God's Bounty Hunter (Biddy Mackay Space Detective Book 1)

by T E Olivant

  “Just what is the plan again?” The bodyguard asked.

  “Geek’s going to create a distraction. All smoke and mirrors stuff, then he’s going to move the ship towards orbit. Scotclan will think we’re trying to escape.”

  “But he’ll really be coming here?”

  “Yes. In fact, he should already have started. Any minute now…”

  A strong vibration rocked the van on it’s treads.

  “That’s the Black Maria,” Mackay said, her eyes staring up at the roof of the van. “Francesca, can you drive over to meet it?”

  “I think I can handle that,” the young Navigator said from the driver’s cab. The vehicle lurched forward as she pushed it into gear. Lu Tang put out a hand to steady the nearest hibernation pod.

  “You’re safe now,” he whispered to its sleeping occupant.

  There was a buzzing sound from the pocket of his robe. He reached in and pulled out the small black datapad that had been left in his cell.

  You have done well.

  The words flashed across the screen. He tilted it so that none of the other occupants of the van could see the writing, but they were all staring out the window at the approaching spaceship anyway.

  Now you must wake them. Wake them. Wake them so that they might wake the others.

  Lu Tang smiled as the doors of the van opened and the Black Maria landed on the rocky terrain just a few meters away.

  “Let’s go!” Mackay shouted, and the Augment helped the humans to push the trolleys onboard the ship.

  The datapad buzzed once more.

  Do not let them leave.

  A pang of irritation passed through the Augment’s mind. The Voice ought to have trusted him a little better. He had no intention of letting the Black Maria go anywhere.

  Once all the pods were onboard, Mackay shut the airlock behind them.

  “Right, let’s hope that the Geek has a plan to get us out of here.” Mackay said, walking away. “Are you coming? I thought we might wake up one of your friends. See what they have to say for themselves.”

  Lu Tang let his face fall into an eager smile.

  “Let me just run an analysis on the hibernation pods. I want to check we’re doing it correctly.”

  Mackay shrugged. “All right. Meet me in the main hangar in five minutes. Then I’m waking up the first Augment whether you’re ready or not. I want to know what the hell I’ve risked my career for.”

  If only you knew, Lu Tang thought as he watched the Detective turn and walk away. Then he plugged the little datapad directly into the ship’s cloud and let it do its work.

  Chapter 39

  “Why aren’t we moving?” Biddy said as the screen in front of her stayed infuriatingly blank. The Black Maria should have been speeding out of orbit. Instead it was still on the surface of Eritree.

  “Some sort of catastrophic systems failure,” the Geek said from her left. That had been the first sign of crisis: the Geek hardly ever came into the command room. They must be in some pretty deep shit, Biddy had thought when she saw the hooded figure arrive.

  “What do the twins say?”

  “They’re in the engine room but they don’t think it’s mechanical. They’re blaming the software.”

  “Which makes it your problem.”

  The Geek flinched. “It must be, but I can’t work out where. Or how to fix it.”

  Biddy rubbed her palm into her eye socket. “You’ve got to. We’re sitting ducks down here. Once Scotclan work out where we are they can just take the ship right out from under us. We need to get into orbit!”

  The Geek turned back to his screens and said nothing. Biddy looked to Hastings.

  “Can we fly the ship manually, without the software?”

  “No chance,” the Captain said.

  “All right, then I want you all to work on a plan B while Geek fixes the problem.” Her crew turned back to their consoles but she could tell by their slumped shoulders that they thought it was hopeless. She banged her hand down on the desk in front of her. “And where’s Lu Tang?”

  “In the medical room with Francesca and his frozen friends. You think he had something to do with it?”

  “Well, he’s the only person on this ship that I don’t trust. But I don’t see why he would sabotage the Black Maria – we’re doing exactly what he wanted us to. Still, I don’t like him being down there with Francesca. And I can’t radio her because the systems are down. Kenzie, go down there and get her to come up here will you?”

