Dreamboat Ch. 10

"I think the sooner the better, yes? Have lunch with your brother and I'll have all the information we have on this mysterious boat of yours prepared and brought to you, along with your er... purchases. And some paperwork of course, including a retainer. "

Hordiyenko nodded. "In cash."

"Of course," the white-haired man said with a smile. "Mr Hashamura, if you would kindly release Mr Hordiyenko from his bonds. I think we have reached an agreement -- a contract even, yes?"

The Ukrainian nodded as the old man moved for the first time, releasing him in seconds.

Hordiyenko stood up, rubbing his wrists.

"Excuse me if I don't shake on it, Mr Hordiyenko," Butler said. "I don't do that. I have a ... reluctance to being touched."

The Ukrainian gave a tiny shrug. He didn't give a shit if the old man never touched him or anybody else in his whole life. Why would he?

"Mr Hashamura will show you the way to the canteen, and I will bid you success in you endeavours."

He turned to leave. Then paused and turned back.

"One more thing. I need to stress the point I made about shooting and innocent bystanders. You could have killed my daughter, you know."

*****

Lachlan Reid sat in the helm seat, watching the waves through the front window as the boat slowly ploughed up and down across the anonymous stretch of ocean, trying to work out what it was doing, and why.

The seat was very comfortable, as if it had been made especially for him, and he idly speculated whether that was actually the case. Then he put the thought aside. Not only was it wildly unlikely, there was no way to prove it one way or the other.

Rich smells floated up to him from the kitchen area in the cabin right below. The boat was going slow enough that the wind wasn't whipping the scent away as normal. In fact the electric motor was driving them along slowly enough that only the AIS screen actually revealed their movement at all.

The horizon seemed to change for a moment and the waves slowly changed direction, and he realised that they had reached the end of a track and were going about again.

His thoughts were distracted as another waft of cooking food reached his nostrils, and he took the time to try and analyse what he could smell. Beef for sure, although he had earlier seen a nice piece of steak resting to one side of the kitchen work area, so couldn't be sure whether his brain was interpreting the scent to fit in with his expectations.

Onions. There were definitely onions, and... celery. He could smell them both. The faintest scent of mushrooms was also in the mix and...

He fell asleep with a smile and dreamed of his crew slowly carrying out golden platters of food and arranging a banquet for a whole crowd of people who were held back outside a fence for some reason. In his dream it made sense to keep them back.

Yes, they needed to be kept back and away from his girls. Definitely! He wished now that he hadn't invited them all to the feast. He could even see fangs and long incisors here and there amongst the onlookers who were so hungry, they were howling now for the food.

Damn, he should have told the girls to dress for the occasion, worried that their glorious nudity might be sending the wrong message to the guests, who were actually salivating now -- long strands of drool dripping from elongated snouts.

The three girls swayed gracefully as they walked to and fro from the kitchen to the long, long feasting table. Breasts, buttocks, thighs -- all were naked, jiggling and bouncing and rolling so sweetly while the howls were becoming ever more urgent.

He realised that the women were in terrible danger, but he couldn't move or shout out. He had put them there and they were serving this feast for him, in his honour. But they were unaware of the danger, and the fence couldn't hold for too much longer. In fact the fence was buckling in places and the guests were using their long, needle-sharp claws on one another as they fought to climb through the growing gaps.

The girls moved blithely on, unaware of what was about to happen, and...

He awoke with a start, his heart beating fast and his breath heavy in his lungs. The dream, in the dream they had... the girls... feast... danger...

The dream drifted away like smoke in a breeze, leaving just an echo of unease to mark its passing. Within seconds he was fast asleep again.

*****

Absalom Grey, known to his friends and associates as Pwn -- pronounced pown, but written without the 'o' -- moved restlessly.

Seated at the gray metal table in a room without windows, he found himself incredibly bored. As a known lower-end dealer, he knew he should be at least a little worried, seated here in the Harbour Bay police station in an interrogation room, but Pwn wasn't stupid.

He knew how things worked with the cops. He had been picked up a dozen times for questioning on drugs related charges, sent down twice for four years in all, and knew exactly how the system worked. And they had nothing on him at all.

