by T E Olivant
“It was when we did the first miracles.”
“Miracles?”
“Any technology to those that do not understand it can appear miraculous. We gave humanity the stars. That was our miracle. Now you have a chance to pay us back.”
Biddy flinched. “I will think about it,” was all she could think of to say. As she let herself out of the room, she saw the God watching her. His eyes were dark and unreadable.
Chapter 32
The wall thumped in a constant rhythm. Lu Tang ignored it. He had made his decision, for better or worse, and now he had no interest in the prisoner next door.
Would Mackay come to his aid? If she had been a true member of the Faithful he would have been fine, but trust his luck to come up against an atheist.
Religion. It had worked so well for them at the start. It had seemed perfectly natural that the humans would worship beings that were so much more advanced than they were. But it had ended badly. They had moved on, forgotten their Gods like some long-dead relatives that no one cared about even if they were happy to live off the inheritance. Mackay hadn’t even cared when he’d told her about the missing Augments. Humans were a parasitic lot all right. Happy to take what they could get but unwilling to help when they were needed. He would be perfectly content when the whole lot of them burned.
There was a scraping noise from the cell door and the food hatch opened. Crude technology, but effective. A hand pushed a tray through, then the panel locked shut once more.
Lu Tang wasn’t hungry, but he went to collect the tray anyway. A square of some sort of protein ration and some pseudo-fruit. Not exactly his favorite kind of nutrition, but it would keep his body adequately fueled. There was still a good chance that he would have to fight his way off this ship, so it was important to be prepared.
He sat down with the tray on his knee and picked up the protein square. Underneath was a small black datapad. He stared at it for a moment. The protein square was chewy and he worked it around his mouth, masticating it into submission. He swallowed. Then he very gently laid the tray beside him on the bed. He looked around the cell. There must be cameras there somewhere, but he couldn’t see any. Well, he had to trust that whoever had sent the datapad also knew that he was being watched. So the decision had been made for him.
He picked up the datapad and switched it on. A message lit up the screen.
Continue to Eritree immediately. Let nothing stand in your way. You must save the lost ones. Remember, this is the only way to heal yourself.
The screen went blank once more, and try as he might he could not turn it back on again.
He picked up the pseudo-fruit and bit into it. It was sickly-sweet, on the edge of becoming rancid. But he managed to swallow it down anyway.
How dramatic, he thought to himself. It was rather a disappointing move from the Voice. Lu Tang had always detested the need for drama. And yet, the message itself could not be denied. His family was waiting for him on the planet below. Sometimes he felt like he could sense them down there, dreaming their terrible dreams. He would save them. He had spent too many decades being alone. It was time for that to change.
He put the datapad back on the tray. Should he try to conceal it? Probably. He stared at the black rectangle. Who had placed it on the tray? Someone working for the Voice, he supposed. Did that mean that he had an ally that he didn’t know about?
Someone on this ship was trying to help him. Could it be Macleod? She seemed the most likely option, but wasn’t she still locked in her cell? It certainly wasn’t the Detective, unless she was very good at double-bluff and Lu Tang didn’t think she had the brains.
Someone on the crew, then. Bad news for Mackay. The young Detective probably thought she was in charge. Idiot human.
The datapad had told him only one thing then, that there was an agent of the Voice onboard the ship. Did that mean he could count on them for help? Possibly. But it could just as easily mean that there was someone checking up on him. Making sure that he didn’t back out of his agreement. And there would be consequences of that, he was sure.
And if Mackay decided not to help him? Well, he was still a God. He had plenty of ways of getting humans to do exactly what he wanted.
Chapter 33
“What did the Augment say?” Elvis asked as soon as Biddy closed the cell door.
“He wants my help.” Biddy watched the tube lighting strobe across the engineer’s stubble. “He thinks that a group of Augments were imprisoned years ago by the gangs of Eritree. Put in stasis or something. He wants to get them out.”
Elvis frowned. “You’re not planning on helping him, are you?”
“No. At least, not unless he comes up with a decent plan and a more convincing story. But I’m not ready to hand him over to Scotclan yet either. Can you put a call through to Campbell and stall for time?”
“Sure. I guess he’ll be happy to talk to the ship’s Captain.”
Biddy rolled her eyes. “Acting Captain.”
“Sorry!” He held his hands up in surrender. “I would hate to upset you.”
“Never stopped you before.”
“Well, you have a God, a member of Scotclan and the Captain of your own ship in the cells,” Elvis said with a wry grin.
“And do you have a point?”
“No, no. I mean, don’t get mad and lock me up too.”
“Not very funny,” Biddy hissed at him, rubbing her temples. She was so tired it was getting hard to think. The Augment’s story had just confused things even more. She had gone into this mission thinking it was all about the demise of the Westward Ho!. But if she were to believe the God then it was actually about something else entirely. The wrongful imprisonment of innocent people.
“Can I be honest for a second?”
Biddy sighed. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what was coming next. “Sure.”
“Are you treating this guy differently because he’s a God?”
Biddy’s spine stiffened. “Of course not!”
Elvis turned his handsome face towards her. “It’s just that the evidence stacks up against him. Plenty of reputable sources think he was to blame for what happened on the Westward Ho!. Scotclan themselves even think he did it. Don’t you think if this was any other suspect, you’d have sent him for judgement already?”
