head does nothing for the neck. I have to rub the neck as I look at some photos Salara’s just sent. Whoop, I need to delete those! I mean, she’s a fabulous lady but, if any cop checks these, I could get done for indecent images. It’s silly, I know. You can download vids oand photos and whatever over the galnet or if you pay for the import of mucky mags for mass sale but you can’t bring these things in through customs. We caught a trafficker out the one time, me and Dakrin. He was suspected of importing girls and young ones to a place on Gire Fantune and we needed him delayed so we could rescue them. We found out he kept photos on an automated system that downloaded to his comm on preset times so he’d always gone through customs by the time they downloaded. So Dakrin adjusted the timer so it downloaded half an hour prior. They did their random checks, he did a random fourty-three hours in custody, seven girls got released and he got a lighter sentence for telling on everyone who’d bought from him. The actual heros of the hour went unnoticed, except by the people who’d paid them to find their daughter and an elderly Mican who showed her charming side by arranging the return of the others on her dime. Sometimes she can be nice. And she didn’t get anything out of it. Yeah, right. None of them have anything close to power or money they still have their uses. I better move on. Last thing I need is to appear on the fines lists. This car is…


...Known. I slap my forehead. This car is known! It has its own tracker which the rental lot can track. If the people trying to kill me find out, they can track it too. It takes me ten minutes to find the monitor on the system and disable it as Dak’s told me on a few occasions. They can probably reactivate it if they need to but I can’t exactly go under to find and disable it permanently in the dark, can I? Besides, there’s nothing suggesting anyone’s following me. Especially not the three dark ground cars coming into the parking lot at the same time. One Thirty AM. Either this place just hit peak hour for five seconds or the paranoia alarm’s going off in my little head again. I probably haven’t paid the annual subscription fee. The three split up to check the car park and I do my best to disengage the brake after they’ve swept past and sneak out of the 24-7’s place silently, without lights. I roll down the slope to the road and look back to see if anyone’s chasing me, guns drawn. Not yet. Won’t be long though. They aren’t parking, they’re searching. Good thing there were employees with cars in the parking area. I engage the engine and, once out of direct sight, turn my lights on under the streetlights.


They’ll be in unison soon, I reckon as I do my best to stay away from speed cameras when I don’t actually know where they are which means that, instead of triggering one or two, I’ve probably hit half the ones in the town. It’s a hundred miles North of my destination, which I’m planning to get to tomorrow, shortly before my car runs out of fuel. It’s gonna be tight. I might have to abandon the car and get there another way. Heh. Imagine, taking evidence that could change the course of power throughout known space on the bus. I shouldn’t laugh. It might happen. I park up in the town’s second supermarket and it’s not 24 hrs. There’s no-one else parked here… well, there’s one other car, over in the corner, but that’s always the way, isn’t it? I’d filch it but for three things. It could be alarmed. It could be stolen. It’s designed for an Equinna. No WAY I can adapt it for me. I can’t stay in the car. And now I have to do something I didn’t want to do. Harriet’s going to be unhappy. I get out of the vehicle, lie down on ground that stains my coat after I lock it and pull myself under the chassis to disconnect the tracker system with whatever I have to hand.

Of course the thing’s welded in. Why wouldn’t it be? I have to be careful about this next bit. I push my way towards the front of the car and take aim with my blaster to scythe it off at medium power. It sparks and cracks and I hope I’ve not just done severe damage to the power systems. That WAS the locator, right? It said ‘locator’ on the outside of the box. I’d find out in the morning. There’s a park opposite.


Morning sneaks across the horizon like a Raitchian skipping out on a nighttime encounter and I wake up on a park bench with my hat stuck in the slats. A jogger woke me up by running past and swatting my face with his whip tail. I practically fall off as he says ‘sorry’ without meaning it and doesn’t even slow down. I stopped at the top of the hillside park for the view of the supermarket and car park so I don’t know what insanity that guy’s suffering from but it affords me a good view from here. I can see all those pretty, twinkling, lights around the blackened mass of a broken vehicle that’s covered in foam right now and I think of what Harriet’s going to do in response to this. And how do I tell her I might have done it? Simple answer to that. I don’t. I parked up for the night and someone unknown fired it, Miss Thurso. I’m lucky I wasn’t in it or I could have died! Which would have prevented you the pleasure of killing me now. In case you’re wondering why I keep saying I’m scared of her, the first time I met her, her henchman tried to kill me. He threw my own sofa at me! My Pen telescope helps me pick things out. There’s Fire Officers and Police types and looky-loo’s observing but there’s a couple of people looking out for others. Both Micans. Both so unofficial they have to be official. No-one around is talking to them but they’re talking to people and one is visibly trying not to touch their ear. And there’s a third.


She’s looking straight at me through a pair of binoculars. Ah, nut smugglers. She’s calling it in. I’m taking to my heels and hoping there’s a bus coming or something.


Bus coming? Nope. Bus just gone. No clue when the next one is. So I run into the roads beyond and hope I’m at the top of the hill.

[Amazee Dayzee]

So I guess you can say that Harvest was "running up that hill" then? XP

Its not as bad as the other jokes I hear around here.

[Welsh Halfwit]

No-one's as loony as the locals...

OSIRAN MORNING.


I’m not exactly sure what the lady in… I think it’s 47 Takrey Crescent if the road sign I ran past a moment ago… was expecting when she decided to do some clotheless morning relaxing on the sun lounger in the garden but I have this vague doubt that she was expecting a wide hatted Mican gumshoe flipping over her fence. Hey, it’s actual wood. Probably cost a pretty penny. She cries out and I quickly put my hands up in my slightly mauled coat and apologise as I run across to the next fence. “Sorry, sorry,” I say quickly as she swallows and stops screaming. “Running away from people who’d like to kill me. I pause as I reach the fence. She’s got a towel against her front. “Is there a nonsentient animal on the other side of this,” I ask, having found one over the second fence, some three fences back. She nods, clearly scared by my presence and tells me there’s one ‘two-two-two d...doors down.’ Which either means six doors down or she’s stammering. I thank her, tell her she’s a bright spot in a, so far, very depressing morning and watch the sun come out in her smile as pride overwhelms fear, she drops the towel and I spend a couple of entirely too long seconds before I lift myself over the fence and have a plastic skittle swung at me by a mother protecting her little ones.


