Wilkinson Under The Shell

An Agent Pilakin Mystery
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-908600-74-5
Verlag: Inspired Quill
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 392 Seiten

Engalise is a city under siege.
Without a government or the usual series of formal laws, relative peace is kept under the premise of the Ten Free Rights of the Individual.
Freedom Protection Agent Jaq Pilakin specialises in investigating violations against the First Right: life. As a freelancer, she's forced to pick up the less lucrative cases cast aside by the big agencies, and stumbles into a scene where an artillery strike by the besieging forces has left a plumber dead under the rubble.
As Pilakin digs deeper into the case, she finds a trail of murders - and a would-be murderer finds her. When she finally identifies the perpetrator, it turns out she holds Engalise's entire fate in her own bloodstained hands.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilkinson, David

Leseproben

Chapter 3
“Well, look who it is…” came a sneering voice as she arrived at street level outside the Southwind apartment complex. Her lack of breath, having climbed a further two hundred or so metres up a public stair, prevented an immediate response but using the Corporation elevator would have been half a credit. It was the same ape-man from Daskovich Biorendering, leaning against the van next to his partner who was filling in paperwork. He took Pilakin’s silence as an invitation to answer with his own observation. “It’s the ugly corpse-shagger. You want this one too?” He jabbed his thumb at the van and grinned. He seemed in better mood now he had a body in there. That was good. He might be more amenable to giving her what she wanted, although this would also mean swallowing the insults. She smiled rakishly. “That depends. I don’t just want any old muck, you know? Where did it come from?” “Out of a flat up on the outside of this building. Got hit by an Imp shell. He’s pretty cacked up, but whatever floats your boat I suppose…” “Seriously though, I’m a Freedom Protection Agent and I want that body…” “Whoa! You can’t just have him. We already got a contract with the widow. She said we could take him and chuck him in the vat. In fact she said a lot more, and none of it nice. Also, the lift is knackered. We had to carry him down seven flights, you know. They don’t pay us enough for this shit.” “Well, I’d like to buy the corpse off you then, and give you something for your trouble too.” Ape-man looked at his partner, who just shrugged. Clearly a man of few words. “Okay. I’ll call my supervisor.” They should give it to her. Buying and selling bodies was their core business. Even renting them – so that people could have their post mortems, funerals or… whatever… before taking them back to separate out the valuable commodities contained in the corpse. A decades-long siege of a city of millions meant that water, methane, calcium, hydrogenated fats and a hundred other body-borne chemicals had a profitable price. Even hair and teeth could be sold to those in need. In the City of Engalise, the value of a human body could be measured. “Boss says there shouldn’t be a problem,” said ape-man, his eyes twinkling with the prospect of his ‘tip’. “He just wants to know your name and Agent ID.” “Pilakin, 814159.” He relayed it to his boss and a few seconds later his face turned back to the thunder she had seen earlier. He snapped the connection with a sharp jab of his thumb and then punched the side of the van for good measure. “Shitting fuck!” “Problem?” inquired Pilakin. “Who have you been pissing off? Boss says you’ve been flagged. We’re not even allowed to talk to you.” “So, I’m not getting the body?” He turned away from her and told his partner to get in the van. Without another word, they pulled out into the crowds. Pilakin stood, flummoxed for a moment, watching the van barge its way down the lane that was supposedly for vehicular traffic. Of course the shortages meant there were very few private cars, especially out here in the poverty stricken rim. She tilted her head back to look up at the large edifice of the Southwind Building; a monument to that very poverty. She sighed and walked through the entrance, where the doors had either been stolen or sold. Ape-man had lied about having to carry the body down the stairs. She emerged from the dimly lit and foul smelling but free building-services lift on to the fourth floor landing. Despite being daubed with graffiti, the directory opposite was still legible and she turned in the direction of flat 4263. The doors to the apartments were sturdy plasteel. The designers, no doubt, would claim this was for blast mitigation should the Imps manage to hit the building. Pilakin was sure the residents prized them for their security. Regular Imperial artillery shells kept the outer ring of the City undesirable and thus poor. Yet, counter intuitively, the apartment buildings on the very outside were sought after thanks to their necessarily sturdy construction. Families who lived in them could shut out the anarchy, which was far more likely to