by T E Olivant
“Yes sir,” Lu Tang replied. The subservient words felt alien on his tongue, but they were also somehow thrilling. How easy it was to deceive the humans. How quickly he would be back on top once more.
Lu Tang rolled the metal barrels towards the rear of the cargo hold. He did it slowly, like an aging laborer might have done. Of course, if he had used his augmented strength he could have done it twice as fast. Pretending to be human was so… limiting.
It had taken a ludicrously small amount of effort to escape from the prison. Human beings. So easily deceived. And so willing to believe that everything would turn out all right in the end. Lu Tang laughed, the sound coming out as a wheeze as he tied a barrel to the netting. If his centuries had taught him anything it was that there was no wrong or right, there was just the end.
And yet… As much as he derided them, he knew that once he had been one of them. Before the change wrought upon his body had turned him into a God.
And that was another, better, laugh. For a while – a century? more? it was hard to remember now – the Augments had been seen as freaks of nature, resented for their wealth and power. Then, by some process he had never quite understood, the humans had begun to worship them. Religion, that long-forgotten collective dream beloved of the men that walked upon the old Earth, had returned.
At first, it had been exhilarating. A God was untouchable, able to do whatever he or she wanted. Thousands, millions even had wept at his feet. He had thought that it would mean the greatest success the Augments had seen. Just like the humans, he had fallen into the romantic notion of believing that life had a purpose, a direction that could only be upward.
And then came the fall.
Lu Tang leant back against the cool metal wall of the ship. How could the pain of a half a century ago still be so fresh? The Gods, fallen. Olympus destroyed. The very human beings that had put them up on their pedestals could barely wait to tear them back down.
And now? Neither Gods nor demons, and no one knew what to do with them. The Augments were relics of a past that everyone was too embarrassed to think about. So they shut them away, kept them hidden from sight in the hopes that they would be forgotten.
No more.
A small vibration made Lu Tang look down. The miniature datapad he had acquired from some careless traveler two weeks ago was buzzing.
You will be met at the planet as requested.
Lu Tang grinned. Some of the people had kept Faith. And now they were about to be rewarded. He loaded the crew list for the starfreighter onto his pad.
“Hey, you want to get paid? How about getting your ass in gear?” A nasal voice came from far too close to Lu Tang’s ear.
The man’s spleen would be a good spot to aim the first kick at. Or maybe the kidneys. They always dropped quick if you went for the kidneys.
Instead, Lu Tang held up the datapad. “Been reassigned. They want me in the engine room.”
“Really?” The man brought out his own datapad and clicked through the screens. “Huh. You’re on engine prep. Guess you must have some friends upstairs to get that cushy job.”
Lu Tang shrugged. He didn’t know anyone on the ship, but he did know the cloud system. In fact, he had designed it, a few decades back. It was pitifully easy to hack, which of course had been intentional. Never design a system you can’t exploit.
“Get your ass upstairs then and stop cluttering up my cargo bay.”
Lu Tang nodded and turned. Just a couple more clicks and he had found the shaven-headed man’s employee profile. Click click. Looked like he’d been fiddling his expenses to the tune of a few thousand. Not good for him when the trade alliance found out. Click click. And a fondness for compromising photographs of young ladies. Shame. Lu Tang made a few more alterations. A file of documents was making its way through the cloud to the asshole’s bosses. Now it looked like shaven-head would be having a tough year.
The cargo bay doors closed behind the Augment. He didn’t look back.
Chapter 3
“Okay, let’s keep this brief as we’re scheduled for launch in three hours. You all know by now that I’ve taken another case. An interstellar one. And no, I’m not happy about it either. But you’ll be on double rates for as long as this thing takes and you have the word of Scotclan on that one.”
Biddy glanced around the room at her crew. No one looked away, but nobody smiled much either. She felt her shoulder muscles bunch up. It was hot in the little office behind the control room that she used for meetings, and all nine of them were starting to sweat.
“I don’t have to tell you that we’re breaking the guidelines on this. So I’m giving you all an option to stay behind on Eris. Your contracts will all be classed as fulfilled. There will be no repercussions for you if you choose to bail out now.”
She could hear the hum of the engines going through their pre-launch checks.
“Well?”
Hastings coughed. “As the Captain, I’m not going anywhere. And I think the rest of you would be batshit crazy to do any different. Mackay has never let us down before.”
Biddy grimaced. He was trying to help, of course, but that sort of unthinking loyalty made her uncomfortable. She much preferred a crew that would keep her on her toes rather than doing whatever she said just to keep her happy. Still, Hastings was reliable, and she was glad that he was staying on. She had been the youngest ever Detective when she started three years ago, and there were plenty that still felt she was too inexperienced to have her own ship.
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Anyone else got any concerns?”
There were a few shared looks. Elvis, the engineer who looked like an old movie star from the viewscreen with chiseled chin and smoldering dark eyes shifted in his seat. You might think he was an actor or a musician if you didn’t spot his calloused hands and oil-stained skin. He leaned forward. “I guess we just don’t like the sense that you couldn’t say no to this guy. Seems like he had you over a barrel. And that barrel was on a parsec gun.”