I let it hit me as there’s not really any way to stop it and I certainly feel it. I apologise again and she sees my weapon and hollers that I’m threatening her with a weapon. I tell her it’s holstered, the only one threatened by it is myself. I take the skittle off her as she plans to hit me again and tell her a story about running from people trying to kill me. She’s on their side. Can’t say I blame her. If some lunatic leapt into the garden without so much as a by your leave, I’d be scared too. I’d rather take on what’s behind the next fence. Especially as I can hear people hopping fences behind me. So I run, jump, scramble and stamp on a Canine’s head on the other side of the barrier. Great. I just knocked out a home owner. And here comes his defence. It’s big, muscled, four legged and seems mostly to exist of teeth and saliva. Reasoned discourse is out here. Fleet foot is in as the kids behind call out for their fallen father. Hope he’s OK but I’m not stopping to look as I leap onto the garden table and use that to clear the fence before I become a chew toy. My lungs are beginning to burn.


Good job there’s cooling water on this side as I plunge straight into a swimming pool. Good job I can swim as it seems to belong to an Osiran of the aquatic type who’s rather arrowing toward me right now. I’m out of here. I have water in my ears. I’m almost out when he grabs my tail and holds on. Then he gets out of the pool, all glistening and shiny and… well, that’s less welcome than it was a few doors down. He throws me in the shed and locks the door as I hear cries of pain from next door as the non sentient Canine introduces himself to the Micans. I hear ‘no, not in public’ before the slats come down and I’m in the gloom, watching through a peephole. I hear the ‘fazz’ of what I hope is a stun bolt and two Micans climb over the fence, one with torn trousers and bleeding legs. He’ll need shots for those. I hope they’re painful. The Osiran points them to the other fence as they point weapons at him and tell him they’re from colony security and I wonder why he’s helping someone they claim to be a terrorist until I turn around and see the – shall we say right wing – paraphernalia he has in here. The walls are covered with anti-governmental diatribes and protest banners. Wonderful. I’m someone with evidence that might bring down a government and I can’t tell him because he might try to kill me so he can use it. Good job the inner pocket’s waterproof, by the way. I wait until they scurry over the fence and the rather starkers Osiran comes back other to the shed. He says that it won’t fool them for long with a sibilance that tells me my translator’s still a little damp. He asks me if I’m fighting the esstablisshment or some such nonsense. I’m not in the mood to disssagree and tell him I’m certainly a target for government types right now. He complains that they’re forever trampling over the peoples rights and why do Micans occupy all the main governmental posts if it’s not to keep all the other races oppressed. I want to point out that it’s a Mican colony and has several non Mican government seniors but I don’t think my friend here is playing with a full deck of cards. Or any cards, if I’m being honest. But he’s taking a risk. So I tell him something close to the truth.


Well, OK. The fact that I have evidence that might embarrass the Mican government in a trail that’s soon to take place is worryingly close to the absolute truth but there’s only so many reasons the secret service want people to die badly enough to be hunting them and littering wouldn’t be a good lie. The Osiran asks if I want to take his vehicle and I’m pretty sure the answer is yes as the answer is, in fact, YES. Especially as they’re out front now, looking in dustbins and knocking doors. I need a towel. I’m not going to find one in an Osiran household. I’ll just have to use his AC, which is currently set to ‘dry as cake’ I hide behind the living room door as they ring the bell and ready my pistol as he answers the door. The agent starts to as if he’s seen me, then pauses as she takes into account how much she’s seeing of him. Even though I can’t see, I know she’s fighting not to look down. She asks if she can come in. He repliess – isn’t that implant dried out yet – that he’d normally say yes to a pretty lady but he knows they’d need a warrant and he needs to go to work so, if she could come back later? Then he shuts the door in her face and sashays back into the room, swinging his tail and declaring he’s still got it. He goes up the stairs to get dressed and I pack myself into a small box in the corner as she appears at the window, looking in to see if there was any sign of me. Good job the window’s not open. I currently stink of pool water, that’s brought out all the aroma’s that have been trapped in this coat and trousers since they were last washed. My boots are squelchy. I should be lying down under the window. That would have been a good idea.

The security officer goes away and my new friend comes down wearing a business suit and gestures that I should join him at the door and stop leaving a Mouse shaped stain on his wall. He provides me with a couple of hundred in folding credits and a filled in loyalty card for a sandwich shop. I didn’t know they still did them. “No weapons,” I ask him jokingly.

“They’d arrest me for that,” he replies.

I suppose there’s a truth in that. Plus not every revolutionary actually wants to kill people. He steps out into the garage and I dive into a pile of leaflets and knives that I really wish I’d known about before I dove in.

We stop a half mile away and, thankfully, he’s kept his word so I don’t find myself facing guns but an old fashioned rail station.


Now I have to wait for the train to the city.

[Amazee Dayzee]

This chapter is one of the best that you have written up to this point! Nice job!

[Welsh Halfwit]

SAFE ZONE?


They still run exclusive trains on this colony, for the upper class types who want to see the scenery as they head from the city to their little palaces in the country, sipping the finest wines and enjoying high class meals as they zoom past people who work to put the fluids in the bottles or the meat on the tables. They have curtains on the windows and air conditioning in the first class rooms – not carriages, rooms – where they can relax and even doze, unlike the plebs in Standard who have to sit up and enjoy their chip sandwiches with mayonnaise and soft drink from the vendor.


This is not one of those trains. The early morning from Gawdsforsakenville to Teabury, the big town around here (guess what the main export of the area is) is filled with families on their way to schools and work and shopping and, in at least one case I can see, morning cheerleading practice. Dakrin would have a new girlfriend if he were here. Either that or a new restraining order. I give passing thought to how he’s getting on and how many girls are going to be demanding he look after them as a male Raitchian looks at me curiously. I suppose it’s not totally surprising. I still look like a drowned R… well, I’m pretty wet. “What happened to you,” he asks.

“Needed a shower before getting the train,” I reply, keeping to the truth in my own way. A wry grin. “Didn’t have time to change first.”

He laughs in that ‘you’re telling me to mind my own business. Got it’ way that people do and goes back to reading his padd as a van emblazoned with ‘Fosbury teas’ flits by on the road we’re currently running along. It’s not important, I just figured it showed I wasn’t kidding about the tea thing. Gawd, I’m beginning to stink. There’s no choice about this. I’m going to have to risk the local H/K safe house.


