Fire Fight by Chris Ward

Author:Chris Ward [Ward, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMMFA Publishing
Published: 2018-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

14

RAYLAN

The Tolgier’s blasted body was already starting to stink, bowels that were far larger than those of its human master-species opening up on death. Raylan tossed his photon blaster to the floor, then called for some servants to remove Leon-Ar’s body and find an incinerator or dung heap somewhere.

First, he had them search the body. The chip was in the palm of the Tolgier’s hand, and Raylan gratefully dropped it into a pocket of his robe. He really did appreciate the Tolgier making good on his mistake, but a mistake was a mistake, and if you got too soft, your enemies would use you as a trampoline.

At least, that was what another warlord had told him, shortly before Raylan shot him in the back.

‘Prepare my shuttle,’ he shouted to another orderly. ‘I leave for Abalon 3’s surface immediately.’

The chip was a welcome bump in his pocket, one he looked forward to setting to profit right away. As he headed through the corridors to his shuttle’s launch site, he opened up a local web connection on the computer fitted into his left wrist and made sure all his documentation was in place. In a hundred locations he had requests to purchase contaminated land in position, some already filed under false dates that would be updated immediately upon the virus taking effect. Trill System’s law required the first serious offer to be given first refusal on any land agreement, and Raylan was a step ahead of any other mining operation in the system.

Soon, he would hold a complete monopoly.

He boarded the shuttle and headed for the surface. For a few brief hours they were caught in orbit while a firestorm raged, appearing out of nowhere as they often did, so by the time a break in the impenetrable wall of flame and heat allowed the shuttle through, he was desperate for food, and also for the toilet his shuttle didn’t have.

Landing in Avar, the closest spaceport, he made his way to his private apartment block and called his advisors to gather. As he followed moving conveyor belts threading through thick glass tunnels designed only for off-worlders, while outside the tubes the adapted Abalonis walked freely in the air, he dreamed of the coming day when the useless dirt farmers would be no more, and the ground would open up to release its treasures. Only then could Raylan begin the completion of his true plans.

Scorched, they were, the silver of their metallic bodies quickly blackened by fallout from the firestorms that raged every few days. Even here in Avar, with its giant steel net and sprinkler system, the surface was regularly burned clean. Houses were stumps in the sand, mostly underground, with only a few fire-resistant tower-pyramids reaching defiantly into the sky.

His private apartment suite was in the tallest tower, and was the only area of the building with windows.

Replaced since his last visit, he stared down at the battered spaceport while waiting for his advisors to arrive. In the streets, the Abaloni

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