Chapter 15 Garbage Disposal
Down on the street the refuse collector cursed the thick acidic rain, that hissed and spat aggressively, as it bounced off the surface of the heavily scared roadway. He drove the battered garbage compactor slowly down the road looking for refuse to recycle. He was running low on credits. If he didn’t find something worthwhile soon he’d miss his company quota and find himself without an enviro suit or roof over his head. He stopped, the rain sizzling angrily as it beat down on his cabin, and peered through the rivulets of water running down a windshield etched clean by the acidic fluid. Across the road he could see two or three scavenger’s huddled round something on the floor. A body perhaps? Whatever it was it must be fresh judging by the way they were fighting over it. He reached into his glove box and pulled out a revolver. A basic, but serviceable, gauss gun. Then did the mental math's to determine the cost benefit ratio of firing the gun to the likely value of the find. It was borderline, but worth a risk.
He slid silently out of the cabin, gun at the ready. His enviro suits hydroacidic coating deflected the rain harmlessly away as he aimed at the head of the nearest scavenger. He whispered the time honoured company liturgy under his breath. “No mercy or compassion for the weak.”
Then something remarkable happened. The clouds parted. Swirling away as if a giant vacuum had simply sucked them up out of the sky. Rays of brilliant sunshine breaking through, sending hissing columns of acidic steam spiralling crazily into the air.
The scavengers dazzled by the unnatural brightness of the light, living as they did for the better part subterranean lives, held their hands across their faces. Forgetting their victim for the moment as they stared transfixed into the now clear blue sky. A giant holographic image of the High Priestesses head and shoulders had been project into air high above the capital. While simultaneously being relayed through every media channel across the planet. The refuse collector looked around. Even the smog, that normally reduced visibility to a few meters in the dry season, had gone and he could see that several vehicles had stopped. Their occupants getting out and lifting their heavily shielded helmets off to get a better look at the phenomena above them.
Then the High Priestess, smiling warmly at them, spoke. “People of Malshenko today is a historic day Malstrom is no more. All its core assets, planets and people have been assimilated into the Brethren. Its enemies, the Vesperon, Haldyne and Zodan Corporations, have been defeated and their battle fleets converted to the faith. We, the Brethren, have ended their reign of terror, that for too long has plagued your lives. So now, in return, we ask you to embrace the Brethren and the everlasting peace and security that it brings. In honour of this auspicious day we will be waving the usual initiates fees and indoctrinating you, the citizens and employees of Malshenko and the former Malstrom core worlds and systems, into the faith free of change. The normal rates of tithes in addition to other company approved deductions and taxes will still apply. Our indoctrination squads are planet bound as we speak, to ensure that the faithful are rewarded and judge those who are found to be wanting. I trust you will not disappoint them. Farewell for now.”
The image vanished as rapidly at it had appeared. The clouds rolling violently back across the sun. Vomiting a thick torrent of merciless acidic rain as they thundered angrily at the unannounced intrusion. Huge globules spitting off the roadway with renewed vigour. He could sense the panic of the couple who’d stopped their roadster barely thirty-five meters away and taken off their helmets to look up at the sky.
“Poor bastards.” he thought. “It was probably the first and now the last time they’d ever seen the sun planet side.” As caught off guard by the deadly onslaught of the returning rain they fumbled frantically with their helmets. He watched one fumble and slip, their helmet skidding across the roadway as heavy droplets of rain burned and scared their scalp. The noxious vapours searing and blinding their eyes. They fell to the ground gagging and gasping for air, air that ate away the lining of their lungs. Their partner had panicked and made a dash for the car fumbling frantically for the key card to open it before they too were overcome and fell to the ground gasping, wheezing, foaming at the mouth as their lungs were reduced to toxic mush. Impassively he tagged the car and their bodies for collection before they’d even finished their death throws. Then turned his attention to the scavengers and the mystery prize.
