A Fistful of Trouble (Outlaws of the Galaxy Book 2) Paul Tomlinson (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

“I’m sorry I stole Floyd’s head. And broke it.”

“What did you do with the money?” I asked.

“I... er... I gave it to a friend.”

“You mean someone took it from you.”

“That’s not what happened! Not exactly...”

“They stole it, didn’t they?” For some reason, I was suddenly feeling much happier.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That explains why you came back,” I said.

“I didn’t come back because of the money,” she said. “I’d already taken your money.”

“You came back for the rest of it.”

“Why, do you have more?”

“No!” I said quickly.

“There’s a ship coming in from off-world in about twenty minutes,” she said. “They’re ahead of schedule and asking to land early.”

“Must be our guys,” I said.

Harmony’s eyes had a slightly unfocused look – she was concentrating on data being fed to her by the computer. I would need to watch her eyes to recognise this in future. A small advantage is sometimes all you need.

“They’re coming in on a wide arc, trying to make it look like they’re travelling from within this system.”

“I bet they dropped out of a hole on the dark side of one of the gas giants, hoping no one would notice their arrival.”

Harmony nodded. “That’s what I’d do.”

“If they’re early, we might have a chance to do something before the Colonel’s boys get here.”

“When do you want to go into the spaceport?”

“As soon as I’ve figured out how,” I said.

“I can knock out the security cameras if that’ll help,” she said. “But only for about ten minutes.”

She would trigger the self-diagnostic sub-routine, taking the cameras offline until they’d thoroughly tested themselves. I’d used the same trick before myself. Ten minutes is about the most you can hope for. But that would be enough to get us past the cameras on the way in.

“Can you fake a work order for a sanitation engineer?” I asked. “If the guy on the gate sees we’re expected, he’ll wave us through.”

“Do we have to be sanitation engineers?”

“I have fakes signs we can put on the Trekker. I’ve got sanitation engineer, gardener...”

“Not many plants over there.”

“... painter and decorator or pet groomer.”

“You really need to think bigger, Quincy. You have a lot of potential.”

“The joy of being a sanitation engineer is that no one wants to get too close to you.”

“Squit specialists it is then,” she said.

Her eyes glazed over again. For some reason, I started wondering whether I’d seen that look when we had been in bed together.

“The repair shop behind the hangars is on a septic tank,” she said. “I’ve just jammed the main valve – it’ll be backing up the next time someone flushes. I will intercept the automatic call-out and send back a response saying that we’re on our way. What’s the company name on your signs?”

“Pegajoro & Marrón,” I said.

Harmony looked at me the way my old school teacher used to. “Did you come up with that yourself?”

“You can be Marrón,” I said. “Our slogan is ‘Number 1 for Number 2.’ Look, it’s on the sign.”

I pulled the two flexible signs from behind the back seat.

“I wish I’d brought my MASQ,” she said, shaking her head. She got into the Trekker while I fixed the magnetic signs to the doors.

“One final detail,” I said as I climbed back into the passenger seat. I dug around in the door pocket and found a little glass ampule. I passed it to Harmony.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

She snapped the top off. “Oh, squit!” she said and leaned out of the open window making retching noises.

“It’s what stops people getting too close to us,” I said. “Ammonium sulfide. We used to call them fart bombs when I was a kid.”

“If your farts smell like that, you’ve got serious problems,” Harmony croaked. She looked like she’d been crying. I don’t think it was from laughter.

“What did you do with it?” I asked.

“Threw it as far as I could.”

“That was my last one!”

“Don’t worry, that bad smell is like you – it won’t go away.” She pressed the ‘start’ button on the dashboard.

“Wait until we get close to the gate before you disrupt the security cameras,” I said.

“Thank you, I wouldn’t have thought of that myself.”

“Are you angry with me?” I asked.

“No, no. The bile is from the fart bomb.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant she was annoyed with me or not.

There was an old baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses on the Trekker’s dashboard. I gave Harmony the cap.

“Your hair is quite distinctive,” I said.

As a criminal, it’s best not to have any memorable features. I put on the sunglasses.

“Do I look like a Pegajoro, Señorita Marrón?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows.

“Te ves como la mierda,” she said.

If Trixie had been here, she’d have translated that for me. Floyd would probably have just laughed.

Harmony stopped the Trekker at the barrier and rolled down the window. The guard stepped out of his gatehouse and squinted at us. He was short and plump and had round steel-rimmed glasses. His pale sand-coloured uniform was immaculate but the overall effect was spoiled by the greasy comb-over.

“Pegajoro and Marrón,” Harmony said. “We’re here about the septic tank.”

The little man took a step back before consulting the screen he held. Maybe he got a whiff of the fart bomb. He looked at the text on the screen and then took a good look at the Trekker.

“You’re not going to pump it out?” he asked.

If it had been me, I’d probably have said ‘No, we’re going to bail it out with a bucket,’ but Harmony had a better answer.

“Report we got said it was just an issue with a valve,” she said. “Tank’s not even half-full.”

“You’re the expert,” the guard said. He looked nervously in the direction of the repair shop and its septic tank. I think they’d had problems with it before.

“Don’t worry,” Harmony said. “The wind’s blowing the other way.” She pointed to the windsock flapping in the breeze near the runway.

The security man nodded, looking relieved. “You two have a good day now.”

“We always do.”

He