"Fuckin' amateurs," he said quietly, not wanting to alert the tape recorder. He ran over the events that lead him to this, looking for clues as to why he was here.

He had been picked up as he rolled out of his ho's place after a good evening of fucking his bitch and imbibing some blow, followed by his usual morning blow from Jazz before she rolled out onto the streets to seek out her first trick. Despite protests, he had been taken to the station and dumped in this shithole room. He hadn't been given a Miranda, and hadn't even been searched. Sheeit, he still had his car keys, his phone and even a knife in his pockets -- not a big one, but big enough.

He thought back, checking the sequence of events in his mind. Two po-po, one of them a big fat, bald pig who could have lost half his bodyweight and still been a fat bald pig, had pushed him into the room, sat down, turned on the recorder and gone through the normal intro shit, warning him they were recording and did he want a lawyer yada yada. They hadn't even got the warnings in the right order, he sniggered to himself. Idiots.

Then, some shit went down outside the room. There was shouting and running and the two pigs had told him to sit tight, and then run out. He could still hear shit going down and just sitting here looking at nothing was fucking boring. Fuck, he needed to make sure his bitch got out onto the streets and started earning a living for him. He didn't need this hassle in his life.

Pwn got up and went to the door, listening. There was still shouting and the sound of heavy feet, but it sounded like it had moved to another part of the building. He cracked the door and peered out cautiously. There was a bored looking woman leaning against the wall opposite the door.

"Hey," he hissed.

She looked up at him, her jaw moving steadily around a wad of gum.

"You supposed to stay in there. I have to tell somebody if you come out." She sounded as bored as he was.

"What's happening out there," he asked, opening the door, but staying just inside the room. The cops had nothing on him and he didn't want to give them the chance to fit him up with some bullshit like trying to escape custody.

"Some gang-bangers got into it," she said, looking around. "I dunno."

"You police?"

"No, I ain't got no uniform. I just type stuff into the computer."

"Why they tell you to stand there?"

"Somebody gotta watch you. I ain't fighting no gang-banger. I just do computer stuff."

He looked her over. She was blond and pretty, although thick make-up made it difficult to see properly, and make-up covered a lot of ills, he knew. She was wearing a short, silvery dress that was way too short for a police station. Hell, he could almost see her pussy, it was so short.

He watched her from the corner of his eye, showing that he wasn't interested in her. The way she was leaning back against the wall and bouncing off it with her butt like a bored little girl, made her look quite sexy, like she was pretending to fuck, he decided.

"What's yo name?" he asked, leaning against the door jamb, careful to show that he wasn't interested .

"Ellie," she said. After a moment's thought, she continued. "What's yours?"

"They call me Pwn. P-W-N."

She looked puzzled. "That don't spell porn."

"Porn," he sniggered. "Pwn -- as in I pwn you."

"I don't get it."

"Means I own you in a game."

"Really? Wow. You own me?"

"Hell, maybe if you asked nice I would. Shit yeah."

She giggled and leaned back so her breasts thrust out a little more.

He considered them with interest. They weren't massive, but they were shapely enough. He would have liked his ho' to have that shape to her tits. Jazz had floppy tits, but she had an ass to die for, he knew.

"Hey, you looking at my titties?" she asked, pretending to be upset.

"Hell yeah," he said with a smile he knew the girls loved. "If I pwn you, then I pwn those titties too. Stands to reason."

Ellie considered that while looking him over. Black hair, greased and finger-styled. Brown eyes, thin lips, straight nose and stubble. His body wasn't too bad, he was more wiry than muscle, but he had a nice ass and a cocky way of walking.

"I guess it does stand to reason," she said finally.

"I don't want to shout over all this noise," he said. "Why don't you come stand over in here? That way if those gang-bangers start any shit down this side, I can protect you."

She looked down the corridor towards the ruckus that was still going on. A frown of concern crossed her face.

"Okay," she said finally, moving to the door to stand next to him.

Pwn's mind was racing. She wasn't a cop but she worked on the computers at the station. That meant she had access to inside information that a lot of people would pay money for. Good money! Hell, who wouldn't want to know if a warrant had been issued for them.? If he could reel her in, he could use her to make some good life happen for him. Eventually she'd be caught, he figured. She was too dumb not to be. But then he could turn her out and get her working with Jazz. Shit, that black and white thing between the two of them could work really well. It was a win-win situation.

