Night shift

On duty: DC Frank Holland and DC Marion Hobb

London.

1973. February.

Lola Styles was off duty. It was nearly midnight but sleep was remaining resolutely out of reach. The skeletons of alien creatures played through her mind, mixed with the terrified cries of the boy in the park, and the dead man on Wong’s autopsy table. She hadn’t been there but her imagination was running rife; the same skill which normally served her so well in her chosen profession, which helped her to see things from different points of view, was now keeping her awake. She felt like she’d had too many late coffees, but knew she’d not had any since the morning.

She lay alone in her bed, duvet tucked around her, with the palpable sense that it was going to get worse. The curator at the museum had been alarmed, even muttering about evacuating the building given the proximity of the park attack. She’d had the controlled, quiet anxiety of an informed person knowing exactly how bad the situation could get.

The kengto was an animal that went through multiple stages of metamorphosis - like a caterpillar into a butterfly, except kengtos were larger and meaner. Just as a pretty butterfly bore little obvious resemblance to a wriggling caterpillar, at least to the untrained eye, a kengto’s various forms were similarly divergent. Lola had borrowed a book from the museum containing pictures and some academic text on the kengto’s developmental cycle and it made for grim reading. That there was one loose in London made her shiver and pull the duvet tighter: every slight rattle of wind against the window pane of her bedroom made her freeze and hold her breath in anticipation of the creature’s face at the glass.

Not even realising it, Lola began to drift off into a troubled sleep - only to be awoken by the telephone ringing. Groggy, waking from a slumber she hadn’t thought possible, she pulled herself out of bad and padded across the room, feeling the cold on her bare legs and arms. She fumbled for the handset and lifted it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Lola? This is DS Collins. Just got word that the Palinor cohort have arrived at the portal station.”

Screwing up her face, she let out a grunt. “In the middle of the night?”

“Don’t ask me,” Collins said down the line. “I tried calling Clarke but he didn’t answer.”

“We were expecting them in the morning.”

“Well, they’re here now.”

Lola tried to gather her thoughts, still bleary-eyed. “Is anyone there to meet them?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Collins said, “the only people on call were Holland and Hobb.”

“Oh,” Lola said. She paused, then sucked in air between her teeth. “Oh.”

*

DC Frank Holland didn’t appreciate playing babysitter to a bunch of VIPs from Palinor. That absolutely, positively was not his job, and he’d said as much to Hobb.

“You’d think they’d have ambassadors or other flunkies to do this,” she said, as they walked through the portal station entrance. “It’s not even our case.”

“Everything Clarke touches goes to shit,” Holland said. It was true: first he got his partner killed, then he brought down the entire bureaucratic might of the Joint Council on the department with that human trafficking nest he kicked, then there was the bizarre diplomatic thing at the start of the year, with Clarke, Chakraborty and Kaminski all disappearing to Max-Earth for a few days. The explanation for that one didn’t track in the slightest, but DI Bakker had told him to leave it. Walpole didn’t seem too bothered either.

“We’re the stooges,” Hobb said. “Me and you especially, but the whole squad. We get lumped with all the weird shit. The SDC is a dumping ground.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her. “Then why don’t you move out and go work somewhere else, partner?” She wasn’t wrong, but Holland was also fiercely proud of the SDC’s track record, his contribution to it and that he’d been hand-picked to be part of it from the start. Hobb was a depressing fatalist, which he mostly found amusing as long as she didn’t start pulling him down into her pit.

“Give me time,” she said. “I’m asking around.”

That was a surprise. Normally she’d be all talk and no action. “You’ve put in a transfer request?”

She smiled coolly. “Who said it was just one?” Pointing at an overhead television, she increased her pace. “Come on, they’ll be through before we get there if we don’t hurry up.”

“You know anything about them?” They were there to greet and brief a team of hunters from Palinor, which was as absurd a job as it sounded. He’d read the file and understood that they had a critter problem, but there were equally if not more qualified people on Earth - probably right there in London, but definitely out in the empire. Calling in outside help so quickly felt like admitting defeat. It’s not how he’d have done it.

The portal station was quiet, which made sense given it was the middle of the night. That’s what made it all the more evident that there was a commotion near the Palinor portal gate, before it even came into view. Holland and Hobb broke into a fast walk, not wanting to show up out of breath, heading towards the shouting.

Station security and customs staff were standing in a line in front of the new arrivals from Palinor. Holland put a hand gently on one of the security guard’s shoulders, who jerked around defensively. “Easy, chief,” Holland said, grinning disarmingly. “Detective Holland, this is Detective Hobb. We’re here to assist, and it looks like we got here just in time.” He glanced at the five arrivals, immediately clocking the koth towering above them all and the skinny aen’fa. “What exactly is the problem?”

“They’re insisting on bringing their weapons,” the security guard said, face flushed red.

The largest human roared disapprovingly. “How do you expect us to hunt without our hunting weapons?” he bellowed.

Holland moved past the security line and closer to the hunters. Three humans with the koth and the aen’fa, although two of the humans were huge and looked like they could crush him with their bare hands. “Hi, I’m Detective Holland,” he repeated, “we were supposed to meet you here but looks like you beat us to it.”

The big man looked him up and down. He must have been pushing seven feet tall. “You’re the one that called us in?”

Holland nodded. “My department, yes. I’m Specialist Dimensional Command, we handle portal-related criminal activity.”

There was immediate laughter from the hunters. The koth’s laugh was rasping and grated on Holland’s ears. “You hear that, boss? Maybe the kengto’s been caught stealing.”

“What exact crime is it we’re dealing with, detective?” The big man smiled meanly.

“Getting me out of bed in the middle of the night,” Holland said, holding his gaze and smiling just enough to make the bigger man a little unsure. “Listen, I have no problem with you bringing weapons in if they’ve been cleared your end.”

The normal-sized human approached. He appeared to be wearing a dress of sorts. “Here’s the paperwork,” he said, offering a folder. “Clearly somebody on the other side didn’t talk to somebody on this side. It’s taken days to secure inter-dimensional passports and working visas.”

Holland made a show of scanning the papers, then handed them off to the security officer. “This look in order? It should have been cleared ahead of time, looks like the memo didn’t make it to you.”

Hobb had approached and was moving around the hunters to examine the boxes containing their equipment. “What have you got back here?”

“Everything we might need to kill a kengto,” the big man said, grinning. “I’m Halbad,” he said, “I run this crew.” He held out his hand.

“Marion Hobb,” she said, shaking it. “Detective Constable, I work with DC Holland here.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Halbad said. Holland thought he caught him actually bowing slightly. “After a long journey I always feel parched. Anywhere round here we can sample the local ale at this time of night?”

The aen’fa sniffed. “A long journey? We just walked from one side of the portal to the other.”

“Though it may not be many steps,” Halbad said, “we have travelled to a new world. This is farther than any of us have ever been.”

“Still didn’t take long,” the aen’fa snarked. She clearly wasn’t afraid of the big human.

“I know a place,” Holland said. “We can fill you in on the way.”