Pixie Hazard by Archibald Bradford (top young adult novels .txt) 📕

“You have to understand! Outerlight was going to mothball the entire program! Nearly thirty years of my work! Gone!”

“So you contracted the Iowa Clan to abduct Bryan and steal the research.” Donnie observed simply.

“No! Nothing like that! I never met any of them! All of it was done through a broker, and certainly no one was supposed to get hurt!”

Eva sniffed.

“Didn’t turn out that way. Seriously, how many dickheads have made that same excuse over the years? ‘Oh but I swear mummy, no one was going to end up dead!’ Whiny little cunts.”

He wheeled in place, wringing his hands as he struggled to justify himself to people that just didn’t care.

“But it’s true! Those blasted pirates! They were supposed to simply meet us at the airlock to provide transport and security! We were going to leave peacefully, next thing I know they’re charging in and shooting up the place!”

“I know, I was there!” Bryan cried out.

But the agitated professor didn’t pick up on his distress, still caught up in his story.

“Yes, it was all so very unfortunate. I barely got out myself! But now you are here! My prototype! And every ounce of my research is inside of you!”

Again Eva tapped her knife against her armoured thigh.

“You’re making it sound like you were up to some butt stuff.”

The redhead was honestly bored of the entire thing and just trying to amuse herself by taunting the cornered man.

Donnie stepped forwards and caught the professor’s attention by poking him in the chest.

“Let’s cut the crap, why does everybody in the universe want him if Outerlight was mothballing the program? Never known a corp to throw out an investment like this.”

“It’s because they are all short-sighted idiots! They claimed it was too much of a risk! Just like the Iowa Clan, all they see is a means of transporting stolen data-”

“Which you did. Kind of proved their point there.” Maria growled.

“Corporate espionage!” Billy snapped her fingers suddenly as realization struck; “The foulest crime in the universe as far as the mega-corps are concerned. If it got out that Outerlight had developed a means of facilitating it on this kind of scale they would be in hot water with just about every other company out there. Their top brass must have realized this when they decided to shut you down.”

“Like I said they are a bunch of short-sighted fools!” Calvin lamented with no small amount of indignation; “Every new technology can be used for nefarious purposes! Every single one!”

“Breast implants?” Eva challenged with a wry smirk.

“Counterfeit Jell-O!” He snarled back with a manic tinge to his eye.

The redhead’s expression soured.

“Feel like maybe that wasn’t a big issue.” She muttered.

“Okay I think we’ve heard enough.” Donnie declared as she made her decision; “We’re washing our hands of this nonsense. Tip off Outerlight to this knucklehead’s super-duper secret base and close the loop right here. Once their black-ops gets involved Iowa will have to back off or they’ll get more than just a bloody nose.”

“No! You musn’t!”

“Yes, I must...t. Is that even a word?” She shook her head to cast of the inconsequential thought; “Whatever, Maria keep the mad scientist from losing his shit while I have Davie make the call.”

Professor Calvin turned to find the blonde woman hulking over him.

“Why don’t you have a seat Teach? Let the women-folk do their thing.”

But as she reached for him he pulled a pulse-pistol out of his coat and leveled it at her.

“Stay back! All of you! I won’t let you ruin my-”

He didn’t get to finish though: Eva was moving on him as soon as she saw him reaching for the gun.

The deadly woman had him disarmed and disabled in seconds and she wasn’t gentle about it.

“Just plain sloppy Sledge.” She said flatly as she cleaned her knife on the now-dead professor’s lab coat.

Maria crossed her arms and pouted.

“I could’ve taken him.”

“All you could’ve taken was a pulse-laser to the face.” The redhead said angrily as she cleared the pistol with her foot; “You’re still too focused on your new chew-toy.”

“Enough Hooker. It’s done.”

Donnie wasn’t overly happy with the bloody outcome, but ultimately she didn’t have much sympathy.

Staring at the vacant eyes of the dead man, Bryan was another story.

Professor Calvin was the one that helped him get the internship at Outerlight in the first place, at least that had been the story he had been told, but even then the geneticist had been in Bryan’s life long before that.

Finding out now that the whole thing was a cover for a completely different form of research didn’t change the fact that the older man was someone he knew, who was now dead for no good reason at all.

And nobody else in the room seemed to give a damn.

For Eva it was a simple matter of neutralizing a threat, and for Donnie it was all about what came next.

“Davie, send Eniella over. If we want Outerlight to think that this was a Junker deal gone bad we’ll need to strip this place bare of anything shiny. Who knows, maybe she can score Kyle some doohickeys, maybe even a doodad or a whatzit.”

“I’ve already spotted some nanites, so there is that.” Billy volunteered.

“Good, just make sure nothing you take has any marking on it that could lead back to this place, or to the corporation that bankrolled it.”

“Which is it? Are we stripping it bare or leaving the most valuable shit cuz it has this dickweed’s name on it?” Eva asked in exasperation, one armoured foot nudging the dead professor’s side.

Bryan’s composure cracked at that point.

“He wasn’t a bad person! Despite what he did he didn’t deserve to be murdered!” He cried out.

“Whoa now.” The murderer