  “Sure.” The girl hurried out of the room.

  A noise Biddy had been barely aware of suddenly grew louder.

  “What’s that?”

  Hastings turned around. “Are the engines coming back online?”

  “Still dead,” the Geek muttered, his hands flying over the console.

  “Then what…” Biddy ran to the port side of the command room. “We still have manual window guards, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but they need to stay down in spaceflight.”

  “We’re not in flight. Hastings, Phil, come help me raise them.” It took all the arm strength of the three of them to lift the metal covering over the window. Then they could look directly onto the surface.

  “Scotclan.” Hastings said, stating the obvious.

  “Chief Campbell’s ship.” Biddy said, staring through the whirling dust clouds. “And another two ‘tec cruisers flanking it. They’ll touch down in less than five minutes.”

  “I guess it’s flattering that he thinks he needs reinforcements,” Phil said.

  “He doesn’t know that we’re a sitting duck. Geek?”

  “Still nothing.”

  The door to the command room opened and two figures staggered in.

  “Help me!” Kenzie panted as she struggled to support Francesca’s weight.

  “What happened?” Biddy cried as she ran to the navigator. A nasty red welt was raised across the young woman’s temple. Francesca’s eyes had rolled back in her head.

  “Phil, the aidkit from under the –”

  “Already got it.” The bodyguard lifted Francesca easily and laid her on her back on the floor. Then he placed the probe from the kit to her temple.

  “The Gods have gone!” Kenzie gasped. Her face was white and she looked like she might throw up. Biddy felt the panic rise up in her throat, but she grunted and pushed it back down. This was no time to give in to despair. Not yet, anyway.

  “Sit down, Kenzie,” Biddy said as she led the girl to a chair. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know! Francesca was just lying there, she was hardly breathing, and I couldn’t get the medical equipment to work because the system was down. I didn’t know what to do!”

  “You did the right thing bringing her here. What about Lu Tang?”

  “Gone. Blessed be, all the Gods have disappeared. The pods were empty.”

  “‘Tec!” Phil’s voice recalled Biddy to her injured navigator. Francesca’s eyes were open.

  “I’m sorry,” the young woman whispered.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Biddy said firmly, taking her hand.

  “The aidkit says its concussion,” Phil said and she could hear the relief in his voice. “She needs rest and monitoring, but she should be okay.”

  “The Augment…” Francesca’s voice shook with the effort of speech.

  “Yes?” Biddy didn’t like the look of fear that flashed across her Navigator’s face.

  “He tricked us. He woke them up. Every single one of them.”

  Chapter 40

  Lu Tang raised a hand for silence. It didn’t work. The newly awakened Augments had created a cacophony of pitiful wails.

  “Where are we?”

  “Why am I so cold?”

  “What happened?”

  And perhaps most irritating: “Who are you?”

  This last question came from a statuesque male with striking dark skin that was almost the color of obsidian. Like the others he wa
s wearing a white robe that was little more than a medical bandage. The fact that he was shivering did not dispel his overall aura of authority.

  Lu Tang raised his voice. “I am…” He paused, his lips of the verge of forming the words Lu Tang, but of course that was stupid now. “I am Kepler.” Why did the name feel so alien? It was his own after all.

  “Kepler?” The black man stared. “I knew a Kepler once. Played all sides, not to be trusted.”

  “Sounds about right,” replied the man who still thought of himself as Lu Tang.

  “Can you explain what happened to us?”

  “We were captured!” A female Augment, with pale, tight skin that still did not disguise her great age spoke up. “You remember, Augustus, those cretinous humans ambushed us.”

  “Ah yes,” Augustus replied, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. “We were taken by surprise. Well, that does not happen twice to an Augment. We will teach them not to attack the likes of us! And where were you, Kepler, when we needed you?”

  Lu Tang shrank back. “I was… well, I’m not quite sure. In another solar system, I believe. But I came here to save you, to awaken you. Without me you would still be in the freezer.”

