“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