kill them than a stray Imp shell. The occupants of flat 4263 were just unlucky. Outside it she found two Corporation security guards, there to protect the engineers who would be working inside the apartment. She showed them her FPA badge and, after a moment’s close scrutiny, they waved her through. Within she was surprised to find another Agent; Gregor Manstein. “Hello, Pilakin.’” “What are you doing here?” He shrugged. “You know how it is.” She certainly did. Independents without a reputation, like them, needed to investigate anything they could find and hope it turned into something profitable. All the juicy stuff was snaffled by the big agencies. He led her across the hall and through another heavy but pockmarked door into the main room. Temporary lights had been set up and cast an eerie glow across the scene. A hole about a metre across had been blown into the room. Pilakin marvelled at the exposed interior of the wall – plasteel encased concrete, almost a metre thick, with two layers of mesh inside. “Must have been a hell of a blast,” she observed. Manstein nodded. A City Engineer, who was looking out of the hole, turned upon hearing her voice. He nodded a greeting before sticking his head out and shouting, presumably to a colleague outside. “There’s another one here now.” Pilakin looked around the rest of the room. Dust, rubble and shards of metal mesh covered almost every surface. But it was clear that the room had been no palace before the shrapnel got to work. There was only one comfortable chair, which faced the hole. An old fashioned projector system showed the impact wall doubled as the television. There were also two dirty mattresses on the floor, with stained duvets and small bundles of children’s clothing for pillows. A low coffee table that had been heavily splintered by the explosion now rested against the far wall, completing the room’s furniture. “Only one person in the room when the shell hit.” Manstein consulted his slab, “Youal Fesh. He was sitting in the armchair.” The chair was riddled with pieces of shrapnel and mesh. It appeared to be soaked through with blood and, by the smell of it, urine too. Death had probably been fairly quick. Manstein continued reading his notes in a tired voice. “Crystal meth and cannabol user. He spent his days in here before making his partner’s life unpleasant in the bedroom at night. The kids slept there.” He pointed at the mattresses. “Are they okay? The kids, I mean.” “Their mother had them in the bedroom doing some maths lessons before she went to work. This building may look like shit but it’s built well enough that the blast was kept in here. They’ve got some ringing in their ears but that’s about it.” “And she just sold the body?” “Yeah. I think the Fesh family’s life is going to improve now the patriarch’s gone. Multiple Second and Third Rights violations have been filed but he always managed to get her to invoke the Eighth.” “You taking the case?” “I was about to pack up. Even if we ever got a prosecution out of it, the defence would show the victims’ lives have materially improved. Payout’d be miniscule. The poor bitch’d probably end up having to pay the Imps.” “Mind if I take it then?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Really? What are you working?” “Oh, it could be something or nothing about a guy the rubble from this lot fell on. Might be able to fold this one in too.” Manstein licked his teeth for a moment as he appeared to weigh up what kind of chances she would have in making a case. In the end he must have decided not much. “Okay. You can have it as a favour.” Not as insubstantial as it sounded – favours were real currency amongst cash-strapped agents. Manstein put all his crime scene photographs and case notes into a single folder and they bumped slabs to transfer them. Then, with a brief “See you around,” he was gone. Pilakin walked over to the hole and stood next to the engineer who was looking out. “Hi…” He looked and smiled at her. “Oh, hello. Do you want something?” She now saw they had clamped a platform, outside the hole, on to the side of the building and the engineer’s colleague was outside but tethered to some of the protruding steel mesh with a rope. Beyond that, about five metres away, was the ‘sink field’ – a black, charged plasma held in place by a strong magnetic field. It was there to absorb the energy from weapons fired by the besiegers outside. It encompassed the whole city inside its shell. “Mmm,” she replied, “I was wondering why this happened.” “Well, the Imps shot at us. Kind of happens in a siege.” “I mean, this is a reinforced building. Why did this shot blow a hole in the side where others don’t?” “The netting’s down. Look. Hey, Melissa! Show the lady the rip, will you?” The engineer outside walked to the edge of the platform and bent down. When she stood again, she was holding up a piece of netting, still hanging at one end from supports inside the field. Pilakin smiled as she looked at the non-ferrous gear the woman was carrying. She knew that standing that close to the magnetic field’s main intensity could be dangerous, but the netting...