  This got him some small grunts of approval from the others.

  “We must plan our attack immediately,” Augustus said, his voice booming out across the medical bay. “The miners cannot be allowed…”

  “There is no point in all of this,” Lu Tang said, his temper failing. Had the Augments always been so fond of their own voices? At least he was not like that! “The miners who attacked you are long gone. We must make a plan, but it must be focused on escape.”

  “Escape! And let our foes go unpunished?” This yell came from a short, white man with pink cheeks. His augmented features were so misshapen he looked like he had been formed out of putty.

  “Your foes are all dead!” Lu Tang shouted. This at least gained him smiles from most of the others. A younger augment – female, perhaps only a century old – raised her hand.

  “You do not mean that you killed them, do you?” She said quietly.

  “No, I do not.”

  “How long were we asleep?” The soft voice asked and the hangar finally fell silent.

  “How many months?” Augustus asked, a slight tremor in his powerful voice.

  “Months?” Lu Tang swallowed. “I have bad news, my friends. You were asleep for over seventy years.”

  Lu Tang clamped his hands over his ears to stop the wails. Only the young female was silent, her dark eyes watching him like the endless chasm of space. He had not prepared for this. His people, either braying or broken, lost children not the comrades in arms that he had imagined.

  He spat on the floor. The humans. How low they that been brought by those odious creatures. He thought of the young medic, battered to the floor by one blow from the short, white Augment with the blotchy face. Yes, his people were damaged, but they were still strong. There was still the chance that they might become what they once were.

  “Come to me,” Lu Tang said, channeling all of Kepler’s strength. “My friends, I have not awakened you for nothing. We will have our revenge on the humans. And we will start here, on this ship.”

  Chapter 41

  When the attack came, Biddy was only surprised that the Augments managed to get there first. She had expected Scotclan to come for her before the newly awakened Gods. Even her enemies were becoming depressingly unreliable.

  “Your crew will enter the waste recovery vehicle and exit onto the planet. You will be a little cramped in there, but you will survive,” Lu Tang said, his voice a calm monotone. The crew had surrendered to him immediately, just as Biddy ordered. They were weaponless and vastly outnumbered and she had no intention of giving the Augments any excuse for bloodshed.

  “Bastard,” Biddy said, but the God didn’t even flinch. “You know that Scotclan will be here any second, right? Your friends are going straight back to prison.”

  “You are lucky,” Lu Tang said evenly, ignoring her threats while his white robed friends took over the command room. “The others wanted to shoot you on sight. They have awakened rather tetchy, I’m afraid.”

  Biddy bit back a scream of rage as she and her crewmates were led off the Black Maria and onto the tiny maintenance vessel. On the way there Phil caught her eye a few times, eyebrows raised and she knew he wanted permission to fight his way out. Each time she shook her head. Biddy knew that there was a chance they could overpower the Augments, but not without losing half the crew. The newly awakened Gods were not carrying stunguns: they had proper laser rifles and they looked like they were dying to use them.

  Once the crew were all onboard, Lu Tang stood in the doorway. The other Gods had already hurried away to do whatever it was that Gods did.

  “I would thank you for your assistance, Detective, but I sense you would not appreciate it. Just know that you have allowed your Gods to regain their rightful place. Soon enough the entire galaxy will understand the consequences of forgetting their Faith. Good night.”

  Only the strong arms of Lee and Ali held Biddy back from throttling the Augment before the doors shut behind him.

  “At least Scotclan haven’t realized that we’re in here,” Kenzie said, earning her a rare smile from the new crew of Maintenance vehicle 783. Half an hour later and the tiny craft was still parked outside the former prison of the Augments. Biddy’s men were jammed in like vacuum packed pseudo-meat.

  “We should get away from here,” Hastings said, not for the first time.

  Biddy shook her head. “Not yet. We need a solid plan. You told me that the batteries on this thing will only get us one decent flight.”

