God's Bounty Hunter (Biddy Mackay Space Detective Book 1) Read online

  God’s Bounty Hunter

  Biddy Mackay Space Detective: Book 1

  T E Olivant

  Copyright © 2021

  Tania Scott

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Prologue

  The man of a hundred names, currently known only as Resident 213, had finally made his way onto the roof. It was no mean feat given that the facility in which he had been imprisoned was fifty meters high. Fifty-one, in fact, the denizens of this particular exoplanet having no sense of symmetry.

  Resident 213 sucked in his breath as the noxious gases of the planet assailed his lungs. Technically breathable, and that was all that concerned the administrators back on the Earthsats. What did it matter to them, locked in their perpetual orbit of the home planet, if the air on Widdershins 3 stank like a millennia of cat’s piss? They didn’t have to smell it.

  Today though, today it smelled like freedom. And cat’s piss. 213 slammed the door behind him, sealing the airlock and cutting off the blare of the alarms. Silence, apart from the hiss of the wind. At higher altitude it could flay the skin from your body. Down here it was merely an irritation.

  He checked the position of the stars that were just beginning to sparkle out from the sunset. Almost time. A minor explosion behind him told 213 that his pursuers had chosen the fastest way of opening the airlock. He didn’t look around, not even when they demanded his surrender.

  As he stepped off the edge of the building, 213 allowed himself the smallest sigh. This century really was a devil on the knees. He closed his eyes against the rush of air as he descended. He was almost halfway down when the drone swept in below him.

  “Gnnnn…” Yes, a devil on the knees. The impact jolted up from the soles of his feet to his neck. He had landed in a crouched position on the sleek metal surface of the drone. He reached out with his fingertips and felt for the handholds. Some sensor on the craft must have known he was secure as it swooped upward, searching for the spaceship that had sent it.

  213 would have waved down at his jailers, but he had never been one for showboating. And he didn’t want to let go of the drone. Instead, he flew off into the vibrant purples of the binary sunset. It was good enough.

  Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

  Isaac Newton, Laws of Motion, I

  Chapter 1

  The only bar on Eris was full of silent drinkers. When the door opened and the stranger entered, not one of them looked up. It was the sort of crowd that would continue to drink even if the windows cracked and the icy atmosphere of the dwarf planet swept in. As the fluid in their eyes froze and their internal organs exploded with the pressure of the ice dwarf-planet, they would still enjoy the burn of that last sip of space-gin. It was that sort of place.

  “I’m looking for Biddy Mackay,” the stranger said, and now the drinkers did turn around, each one with the same expression of distrust.

  “Show us the folding,” a voice called from the corner. The stranger reached into his black suit pocket and pulled out a thin strip of metal. It glinted in the strip light. Encapsulated Rhodium, an essential component of any neutron engine. Very rare out here on the furthest edge of the solar system. Very valuable.

  The atmosphere in the room became a fraction warmer.

  “In the back,” the barman said, his thin face streaked with ill-judged silver tattoos. The tattoos looked impressive on the steroid-pumped miners of the outer solar system. On this aging white guy who had never lifted anything heavier than a soda siphon they looked ridiculous.

  The stranger made his way around the bar, being careful not to bump into any of the muscled forms that were hunched over their drinks. Miners were big, steroid-jacked and mostly sexually frustrated. This meant that people had died for lesser offences than spilling a pint.

  Biddy watched the guy as he snaked his way over to her table. She noticed her bodyguard, Phil, reach for his pocket, but she put her hand on his arm. Phil was a recovering addict and had a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. That was fine when they were battling their way through gangs of neo-syms on the surface of New Mars, but not advisable on this tin-can space station tacked onto the edge of a hunk of rock on the outskirts of the solar system. A wrongly-timed shot might cause a tear in the atmospheric protection, which resulted in a hefty fine from the station owners and, incidentally, the death of everyone in the room.

  “Biddy Mackay?”

  Biddy narrowed her eyes at the sound of the man’s voice. When he had been at the other side of the bar, she hadn’t noticed the faint tinny edge to his speech that marked him out as a falsebody. She looked him over. The plastic suit was expensive, cut to resemble an old-Earth businessman. His engineered face showed central Asian features. This itself was unusual: most falsebodies were made to look neutral so that anyone could use them to send a message. Just human enough to look fake, this stranger had been specially made to resemble his owner. It all screamed of money. Interesting.

  “I’ve got a job for you,” the plastic man said. Even though it was top of the line, it still had a slight delay between the words transmitted from some distant planet and the movement of its lips. No wonder people found them creepy. Biddy sure as hell did.

  “I’m listening.”

  “A hunt-down. Single person. Interstellar.”