“That’s unfair,” she said.
“Is it? You’re risking a hell of a lot for this guy. Your career’s already on thin ice after you came up against Campbell down on the planet. If you help the Augment you’ll lose your badge.”
“I know. I’m not planning on helping him. I just want to get to the bottom of all this. Between what happened with Macleod and the Augment’s stories about the lost Gods, I just can’t let it go yet.”
“I don’t want to see you hurt.” Elvis had moved so that he was close to her. A little too close. She could smell his aftershave and feel the heat from his chest.
Biddy took a step backwards. “I’m the ‘tec here. You don’t have to worry about me. You just have to follow orders.”
His charming smile turned down at the corners. “All right, I get the picture. I’ll just head back to the command room and await instruction.” He turned around and strode down the corridor.
Biddy let out a breath. Damnit. Elvis hadn’t deserved that. She needed someone to keep a check on her. And the truth was, she was risking everything by even considering trusting the Augment. And yet there was just something about this case that itched at the back of her neck.
Even from the first moment she agreed to take the plastic man’s money, she had had reservations. It just all felt a little too staged, a little too unreal. An Augment escapes a facility where he has been imprisoned, and no one will tell her what for or why. Next he commits a terrible crime so that he can be arrested and thrown into prison once more. All for what? Scotclan didn’t have an answer for the Augment’s motive. And Lu Tang’s own reasoning was just as farfetched. Were there any Gods hidden down on the planet, w
aiting for someone to come and save them? It didn’t seem possible.
Her datapad buzzed. “Yes, Geek?”
“Francesca’s been fielding calls from Scotclan and Eritree. How did the interview with the suspect go?”
“It was rather… interesting.”
“You’re not handing him over then?”
“Not just yet. Listen, I need you to do another research job for me. Did you start checking out the Council of Eritree?”
“Of course, as soon as they accosted you on the surface. It’s much as you would expect. When the mining gangs became more powerful they installed themselves as proto-governments. It’s happened all over the galaxy. The Eritree Council are no different from the others, except they have a reputation for ruthlessness. Not many people complain about them but that seems to be because anyone who comes up against them disappears down a mine shaft.”
“Noted. I want you to keep looking at them, and any other factions on Eritree, but keep your eyes out for any connections to the Augments.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“Lu Tang or whatever his name is… wait, he said he used to be called Kepler. Stick that name in the search. Actually, I’ll get Kenzie to do that one. Lu Tang said that there are 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 feel a hot itch at the back of his neck and his hands kept clenching into fists. His testosterone and adrenaline readings were in the danger zone and he didn’t seem capable of lowering them. Was this how humans felt all the time? How did they ever get anything done?
The door slammed open and Lu Tang looked up wearily. What did the Detective want now?
“Stand up you old bastard!”
It wasn’t the Detective. It was the voice from the other side of the wall. An old woman about half his size who was brandishing what looked like a section of metal door. She was covered in some sort of dust. Had she tunneled her way out?
“You must be Macleod.”
“You lied to me.” Her eyes were wide and staring like she had overdosed on some sort of rage hormone. “You said you would fight the stupid Detective. Why didn’t you?”
“I weighed up the possibilities and took the most sensible decision.”
“Bloody Augment.”
“Indeed.”
Macleod stepped towards him. Lu Tang wondered what had happened to the people in charge of the cells. Shouldn’t they be rushing in to save him? Another example of lax command from the young Detective. He would have to admonish her about it later.
“I want you to tell me
your name,” Macleod said, advancing in his direction.
“You know it. Lu Tang.”
“That was what my bosses told me. But I got to thinking about it when you betrayed me earlier. What cowardly Augment would treat a person like that? I’ve known several of your kind over the years. I can smell out a corrupt Augment at a thousand paces. And that’s why I want you to tell me your name. Your real one.”
He could have lied, of course, but he wanted to find out why the woman was so irate. “My name is Kepler.”
There was a crash as she slammed the metal strip into the wall beside his head. Despite himself, Lu Tang flinched.
“Kepler! I knew it was you. The bastard that killed my men on Petrichor.”
Petrichor. It rang a distant bell. Something to do with Saturn, around the time he got his radiation burns. He couldn’t remember much about that time other than fire and pain. Lots of pain.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said.
“Oh yes you do. I never saw your face then, but they told me you had been reconstructed. You helped the Knights attack the station. You claimed to be helping our people at first and we trusted you. Of course we did, you were a God! But then you used all that information against us, worked with the Knights to break down the station’s defenses. It was down to me to stop you. If I had let the Knights win then the Clans would have lost everything. So instead I had to make a sacrifice. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. The men understood what they were dying for, but if it hadn’t been for you it wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Lu Tang wished she would just shut up and attack him. Her words were jumbled in his aching head. Had he worked with the Knights? He vaguely knew about the organization. Rich humans in silly robes, but had they attacked a space station? It was just so hard to remember.
“The Detective will be furious if you kill me,” Lu Tang said, stalling for time. He looked around for a means of escape, but Macleod was blocking the door.
“That little twerp? I’ve crushed girls like her without stopping to wipe my boots. No, I’m not worried about Mackay one little bit.”