Silently he squeezed the trigger of his compact, but deadly gauss pistol, shattering the helmet visor of the scavenger nearest him. A fine mist of blood and flesh spraying out onto the pavement, fizzing and spitting in the rain as the lifeless corpse fell. He loosed off a second shot before the first body hit the pavement striking the second in the back of the head where the spine joined the base of the skull. The third was already running by the time second body hit the floor, blood pumping out of the wound and into the gutter. Using the forearm of his other arm to steady his aim he took the third fleeing scavenger down with two carefully placed shots in the back. The job done he tagged and marked them for retrieval on his HUD and approach the mysterious prize they had been squabbling over on the pavement.
On closer inspection he could see a body in a matt black enviro suit huddled lifelessly on the pavement. He checked his HUD for movement and, assuring himself the coast was clear, knelt down for a closer inspection. The stranger’s suit was of better quality than anything he seen in years. The make and style was unfamiliar to him, suggesting an off-worlder. The suit would command a premium even with the scorch marks on the back of it. Which suggested, despite its flimsy light-weight appearance, it was one of the new generation armoured enviro suits he'd heard about. Carefully he rolled the body over onto its back for a closer inspection. He could see from the cut of the suit as he rolled the body over that it was a female. A firearm clattered onto the ground as her hand flopped lifelessly onto the hard concrete of the pavement beside her. He picked it up and examined it. It had the same matt black finish, the same off-worlder attention to detail and quality as her suit. It also showed signs of having recently been fired. There was another scorch mark on the chest of her suit. He examined the dimly lit helmet brushing the cloying rain off the visor for a better look inside. As far as he could tell she was a young woman with thick curly black hair.
It was then that he notice the thin film of mist on the inside of her visor, she was still breathing. He debated with himself for a moment, whether or not to turn off the suits life support there and then, and be done with it. She was going to be trouble whatever he did. He picked up her right forearm and checked for her suits inbuilt computer. Thankfully it was still there and still intact. It was more sophisticated than any he’d seen in a long time and was locked into a medical self-diagnostic mode that only gave him limited access.
He couldn’t access anything to tell him who she was or where she came from. She didn’t seem to be carrying any ident data chips, but it certainly didn’t look like she’d come here officially. He shuddered at the thought of what would happen to him if caught assisting an unauthorised off-worlder. Then stopped to consider what they would do to her, if they caught her, and finally how much they would be willing to pay him for her. He checked her medical diagnostics again, the suit seemed to be suffering a malfunction. There was no way anyone could have survived a fall from the height indicated. Yet her suit appeared to have absorbed the impact with little more than concussion and a few minor injuries that the suits inbuilt emergency medical nanobots had treated. He looked up into the leaden sky, perhaps she been in a fire fight and was pushed or jumped out of a passing shuttle in desperation, or fallen from a building. They were after all in the commercial quarter, so she could have been caught spying for a rival. In any case he needed to get her off the street.
He accessed the emergency medical program and managed to get it to keep her sedated till he was ready to wake her, so she didn’t come round at an inopportune moment. Then checking he was alone slung her unconscious body over his shoulder and carried her back to hi
s cab. He laid her carefully down on the bunk behind his seat, before throwing a few ragged old blankets over her, to hide her from view.
“So far so good.” he though as he went about the rest of his business throwing the scavengers and car occupants in the back of the compactor for recycling, having stripped them of anything of value first. Then he reversed his battered vehicle up to the roadster, activating his rusty maglocks, and winced. They groaned and squealed in protest, as they slipped into place, locking the now ownerless car into the towing harness. Checking everything was secure he set off for the depot to cash in his newly won prizes. He calculated that if he was frugal today’s score would see him through the rest of the rainy season. There was just one small fly in the ointment, her.