  Biddy was already shaking her head. “Can’t do interstellar. My team are on a rest period for another week.”

  “I know. They will be compensated.”

  The glass rested on her lips for a second, then Biddy swirled the gin around her cheeks. Rest periods were mandatory to allow crews travelling between solar systems enough recovery time from the unpleasant side effects of long-distance space travel. To break that rule was illegal, not that it was ever enforced. Still, it gave her some clue about how urgently this guy needed her help.

  Biddy’s fingers played with the frayed end of her tartan scarf. It was more than a talisman: it was proof of her membership of Scotclan, the last independent police force in the galaxy.

  “Listen, plastic man
,” her voice was hard and every man nearby flinched. “I only clocked off-ship three hours ago after a six month not-so-jolly around Alpha Centauri. Every muscle in my body is vibrating from a bottle full of muscle repair drugs. If I’m going to take my ship anywhere that isn’t within a mile of this bar, you better not be wasting my time.”

  From her right, Hastings gave a prim little cough, but she ignored him. The captain of the cruiser never liked her shooting her mouth off. But he wouldn’t question her directly: he knew who paid his salary.

  “I need you to capture a God,” the creature said in that same neutral non-human tone.

  Hastings snickered a laugh, but Biddy’s expression didn’t change. The plastic man hadn’t come all the way out to this dive at the edge of the solar system to kid around.

  “Explain.”

  A printed photograph landed on the table in front of her. Real paper, which meant that someone didn’t trust the data cloud. She was just mulling this over when an insistent voice at the back of her brain drew her attention. There was something very wrong with the guy in the picture.

  “It’s an Augment,” Hastings said, stating the obvious as usual. The noise in the bar dropped another few decibels and Biddy flinched at his indiscretion.

  “Explain,” she said once more.

  The plastic man’s eyes flickered as the connection to the web faltered. It always gave Biddy the shivers when they did that. She clicked her tongue in distaste.

  “You do not like my avatar?”

  Biddy raised an eyebrow. “Makes no difference to me how you do your business,” she lied.

  “I have one in every system in this part of the galaxy.” All right, Biddy thought, make that a lot of money. Plastic men were not cheap and she had never met anyone who had more than one custom model.

  The bar was getting busier. Or at least this part of the bar was. Biddy noticed that the rest of her crewmates had reappeared from whatever drunken corner they had been occupying. Money had its own powers of attraction.

  “The subject went missing from a detainment station last month. We have received intelligence that he is en route to one of the outer planets of the Fuller system.”

  Biddy leaned back in her chair. At least it was an easy decision to say no to the guy, no matter how much money he had.

  “First of all,” Biddy said, “if the guy’s been missing a month he could be anywhere in this sector of the galaxy. And second, the Fuller system is a hell of a lot further away than Alpha Centauri. It’d be a week’s travel, even at full power. The costs involved would be… astronomical.”

  “We’ll meet them.”

  Biddy stood up from the table. “You should have come to me a month ago. Trail’s cold.”

  A flicker of what… doubt? Frustration? Something passed across the plastic man’s face. “We didn’t think he’d be a problem. He hadn’t actually broken the law at that point.”

  “And he has now?”

  “Damn right. Heard about the Westward Ho!?”

  Hastings gasped, and even Phil looked unsettled, grabbing the edge of the table.

  “Of course.” Biddy fought to keep her face unmoved. People had talked of little else for the last week. A tourist vessel, making a lazy crawl around a binary system. Fun for all the family, two hundred people having the time of their lives. At least until it slammed into an asteroid with the death of every single man woman and child onboard.

  “It was an engine failure,” Hastings said from between gritted teeth. Biddy tried not to look at his trembling hand, curled into a fist on the table. Hastings’s younger brother had been on that ship, serving out an apprenticeship as a porter until he had become just another piece of space dust.

  “The Augment was responsible,” the plastic man said. “It was sabotage.”

  “God’s don’t kill people,” Biddy said softly.

  “Angry ones do. And this guy was angry.”

  “Why?”

  Another eyelid flicker. “We need you to get him for us. He needs to answer for the deaths of every person onboard that solarcruiser. Do you know why he did it?”

  Biddy turned away. She didn’t want to get involved. But she heard Hastings’s voice behind her.

  “Why?”

  “A distraction. We’d almost caught up with him, six of my men were on the cruiser. He managed to climb into a life-raft before they could grab him. And made sure that the guidance systems on the solarcruiser took them straight into the asteroid belt. My men died along with everyone else.”

  Biddy shook her head, not looking at Hastings. “I don’t hunt Augments.”

  Hastings made a sort of choking noise in the back of his throat, but he didn’t challenge her.