Why is this dangerous, you might ask as I open the ‘fuse box’ attached to a small shipping container in one of the road haulage companies lots just outside the town centre. There are ten of these locations on Pandera. One in the capital, one in the southern continent… Panteknika, if I recall correctly (yes, it was named by a nerd). One in Salway City – which is where I’m headed, one in Teabury – which is where I am and five that are totally irrelevant to the tale. As are the ones in Panteknika and Pandera City. Hopefully the same’s the case for Salway. It’s a pretty basic thing, this little bolthole. A small room with a sonic shower, a washer/drier, changes of clothes in various styles and sizes – all bad and none mine in that order and basic, long life, provisions and basic weapons


So. Back to the question. Why is this a bad idea? Simple. How do you think I’m getting in there? I enter a ten digit code to prove I am who I say I am. That goes to the local HK office. And I’m trying not to fight the Mican Security services on this trip. Knowing who I am, they could easily be keeping an eye on the H/K in case I make contact. This won’t tell them exactly where as you need to log in from this side for that but there’ll be someone there who’ll know. And someone who’ll tell them. But there’s no choice. I can’t go further smelling like a swim in a sewage farm. I’m getting attention. So I step into the location and wish I hadn’t. The place smells worse than I do. No air circulation unless occupied. Keeps the power cost down. I lock myself in, engage the defensive sensors and strip off to put my sodden clothes into the washing machine, which analyses the fabrics and weight, calculates the liquid soap amount needed for the operation, tells the turbo dryer what’s coming its way in ten minutes and starts the operation in the time it takes me to find out there’s never been any such thing as a boot drier. There are childrens’ sized shoes here. They’ll fit.


After five minutes in the sonic shower I’m a complete fuzzball who could probably kill a small human with static so I spend a moment in the defrizzer and wish ‘sea breeze’ wasn’t the only scent they had to cover the smells I’d just lost in the charged environment. So now I smelled like a beach rather than a river. My clothes are still in the washer so I sit on the hard plastic chair and watch the vid – the security vid that shows the area around this pod – as I access the weapons cache stored under the seat. I use the chemicals in the store – the non lethal ones – to recoat my knife as it kind of had its previous coating washed off in a pool. I check to make sure my gun is still operational and take a second from the store along with the stash of untraceable credits. The information stick is still intact. At least I do hope so.


My comm beeps, telling me it was a good idea to take it off before showering. I turn it on. It’s an obscene comm call. Harriet’s found out about the car flambé. Or has she? Paranoia is as much of a friend as Galnet search is and I don’t have that capability here so I’ll go with paranoia and thank her for her concern and that I can’t allow her to send me any more cars and I’ll make my way to Panteknika on my own dime before I hang up. If it wasn’t her she’ll understand me hanging up the call. If it was her, she’ll understand me hanging up the call. Then make me suffer for hanging up the call. So I’m hoping it wasn’t her.


The washer slides open a doorway into the speed drier and tips my clothes into it as I try on the shoes and find that the only pair that actually fits are a pair of pink and green trainers and I wonder who the heck left these here and why? The H/K don’t, generally, go in for child assassins. Then again, they don’t usually go in for HarvestMicans either and thy have at least one of those on the books.


Hello, there’s a car that looks too good for around here. Any higher spec and it’d be a shuttle. In case you’re wondering, shuttles are faster. They’re also considerably larger, as subtle as a concrete block gliding through the air when you’re trying to be stealthy and less able to just pull up at the side of the road and park without doing thirty thousand credits of property damage. A trio get out and I recognise the Canine from the other night. The Mican with him has a bandage along his muzzle. I remember him. I wonder if his teeth remember my boot? Two other Micans get out of the back and these are the sort of Micans you don’t want to meet down a dark alley. Or a light one. Or any alley. Or… you get the idea.


And a second car’s pulled up. Oh, fun. They’re searching the place.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I am gonna assume that the Mican DOES remember his boot and probably isn't too happy about it and want to rip him limb from limb. So he better make himself sparse quickly.

[Welsh Halfwit]

Harvest finds a friend.

KNOW YOUR FOE


I can hear footsteps overhead. Or should I say over face? Something H/K’s keep to themelves – aside from the fact they think Hunter Killer is a rather stupid name for a bounty hunter as everyone thinks we just kill everyone so they fight three times as hard – is that there’s always another way out. Earthers used to call them priest holes because they hid from the whackadoodle priests who came to convert them to gas or something equally primitive but the idea’s the same. A small compartment with hidden controls. I have such a control in here but that’s really for emergencies only. It opens around the back of the unit – probably – and I know there’s three of them searching. And I can only hear two of them talking. One has a smooth, cultured, voice that I’ve heard before on the comm – which I quickly remember to turn off – and the other has a voice like a broken snout, which identifies him too. Snout, I hear, asks the other guy why they’re doing this again. The other guy sounds like he sighs and almost gives plot exposition but opts for ‘because those are our orders!’ Oh, come on! Give me something, soft tone! “If you want to take it up with Montagne,” he continues, giving me a mental ‘yes!’ and a fist pump that almost connects with the wall of my ‘cell’ “you do it when I’m not there!”

I hear the second stammer the name but I don’t actually need to hear his explanation. I’ve heard the name once or twice before. Mostly Harriet talking on the comms. Along the lines of ‘if Montagne thinks he’s operating in MY patch without my agreement…’ and other such comments and insults that the translator doesn’t like translating for non micans. Mostly to do with the thirteen vowels involved. From what I can gather, he’s the Mican intelligence Chief from the next sector over. The sector Dartlingford – I really have to get that name straight – comes from. Which doesn’t seem to be co-incidental. It does make things a bit clearer, of course. He’s supposed to be ruthless and capable and there’s no way the build up of forces could have happened without his knowledge. From the way he’s throwing his former boss under the landing starship – we still have buses but I think a greater weight than a double decker is about to land on him – that’s exactly what he’s planning should be revealed. That he had nothing to do with it. And Harriet thinks that he does.

Or that she doesn’t and just happened to have found some evidence that he did. Or made it up herself. Either way, it seems she’d right to be worried about him. He’s clearly out to get rid of her. He’s too well protected physically but he could defeat her politically…


And I don’t want that. No, I don’t. What people fail to understand is that, if there’s one thing more dangerous than a spymaster, it’s an embittered, embattled, retired/sacked spymaster who knows where the bodies lie. And how good I’d look, slathered in concrete under the new extension if I let HIM beat her. I assume it’s a him. Could be wrong. My foot’s itching.


I can hear one sniff through the venting I opened. It leads to the outside as well as down here so it doesn’t quite mean I’m done for yet. But it means I can’t make a noise. I might get an answer to the question ‘is thinking noisy’ soon. My foot’s in agony now. Pins and needles and a desire to itch that’s making my teeth shudder. “If he was’ere,” smashmouth slurs, “then he’snot now.”

“Yes,” smoothy replies, “It seems we’re one step behind. “Still, it’s nice to see one of these old classic havens again.”

Uh, oh.


