Chapter One
Tredd’s cover was blown.
He stood in a huge lounge on the 251st floor of the Twilight building, a Spit City landmark. Behind him, floor-to-ceiling windows offered a gaping view of the nearby buildings as they contrasted with the dark red storms of the gas giant, Heeg. In front of him, in the middle of the room, stood Daler Tait.
‘Tredd Bounty,’ Daler said as their eyes met. ‘Welcome to my lair.’
Daler had aged since Tredd saw him last. Silver streaks appeared near his temples and his stubble had started to grey out, but his sleeveless shirt revealed a strapping frame.
Tredd was surprised that Daler remembered him. It had been ages since the incident in Runcor.
‘It’s that obvious?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ Daler said. ‘Your fumbling electrician’s outfit fools nobody. I know a bounty hunter when I see one, and only Tredd Bounty would take a break from scavenging scum to harass a reputable businessman like me.’
Tredd stood silent and surveyed the room: grey walls, white furniture on shaggy black carpets, a few glossy control items with buzzing blue lights, and tall crystal vases holding pink flowers.
‘Things being different,’ Daler continued, ‘you might have been a useful ally. We could have been friends... but you got in bed with the wrong folks.’
Tredd shrugged, and took a few steps towards Daler. As he moved, he noticed a service robot following by his side.
‘Stop right there,’ Daler said.
Tredd did, and raised his eyebrows. His eyes fixed on Daler while he remained aware of the room as a whole.
‘Good boy,’ Daler said as he opened his arms. ‘You see, I’ve just installed a new S11 field in the middle of this room, perhaps two metres from where you stand—it will scorch you on touch.’
Tredd saw the force-field generators on the walls, and, while they were nearly invisible to the eye, he could sense they were on. Most force fields just bumped you back like a physical wall, but Tredd recognised that this was a nasty one, one that would cut right through a man like a sausage slicer.
Daler gave Tredd a sly smile before continuing. ‘My time is limited,’ he said, ‘so please, let us skip the formalities. What do you want?’
Tredd shrugged. ‘I’m here to pick you up.’
Daler snorted.
‘For FIST,’ Tredd added.
Daler looked agitated. ‘Blast it, man. I know what’s going on—my intelligence bots are at work as we speak, scanning the network for any activity regarding my businesses. I knew FIST put out a warrant on me and that you were coming with your old terminal... and here you are, trying to take me to them. But the question remains... why?’
‘It’s what I do,’ Tredd said.
‘It’s what I do,’ Daler said, mocking Tredd with an evil grin. ‘Still the soldier. Do you even know why they want me?’
Tredd had no idea, and he didn’t care. He was in it for the money that FIST, the private police monopoly in Spit City, would pay for his head. In addition, the warrant specified that they also wanted his body, preferably alive.
‘Of course you don’t,’ Daler mocked, ‘but you must know that I’m not planning on meeting with those smut-suckers.’
Daler’s face turned grave; then, from behind the table, he pulled out an assault rifle.
This escalated quickly, Tredd thought. ‘I wouldn’t…’
‘How stupid are you?’
So, that’s it for the smooth in-and-out approach, Tredd thought. ‘You got me... Now tell me whatever it was that made them want you.’
‘It’s complicated… like my marriage,’ Daler said with a dry chuckle. ‘Let’s just say it involves stakes bigger than you could ever understand.’
‘The city, the planet, the universe?’
‘All of them. And as a bonus, a superweapon.’
‘A superweapon?’
‘That’s why they want me. I know all about it, but I’m not going to take it to FIST. I’m a businessman, and I know an opportunity when I see one,’ Daler said as he narrowed his eyes at Tredd, ‘and that means it’s time for you to go. I like you, sport, but I can’t have you running around poking your bits into my bytes. Server, take him down.’
‘Taking down the intruder,’ said a friendly computer-generated female voice from behind Tredd.
Tredd whipped around and saw the service robot gliding towards him, as a small hatch opened on its forehead, exposing a narrow pipe. It was a standard security feature of any service robot—the ability to shoot a tranquilliser to neutralise an infiltrator.
In a flash, Tredd dove to the side, just barely avoiding the needle as it shot from the robot’s forehead. He yanked the gun from his hip and delivered a hot burst. The robot’s head exploded, leaving only a burnt black stub of a neck. The robot fell backwards onto the plush carpet, and its white lights faded to grey.
Tredd rolled on the floor and turned to Daler, firing a single burst at his feet. He had to get him alive, but he wasn’t going to get killed in the process.
The force field between them repelled the burst in a flash of white light.
‘You should have listened to me,’ Daler said, shaking his head. ‘I really liked that robot, and now I need to call the cleaning service.’ Then he raised his rifle again and smiled. ‘Well, why not make it a good mess?’
An alert sounded, a painful noise, and red lights started to flash.
Four heavy duty cannons emerged from the walls, the door behind Tredd opened, and three security guards stepped in, holding assault rifles, dressed in black body armour, including full helmets that completely concealed their faces. Tredd wondered whether they were human or android.
Tredd could hear Daler’s annoying laugh from behind the force field.
He drew a sharp breath.
He turned his mind inward.
His complete focus became the present as his being became the centre of the universe.
The security guards shot their assault rifles and the cannons fired, but just before they hit Tredd, all the blasts froze, suspended in mid-air.
