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

his screen. “There is one that is currently empty and two others that are being mined as we speak.”

“Target the empty one.  I would rather not waste lives.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Tibo said, looking rather surprised.

“Human beings are a resource, like anything else.  I would not wish to waste them.  They have some sort of value.  Not like the osmium, or the platinum of course.  But a modicum of value none the less.”

“All heart, aren’t you,” Tibo chuckled.

Lu Tang sniffed and said nothing.  The man was becoming intolerably over-familiar.  Well, he wouldn’t be needed for much longer.

“I want the rocket ready to launch within the hour.”

Tibo raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been planning this for a decade, Augment.  Why the hurry now?”

“Just get it done,” Lu Tang replied.

“Are you all right?” Tibo asked. “Your left eye is kind of twitching.”

Lu Tang reached up.  His eyelid was indeed twitching.  Strange that he hadn’t even felt it.  Probably a problem with his Augmented nervous system.  A few centuries ago he could have returned to Mars to have it fixed.  Not now, of course.

“Nothing for you to worry about.  You just concentrate on phase one.”

“Understood.”

Lu Tang watched the door close behind Tibo’s sizeable rear end.  At least the man was too loyal – or too dumb – to ask what phase two might be.

The plastic bed sagged as the Augment sat down.  The tiny room allotted him by Tibo was hardly befitting of a God.  His old friend had some more sumptuous lodgings in another part of the mining station, but had not offered to switch.  Lu Tang felt a wave of irritation at the man.  He thought he was such a big player with his little mine and his friends in high places.  He truly had no idea how little his life mattered.

There was a light vibration in the floor beneath the Augment’s feet.  Lu Tang smiled.  A man with his experience could recognize the feeling when a large rocket was launched into the air.  Tibo had not let him down.  Phase one was complete.

Chapter 15

“What the hell was that?”

Biddy stood with the rest of the crew and simply stared at the Viewscreen.  It showed a satellite view of the planet Eritree, just a few million kilometers away from Pratchett Cinque.  A giant cloud of dust had appeared where just a few frames before there had been buildings and tracks.  The pictures were coming in from a cloud-based news server somewhere in the Fuller system.

“They are saying it’s a mine collapse,” the Geek said over the speaker system. “But there’s no way that’s what caused it.”

“He’s right,” Elvis said, staring at the screen. “The blast is all wrong for a mine collapse.  They implode.  This was definitely an explosion.”

“An attack from space?” Kenzie asked.

Elvis was already shaking his head. “No, that doesn’t fit either.  The crater would be much larger.  This had to be something from the surface.”

“A bomb?” Biddy asked.

“Possibly.”

“It’s the God,” a voice said from behind them.  Biddy turned to look at Macleod.  The woman had arrived onto deck silently and now stood leaning against a console, her hair a white halo of fluff.

“How could you know that?”

“I had been warned that he was planning something in this system.”

Biddy felt her temper rise. “Warned by who?  And why weren’t we given the same information?”

Macleod smiled sweetly. “We weren’t one hundred percent sure.  And besides, we certainly didn’t imagine that the action of the God would be so, well, definite.”

Biddy felt her teeth itch. “Can I have a word with you in my office please?” She turned and strode away without even checking if Macleod had followed.

When the woman shuffled in behind her Biddy slammed the door shut.

“What exactly is an observer’s role?” Biddy said, trying to keep her voice level.

“The title would pretty much cover it,” Macleod said, with a small smile.

“Is that right.  It seems to me then that an observer should be outwith the investigation itself.  From what you’ve just said out there you are right in the middle of it.  Any more secret information you happen to be privy to?”

Macleod watched Biddy for a moment without saying anything.  Then she said, “mind if I sit?” and took herself over to Biddy’s chair.  Another power move designed to annoy, and boy was it working.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kick you off the ship,” Biddy said, giving up on being civilized.

“If you do that you lose your license with Scotclan.”

“Really?  Somehow, I don’t think it would be that simple.  What if I tell Scotclan that their so-called observer was nothing of the sort but instead directly involved in the case?”

Macleod narrowed her eyes.  Then she grinned. “Listen, why don’t we stop with the games?  I’ll give you what information I can and you can stop fending me off, all right?”

Biddy waved her right hand to indicate that Macleod could continue.

“I was sent to you by the Clan Chiefs.  They chose me because I have a previous connection with this Augment.  I was in charge of his detention.”

“You ran the prison?”

“A small section of it.  Specifically, the part where our missing Augment escaped from.”

“Hang on, what’s Scotclan doing on Widdershins 3?”

“We won the contract to do the security last year.  A small team of five of us monitoring what seemed to be a low risk site.  The residents were confined to their rooms.  All food and waste systems were automated.  All security had to do was watch the viewscreens and the data from the body monitors.  It was meant to be an easy job.”

“Guess it didn’t work out that way.”

Macleod grimaced. “It did until last month.  Then our most important prisoner escaped.”

“And you don’t know how that happened?”

The old woman sucked in