  The plastic man paused, receiving more instructions. “Could I talk to you alone?”

  Biddy felt a flash of irritation. Now he was simply wasting her time.

  “No. Say what you need to say then get back to wherever you came from.”

  “What about Iona Beach?”

  A knife blow. That’s what it felt like. One driven in low, just below the ribs. Biddy could feel the wound left by the words. She turned back to the plastic man.

  “This way,” she said, hissing out the words.

  “Biddy?” Hastings was offended, she could see that. But she couldn’t have this conversation in front of the crew. Damnit, she didn’t want to be having it with anyone. But the plastic man had said the magic words and now it was time to watch his trick, whether she wanted to or not.

  She could feel the avatar’s smirk as he followed her to the door near the bar. The barman gave her a brief nod as she led him in.

  “This better be good,” she said, closing the door behind them. The room stank of stale beer and condensation oozed from the walls.

  “Good… or important.”

  Biddy realized she was grinding her teeth. “If this is just a trick to get me to listen to you…”

  “It isn’t. I have a… friend who runs the mineral mines on the moons of Haumea.”

  “This friend would be a member of the Knights?”

  “Could be, could be. He inherited the mining settlement of EndSat.”

  “Iona Beach.”

  “The settlement of Endsat, otherwise known as Iona Beach. The name given by those who settled it a hundred years ago. The artificial planet they built there around the moon Hiʻiaka. The locals called it after a tiny island on Old Earth. Some even called it Tirnanog. It was settled by the people of the Celtic Alliance until seventy years ago when EndSat was reclaimed by the Galactic Bank, representing the Knights.”

  “Thanks for explaining my own history to me,” Biddy said, annoyed by the whine in her own voice. She should have known better than to let this guy get under her skin.

  The plastic man blinked, then continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Since that time the EndSat has been run as a tourist destination for wealthy clients.”

  “And interstellar criminals.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “And the Celts have been fighting the longest legal battle in Fast Light history to get it back.”

  “Including your own family, whose entire fortune was invested in an attempt to recover the Iona Beach colony. The reason why you had to become a bounty hunter for the Void.”

  Biddy grimaced. “Scotclan prefer the word ‘Detective’. Bounty Hunter has kind of negative connotations.”

  “Is that so?” A drip of condensation fell from the ceiling and landed on the plastic man’s jacket.

  “We’re still happy to take a bounty though, should it be offered.”

  “Does that mean you’ll take this one? Iona Beach. Back in the hands of your clan.”

  Biddy avoided answering. She looked at the dead glass eyes of the falsebody. “This Augment. One man. How can he be worth all that?”

  “You know the answer.”

  Biddy sighed. “Because he is a God. Let me get this straight: if I don’t do this then I lose the only chance we’ll ever have at
getting Tirnanog back. It’s blackmail.”

  “Or an offer you can’t refuse. Come on, Mackay. Do this job, and your people get back what they’ve been trying to obtain for three generations. Do you really have any other choice?”

  Biddy didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  Chapter 2

  They had called him God. He had been revered by humanity. Then feared. Then they had imprisoned him. It was all so… impolite. And now the strangest punishment of all. They had made him disappear.

  The cargo hold stank of fuel, hot electrics and old sweat. Men with broad shoulders and heavy overalls worked at the machines, connecting cables and lifting metal. All these centuries of technology beyond the old Earthers’ wildest dreams and manual labor was still the easiest way to move awkward cargo.

  The God stretched his back. He was no longer 213. That wasn’t the sort of name that made you invisible. Now he was Lu Tang, a starfreighter mechanic from EarthSat 5. Lu Tang had had an unfortunate accident which had led to him having sections of metal plate implanted in his skull. This had the benefit of disguising the surgery that marked him out as an Augment, but it was a clumsy solution at best. At least his genes were sufficiently mixed that he could pass for someone of Far Eastern heritage. He was starting to run out of his emergency identities. What he needed was a new face, but those were not easy to come-by in this sector of the galaxy.

  After the total disaster that had been the Westward Ho!, he had managed to make it as far as the asteroid belt just outside of the Rodenberry system. He had blagged his way onto a starfreighter that was looking for laborer’s. The ship looked like it was held together by black tape and prayer. Two centuries since humanity had entered the age of Fast Light, and it was still frontier territory as soon as you got a couple of solar systems away from Earth.

  “Hey, these barrels won’t load themselves!”

  Lu Tang stared at the man who had shouted at him. The stranger was shaven headed, thick-waisted and had a serious tic under one eye. Lu Tang considered the merits of crushing his windpipe with a single, accurate blow. Then he reluctantly acknowledged that now was not the time.