God's Bounty Hunter (Biddy Mackay Space Detective Book 1) by T Olivant (reading in the dark .txt) 📕

“You okay, Kenzie?” The young blond girl looked like she might throw up at any moment.  Her face was coated with clammy sweat.

Biddy glanced at Francesca who nodded and grabbed the girl a glass of water and a multicolored collection of pills.  Kenzie swallowed the drugs, then sipped the water slowly.  Biddy felt a pang of guilt.  There were good reasons why interstellar travel was so highly regulated.  Even the older members of the crew who were more used to Fast Light looked tired and drawn.  Well, they wouldn’t have much time to recover, so they might as well get on with it.

“We’ve arrived at the Fuller system,” Biddy said once the last stragglers had arrived.  Elvis strode into the room looking like he’d just been for a light jog, beaming with health and strength.  Bastard.  Biddy tried not to care that she looked like death warmed up.

“I know everyone is feeling terrible, make sure you all take your meds.  We need to be on top of our game in around eight hours, is that right Hastings?”

The Captain nodded. “We received a message from Scotclan.  We’ve got to head to the second planet, Pratchett Cinque, to meet our observer.”

There was an unhappy murmur from the crew.

“I know,” Biddy said, “I’m not exactly thrilled about it either, but we’ll deal with the observer when we have to.  One thing at a time.  How is the ship doing, Elvis?”

The engineer whistled through his teeth. “Well, as you might imagine, there’s been more faults than usual due to us not having the interstellar break.  But what with the rhodium from your plastic friend, it’s not holding up too badly.  It’s necessary to get her into a repair station before we leave this system though.  Otherwise you’re risking a major problem before we’re next at the maintenance hub.”

“Noted.  Now, as you most of you know I’ve spent the last week going through the case notes for this mission.  Kenzie has been helping me find out everything we could about the Augment.”

Biddy waved her hand towards the girl and she stood up.  Those pills Francesca gave her must have been good, because some color had already returned to her cheeks.

“At first, we didn’t really know anything about him other than what the avatar told us.  We still don’t have a name for him, although he might have a history of people smuggling.  We do know that this Augment escaped from Widdershins 3 on the 1st of March, earth calendar.  The Westward Ho! came down two weeks later.”

Everyone in the room avoided meeting Hasting’s eyes.

Kenzie cleared her throat. “No one seems sure how the Augment sabotaged the ship, but it is clear that our client’s men were about to catch up with him.  After that they lost him.”

“But you found him, right?” Hastings asked right on cue.

“I think so,” Biddy replied.  She brought up a star chart showing all the systems between Earth and the Fuller system. “The plastic man told us he was headed for Fuller.  We’ve got a trace on a possible suspect named Lu Tang who appeared on a starfreighter last week.  He left the starfreighter and then the trail goes cold, but he was just a few AUs from Fuller two days ago.”

Phil raised a hand. “What I don’t get is why the client needs us if he knew that the mark was heading for Fuller anyway.  I mean, it’s not really a Scotclan job, is it?”

Biddy was already nodding. “Absolutely.  That’s why I’ve had the Geek looking into our client.  You there, Geek?”

A viewscreen at one end of the room clicked on, giving a close-up of a shock of mousy brown hair.

“Here,” the Geek grunted.

“Adjust your bloody camera,” Hastings said with more than a trace of impatience.  He had never been as indulgent of their young crew member as Biddy was.

The viewscreen zoomed out to show the Geek’s scowling face. “That better?”

“Yes, thank you,” Biddy said, with a warning glance at Hastings. “Can you tell us what you found out about the plastic man?”

“The avatar was sent by a businessman named ML Ito.  He operates out of one of the luxury modular stations surrounding Earth Sat 7.  I had to get through a lot of cloud security and false trails to find that out, so he didn’t want to be found.”

“Sat 7?  Lots of money then,” Francesca noted. “Those pods don’t come cheap.”

“And where does Ito get his money from?” Biddy asked.

The Geek shrugged. “Even I couldn’t get into his private banking.  That’s run on the local Martian servers.  Same place all the serious crime guys keep their money.”

“But you did find out something for me, right?”

A hint of a smile played on the Geek’s lips. “Maybe.  Ito is a bit of a gym nut.  Of course, a lot of the guys on the EarthSats are, seeing as they never step outside their pods.”

Biddy deliberately kept her face neutral, thinking about how much time the Geek spent in front of his viewscreens.

“Anyway, when he’s using the gym he likes to hook up the best speakers he’s got to crank up the music.  Some sort of neo-funk, very derivative stuff.”

“And the relevance is?”

“Only way to get the tunes into the speakers at the symgym is to hook up his own cloud system to the gym unit.  Of course he’ll get the odd security system alert, but it’s just music, right?”

Biddy was grinning now. “And that gets you in?”

“Yep.  I’ll spare you the details as you wouldn’t understand them anyway, but the symgym’s security is significantly more lax than his private system.  For four thirty-minute sessions every day his system is wide open.”

“Great.  What did you find?”

The smile disappeared from the Geek’s face. “Nothing good.”

“Get on with it, kid,” Hastings growled.

“I