Live and Let Kill by J.S. Morin

Author:J.S. Morin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643551463
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press

The tunnels wound through a maze that Brad might never understand if he lived half his life down here. But since he hadn’t any intention of setting up shop on Birmingham for another sixteen years to make that come to pass, he relied instead on his guides.

Most of this place had been mines once, and the unproductive, exploratory drillings had been less conducive to excavation than the veins that left habitable spaces in their wake. The crew bent low and traveled single file, all but Keeli who only had to duck a little. Farley led the way with the instincts of a lifelong asteroid dweller. Ambo trailed behind as a rear guard. As the one most likely to get himself lost, Brad kept to the middle of the pack.

“Shh,” Farley warned as he emerged from the narrows and stepped aside to usher the others out behind him. Everyone came out ducking for cover and using construction debris for shelter.

Not every surface of the mine had been converted to dwelling space. Yet. While these weren’t the lowest reaches of the asteroid—those regions were still actively extracting minerals—this part of the complex was among the more recently abandoned by the miners. It hadn’t taken long for construction rights to get bid off and workers to swarm in.

Of course, no one was building anything right now.

Economic troubles, Devin had said.

Instead of becoming a residential district, the site had become a cheap slum and would remain so until construction resumed.

“That the guy?” Farley asked. He’d been looking through digital binoculars and handed them to Annie. Brad couldn’t see a damn thing except where a few open-air cooking fires violated about a million rules and tenets of enclosed-colony living.

Annie didn’t need too long a look. “Yeah. Fuck him.”

There hadn’t been much of a plan going in. Annie had showed up crying that afternoon. Her sister had ended up at the free clinic after a money dispute between her and her pimp got violent. They’d kept her alive, but free medicine wasn’t going to help her walk again or fix the teeth the guy had knocked out.

When the gang had started brainstorming ways to scrape together the money she’d need, it was clear that none of them had any experience planning jobs for real terras. They’d gone to check on Annie’s sister—Brad suspected that Annie’s honesty wasn’t exactly legendary among her friends—and it was clear that they were going to be needing money with zeroes trailing it like ducklings.

It was Brad who’d pointed out the obvious. “We go after the guy who put her here.”

No number of pickpocket jobs and snatch-and-grabs of convenience stores was going to pay for that much surgery before authorities caught up with them.

“Lemme see,” Brad said to Annie and accepted the binoculars. He saw the sleazeball in the fur-lined trench coat leaning against his tiny, tunnel-friendly hover. He scanned left and right. He’d have checked upward, too, but there wasn’t much upward to be had around here. No one was guarding this guy from a tenth-story sniper perch when a vaulted stone ceiling loomed six meters overhead.

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