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

a group of Augments being held prisoner on Eritree.  He reckons they’ve been there for decades, held in suspended animation.  I need to know if he’s just telling me a heap of crap or not.  It’s urgent, Geek, I can’t get rid of him until I know if he’s telling the truth.”

“On it.” The connection ended.

Biddy pinged a message on her datapad to Kenzie to take a look at the name ‘Kepler’.  Ideally she would have liked to leave it to the Geek, but he had enough to do.  If there was any chance that Lu Tang’s story about the kidnapped Augments was true, then she had to check it out.  They were her Gods after all.

Damnit!  Biddy smacked her palm against her forehead.  That was the sort of thinking that would get her and her crew killed.  She wasn’t even a member of the Faithful.  What did it matter if the Gods were involved?  She didn’t owe them anything, no matter what Lu Tang said.

She chewed her lip.  She needed to do something.  Sooner or later Scotclan would start taking matters into their own hands.

Biddy pressed the datapad to call Elvis. “Are you back in the command room?”

“Yes.” His tone was a little frosty.  She decided to ignore it.

“How soon can we land on Eritree?”

“I’ve already requested a landing at Retrusk.”

“Take us down, then.  Get Francesca and a couple of others to transfer Tibo to the medical facility there.  If he’s still alive?”

“He is.”

Biddy breathed out. “Okay.  Tell them to get him set up there and then head back to the ship asap.  We might need to make a quick getaway.”

“Understood.”

Biddy knew her pulse was racing, but she actually felt better.  Yes, it was a hell of a risk landing on Eritree and Scotclan would be pissed off.  But Tibo might have a fighting chance of seeing out the week, and it would force her to make a decision about Lu Tang.

“Biddy?”

She turned around to see Kenzie jogging along the corridor.  The girl had red rings around her eyes and was wearing the same clothes as yesterday.  Mind you, Biddy realized, so was she.

“Kenzie.  Did you get my message?”

“Yes.  I thought I’d come and see you as I’d already done the research when we were checking out the Gods.  Do you really think he could be Kepler?  The Knights were pretty sure the God known as Kepler was dead.”

“He’s an Augment, so if anyone could survive that sort of radiation it would be him.  Who knows what sort of freaky stuff they’ve done to their own biology?”

“Right.  Well, I have my research on Kepler on my datapad so if you want to take a look –”

“I don’t have time.  Summarize it for me.”

Kenzie flinched, then looked down at her pad. “All right, I guess I can do that.”  She tapped a finger against her top teeth. “Kepler seems to be around two hundred years old.  Of course, he may be even older, but that’s when the name first appeared.  One of the projects he was first involved with was the creation of Tirnanog.”

“So he was connected to the Celtic Alliance?”

“I’m not sure.  He seems to have been more like a contractor, not one of the Gods that was directly worshipped at the time.  The true Gods of the Alliance were granted a special status, given temples, that sort of thing, but Kepler wasn’t.  Back then people were really superstitious about the Gods, blessed be.”

“Not like now you mean?” Biddy held up her hand when she saw Kenzie’s lip tremble. “Sorry.  I’m an asshole.  Keep going.”

“Over the next couple of centuries his name crops up, always on the edges of big events.  But it’s hard to tell whether he was a force for good or evil.  He was just sort of there.”

“Well, at least we know he existed.  Sounds like Lu Tang has been telling me some of the truth on that anyway.”

“I’m not sure,” Kenzie’s forehead wrinkled. “I’d like more time to do some research.  There’s something a bit weird about all this Kepler stuff.  There should be more evidence of his existence if he has been around for two centuries.  If I had a little longer –”

“We simply don’t have the time.  You can keep looking if you like, but I’m going to be standing on Eritree within the hour.  We’ll just have to work with what we’ve got.”

Kenzie nodded. “It’s just… What if I’ve got it wrong?  I might have missed something.”

“Then we’re all in the shit.  Welcome to being a detective.”

Biddy watched to see if Kenzie smiled.  She didn’t.

Chapter 34

Lu Tang didn’t need his Augmented senses to know when the ship came in for landing.  He felt the hum of the engines changing frequency through the floor.  They really needed to put some more insulation in the cells, his teeth were chattering from the vibration.  The Augment pressed his hands against his ears.  The humans were so inconsiderate.

He was getting frustrated at waiting for the silly little Detective to decide if she wanted to help or not.  Humans were just so slow.  Either you do something, or you do not do it, but what was the point in spending so much time thinking about it?  They did have brain cells, he knew that, it was just a pity that they never put them to good use.

When the engine shut down, he stood up and moved towards the door.  Eritree.  It felt good to be back, but also infuriating.  To be so close to his sleeping friends and unable to help them… it was a form of torture.

He shivered as a nerve in his back spasmed.  His hormones were playing up.  He should have been an ocean of calm, no matter the irritations the humans were causing him.  But he could