He arrived at the depot, making sure she was covered and sedated, before unloading and logging his claims. Payment was automatic for the corpses and the equipment recovered from them. There would however be a standard waiting period on the vehicle. After which, if it remained unclaimed, he would receive the scrap value less the holding fee. He shrugged and accepted it without protest, it was standard practice, even though he knew the roadster would be sold on for much more than that. The transaction completed and the agreed amount of credits transferred into his account, he slid into the cab, shifted into gear and started to pull out, but the barrier on the main exit remained down.
The duty guard stepped out of the control booth splashing through the acrid puddles of rainwater that had collected on the uneven surface. A semi-automatic gauss rifle hung at the ready across his chest. He rapped on the cab window. Slowly he lowered the window.
“You got a problem Max?” he asked casually as the guard stuck his helmeted head in the window the cab floor hissing in protest as the rain dripped off his helmet onto the rust caked surface.
“According to the weighbridge your weights a few kilos off what it should be, not holding out on us are you?” Max replied as he scanned the cab for irregularities. He winked at the garbage collector and cast a sly glance back towards the control booth before continuing. “I mean it must be hard. The day the Brethren arrive to enlighten us you get your best score in months. Only to discover you’ll now have to pay tithes on top of all the routine deductions, must be a bit of kicker, eh, professor?”
He took Max’s lead. He could see the shadowy silhouette of a figure in the control booth, probably one of those indoctrination goons, and laughed shaking his head vigorously. “I consider it a sign, a reward for following the faith, perhaps this will explain the discrepancy?” he rummaged around in the pile of blankets behind him, being careful not to expose her. Then pulled out a meter long, heavy, lead alloy bar. “I dropped a few of these in the cab after my last check in for when the scavengers get up close and personal. Cheaper and more profitable than using a gun, but feel free to do a search. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
He watched as Max glanced back at the booth, waiting for a signal, before nodding and waving him through, as the shadowy figure gave him the all clear and raised the barrier. He smiled and waved a farewell to Max, as he revved the engine and grinding through the gears made his way to what passed as home, in the murky depths of the capital.
The rest of journey passed off without incident and he made it home without so much as seeing a single scavenger or another vehicle on the rain sodden roads. It seemed like the High Priestess had driven everyone into hiding. He dropping through the gears gradually slowing to a stop as he passed under a long since abandoned rail bridge. Who’s rusting tracks disappeared into the upper levels of the disused steel rolling mill he called home. A budding entrepreneur had took over the abandoned building and converted it into tenements for the not so discerning public. Misfits and outcasts, in need of roof over their head. Five shuttered loading bays splayed out across the lower level. Under the railway that had fed the massive ore processor, the building once housed, with raw materials. He had number five on the far side of the building.
He turned the lumbering vehicle around and reversed up to the dented, rusty shutter, with the number five crudely painted on it. The number had once been painted on in black paint, but had long since ago faded to a sickly shade of dark grey. He jumped out of the cab and checked the tamper proof seals he had concealed on it were still intact. Satisfied that they were, he jumped back into the cab and activating the shutter remotely, waiting patiently for it to roll back reluctantly into the roof. Once he had enough headroom he began reversing into the dimly lit opening, barley waiting to secure the vehicle inside before calling the shutter back down. He sat there patiently, watching the bruised and battered shutter stumbled, stutter, and rattle loudly back into place. As soon as it was securely sealed he switched off engine and climbed out of the cab onto the cold, stained, concrete floor of the old loading bay.
A short flight of steps lead up to the raised concrete loading platform behind his ancient garbage compactor. Where, what had once been the glass fronted supervisors office, had been converted into a studio apartment with the addition of a small kitchenette. A sleeping area had been portioned off and blinds fitted to the glass fronted section to afford some privacy, not that he had any visitors. What had once been the male workers bathroom facilities converted into an en suite. A number of sealed crates and boxes, containing unspecified pieces of equipment, were stacked neatly on the platform, outside the spartan living area, that jutted out into the loading bay.