"You know, I was thinking maybe I could show you parts of this town I know you've never seen yet." He used the smile again.

She sniggered. "Yeah, lemme guess. Inside your room, yeah?"

"If you played your cards right, I might let you have some of my sugar -- if you know what I mean."

She looked at him sharply out of the corner of her eye. "You talking..."

"I'm talking whatever you want to hear honey. I have it all."

"Pshaw!" she sneered. "All men say that. Most of them don't got what it takes. My last boyfriend..."

She waggled her pinkie at him.

He opened his eyes wide, still going with that special smile. He moved his hand over his groin. His pants were worn halfway down over his buttocks and the front was seemingly held in place by hanging on to the base of his penis.

"I got more than enough, look!" He started to undo his zip.

In a flash she was out of the room and back across the corridor. Pwn zipped up again and went to the door.

"What's up?"

"You too stupid for me if you think I'm going to stand next to you while you do that in a cop station. Someone walks in, you get arrested and I get fired. No fucking way. You ain't got enough brains for me."

"Honey, I got more than enough brains and more than enough of everything else."

"Talk's cheap."

"Ellie, honey. What do you want me to do? I can prove it to you, but you don't want me to do it here."

"Then maybe I just go home by myself and let you figure that out for yourself. Why you making your problem my problem? Shit, you gonna be locked up anyway. Dunno why I'm even talking to you."

Pwn saw his information source and future income heading towards the door at the end of the corridor.

"Hey, you supposed to watch me!"

"I'll watch you from the other side that door," she called back.

He had a flash of inspiration.

"Wait, I can show you something."

She stopped and turned. "Yeah? You try that again, and I'll report you before you get us caught."

He beckoned to her.

"No, I won't touch my pants, I swear. Come and look at this."

Hesitantly she returned to his side.

"What?

He slid his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and found a photograph. He held it up.

"There you are honey, proof of the pudding. And my pudding is the sweetest!"

"Lemme see," she said, excitement in her voice. "I can't see, your thumbs in the way. Give it here."

She took the phone and looked at the picture. "Nice cock. Very nice. Whose is it? Tell me and I'll go talk to him about pudding."

He looked hurt.

"That's my pudding. All mine."

"Ha, can't see no face on this guy. Could be me for all you know."

He looked taken aback and looked at her. No, she wasn't no dragster.

"Look at the next pic. No, not that one. She's just a friend of mine. Keep swiping, No, never mind him, he's just someone I know casually. Keep swiping!"

"You don't mind if I look through your phone?"

"I ain't got nothing to hide, honey. You look all you want."

She straightened up and touched her lapel. "That's it. We're out of here. Tell Charlie to get the flight warmed up. I'll be there in thirty minutes."

Her voice had changed. She didn't sound young and dumb any more. In fact she didn't look young and dumb either.

As she walked off from the dumbstruck man, the door opened and three policemen walked in.

"Let's go, Absalom. Back into the cage."

"No fucking way, she's got my phone!"

"You said she could look through it. 'You look all you want," you said. You heard it, we heard it, and it's on tape. You knew we were taping you, Absalom. We told you. That's on the tape too."

"But then you ran off!" he complained.

"What, you thought we were on a break? Not a chance. The tape was running. You're an old hand at this. You know we have to announce that the taping is finishing when we turn it off."

"You didn't do it right," he shouted. "You didn't give me the Miranda!"

"Of course we didn't. We didn't arrest you. We just offered you a ride here to see if you'd help us with a few matters. Friendly thing to do, thanks."

Thinking back, he realised that at no stage had they said he was under arrest. Shit, the cops that picked him up had just opened the back door of the cruiser and looked at him with pissed-off faces. He had simply climbed in while mouthing off at them, assuming...

"Make her bring back my phone! I withdraw my permission!"

"Understood, but she did tell you she didn't work for the police, so she may no longer be here. We'll look for her while you wait here."

"She said her name was Ellie and that she worked here. She said she operated the computers here. She said you told her to stand there and watch me."