Their feet start retreating but I know what’s coming next so I’m quite prepared for the Whoomph of someone starting a large fire just above my head and I’m jabbing the release button shortly before I start getting toasty. I jab it three times and wait for the panel to the left or right to open up. Right will take me right to the people who just tried to fry me but, if it’s the frying pan or the fire, I’ll take the pan eery time. Given the chance I can hit people with that. Punching people with flame is the realms of superhero fighting games. Honestly, how often do those good guys end up solving a problem by setting fire to an opponent? I’m not thinking that as the hatch opens beneath me and drops me into a filthy tunnel before snapping closed to extinguish the light. Ow. Couldn’t they have slanted it at least? Is there something in the dark with me? If I find a light, there will probably be something down here that I don’t want to turn the light on to see. On the other hand, if there is something down here with me, it won’t care if I see if something’s down here with me or not. So I switch my hat to the neon blue setting and light up the tunnel a bit. Smells like a disused sewer. Dank and musty and that shower was a waste of time. Still, there’s enough room for me to get onto my hands and knees and turn around. Something skitters over my fingers and I almost call out, I almost fall backwards. I do smack my head on the ceiling. Yeah, it’s THAT low. The tiny me from Earth - my Human neighbour, Mrs Lorin would call it a Mouse - looks almost as shocked as I am at what it’s seeing. It approaches nervously, letting its nose take the danger, sniffing for all it’s worth at this weird thing that looks like itself with fashion sense and I’m almost a titan to it and… hee, hee, it’s running over my hand! It’s running up my arm and sniffing my cheek. I hope it’s not a female because this isn’t going to… Ooh, right. The tunnel’s filling with smoke. Time to scurry myself. I take off, confident that going somewhere is better than going nowhere and suffocating. The glow of my hat tells me my little friend is still with me. Probably going to bite me at some point but, for now, I can luxuriate in being able to call something my ‘little’ friend.


Is that an arrow on the wall? Oh, a ladder. Well, see a ladder, you gotta climb it. Especially when there’s so many little bones down here that… ooh, Cat! Now it makes sense! Whoever brought a Micean – or whatever – from Earth also brought a Cat. OK, it’s probably more than one but this one’s on it’s own. It charges around the corner, slams on the brakes when it sees me and hurtles back off. I raise an eye ridge at my companion. “Protection detail,” I ask lightly, not directing the question directly at it or it might fall off. It simply looks at me, twitches it’s whiskers twice and slides down into my jackets’ outer pocket. Ah, well, I can do with someone to talk to.


It’s a garage. Dakrin would be appalled by the state of the junk heaps in here. They’ve obviously not been used in years and they make the Brick – my usual car – look stylish in comparison. But they’re powered by everlast batteries, made in that short period between the genius idea and the time the company realised that no-one replacing their batteries was a BAD thing profit-wise, so they should be able to go after a few… Someone’s pulled up outside. Right. Time for not subtle. “You want to run,” I ask my hitch hiker. She just twitches her nose at me in a ‘why did you learn to speak’ way. She’d right. The time for words is over. Had it ever begun?


I get behind the wheel and turn the engine on with the keys in the ignition for fast getaway. Then, as they open the door, I crash through, sending them diving aside and wrenching the door off its hinges so it circles around and almost bashes them in the head behind me as I cheer. Pity I missed them. Pity I forgot about the second car.


And, if anyone asks, it’s a pity I forgot where the brakes were and stamped on the accelerator, speeding towards the incoming car.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Hope that the other car swerves out of the way. I can't imagine Harvest or the other driver doing well in a head-on collision.

[Welsh Halfwit]

MOUSE RACE


There’s something the people in the car heading straight at me might not have considered as I lumber towards them at an unsafe velocity and that’s that I usually drive a wonderful slab of car known as the Brick. It brakes for no-one (largely because, if it did, I’d have trouble getting her going again) as it’s armoured like a tank and, to be honest, too many people know about it. This thing’s no Brick but, compared to the tinfoil car that’s coming at us, we’re a steamroller. I urge my pocket companion to hold on and, by the time I realise how stupid it is to be talking to a non sentient right now, I’m past them as they decide the lunatic coming at them isn’t going to stop and veer off at the last second. I barely feel the smash that has their car rolling onto its side as the other agents start shooting at me.


Nope, this thing’s not bulletproof. Well, energy pistol proof. Not to the same degree as the Brick. The energy bolt spiderwebs the rear window quite effectively as the dispersal wires do their job but it’s a close thing. Two more hits and it’ll go through. Two more minutes and they’ll catch up. Which is only the first of my problems. The second is where the heck AM I? It’s not as though I was following directions. I must still be near the industrial area where I went in but… Those houses look nice. I wonder if anyone’s called the Police about the lunatics shooting up the place. Or are they using silenced energy pistols? And who cares anyhow? I wonder how much they paid for a place that sees trucks coming past every hour of the day? They’re going to be on me soon. They probably already are. Ah, well. Oop, here they come, as I drive past a park. There’s a few kids on swings, a Mican and a Celican, being pushed by their parents. It soured matters a little as the car begins trying to overtake me. I can’t swipe them over into the park if kids are close. Think of the therapy bills and the chance of stray shots. Not going to happen. Well, it might, but I wasn’t going to do it deliberately. Plus I’m beginning to want to aim for a truck now. I HATE being prey.


They try to overtake and I let them, pulling back as they started trying to keep level with me on the deserted road. Where are all the mothers travelling back from dropping their kids off? Where are all the delivery trucks? They can’t ALL have grocery teleport booths in their homes, can they? Where’s ANYONE? I push into the back quarter of the passing vehicle and she spins around twice, ending up behind me and, infuriatingly, refusing to crash into any of the parked cars. Well, OK, the parked car. Because there’s only one of them. This estate is oddly empty for a… ah. I shoot past a sign and it reveals that the estate is about to open for interested buyers. Thought it seemed clean. It hass everything needed for cleanliness. No inhabitants. I turn left on a hunch and find myself heading down the road to the roundabout that I’d passed on my way in. It meant I knew where I was, now. And I knew where they were too. Right behind me. I take a sharp right. It’s not the way I want to go but it’s towards the town centre and, when you’re outnumbered by people who’ll happily kill you out of sight of others, you want attention and local Cops. Is the Earth Mican covering it’s eyes as I swerve around a van and almost swat a convertible into the verge. The car behind me pulls around it and overtakes me as I slammed the brakes on so the truck was passing me. I can imagine the cursing as I pull off the verge and turn around as fast as I can as the trucker slams the brakes on and plans to get out and add to the number of people today who want to murder me. The Raitchian comes, muscled paunch showing almost as much as the crowbar in his hand as I manage to get this beast in gear and head back towards the roundabout, trying to keep whatever advantage I have. It’s not going to last. I just passed the other one. They’re spinning around to get on my tail. Not like I hadn’t guessed this was going to happen. I wonder how hard it had been to tip the car back onto its’ wheels? Oh, well.


