Rocket Age by Tales from the Rocket Age

Author:Tales from the Rocket Age
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Why Not Games
Published: 2018-05-19T22:08:03+00:00

Emancipation Knights

Ken Spencer

It was raining over Emancipation. Not water, water never falls from the sky here, at least not like back on Earth. Some wackjobs upset about Earthlings on Mars had blown up a freight rocket over the city and ash was falling all around. It whipped through the streets like snow and covered the Canal District in a greasy grey blanket.

The thirty crewmen dead up there wasn’t my problem, just the Silthuri lying face down in the canal. He’s why I got called out of a warm bed in the middle of the night. I stood outside the cordon of cops as two Julandri laborers fished the stiff out of the water.

Inspector Mullen waved me over. “You know this guy?”

“Yeah, that’s why you called me out.”

“How?”Mullen, sorry, Inspector Mullen had come out from Earth to teach the newly freed Martians of Emancipation how to do police work. He didn’t like Martians and didn’t like Mars, but the pay was more than a chief of police back on Earth. He also didn’t like private dicks, yours truly especially.

I didn’t like him either.

“Former client can’t tell you much else.”

“Try.”

“Confidentiality.”

65

Tales from the Rocket Age

We glared at each other. All two hundred and some pounds of meat going to flab stared down at my buck eighty of flesh going to booze. The flatfoots inched away and looked like they wanted to be anywhere else. All of them were Martians, and all from the former lower castes. They might be free, but master and master butting heads was trouble they didn’t want to deal with.

Mullen grunted and blinked first. “Stay where I can find you, and get outta here.” The sap still thought like an Earth side copper, which was the bluff I was angling. Emancipation was too new to have many laws on the books, and client confidentiality probably hadn’t made it in. Or not. Better have Roberta check on that.

I took one last glance at the corpse, tipped my hat to all and sundry, and slouched off back home. Dawn was coming in a few hours so I just showered and put on a fresh suit. A dead client wasn’t anything I wanted, and despite what I had told Mullen, ex-Prince H’illistat’s case was still open. The office wouldn’t be open until nine, and no one expected me there until ten at the earliest. That gave me some time to think.

H’illistat wanted me to find a woman, supposedly so he could pay back some gambling debt. He was in sad shape for a Silthuri, having pawned most of his gems and jewels just to stay fed and housed. He didn’t even have an entourage. Not that unusual on Mars these days, what with the Americans, Brits, Frenchies, Italians, Nazis, and who knew who else toppling city-states and setting up their own governments. Hell, when the Lincoln Brigade came and freed Emancipation nearly the entire royal caste got axed and the rest ran for the hills with nothing but what they could carry.

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