"Her name is Elaine Pelletier, and no, she definitely didn't say she worked here. Works on computers maybe, but not here. And I did ask her to watch you. She's an agent so she's too high up the ladder for me normally to ask anything, but you heard that commotion. I needed all hands on deck at the front. But I was still listening. I would have heard if she said she was a cop or that she worked here. Anyway, we can check the tape."

"That bitch suckered me! Oh fuck. I am so fucked. My life is over." Absalom, known to his friends and acquaintances as 'Pwn without the fucking 'o'' sat down at the table, put his face in his hands and began to cry.

While Elaine, know to all as Swan, took the agency plane back to DEA headquarters, eagerly starting the process of copying all the contents of Pwn's phone, he began to talk.

*****

Reid awoke for the second time, feeling refreshed. Enjoying the languor of sitting there while slowly rising to the surface of consciousness, he cracked his eyes open. In front of him was the bridge, the console curving around.

He was trying to remember the dream he had during his earlier nap, knowing there was something very worrying about it. His eyes drifted from place to place as he thought.

What was it about the dream? Food! Something to do with food. That was it!

He realised his eye had been caught by something... an image on the console... on the depth finder. He sat forward suddenly and looked more closely.

The image showed a diagram of a vertical view of the ocean floor. Normally the image was simply one that showed rises and falls, but now it was showing more. There was something about a shape that drew his attention, although most of the shape was above the top of the screen, and so couldn't be seen. Without thinking he touched it with his finger and pulled it down as if using a phone or tablet.

The image moved smoothly. Astonished, he moved the part he was interested in and looked at it from all angles. This wasn't simply from an echo-sounder. There had to be sophisticated equipment attached under the hull, angled to the ocean floor in order to build up a pseudo-three-dimensional picture.

It came to him that the constant to and fro course of the boat had built up a far more detailed picture than would be expected even from top-of-the-range equipment. But if the results of each pass were laid one on top of the next and the next and the next... Suddenly he realised the meaning of their supposedly random up-and-down ploughing of the ocean waves.

He rushed from the bridge down to the cabin, to find the girls clustered around the laptop at the table, all trying to read something at the same time.

"I know why we're here," he announced. "There's a wrecked boat right beneath us."

The three looked at each other.

"We know something as well," Honey said. "This website just popped up by itself. It's about the Maritime Museum near Copenhagen. We weren't looking for anything, so we didn't get there by accident. In fact I thought I'd turned the laptop off."

"It just went ping, and there it was!" announced Wren. "The weird thing is, Honey can't close the site."

Honey shrugged. "I didn't want us to get some virus, so I tried to close the page. Then I tried to turn off the laptop. Then, when it wouldn't do that, I started to panic and tried to take out the battery. It turns out it doesn't have a battery."

Reid stared at her. "What? You're sure? How can it run without a battery?"

"How can boat run without engine?" commented Sasha. "Is same thing. I test charge wire. Charge light on laptop go green, but no power goes in machine."

"Maybe it's a new type of long-life battery that has to be replaced at a computer shop, or at the factory or someplace like that," he suggested.

"No screws," Sasha said.

He took the laptop and closed it, and then carefully examined the heavy base unit which contained the keyboard and the working parts. The girls were right. There were no screws, In fact there weren't even any holes for screws to slot into. The base was one solid piece, as was the screen. The hinge seemed to be one solid rod inside a solid tube, open at the top for the two support brackets, with no apparent way for them to be assembled together. When he had finished examining it carefully, he had the weird sensation that it had been grown rather than assembled. This was some spooky shit technology, he concluded.

He placed it on the table carefully and sat down alongside Honey, who took his hand, holding it in her lap. Wren reached across the table and took his other hand in both of hers, while Sasha came up behind him, knelt and held him around the waist, her chin on his shoulder. Somehow the measure of what they were dealing with had hit them all.

They all stared at the machine as it lay there silently, a mix of silver and black, the well-known logo stamped into the back of the screen section seemingly a fake. Unless Bill Gates had had an incredible inspiration and breakthrough without telling anyone - and then quietly put it into the hands of two homeless people, a runaway and an escaped slave without a word, in order to test it. That would make a lot of sense.