Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Bernice Summerfield [069] - Mean Streets by Terrance Dicks

Author:Terrance Dicks
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1997-12-27T23:00:00+00:00

10

SHOOTOUT ON SPACEPORT BOULEVARD

It started out as one hell of a nice day.

I woke up to the comforting feeling of plenty of credits in my pocket, and not too much to do except spend some of them.

I got up slowly, showered without even banging my head on the ceiling, as I usually do, and got dressed.

When I came through into the office, Cat was sitting on the balcony sneering at me. Cat was a werecat, a giant, tangled ball of fur, teeth and claws. Werecats are hunters and scavengers, about the only form of wildlife tough enough to survive in Megacity. They’re said to be untamable.

Cat wasn’t exactly my werecat – he took care of his own needs. But he had a taste for booze, and occasionally deigned to accept some of mine. Maybe they wouldn’t serve him in the local bars.

There was a little vragg left in the office bottle so I took the top off and held it out to him. He jumped off the balcony and I passed him the bottle. He took it in his handlike forepaws, sniffed it as if he was used to a better class of booze, and then emptied the bottle down his throat.

Then he tossed the bottle aside, jumped over the balcony and disappeared. I liked seeing Cat, though it wasn’t a close relationship. He was never going to sit on the mat and purr, and if you stroked him you’d probably lose some skin.

I went to the bar across the road for breakfast – coffee, doughnuts and a quick belt of brandy to get me started.

Old Cy the bartender was a wizened little anthropoid, damn near as hairy as Cat.

‘See what happened last night, Garshak?’ he wheezed as he brought my coffee.

Cy always said that – there was always some bad news to be passed on in Megacity.

‘What?’

‘Wolverines hit Sara’s Cellar, killed some big-time crime lord called Lucifer.’

‘You sure?’

Cy nodded to the ever-flickering vidscreen behind the bar.

‘Saw it on the news this morning. Blood and bodies everywhere.’

I finished my breakfast, thinking about Lucifer meanwhile.

I’d rather taken to him. Still, he was in a dangerous business. He was probably bound to get blasted eventually. I wondered who had ordered the hit. Some business rival, probably.

Maybe even Nastur.

I had another belt of brandy in his memory, and then went back to the office to catch up on my foot-dangling and to plan my day.

A packet popped out of the mail tube.

It held an autoguide disc, nothing else. You put it in your hovercar’s guide system and it took you where you needed to go on automatic. Somebody, somewhere, wanted to see me – presumably a client. Only I didn’t have a hovercar any more.

The hell with it, I thought – I’d go out and buy one. I could afford it. I’d buy myself some new clothes as well, make a good impression on my new employer.

I had the clothes run up on the autotailor in one of the retro clothes shops at the spaceport.

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