Second Chance Angel by Griffin Barber

Author:Griffin Barber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2020-06-19T22:10:04+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Angel

I didn’t like the Brethren.

They were nice enough people, friendly and polite. Generous. They seemed happy to share their food and water with Muck during the overland trek to the capital city, but . . .

They were a religion of people who thought that AIs like me were an abomination. I figured it wasn’t out of line for me to hate them a little bit in return. So when we shuffled into the capital, dusty and footsore, I couldn’t wait to slip away from the lot of them.

“We can just turn aside,” I said silently as we filed over the rim of the crater and down the roadway toward the central vegetation and Dugra landing plinth. “Just slip into one of these spaces between these habs squatting here and wait for a bit. Let them think we were a desert mirage.”

“Cute, Angel,” Muck said. “But you know I can’t do that. It would be rude, and they’d probably send someone to look for us.”

“Why?” I asked, instantly suspicious.

“Nothing like that. They care, that’s all. They would want to make sure we made it here, and would worry that we hadn’t.”

“Oh.”

“Look,” he said. “I’ll go talk to the Speaker as soon as we reach the central oasis. Then we can slip away. Remember, too, someone sabotaged that transport. Coming in with the Brethren is excellent cover.”

“If you say so.”

He was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. So I made careful note of every dusty, shadowy alley and side street we passed and made sure he saw them too. He started gritting our teeth, but I didn’t care. I just kept pulling our attention to the sides, while he did his best to ignore it.

I didn’t like being ignored.

From a distance, the “capital city” of Sagran VI looked like a poorly cobbled together afterthought of a place. Up close, it wasn’t any better. It resembled a high-tech shantytown, as listless, dirty faces peered out from the doorways of the dust-caked hab units that clustered around the central oasis. Eventually, finally, we reached the bottom of the crater and started marching through the dense greenery of the native trees. It wasn’t pretty, as the dust on the ground just turned to mud fed by a trickle of brownish groundwater pumped to the surface in order to keep the dust manageable.

The locals seemed to congregate here, pushing and jostling for position as they fought to fill various containers with water. It was marginally cooler in the shade, causing the crowds to cluster beneath the low-twisting trunks and their thick, broad leaves. It would have been a perfect place to slip away, if Muck was on board. Just fade back and blend in with the masses. A fact I was about to point out again when something caught my eye.

Not something. Someone.

Shock punched me in the gut, and Muck stutter-stepped in response to the erratic spike of adrenaline my lack of control flooded into his system.

“What?” he asked me silently. “A threat?”

“N-no,” I replied.

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