I hit the brakes and take some serious damage to the metal rear of the car as they hit hard enough to set the airbags off in their car. I have to work hard not to crush my chest – or, rather, forehead – against the wheel. This thing doesn’t have crash protection like a new car. And I generally have to disable it on most cars anyhow. I’m in more danger of death from an airbag going off into my face than I am from a collision some times. It’s crumpled their bonnet quite nicely. They’ve been stopped. I pull away and wonder about their insurance and if they can call it. It’s left turn time again at the roundabout. With town being out as I couldn’t reach it before they caught up so I was going to plan C. Or was it D? Heck, right now it could be plan X from outer space! I’m not running on plans right now. There’s the rail station. Ignore it. Go past. You can’t run forever but you can give them a fuel bill. And there’s no train there. I can’t see them behind me but I know they’re there. They’re probably hanging back now. They can arrange for police to intercept me. They can arrange for drones to just follow me. Actually they might just actually follow me from a safe distance as they don’t know where I’m supposed to be going anyway. Only I know where I’m going. Scourie said the IOC were keeping it to themselves right now. Less chance of assassins apparently. And here I am, heading right for them and dragging killers like streamers towards them because, if I don’t deliver this evidence, the killer landlady… I’ve mentioned this before. You get the idea. It hasn’t changed simply because the road surface has. This car’s damaged. I can feel it through the tightness of turn, the lack of assisted steering and the fact I can see the sparks being cast up by the bumper that I’m dragging across it.


The police are probably closing in on me right now. If anyone’s bothered to call them so I make sure of it by calling them myself on the comm. I didn’t do it before for two reasons. H/K don’t like the local cops and they don’t like us. They’re the ones that steal our bounties and we’re the loose cannons that add extra corpses to their streets. The second reason is that coming when you’re driving is extremely unsafe unless you have an inbuilt link to the vehicle, which I don’t. You have to keep a hand off the wheel so anyone can hear you. But, as emergencies go, this was one. My little companion looks at me as I talk sharply to the person on the other end of the line, laying out the fact that a bounty type was being pursued by nefarious armed types and I gave my ident code, dredging my mind to draw it up before seeing what I was hoping for. A railway station. OK, so I’d bypassed one of these a short while ago but this one had something the town station didn’t have. A train pulling in. I slam the brakes on next to the ramp up to the platform and jump from the car to sprint to the transport.


In my dreams. I pick myself up off my hands and knees, check my friend is safe – although it would probably be safe if I just left it here – and run for the train, getting onboard just as it closes the doors. My hat strap almost strangles me as the trim gets caught in the door and I pull it free as the train moves off and a certain trio of agents turn up.


I get my credits ready. Here comes the guard.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Don't you just hate it when your hat strap almost strangles you? That can actually be such a massive pain.

[Welsh Halfwit]

TRAINING


I can relax now. Well, for about ten to fifteen minutes, of course. The train’s about an hour out from Salway City so, if the bad guys have been paying any kind of attention, they know we’re headed for Salway. Or Panteknica. But, odds on, they’ll guess Salway. It has a U.S.C. Military base down here, for example. If the Council wanted to keep someone safe for trial, best to do it in a glasshouse they control. Which is probably made of Tritanium. I don’t much care about that. Something has, however, just occurred to me as I scritch Wheat – I had to call her something, didn’t I? And she’s probably never seen any wheat living down in the tunnels. She runs across my hand – and, yes, she’s missing certain equipment to be a boy – and ducks back down into my pocket. There’s a kid looking at me, his nose twitching in excitement and his eyes glittering. “It’s an Earth Mican,” I tell the Housan type.

“Can I see,” the boy breathes, his tail flicking happily. I bring Wheat back out and allow the boy to use one finger to stroke her. She looks uncertainly at me but seems to understand I won’t let him hurt her. “Heard of them,” he breathed as his mother started telling him not to touch as he doesn’t know where it’s been. Does she mean Wheat or me? “Never thought I’d see one,” the boy responds happily as he pulls back into his seat. “Thank you.” I told Wheat she was a good girl and put her back in my pocket. “Where did you find it,” he asked.

“Around town,” I tell them. “An Earth feline was after her so…” I pause. “Are there a lot of Earth animals in Teabury?”

“There used to be a shop,” the mother tells me. “It closed as no-one could afford the prices here.” I shrug. It makes sense. Earth was the thing a few decades back. Now we have kids pretending to be Celicans. Except the Celican kids who pretend to be Felines. I used to pretend I had money. I’m still pretending to an extent but no-one tell Dakrin. I ask the boy if he’s studied Earthen Animals in school. He tells me he took after school classes and he really wanted to meet something called a Kangroo. I ask what Wheat’s called. A Moose? No. A MOUSE. I know this, of course but, if you REALLY want to make a kid’s day? Let them teach you something.


There’s my ten minutes. I should be getting paranoid again now. We’re pulling in to the next station down from the one I got on at first so I look at the faces of the people getting on to see if I recognised any of them, which is easier than some might assume it is when they’re all of the one species. We concentrate on the smaller things that separate us being as most of us don’t have blue headfur… Well, most of us, I think as a youth with painted fur between their ears walks past and takes up the seat opposite. “Seat free,” he asks in the kind of tone that indicates he doesn’t really care if it is or not as he’s already sat down and wrapped his tail over his lap.

“Not any more,” I reply with a wry grin, shifting towards the window and removing my hat to put it on the aisle side seat as the smoothie comes into view. “This one’s occupied though,” I tell the youth, trying to tell him to go along with it with my eyeridges.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he says, “mum’ll be with us shortly.” He glances at the obviously official Mican standing next to him and I sense the rebellion rising in my young friend. Geez, ‘young friend’? How old does that make me? As I’m sat with my back to the carriage wall and there are no seats behind me, he grumbles and mores to the next carriage as the boy leans over. I put a finger up to keep him quiet until the enemy’s moved past the door. “Who’s that guy,” he asks.

“Don’t know,” I reply, bringing out my private licence, “but he’s been after me all morning. I think,” I add in a whisper, “that he works for a government.”