He open the door and stepped inside. Moving a table, littered with assorted papers and other items, out of the way. Satisfying himself he had a clear path to the worn faux leather couch in the centre of the room. Then returned to the cab to pick her up and carried her inside, carefully laying her unconscious form out on the couch. He turned to the desk, with a computer terminal that looked like it belonged in another century sat on top of it, overlooking the loading bay. Pulling the chair from under it, so he could sit alongside her. He made sure that he’d placed her gun on the table with him between her and it. Then picked up her right arm to check the suits medical diagnostic and, once he was satisfied, initiated a stim injection to wake her and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long, as with a low, long, soft moan, she came too. First feeling her helmet with her hands to check her throbbing head was intact, then checking for gun. Sitting bolt upright when she realised it was gone and looking around. Fixing her gaze on him she retracted her helmet back into her suits collar, allowing her black, curly, shoulder length hair, to spill out. She stared intently at him, the pupils of her soft blue eyes like two cold pieces of flint set in Topaz.
“Who the hell are you and where’s my weapon?” she demanded.
He detached his helmet from his suit and placed it on the table beside her gun and smiled softly. He looked to be in his early sixties, with rapidly receding grey hair, dark brown eyes and a not unfriendly, if somewhat prematurely, creased and wrinkled demeanour. “I was going to ask you the same question, at least the who are you bit.”
She eyed him suspiciously, noting the position of her gun on the table, making a calculation and deciding to play along for now. “Don’t remember.” she checked her suits diagnostics. “Must be concussion from the fall.”
“And what fall would that be?” he asked patiently.
“Don’t remember that either, but the suit says I took a fall and got concussed.”
He nodded. “So you just happen to fall out of the sky, just as I’m in the right place at the right time to rescue you, that’s some coincidence, don’t you think?”
It was her turn to smile. “Guess it must be my lucky day?”
He picked her gun up off the table and twisted it round in his hands examining it carefully. “So that’s it then, you haven’t got a clue who you are, who I am, or where you are, it's just one big happy coincidence?”
“That would be about it I guess.”
He turned the gun around so he was holding the muzzle and held it out the grip towards her. “You know what? An unauthorised off-worlder just h
appens to appear out of nowhere with a fancy suit and gun, just as the Brethren, Vesperon, Haldyne and Zodan turn up to fight over this miserable planet, I don’t buy it. I think we both know the score, your here to remove me from the equation one way or another and I’m tired of living like this so let’s get it over with.”
She took the gun off him and slipped it into her holster. He noted that the scorch marks on her suit had already begun to fade, as its inbuilt nanobots set about repairing its scared skin. Behind those not so incident blue eyes of hers, he could see she was calculating all the probable outcomes of their encounter, before speaking.
“Professor Erikson I presume, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” she held her hand.
He shook his head. “Let’s drop the formalities and cut to the chase.”
She retracted her hand and shrugged her shoulders. “Fair enough I guess. I was sent her by Tantalus to recruit you, extract you from the planet, and prevent you from falling into enemy hands.”
“Tantalus?”
“Federation of Free Planets Special Operations Unit, so secret most members don’t even know we exist. Our job is to deny our many enemies access to key strategic assets and wherever possible acquire them for ourselves.”
“And I would be a key strategic asset you wish to ‘acquire’ because?”
“You worked with Ford back in the day when he was a simple relic hunter, chasing down alien tech for Malstrom, before your own fall from grace.”
“Before I allowed my conscience to momentarily get the better of me and developed a sense of ethics, one that allowed one of my test subjects to escape.” he corrected and paused, staring intently at her before continuing. “So the question is do you want me to protect Ford or control him?”
“Insurance. We need to ensure that whatever Ford is, what he's become, and whatever tech he has access too can’t be used against us.” she replied flatly giving nothing away.
“And if I decline your generous offer?”
“Recruiting and extracting were considered to be the difficult part of this mission keeping you from falling into enemy hands is the easy bit.” she patted the gun holstered against her thigh as she spoke.
“Given my MO I hope you realise you‘d be dead before you could draw your gun, ‘child’, if I so choose” there was a cold, chilling edge to his voice.