  The Captain nodded. “They were only designed to go back and forth from the depot. Judging by the state of the engines we’ve already used up most of their charge coming in to land.”

  “So we can’t afford to rush anything. Perhaps we…”

  “We need to decide one way or the other. Sooner or later Scotclan will realize where we are,” Hastings reminded her.

  “Yes, thank you, I am well aware of the time.” Biddy chewed the inside of her cheek.

  “There’s a call coming through on the viewscreen,” Francesca said.

  “What?” Biddy turned to the small screen at the front of the cramped cabin. “Cancel it! If its Scotclan and they see us…”

  Francesca thumped the console. “I can’t. There’s some weird override thing going on. It’s on a countdown and the call will start in one minute.”

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Mars.”

  Biddy rubbed her knuckles into her face.

  “Mars. Let me guess, an anonymous caller?”

  “No, actually. It says it’s from some guy called Tolly.”

  Biddy’s mouth made a perfect ‘o’ shape.

  “Tolly?” Hastings asked. “Who’s that?”

  “They don’t mean the Augment, do they?” Francesca asked, noting the horror on Biddy’s face.

  “Blessed be,” Kenzie muttered.

  “Who the hell is Tolly?” Hastings repeated.

  Biddy took a deep breath. “From what I understand, if Augments are Gods then he is Zeus.

  “Who’s Zeus?” asked Hastings.

  “Old Earthen myth. Head of the Gods. The most important living creature in the galaxy.”

  “And the head of the Gods wants to talk to us?” Now Hastings was going pale.

  “Yes.”

  Biddy closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. “All right,” she said finally. “Tell him we’ll take the call.”

  The screen lit up and Biddy found herself looking into the eyes of the oldest living person in the universe.

  “Hello,” Tolly said. “I guess you’re the one everybody has been talking about.” A face, not human, but not completely nonhuman stared at her with eyes as dark as space.

  She swallowed. “I am Biddy Mackay. And you are the Augment King.”

  Ke
nzie gasped a little and Biddy narrowed her eyes. Rude? Perhaps. But she was fed up of Gods of any flavor and she didn’t care what anyone thought about it anymore.

  To her surprise, the face on screen smiled. “Augments don’t have Kings. And I’m afraid we have trouble with any hierarchy that isn’t every man for himself.”

  Biddy sighed. “Could you get to the point please, it has been a very long day.”

  “I know. You have been busy. I see that you are currently without a ship.”

  “As I’m sure you are aware, my ship has been stolen by one of your friends. Well, by a bunch of them actually.”

  Tolly massaged his chin with long, slender fingers. “I know about Lu Tang. Perhaps you could update me on the others?”

  A sharp insistent headache had lodged itself at her temple. Biddy was exhausted and fed up. She had never seen this ancient being before, but there was something about him that inspired trust. And anyway, what else did she have to lose? She told him the entire story of Lu Tang and the awakened Augments.

  “It is as I feared,” Tolly said once Biddy had finished.

  “Can you help me get my ship back?” Biddy asked, wincing at the desperation in her voice.

  “I can try. But most importantly we must stop Lu Tang or Kepler or whatever he calls himself from going any further.”

  “What does that mean?” Hastings asked.

  “I mean that Lu Tang was not honest with you. For the last week I have been doing my own research into the Fuller system. I knew about the missing Augments of course, but I hadn’t realized this was where they had been taken. For nearly a century I thought the division of Augments in that sector had been killed.”

  “Why was that?” Biddy asked, drawn in by the Augment’s words.

  “The Augments here established the mining colony planets. Well, it is not surprising, we controlled the technology after all. They were… Not nice people. I say that as one of them, or rather, one like them. They were buoyed by the Faithful, and they truly believed that they were Gods. They made many more Augments, which was expressly against our rules at the time. When two hundred of them disappeared overnight, the Augment Council thought they had been killed in a row over territory. And, if I’m honest, those of us on Mars were more relieved than angered. That is something that I will be judged for as much as anyone.”