He gasps slightly and, when he says ‘it’s true, then’ I ask him what’s true. “There’s a secret trial,” he tells me, “going on. Some massive cover up that’s working to end the Canine government due to their policies on Astana Seven and the Pandera Government is in on it! Lisster was posting about it just now. Look!” He shows me his padd with a post on it that does, actually, say just what he said. Pretty much verbatim. I look at the ident picture and realise I’ve seen that pool before. It’s great how these guys can take random events and map them into a narrative that’s about sixty percent accurate and believe it one hundred percent. Not that I tell him that, of course. I simply say that it might be connected to something that isn’t entirely unlike that and point to my inner pocket. He looks non-plussed. “You’re taking an Earth Mican to act as a witness in the trial? Found her underground, I take it?” He sniffs. “S’where they live.” I just tell him I was pointing at me and that I might know where the evidence is. I’m probably talking too much but this kid reminds me of Dakrin. Only White furred. And Blue.


The mother and her boy get off at the next stop and my associate and I change seats so evil agents can’t sit close to us. I’m still close to an exit in case. Smooth wanders past again. “Is it still taken,” he asks with a grin.

“Yeah,” the kid says as I realise he’s still not told me a name to call him, “mum’s getting on at Dabway station.”

“Of course she is,” he replies, clearly not meaning it. He stalks off. My compatriot says he can help me get to where I’m going. He can set things up with some friends of his online. Great. These people are more organised than I am. Then again, so is the National Disorder Commission, a group that has no head, no controlling section and very little clue as to what they actually want to achieve. I tell him to arrange for a vehicle or something to get me to the harbour, then I pick my hat up and go to the toilet just before we get to the next station and slip off the train amongst the crowd going to the local shopping precinct.


There’s a trope when you’re paranoid. If you find a friend when surrounded by enemies, they’re the ones that’ll stab you to death. I can see his face after the door has closed. I can’t tell if he sees mine as my hat’s underarm but he thumps the unyielding door in exasperation as I head towards the taxi rank outside.


Half an hour later, I’ve mad it to the local Council base and the driver’s dropped me off after taking the last of my credits. He wasn’t that happy about Wheat either. Apparently non sentients make messes. The droppings in my pocket can attest to that. I step up to the guard and tell him I have important information about the Darlington trial.


Which is why a Feline currently has a rifle up my nose.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Hope that he doesn't sneeze or the trigger gets pulled. Would be very bad to have your nose blown off. LOL

[Welsh Halfwit]

A RAT TO TRUST


If there’s one truth across the universe it’s that interrogation rooms – sorry, interview rooms – are pretty much the same featureless rooms with a single door, a table, two – or sometimes three – chairs and an occasional mirror which shows you the same image no matter which side of it you’re on. Interior designers could make a small mint if they made a new design for these things. Perhaps something with roundels or Decagons would suit? A decal of a sword of justice on the table could strike the right effect. Perhaps even a small bin for waste to break up the monotony. I sip coffee that could barely be called mud it was so poor and add that to the truth of the universe regarding interrogation rooms. It’s designed to make you want to get out of there faster, I’m sure. I had good coffee this morning. Now, along with my second car out of the three I’ve driven in the last twenty-six hours, it’s a roast.


I’ve been here since the guard decided not to expand my left nostril down through the back of my head and escorted me here at the barking order of his superior, a Canine called Palmerston, to this little white lit room. He thought about charging me for importing vermin thanks to seeing Wheat, but I assured him she wasn’t going to be much trouble. Especially after it had seen the size of the Feline. And I know she has. I have to empty this pocket of droppings at some point. I do that now. I put her on the table and, after finishing the insult to coffee, take my coat off and pour the pocket contents into the cup as she looks over the edge of the table and, for all I know, considers jumping. I crouch down so we’re practically nose to nose and she boops mine with hers then scurries over to the other side. It’s a game, I find, as I follow to stop her doing anything silly and she does it again. There’s intelligence behind the clueless innocence, isn’t there?


The door opens and a familiar Raitchian comes in with a small cage that’s got sawdust in it, and water in a small bottle attached to the side. Agent Beran puts the cage down and tells me they dredged the records of the cage up from records and had it replicated. She tells me I should put Wheat – which I can tell she doesn’t think is a good name – in for her safety. I have to agree as Wheat doesn’t appear to think much of Adriette as a person. Or as a name. She’s reluctant to go near and stays on my side of the cage when I put her in before deciding to eat some of the grains and work on the water. Now that that’s done, she says, I need to tell her exactly what I’m doing there and what I know about Admiral Darlington. So I tell her. I tell her about the ‘arrangement’ I have with Harriet Thurso and the fact she had asked me – asked, yeah, right(!) - to deliver information to a go-between who’d deliver it to someone who could courier it to the people here. I tell how the go-between was being followed and I interceded and how I’d become the courier when the courier had turned up in the Pandera City Morgue after unexpectedly stabbing himself five times and throwing the knife away before he died. I also detail my morning commute and she rolls her eyes as Wheat holds up a piece of the thing she was named after. I think, just for a second, that she’s appreciating the irony. Then she puts her teeth into it and eviscerates it.


Apparently the fun around Teabury made the local news for about five seconds this morning. The local Police are looking for a wild FieldMican in a massive hat for arson and dangerous driving. She’d been pretty sure it was me but, then again, she’d known I was on the planet before she travelled down yesterday to arrange security for the trial. It was just her from the main Pandera team as Corp Davidstow was formerly in the Mican Military and the lovely, sweer, Patcha Karl always attracts attention, being a Wolf who can terrify an innocent to stone with a single glance at fifty paces. They’ve got some new guy but I don’t really know him. She’s not happy about how this seems to be becoming some sort of Mican Intelligence Civil war that’s dropping one or two bodies around her Patch and she’s REALLY not happy when I mention that they’ve mentioned Montagne. If I could wind time back fifteen seconds so I hadn’t said it, I… probably wouldn’t do it. I decide to hand the evidence I’m holding over to Beran and she decides to watch it on her comm here and now. Nothing. Encrypted. I sigh and tell her I need to make a call.


Harriet’s line is probably bugged so I call my ancient Human neighbour instead. Her name’s Mrs Lorin and she’s from one of those places that the translator engrams have real problems understanding her language. Someplace called Scotland which, apparently, is full of Oil, Whisky and thistles. I tell her I need to speak to Harriet and she tells me to hang on and hands the link over to her. Great. She’s been waiting for Mr Predictable to call. I tell her I’ve made it, although I don’t say where. I tell her I’m with the IOC and it’s an agent I trust – I do, although Adriette seems surprised by me putting the word ‘trust’ in the sentence – and it would be a really good idea to be able to see what I’ve been escorting all the way down here before warning her that her ‘big rival operation’ is making plays and knows of her involvement by the fact they know who I am.

She curses in a dialect that’s either Scottish or unknown to modern technology and wants to speak to Agent Beran. I hand the comm over and Adriette links her installed earpiece to the device as I wonder how the heck she knew it was Beran I was talking about. I’d only said it was a trusted agent.