She laughed and smiled at him. “It would be a calculated risk I agree, but if you we’re going to eliminate me you’d have done it by now. So my guess is on the balance of probabilities you’re going to take your chances with me.”
A message flashed up on the screen built into the right forearm of his suit. Silently he stood up unzipping it and allowing it to drop the floor as he stepped out of it, till he was left standing before her in just his vest and pants. “Get in the bed now.”
Her jaw dropped as she just stared at him in his less than spotless underwear.
“Just do it and keep your gun ready.” he snapped. “We’ve got uninvited guests.”
She nodded and slipped under the covers gun in hand. She’d barely had time to conceal herself when there was a loud bang of an armoured fist on the rusty metal shutters. Scuffing what was left of the paintwork and adding a couple of fresh dents. A gruff voice followed, grating against the ears, almost as much as the banging fist had grated against the metal.
“Indoctrination Squad open up in the name of the Priestess.”
Nonchalantly he strolled across to the computer terminal on the desk, slumped down into the chair and flicked on the screen. It revealed a grainy image of two members of the Brethren’s Indoctrination Squad, clad in white armour and carrying sawn-off pulse rifles, with pistols holstered on their right thighs. He picked up the battered, dusty mike, beside the monitor.
“A moment if you please gentlemen, you’ve just dragged me out of bed, don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt a man when he’s entertaining.”
He watched the one nearest the camera snort with derision. “Open up now old man and let’s see what sort of woman would debase herself by sharing a bed with you.”
“I bet it’s a stiff he found in the garbage he clears off the street, the dirty old pervert.” added his companion.
Erickson flicked a switch to open the small door set in the shutter to grant pedestrian access. He watched it close again behind them, before walking over the glass fronted door of his humble quarters to greet them. By the time he’d opened the door to his bedsit, they had made their way up the old loading bay stairs onto the platform. Kicking their way through his neatly piled crates, tipping them over as they went.
“What the hell is all this junk old man, are you a thief or perhaps a smuggler?” grumbled the one who’d called him a pervert.
“Never mind the crates, checkout the bed and let’s have a good look at the slut he’s been entertaining.” ordered the more senior of the two men as he pushed Erikson back into the room and against the wall, jamming the muzzle of rifle under his chin. “Trafficking people without a licence is a criminal offence, so don’t get any ideas about playing the hero old man.”
Erikson just smiled, casting a sidelong glance at the other man, as he disappeared round the partition that sectioned off his bed from the rest of the room. A few seconds later there was muffled gunfire, a strangled cry and the thud of a body hitting the floor. Moving with unbelievable speed he grabbed the muzzle of the rifle shoved under his chin with his left hand, crushing it with his bare fingers, as he bent it away from him. Reaching down with his right hand he ripped the pistol from his captor’s holster, tearing though the armour like papier-mâché, firing several shots into the astonished man’s groin, before throwing the pistol and rifle aside and grabbing him by the throat and lifting him off the floor with his arm outstretched.
He pulled the dying man’s still helmeted face against his own staring coldly into his eyes. “Nothing personal, but you did say no heroics. So how about brutal, but effective?” the armour crumbled under his ever tightening grip as he crushed the man’s trachea and tossed his lifeless body aside. He turned to the woman who had emerged from behind the partition that concealed his sleeping quarters and shrugged. “Being a professor of cybernetics, exobiology and nanotechnology, even a disgraced one, has it benefits. Now pass me my suit and help me dump their bodies in the trash compactor, we have work to do.”
She nodded without saying a word and tossed him his suit, as just as silently he slipped back into it. A few minutes later, after they had disposed of the bodies, they were left standing alone in the jumble of over-turned crates. Which the indoctrinators had left in their wake, when making their entrance.