Tredd had entered a time-lapse.
He called it by that name, but nobody else knew about it. It was his secret. Entering one felt like he could merge with every atom around him, blending in with the entire universe. As the blasts froze, the colours around him faded to a washed-out black and white. The shrill clamour of the alarm was gone, and for the moment he was safe. But he also felt the drain of energy starting and could see his body bleeding atoms like grey smoke into the air around him.
He had to move quickly.
Instead of a static wall, this force field was a high frequency scan, like a slicer sweeping through thousands of times per second. Now that Tredd was in a time-lapse, it had turned into a slow-moving horizontal line of energy moving up and down between the floor and the ceiling, its movement reduced to a crawl of ten centimetres per minute. At this speed you could see most of the force field was just empty space with a thin line of the slicer creeping about. Tredd’s movement, however, was unencumbered. The time-lapse allowed him to step into another state of being, something science could not explain—at least not the science Tredd had been exposed to, which wasn’t much.
Tredd started running towards Daler, but registering the guards behind him, he stopped and turned around. He pulled a tube of paste from his electrician’s bag and ran back to the guards. He quickly stuffed paste into the barrels of each of their weapons. There was not a second to waste. His heartbeat was already pounding in his brain.
He dashed up to the force field and bent down to slip below the slow-moving slicer. Then he ran up to Daler.
He set his gun to tranquilliser mode and positioned himself behind Daler, pressing the gun against the back of Daler’s neck, and putting his left hand on his throat. As he did this, he felt his stomach turn, a nauseating feeling of something coming up his throat in any second. The pressure in his head was building up, and he was starting to feel light-headed. It was time.
He released the time-lapse.
Behind the force field, the blasts from the cannons hit the floor, scorching the carpet on four spots around where he had stood. The first blasts from the guards’ guns turned into white light as they then hit the force field. The second ones made their guns burst in their hands—the paste had done its work. Grey smoke filled the space behind the force field.
Daler winced under Tredd’s grip.
Tredd whispered in his ear, ‘I’m your cleaning service,’ and pressed the trigger.
The shot passed from the gun into Daler’s neck, felling him instantly.
Tredd was now safe behind the force field, with Daler tranquillised, but at the same time he was trapped. He could not use time-lapse for a while, and the door behind the guards was the only way out. It would not be long until the guards could deactivate the force field and get to him. He pulled up his handheld terminal and pressed the recall button for his shuttle.
Come on, he thought, urging his shuttle to hurry.
The emergency ventilation sucked up the smoke through the ceiling and Tredd could now see the guards. He noticed one of the guards had fallen on the floor, and the two remaining ones were fumbling around behind the force field like headless chickens, hands bleeding from the exploded guns. One of them darted out through the door as the other one staggered about, cursing and spattering blood on the carpet as he pressed buttons on his communications device while eyeing Tredd. There would be more guards on the way.
Tredd could see his double-winged Perisher shuttle float into view behind the panoramic window. He pulled up the shuttle’s remote control, pressed a button, and said, ‘Perisher, activate manual control.’
The screen responded, ‘Manual control activated.’
‘Turn ninety degrees left.’
The shuttle turned, its white nose now facing into the room.
‘Move forward twenty metres.’
‘Your command would result in a collision. Please confirm.’
‘Yeah, yeah, confirmed, move forward twenty metres.’
The shuttle thrust forward and crashed through the glass wall. The collision delivered a shock wave to the building that almost shook Tredd off his feet. Shards of glass burst inside the apartment, and the sudden draft blew over the carefully arranged flower vases as it suddenly became very chilly.
‘Touch down and open.’
The shuttle set down on the floor, crunching broken glass under its landing gear. It opened the side door and lowered a flight of stairs.
Tredd put his hands under Daler’s elbows and started to pull him towards the shuttle. Daler was heavy, and Tredd felt small as he dragged his thick body beyond the force field and up the stairs to the shuttle. By the time he reached the door, he was panting; that was before he felt the sudden muscle ache—perhaps a tear—on the left side of his back. He grunted and straightened his back. It didn’t help, and neither did the sight of the security coming into the room.
‘Aw, man,’ Tredd groaned as he bent down to give Daler’s large frame one last pull.
Six security guards stood poised for battle. Their faceplates enhanced their voices to a boom: ‘Stop now or we will fire!’
The warning was clearly only a formality as shots of white flames immediately began bursting against the hull, stairs and door, fortunately missing Tredd.
‘Argh!’ Tredd cried out as he pulled Daler in and dropped on the floor, panting. His back hurt, but at least he had gotten in.
‘Close the door, close it now, faster, you stupid machine!’
As the door came down, blocking the wind and the noise of the alarm, it suddenly felt very quiet. The bursts from the guards’ weapons were barely audible as they rapped against the hull of the Perisher. Still, there was no time to lose. The Perisher, an economical two-seater with a lightweight chassis, was no fighter.
Neither, Tredd noticed, was the unconscious Daler. His own security forces had hit him in the right leg, turning his foot into a black mess.
Bet they’ll cut this from my pay, Tredd thought.
He jumped into the cockpit and lifted off. In reverse, he flew the shuttle out through the blasted window and swung it around before swooping down to the devilish maze that was Spit City.
END OF PREVIEW