I distract myself by playing with Wheat until Beran tells me off for ‘playing with my little Mouse at the table’. She grins wryly and I know she chose those words very carefully to get me in trouble.

“Can you explain to her it’s a non sentient pet Mouse,” I ask desperately and Adriette laughs and bangs the table.

“She said is that what he’s calling it these days,” she explains before tapping in the decryption code password Harriet gave her and hanging up before I could get any deeper in the muck. One word for the password. I knew it. I mean I know it. She told me it. HarvestBond. I hate her.


We watch the recording of a meeting at which the ‘expansion of the Mican realms is discussed. It’s a meeting attended by the commanders of the militias (for all I knew) who were allotting troops at the Admiral’s behest. The plans were being outlaid with interjections from Montagne who was not only there but an active participant. But most of it wasn’t being directed to the Admiral. Another was present. One who rarely spoke until the end and, when he does, it makes Beran frown and me sit bolt upright. I’ve heard that voice.


In the vids. When the media covers Mica presidential announcements.


I hear it every time Vice-President Sunderland talks.

[Amazee Dayzee]

This chapter has come out really great! Good work on all of it!

[Welsh Halfwit]

LUNCH MEETING


Hours pass.


Hours full of talking, planning, plotting, getting me established in the two star hotel that is guest quarters on the base and so on and so forth. The quartermaster has obviously heard about my journey there as her hand shakes as she hands me the key to the bubble car they keep for the low rent and desperate and makes me sign for it in quadruplicate. I get a twenty minute lesson in checking the vehicle for things that shouldn’t be there and I take the offence to my dignity out to a cafe that the QM recommended as being better than the canteen, which probably isn’t hard. I parked it about a quarter mile from the cafe as I don’t want to be associated with it and make my way to the cafe that’s conveniently situated between the rail station and the hoverport and I take a spot where I can be seen from the window and was under observation as I wait for a weird concoction of a Steak and Cheese sandwich. I had to leave Wheat back in my ‘hotel’ as cafes tend to discourage bringing non sentient versions to the table – even as they serve me. I’m trying the grain coffee and thinking I actually prefer the stuff from the Council base, when the people I’m actually waiting for enter and snake their way over to the table and slot themselves in, blue fur first and smoothie second, trapping his junior compatriot against the wall. I raise my cup. “Is it morning or afternoon right now,” I ask. “I’ve lost track.”

“It is just past two, Mister Moon,” smoothie said.

“I take it that’s afternoon then,” I say, giving a wry grin. “Good afternoon, Mister..?” I let it hang as I offer a hand. There’s plenty of witnesses.

“You may call me… Wilt,” he said, accepting the hand graciously. He’s not got a spiked ring on. The antitoxin sweet I’d eaten in the car might not be needed. Still, it seemed smart at the time. “And this is Bluejay,” he added, indicating the youth next to him, who gave me a wave as the waitress came over and took their orders. After she goes away, Wilt looks back at me. “You have led us a very entertaining chase, Mister Moon.” He chuckles lightly. “We may have to adjust pursuit tactics in training.”

“Might I ask,” Bluejay interrupts, earning himself a glare from Wilt, “how you spotted me?”

I look to Wilt and ask him if he minds if I answer. He nods graciously. “You offered too much,” I tell him. “My mentor used to tell me that, in a field of thorns, don’t trust the untouched fruit.”

He frowns. To be honest, I did the first few times he said it. It makes little sense.

“Ah, the wisdom of Carter Kohl,” Wilt says wistfully. “Noted Canine Bounty Hunter of the school of 27. I knew him back then. I was sorry to hear…”

“Of his incarceration on Osira,” I finish. “So was I. And,” I continue, pointing at ‘Wity’, “if that’s not what you were going to say, consider this. Right now your an opponent. The end of one sentence could make you an enemy.”

Wilt nods. “Understood.” He looks at Bluejay as the boy questions him with a look. “Sometimes doubt is the last hope we hold, ‘Jay. It gives us strength and courage. What have you done with the documents?”

“Kept them safe,” I reply, eating my sandwich as their foodstuffs arrive. “Handed them off to the next courier for the trip.”

He smiles slightly as he starts his Wrekaka. “I had hoped you weren’t going to lie to me, Mister Moon. It’s beneath you. I take it you also saw what was on it?”

I muse on things before I reply to him. Just for a few seconds. “As for lying to you, you do know who got me into this, right?” He nods. Bluejay looks to us for confirmation. “Geepers,” I tell Wilt, “did you guys tell this kid anything? You and me,” I tell him, “are caught in the middle of an intelligence Civil War. On the one side,” I continue, putting the mustard container on one side of the sweetener sachet, “we have Bresslaw Montagne, the up and comer. The controller of destiny in the nearby Mican sector. In this corner,” I continue, placing the Ketchup container on the other side of the sweetener, “we have the current queen of this sector, the mistress of mayhem and control, Harriet Thurso of the old school. Also known as my landlady.”

Bluejay coughs on his drink. “He’s being serious,” Wilt tells him as an aside. “She sees the value in this fellow. Chaos, it seems, has some value.”

“Chaos only has value,” I counter, “when order is predictable. What happens to the sweetener sachet when these two clash,” I ask.

“It gets crushed,” Bluejay replies.

“Only if you’re following order,” I tell him. “Chaos maintains that the contents of that sachet could be anything, even something too hard that might damage either side. There’s the strength of chaos for you. It prevents them clashing directly as they have no clue what’s going to happen. So they snipe at each other and manoeuvre their pieces through benefit and threat.” I turn to Wilt. “I take it you’ve been offered pride, prestige and promotion in this?”

He stirs his drink with a clawtip. “You might say that. It was implied that my career would be best served by success and debilitated in defeat.” He sounds a little depressed by what he’s saying.

“Not what you signed up for, hmm,” I nod. “For good or ill, we’re on the build up to an internal war, aren’t we? Doing what we can to avoid it.”

“Which would have been all the easier if you had not been involved,” Wilt tells me. “And also if our friend, whom you smashed in the mouth, had not been made by the previous courier, necessitating his removal from the stage too early. I won’t go into how a Canine came to work for us.”

“Oh,” I breeze, “probably money or blackmail. It usually is.”

He nodded gracefully. “Usually. But I’m curious to know what you think will happen next, Mister Moon. If I cannot go back without the documents, I might well get by on the fact that I have removed one of Miss Thurso’s key pieces from the board. After all, I can be long gone before she learns it was I who acted against you.” He looks to Bluejay, who’s suddenly afraid he has an idea what might happen to him. “I shall take you with me, of course,” he says freely. He’s probably lying.