“We have to go.” she said looking at him intently. “There’s bound to be more of them on the way. Just take what you need, copies of your research and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You know why I’m still alive? Why they didn’t kill me for failing to follow the company liturgy?” He paused and waited as she shook her head politely. “I have a unique photographic memory matrix. It’s uncopyable. They can’t take an imprint and dump it in a clone or a computer. So, so long as I keep everything I know up here.” he tapped the side of his skull. “And it has value, they have to let me live. However there are a few things we’ll need.”
He knelt down and picked up a small metal briefcase from the chaos and confusion of crates, boxes, and cases scattered around them. He pushed an upturned crate upright with his foot, dropped the case on it and opened it, pulling out what looked like some sort of small hand held injector. He held it up to the light checking a small transparent chamber in the centre of it and placed it on the crate beside them. He unsealed his suit and striped to the waist. Taking the injector in his left hand, he ran it over the skin of his right shoulder till it gave a resounding bleep and hit the button on top of it. There was a slight hiss and he winced at the sharpness of the pain. A small dark glass capsule, about the size of a pea, had been extracted from the fleshy part of his upper arm, along with a small amou
nt of blood, and secured in the chamber. He removed it and placed it in a small slot on the top of the crate and pushed a button next to the receptacle he’d just dropped it in. Then took a fresh chamber, containing an identical glass capsule, out of the briefcase. Calmly injecting it into his shoulder in place of the one he’d just removed, unperturbed by the low hum coming from the crate.
He placed the injector back on the crate beside the case. “Ident-tracker, everyone apart from authorised off-worlder's are required by law to have one fitted from birth. You can’t go to school, work, move about city, or travel to another one without it.” he loaded a fresh capsule into the injector as he spoke. “Unzip your suit and give me your arm, you’re going to need one of these if we’re going to get out of here, unless you have a better plan?”
She shook her head. “My exit strategy went to hell when my contact at the spaceport panicked and sold me out. I had to invalidate my suits warranty with that jump off the shuttle in the commercial quarter.”
As she spoke she unzipped her suit down to her waist and slipped her arms out, revealing two small, perfectly formed, firm breasts in a low cut sports bra. She held out her right arm for him to inject. His hand trembled slightly as he picked the injector up and ran it over the soft skin covering the firm finely tuned muscles beneath her arm. His eyes straying from her shoulder to her chest.
A thin, dangerous smile, crossed her lips. “Why don’t you do us both a favour and focus on injecting my arm?”
He coughed and cleared his throat. She winched as he injected the ident-tracker into her right forearm. He smiled as she covered herself back up.
“Now we both have new identities, curtsey of the couple in the roadster I claimed today.”
“And those would be?”
He picked up a small handheld scanning device from his case, not much bigger than a pen, and held it in his hand. It terminated in a small loop of metal that curved back on itself. The space inside the loop was filled with a thin film of some sort of transparent conductive polymer that, when passed over an ident-tracker, glowed blue and displayed the targets identity. He ran it over his arm and then hers. “I’m Alexander, a moderately successfully trader in the commercial quarter and you’re Janice, a professional escort who makes a living servicing people like me. Not ideal I grant you, but they’ll enable us to travel together unnoticed.”
He packed the equipment back into the briefcase and passed it to her. He bent down over the crate and checked the read-out on the receptacle he’d dropped the old ident-tracker in, gave a satisfied nod, unclipped the lid and threw it open. Thousands upon thousands of tiny robotic spiders came swarming out of the crate, each with a small ident-tracker embedded in its abdomen. They poured over the side of it, clambering over each other to get out, creating an undulating black blanket that streamed across the concrete, ran down the steps and oozed into the drain under the garbage truck before dispersing into the sewers beneath the city.
He saw the quizzical look on her face as he took the briefcase back off her. “That I’ll keep the bastards guessing, each one’s carrying a replica of my old ident-tracker. Now check out those two crates behind you. Take any weapons you think you may come in useful and suit up, our ride out of this place will be here in a minute.”
