The Annihilation Score by Stross Charles

Author:Stross, Charles [Stross, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780356505336
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2015-07-01T23:00:00+00:00

We end up in a briefing room in a police station on Barn Street. At least it’s not a cell: that’s a hopeful sign.

We are not, it seems, expected to shoulder the blame for Übermensch going off his trolley, throwing six assorted vehicles around, upending an ambulance, severely injuring half a dozen Anti-Fascist Action members, and nailing a middle-aged taxi driver to the back wall of his home for the crimes of having been born in Peshawar and dyeing his beard with henna. In fact Officer Friendly is quite popular with the force hereabouts, having saved any number of his non-superpowered colleagues the trouble of having to tackle the aforementioned juiced-up thug themselves.

However, we’re getting rather less love for how we dealt with Anwar Kadir, a regular at the mosque and all around good egg – until he pulled out the extremely dodgy textbook, inscribed a summoning grid in the number two classroom, sacrificed a rooster, and got himself taken over by a class four manifestation (commonly known by the locals hereabouts as a Djinn).

The death of Mohammed Nasir, the unfortunate mosque committee member who let us in, is not going to be easily brushed under the carpet. Neither is that of Mr. Kadir, although the fact that he was throwing lightning bolts around at the time and threatening a Superintendent weighs in our favor.

But the steaming turd in the soup tureen is the fact that we went inside a mosque in hot pursuit and killed him. This is not good. In fact, it is extraordinarily bad. It would be bad enough if we’d done it in a church or a synagogue, but doing it in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in the middle of a race riot…

Paradoxically, what saves the day turns out to be the TV news cameras showing me stumbling out into the daylight with my arm over White Mask’s shoulders, both of us absolutely covered in gore. Mhari was right – my suit’s utterly ruined – but it takes very little effort to imply that I’ve been injured in the course of taking down a superpowered monster. Superintendent Christie simply arranges for an ambulance to back up to the front door and for me to be taken away on a stretcher. Mr. Nasir was not the only member of the mosque committee to be sheltering on the premises. When the Super invited them to examine Kadir’s little pentacle, there were many sharp intakes of breath. Then the imam picked up the book Mr. Kadir was working with – disturbing the crime scene, but we’ll let that pass – and started swearing loudly in Pashtun. It was not a copy of the Koran; it was not a holy book at all. In fact, it was very, very unholy indeed, positively unclean – and he wanted it removed from his mosque as fast as possible.

We (I am using the corporate “we” here: I, personally, wasn’t involved at this point in time) were happy to make it go away. The Laundry is always happy to expand its archives.

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