Biddy snorted. “That was how it seemed, eh?”
Elvis’s dark cheeks were flushed when he realized how pissed off she was. “He must have something good on you, that’s for sure. I mean, it’s none of our business but –”
Biddy held up her right hand, palm outwards. “He offered me Iona Beach, Elvis. Tirnanog and the whole shebang. That’s the truth of it. I don’t see why I shouldn’t let you know.”
Elvis’s mouth was so open it could have caught asteroids along with flies.
“Iona Beach?” A tall, gangly girl with scraped back blond hair whispered the words.
Biddy turned. “Yes, Kenzie. The plastic man said he could get it back. He gave his word. But that’s not any reason for you to feel you have to come along. It’s my responsibility, not any of yours.”
“Shit.” Hastings sucked his top teeth. “No wonder you took the job.”
“Yes. So now you know.”
She was already regretting mentioning Tirnanog. Half the crew had ties to Scotclan, and the rest of them knew what it meant. Any legitimate concerns they might have about hunting down an Augment had gone out of the window.
Still, she could hardly criticize them. She had done the exact same.
Biddy looked at her datapad and grimaced. “We’re already cutting it fine with the launch so let’s wrap it up here. In five minutes I expect to see you all at your stations, or leaving via the cargo bay. No recriminations whatever way you choose.”
Did part of her hope that they would all back out? Biddy felt her spacesuit clammy against the small of her back. If they decided to come then it would be her responsibility when the whole mission went to shit. And she had a feeling it was going to sooner or later. No one who promised an entire planet was offering an easy job. And yet… if there was even the slightest possibility of regaining Tirnanog, well, she had to take that chance.
“Those of you who stay, I’ll come and speak to you all personally with your mission tasks. It’s goi
ng to be a busy trip,” said Biddy Mackay, master of understatement.
Half an hour later Biddy was at the back of the control room watching the crew take the ship out. Every crew member was still on board. No one had even mentioned quitting. At least, not to her face. But Biddy was well aware of the sacrifice she was asking of her men.
“Make sure the crew take extra supplements,” she told Francesca, the petite Martian who doubled up as navigator and medic. “Maximum doses for fast light travel all round.”
“Of course. But the supplements will not counter all the symptoms.” This was as close as Francesca would come to open criticism of Biddy. It still smarted.
“Do what you can,” she replied. Francesca nodded and strode out of the control room, her afro bobbing with the movement. Most of the crew on the bridge watched her go before turning back to their consoles. Biddy bit back a smile. Every crew member fell in love with Francesca due to her combination of shimmering black skin and silver tattoos that flicked their way around her neck and right temple. Unfortunately for the men onboard, Biddy had never seen her navigator so much as glance at them. She was a hundred percent focused on the job, which made her invaluable.
Biddy turned back to her own console and wished she could emulate that focus. A hunt for an Augment. A God, according to the religion of her parents. They would have been horrified by the very idea that Biddy would consider seeking down one of the Gods. And yet…
Iona Beach. Tirnanog.
Damn. The plastic man had left her no choice. But that didn’t mean she had to do it his way.
“Hastings, bring us out of the docks.”
The Captain nodded assent and raised the shutters so that they could see out of the six panels of windows onto the inky black of the outer solar system.
Only the merest of vibrations told Biddy that her ship was moving. The space cruiser Black Maria. Small and nimble with a cutting-edge parsec-neutron Fast Light engine. Well, cutting edge two decades ago, when it was rare for small cruisers to have the engine capacity for interstellar travel. Now it was out of date and unreliable. And the rhodium coating on some internal part of the engine had started to fail. And somehow the plastic man had known that.
Still, the rhodium had been applied and now the ship would be good for another decade or so. As long as she didn’t do too many of these back to back interstellar flights.
“Ready to leave the system?” Hastings called out.
“Ready,” Biddy said. She closed down her console. Now that they had left the docking point, she was happy to leave control of the ship to the Captain. To Hastings credit, he had rarely resented the fact that the ship’s owner could override his control. He was used to working for Scotclan where the chain of command was sometimes a little fluid. Ultimately, without Biddy there would be no ship, and Hastings knew that as well as anyone.
Elvis sidled up to her. He stood a little closer than she might have liked. Biddy had had a terrible crush on the engineer when he had joined her crew. It was a purely physical attraction and she had managed to stifle it down so far, but he was annoyingly handsome. Still, he could be an arrogant ass, so she generally just had to remind herself of that.
“Can I help you?” she asked when he didn’t say anything.
“I decided to stay.”
“I can see that.”
“But I still have some concerns.”
“Go on.”
“Why would an Augment go on the run?” Elvis asked.
“That’s been bothering me too,” Biddy said. She tapped a nail against the arm of her chair. “He’s a God. Or, as good as anyway. So what does he have to run away from?”
“Something… really bad?”
“I guess so.” Biddy felt a gnawing anxiety in her stomach that meant she’d be popping antacids all night. “But our main question for the moment is not what is he running from, but where is he running to? If we can’t work that out we’ll be one step behind him the whole time.”