“I was wondering what would happen to you,” I counter, “if you were to try and kill me in a cafe that was recommended to me by the local United Security Council bases Quartermaster,” I ask. “At lunchtime.”

He stops still for a moment. “Ah,” he says, looking around at the several other species in the cafe.

“They’re non-commissioned Officers, see,” I tell Bluejay. “They can’t afford the swankier places like the Officers can. But they know the best places that non commissioned troops can eat at. Because it’s where the troops DO eat. I bet there’s about six of them in this cafe at the moment.” I pay for my food and leave. They’re about to follow me when a Canine that’s larger than the door steps between us and remarks that they’ve not paid, blocking their path. I leg it as soon as I’m out the door.


I have no idea if there were any troops in there.

[Amazee Dayzee]

He better hope that the person that they were with doesn't pay their bill and can be restrained there. Something tells me when not if they see Harvest again they are gonna be REALLY ticked.

[Welsh Halfwit]

Tomorrows chapter is just a bit of fun, bringing back a couple of characters who appeared in IOC on the sea...

[Amazee Dayzee]

Can't wait to see how they will fit into this story! I am sure it will be so thrilling!

[Welsh Halfwit]

HARVEST AT SEA


Adriette’s mad at me. There are several ways of telling. One of the main ones was her telling me I’m an idiot six times in about five minutes as she blasted my ears off about how stupid I’d been, letting myself be seen like that and how could I risk things now when I didn’t have a clear escape plan and even my argument that having a direct escape plan curtailed the ability to make things up on the fly didn’t cut much water with her. She’s probably right. She does accept that I might have laid down a false trail perhaps, so I need to make sure they follow it. Which is why I was a foot passenger on the duty free equipped shuttle ship across the water to the southern continent with a hire car reserved on the other side for the purpose of getting me to Panteknika. A hire car that I wasn’t going to take.


A salted old Mican with leather palms meets me close to the boat in Reedton, the town on the other side, and complains that this isn’t what he meant when he said Beran could call him anytime. He had the look of someone who’d lived his life in the hardest possible way and his handshake almost breaks my arm with it’s strength. “She owes me one now,” he said, taking me to a ramshackle pick up truck he worked his way into. He took the driving seat and I got in the passenger side and started at the ‘KLANG!’ as the door slammed shut. I made to put on the belt but there wasn’t one. This was going to be fun. “Lap belt,” he said and I noted the lesser protection down at the seat level and stretched it across to its receptacle as he started the thing into life. I’m tempted to ask how he knows Adriette as I very much doubt they float in the same social circles and she isn’t the sort to come down and buy fish from the fisherman, which I know is what this guy is from the nets and tackle in the back. And the fact he reeks of fish. Positively hums, in fact. “Live a life around fish,” he says, even though I’ve not said anything, “you pick up the tang. In case you were thinking of mentioning it.” I wasn’t. I crack and chip my teeth a few times as we head down trails and roads that no-one other than a local would know. No chance of being followed down here, I guessed, watching behind us as we bounced.

“Good job your… suspension’s up to code,” I say, hanging on as we go down a collection of potholes that’s pretending to be a road.

He snarls a grunted chuckle. “Northern softie.”

“Calderonian softie,” I corrected as we came out onto a cliff side road that led down to a small harbour where a boat that looked truly fishing style lay.

My captor – because jumping out now would be madder than staying in – pulled a radiocomm from the compartment that no-one’s kept gloves in for centuries and growls into it. “Mikkel,” he says, “start ‘er up. We got a sprat to take to Dassiran.”

The bright voice on the other side says ‘Aye aye boss’ and gets the Mican next to me growling. Something about still not calling him Captain. We turn inward, away from the edge of the cliff and pull up close to a moored boat.


This is not the luxury ferry I just travelled across on. That had shops and a restaurant and a gym. This little boat has hammocks, an alley and a hold for Seafood. The brawn of the sea farers indicates they might appreciate the bottle of booze I bought on the ferry as payment and the Captain stores it away for mission’s end. I have to agree to him that, when you’re all sails to the wind, it helps to have a crew that isn’t. The person who’d spoken to us on the comm, a Raitchian called Mikkel, tells of the time he worked with Adriette, Corp, Patcha and… hey, he knows Harmony Whitestar! My second favourite Raitchian in the patch! She keeps sending me coats she’s found in second hand shops every Sanctamas. One of them was even quite good. I need a new wardrobe. All this to obfuscate movements. To make sure the people we know about, who know about me, keep their eyes on me a nd don’t spend a lot of time chasing other things. Whatever’s moving in regards to this trial is moving now, it seems. I tell myself it’s nothing to do with me but it’s clear my work isn’t done here yet. Largely because I’m hoping Adriette will give me a lift back to Pandera City on the IOC dime. The trail we’ve laid points further south but I’m not convinced ‘Wilt’ will fall for it.


He knows my old mentor. I don’t mean he knows his codename – Patch Wilbury – he knows his real name. That and the fact he knew the class of safe house we were in in Teabury – or close to it anyhow as he didn’t know about the false floor – tells me he’s Hunter Killer at one point and, myself excluded, the lifestyle doesn’t suit many Micans. As a species, we have a huge military but H/K’s hunt alone for the most part. For a Mican, community is everything. For a H/K, community is people you can’t afford to care about.

Which is where ‘Bluejay’ is an anomaly. He picked him from the local spy school, obviously, but there was something almost paternal about how he treated him. A mere apprentice would have been disciplined for speaking up at the cafe but Wilt had practically encouraged him. I caught the glow in Wilt’s eye when I’d praised the boy. He’d hidden it quickly but it had been there. Whoa, the sea was up today. Something slaps me in the face and the fishermen laugh. “Seems they like you,” the Captain says. “You can keep that one,” he says, nodding to a silver-green fish that’s flopping about and looking like a… well, a fish out of water. Gasping for the opposite of air. I know how it feels.


I make to throw it back but Mikkel stops me and tells me about refusing the luck of the sea and that they were trawling nets catching dozens of them for offloading in Dassiran so it might be slightly sarcastic to save one when they were taking hundreds. He found me a small cold box for me to take it in. If nothing else, I’ve come out of this with a Mouse and a fish.


At Dassiran, the Quartermaster from the USC base picks me up at the harbour and drives at slightly below the speed limit back to base, turning her nose up at the fish and eying my remaining bottle of mid quality hooch with an intensity that tells me I’m trading it for this trip. I invite her to share it with me in my room and she laughs. Two reasons. One. I don’t have any glasses. Two. I have a meeting with the head of the Council Legal Department.