He helped himself to a particularly aggressive looking snub nosed silver pistol, as she rifled through the crates comparing what was available against her standard issue equipment. She picked up a small Kukri dagger and attached to her suit just behind her pistol before turning to the heavy weapons in the other crate, selecting a heavy plasma cannon. The weapon was designed to be strapped across the shoulders of the operator. Its weight and bulk counterbalanced, for ease of use, by an inbuilt antigravity generator and recoil damper, that allowed it to be aimed and fired rapidly with deadly accuracy.
“Nice choice the Kukri blade. It's loaded with nano-infectors that will rapidly infect and poison any wound, quiet and deadly, but why the cannon?” he gestured towards the weapon with his head.
She activated the antigravity generator and casually swung the long barrelled weapon over her shoulder like a child’s toy. “Sometimes, when all else fails, brute force is the only option.”
“Agreed, a time and place for everything, just keep it out of sight till it’s needed.” he looked down at the screen on his right forearm and smiled. “Our rides outside time to go.”
They closed and sealed their suits. The hermetic seals locking into place with a dull hiss as they powered up from passive to active mode, to provide maximum protection from the acidic rain that continued to pour relentlessly out of the sky. They stepped out through the same batter door in the steel shutter that the indoctrinators had used to enter and he sealed it behind them. Max waited patiently for them in the roadster that Erikson had left at the depot a few hours earlier. The torrential rain bouncing harmlessly off the hydroacidic coating that protected the bodywork. While a localised force field channelled the heavy, toxic droplets, away from the windscreen, to give the driver an unimpeded view of their surroundings.
She unstrapped the cannon from her shoulders and placed it carefully in the trunk before slipping into the back of car. While Erickson slid into the passenger seal alongside Max.
“Were you followed?”
Max grunted a negative shaking his head.
“Good give me your arm.”
Obligingly Max opened up his suit just enough to expose his shoulder. Erikson pulled out the injector deftly extracting one ident-tracker and swapping it with another. He held the glass bead up above his head between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it intently, before slowly crushing it. Rubbing his thumb and finger together till it crumbled into a fine powdery dust. Then turned around to Max.
“If anyone asks your Victor my chauffeur and bodyguard.” he gestured vaguely to the rear of the vehicle. “And she’s Janice my ‘escort’, now drive.”
“Where to?” asked Max.
Erikson linked his suits computer to the roadsters and flashed the co-ordinates up on the dash. “The apartment of the poor bastard, whose identity I’ve just stolen, seems as good a place as any. Till our ‘friend’ back here has figured a way to get us off this miserable ball of rock.”
Max nodded and accelerated smoothly away from the dilapidated building towards the commercial quarter. As the building receded into the distance Erikson lifted up his right forearm and tapped a code into his suits computer. The ground trembled under the roadster as the shockwave from a large explosion washed over them. Flames billowing out of the ground floor of the old ore processing plant. The shutters disintegrated, blowing a cloud of shrapnel across the deserted street. She watched impassively through the rear window as the aging bridge, carry the disused railway into the upper floors, buckled and collapsed into the street below. Gray clouds of dust intermingling with the orange balls of flame erupting from the base of the building.
She turned to face Erikson. “What happened to your new found sense of ethics? There were innocent people in that building you know.”
“My dear child, you won’t believe the things I’ve had to do to survive, since my fall from grace. Beside don’t try telling me the innocent never suffered collateral damage as a result of something Tantalus did. The authorities would have ‘sterilised’ that place once they realised we’d escaped. So the way I see it we did them a favour. Now I suggest you focus on finding us a way off this planet, before you outlive your usefulness.” he said dispassionately without so much as a second glance at the smouldering ruin they'd left behind.
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning on spending a second longer on this miserable rock with you than I have too. Even if it means walking into the main spaceport and blasting my way onto the nearest ship with that fragging plasma cannon of yours.” she snapped.
He smiled back at her. “That’s the spirit, collateral damage.”
Exiles Page 31
