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

Macleod shrugged. “Not my mission.  Not my problem.”

It was only when Francesca grabbed her shoulders that Biddy realized she had lunged at the old woman.  The medic threw her out of the room and the door slammed shut.

Biddy panted.  She had never really considered herself to be an angry person, but now she felt an almost primal rage.  If she had had another second in the room she would have torn the old Scotclan woman apart limb from limb.  Probably a good thing that Francesca had been there.

The datapad buzzed once more.  She answered it.

“You better get up here,” Hastings said. “Something is happening with the Augments.”

“Good or bad?”

“What do you think?”

Chapter 50

“I will kill you, Kepler,” Augustus said.  There was no doubt that the huge man was serious.  His whole body throbbed with rage.

“That would be nice,” Kepler replied, not looking up from the portal device.  Since the other Augment had handed it over, he had nestled it gently in his lap.  He was close enough to the control panel for the hibernation pods that he could turn them off with one swipe.  And the others knew it.

“I mean it,” the head God said, his lips speckled with saliva. “And I won’t do it slowly.  I will cut you into tiny pieces and I will make sure you feel every second of it.”

“A biological impossibility, I’m afraid.” Kepler let out a small gasp as a spasm shook its way up his spine.  He almost dropped the portal drive on the floor, but managed to pull it into himself until the shaking stopped.  He felt cold, even though he knew it was uncomfortably warm in the chamber.  Apart from the heat generated by the hibernation pods, the newly awakened Augments had turned on one of the waste incinerators and were huddled around it like Neanderthals at a fire.  They hadn’t even moved when he’d taken the portal drive.  Idiots.

“What the hell was that?” Augustus asked, staring in horror at Kepler’s shaking body.

“Looks like you won’t have to kill me,” Kepler said, blinking away the flashing lights behind his eyes. “If you give it a few hours the job will be done for you.”

“But you are… how can this be?” The tall man shuddered and Kepler repressed a chuckle.  There was nothing Augments liked less than reminders of their own mortality.

“Now might be the time to tell you that I’m not really a God.” Kepler was aware of more alarms sounding at the back of the room.  Some of the Augments were running seriously low on oxygen. “Of course, neither are you, but that is rather beside the point.”

The look of confusion on Augustus’s face was quite delightful, but Kepler was distracted by his datapad buzzing.

Do you have the drive?

Ah, Kepler had almost forgotten about the Voice.  To think he had once found its involvement a comfort…

I have it. He replied.

“Kepler, whoever or whatever you are, you need to release the others.” Bela’s face was pinched with worry. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but they’ve only got minutes left.”

Give it to Augustus.

Kepler smiled, ignoring Bela’s frantic pleas.  He typed into the datapad: I know who you are.  You can come and get it.

Then he turned to Augustus and the other Augments who were milling around, not daring to step too close in case he turned the sleeping ones off altogether.

“I am sorry for what was done to you.” Kepler was surprised to realize he actually meant it. “No one should have been frozen for decades like you were.  But you brought it on yourselves, with your disdain and your cruelty.  What else did you expect the mortals to do?”

“Serve!” A thin woman with tattoos on her wrists had come to stand next to Augustus. “We were their Gods, their duty was to serve us, nothing more, nothing less.”

“That’s correct,” Augustus said. “And when we have our revenge…”

“Stop it,” Kepler said, half to the Augment, half to the banging sensation in his head. “There will be no revenge.  Those you would have avenged yourselves on are long dead.  The world has moved on.  You have gone from a menace to an irrelevance.”

“Not if you give us the portal drive,” Bela said, her voice almost pleading.

Kepler rolled his eyes. “Call all the others on the radio and get them into the room next door.  I want every Augment in there in three minutes.  I don’t want anyone sneaking up on me.”

“And if I don’t do that?” Augustus asked.

A white-hot pain seared across the back of Kepler’s neck so that he had to bite down on a howl.  He reached to his side and brought up the stungun.  He fired, and the woman with the tattoos couldn’t even gasp out a scream before she hit the ground.

“If you don’t it’ll be a race to see if I can shoot you all before the ones in the pods die,” Kepler yelled.

“All right, all right,” Bela said, her hands up as if she was already warding off the shot. “I’ll get on the radio.”

She placed the call and Kepler felt a tiny bit of his tension ease.

A beep came from the control panel in front of him.  Kepler looked down at the security screens.

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.  Gods, prepare to meet your makers.”

“What the hell –” Augustus’s words were cut off as the doors opened.

A group of a dozen men and woman ran into the room, heavily armed and clearly agitated.  They had tartan scarves around their necks and expressions that ranged from angry to terrified.

Kepler sighed and waved them forward. “Scotclan, I presume?”

The group parted to reveal an old man in the middle.  Old, yet wiry and – as Kepler reminded himself –