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

“Around a dozen.” Lu Tang replied. “The Voice was not clear on that point.  Maybe as few as six.”

Francesca raised a hand. “We won’t be able to revive that many.  Maybe one or two.”

Lu Tang was about to reply but he noticed Mackay was already shaking her head.

“We’re not going to revive them,” the Detective said. “Not until I’m sure that they’re not a bunch of murderers and rapists.”

“They are Augments!” Lu Tang said, horrified.

“Exactly.  Who knows what they might have done?  No, I’ll rescue them from Eritree, just as you ask, but I am not going to bring them out of stasis.  Not at first, anyway.  We’ll bring them onto the ship, pods and all.”

“How will we do that?” Phil asked.

“We’ll need some sort of cargo ship.  Something we can pack the pods onto, then use it to take them up to the Black Maria.  Then we stick them all in the hold.”

“These are Gods, not supply boxes!” Lu Tang could not stop his voice from raising a few more decibels.

“When they are in the stasis pods we can just stack them, isn’t that right?”

“Yep,” Francesca said. “Like leftover tubs of curry.”

Lu Tang decided not to dignify that one with a reply.

“What about the place where they are being held?”

Lu Tang walked over to the screen. “Can you bring up a map of the planet?  Focus on the section to the South of Moscov.  There’s a facility there listed as a waste processing plant.”

“The one with all the warnings about toxic chemicals and being unfit for human habitation,” the Navigator asked as she zoomed in on the image.

“Yes.  A mere smokescreen.  It is a prison.”

“What else is there beside the Augments?”

“The so-called waste processing plant.  Fully automated.  But funnily enough there is no evidence that any waste goes in or out of there.  I’ve seen the files.”

“Guards?”

“None.  Possibly some automated bots.”

“It all sounds a little too good to be true,” said the murderous Captain.  Lu Tang ignored him.

“Kenzie,” Mackay said to the trembling Faithful, “will you check out the station logs for the plant?  Double check Lu Tang’s info.  Get the Geek to help you with systems access if it’s a problem.”

The pale girl nodded and scurried out of the room.

“You do not need to double check my information.  I am a God.” Lu Tang said, resisting the urge to yell at the Detective.  His emotions were out of control and he needed rest.  He took a long, slow breath.  There would be time enough for that when it was all over.

“Yes I do.” The Detective was pressing the bridge of her nose as if she was trying to relieve some sort of pain there. “I’m guessing you have some sort of plan for rescuing your people from the planet?”

“Of course.  I’ve had a decade to plan it.  Nothing can possibly go wrong.” Lu Tang chose to ignore the stifled snigger from somewhere behind him.

“We have half an hour before we are going down there.  I want to know a more definite plan than we’ll just pop inside and liberate these prisoners with no trouble at all.”

“It is the truth,” Lu Tang said, the irritation clear in his voice.

“You need to do better than that,” Biddy said. “I’m not risking my friends unless you give me more details.”

“I suppose I could always appeal to your human capacity for empathy, but it seems so beneath me.”

“What the hell are you talking about now?”

“Give me a datapad and I’ll show you what the Voice showed me when I was on Widdershins 3.  I’ll show you what convinced me to escape.”

Chapter 37

The picture on the main viewscreen was grainy at first and it took Biddy a moment to work out what was going on.  A jumble of shapes coalesced into a line, a curve, then an arm, hanging limp out of the side of a truck.

“Delivery!” A voice shouted from somewhere, perhaps even the same place as the camera originated.

“By the false Gods,” a second voice said. “You just threw them all in the van?  We’ll be lucky if half of them are still alive!”

“Good riddance,” the first voice replied. “Time those arrogant bastards got what was coming to them.”

The two men started to drag bodies out of the van, like they were pieces of meat.  The Augments were bruised and bloody.  The thuds made as their bodies hit the trailer turned Biddy’s stomach.

The camera panned backwards, scanning the horizon.  Biddy recognized the desert landscape of Eritree.

“No one’s watching,” the first voice said as the camera view returned to the bodies.  Biddy’s gaze was caught by the reflection of moonlight on bare, greying flesh. “Why don’t we just leave them out here to freeze?”

“They’ll be cold enough inside.”

The short film came to an end.  Biddy turned to the Augment, but she couldn’t find anything to say.

Lu Tang spoke into the silence. “The video shows that three Augments suffocated to death on the ride to the prison.  The rest were placed in the freezer.  The miners of Eritree wanted the Augments gone, and they certainly achieved that.”

“Hang on, let’s see the truck again,” Hastings said.

“I think we’ve seen enough,” Francesca replied.  She sounded like she was about to be sick.

“Biddy, please, just show me the truck.”

She shrugged and scrolled back through the tape.  The side of the truck came back into view.

“I thought so.  That’s a mark seven Hustand.  They stopped making them fifty years ago.”

“Could just be an old truck, Hastings.”

“Nah, that’s the problem.  Those Hustand’s had a fault.  Turns out if you ran them in low oxygen the engine core’s overheated.  They recalled them after a dozen of them blew up, mostly with people in them.  No one would use one now.