“And he’s heading to the Fuller system?”
“According to the plastic man.”
“We can get there in a week. Five days if we push the engines.”
Biddy shook her head. “We’ll take the full week. He’s been gone for a month already. I’d rather get there in good shape than risk a big repair job.”
“Right.”
She looked over at two silent, burly men that looked like they were half asleep. “Lee and Ali, you’re happy with all this from a systems point of view?”
One of the twins looked up at her from under a dark mop of hair. “Sure.”
That was about as communicative as the systems guys ever got, so Biddy had to assume that was okay. They had only been on the ship for six months, and she had yet to hear either of them offer a full sentence. They worked hard though, and that was all that mattered.
“All right then, I’m going to get an hour’s rest,” Biddy said, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “Let me know when we go interstellar.”
Chapter 4
Lu Tang – or Systems Engineer Tang as he was now known – settled into his sleeping pod for the move into Fast Light.
Faster than light travel. The age of Fast Light, the humans called it. Lu Tang had never quite come to terms with the concept. When he had been born the whole idea of breaking the light speed barrier was still thought to be impossible. Then someone had invented the first neutron drive and all of a sudden it was not only possible, but easy. But no one had ever quite managed to explain the physics to him, and Lu Tang was used to being the cleverest man in the room. This made him suspect that even the engineers themselves didn’t really understand why their spaceships worked. And that was what made him nervous.
Of course, being an Augment a case of nerves was easily dealt with by upping his levels of testosterone and lowering adrenaline. But still, he could feel the unease festering below the chemical balance.
Since the Westward Ho! trip had come to an abrupt end, he had been forced to recalibrate his journey. What should have been a simple trip around one section of the galaxy was turning out to be a lot more complicated. And he was spending half the time looking over his shoulder.
It was only a matter of time before someone caught up with him. He wasn’t even sure who it was that had imprisoned him. Governments changed so frequently, and he often found himself ten years out of date where politics were concerned. It was probably something to do with the trade alliances that had been set up around the Fuller system, but that was about all he knew. Of course there were other, worse possibilities, but Lu Tang ruled them out on the grounds that those sorts of people would simply have killed him immediately.
Lu Tang massaged the scars on his neck. He was running out of time. He couldn’t afford to remain ignorant of the diplomatic situation around his imprisonment, yet he simply didn’t have the hours required to investigate it. He would need to call on his network, and half of them were probably already dead. Except for the other Augments, of course. They could be counted on to be alive at least.
The base rumble of the engines increased to a steady whine. Lu Tang shifted in his tiny pod. It sounded like the engines could do with a recalibration, but these starfreighters were not exactly known for being luxury travel. Cheap and cheerful, and the sort of travel experience that was kinder on cargo than it was on human beings. Or Gods, for that matter.
Lu Tang closed his eyes. Augments didn’t need to sleep. One of the ways that their creators had made them better than humans all those centuries ago. But there was still just enough humanity in them that all but the oddest of his kind closed their eyes at some point in the night. Dreaming was out of the question, but thought was important. His brain was his greatest asset. At present it was his only one.
That had to change, Lu Tang thought. For the last few weeks his primary aim had been escape. But now that was no longer enough. His next move would be to switch from defense, to attack.
And to do that he would need some more live assets. Wel
l, he was on his way to retrieve something that would help in that way, but he needed to up his game. The next important thing was intel. What were his enemies up to, and why? And who the hell were they. That was the heart of it. And when he found out just who was responsible for the current screwed up mayhem of his life? Then he would exact his revenge.
Dreams. Did he miss them? If he still dreamt, what would he see? Lu Tang suspected that he would be plagued with terrible nightmares. The faces of the children on the Westward Ho! as it plummeted out of the sky? He could do without that, thank you very much. Yes, there were benefits to being a God. Save the nightmares for someone else.
Chapter 5
Biddy found Phil fast asleep in the cubby hole next to her office. She hadn’t asked him if he wanted to stay onboard the ship. It would be an insult to assume anything less. He opened one eye slightly as she passed, then closed it once more when she didn’t stop. Phil knew that she was safe enough onboard her own ship. It would be a different matter when she left it.
At first Biddy had resented Phil. She felt it was a poor reflection on her – after all, she was Scotclan trained with all classes of weapons, she could look after herself. Then there had been an unfortunate incident with an explosive barrel of fuel onboard her last cruiser. She had hired Phil the next day.
Biddy turned on her viewscreen.
“Call home.”
Biddy’s mother, the matriarch of Clan Mackay and all round hardass, picked up straight away. Mary Mackay looked at her daughter through thick opaque goggles.
“Thought you were on Eris for another week,” the woman said, pulling the goggles from her face to expose the same green-blue eyes as her daughter. “Didn’t think you’d be sober enough to call.”
“Things have changed.”
“Oh?” Mary narrowed her eyes. “What’s happened now.”
Biddy winced. What was it about mothers that always made you feel like you were seven years old and had spilled your neomilk.