The Erkennen Job by Chris Pourteau

Author:Chris Pourteau [Pourteau, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub

The Alliance

“Amin!”

I could hear the anguish in her voice. I left her to it. I was more interested in the corpses at my feet anyway and why my stunner had misfired.

Blood from the three assassins leaked bright red into the gray muck. I kicked each in a kidney to make sure they were all good and dead. Not a grunt among them.

I noticed some of the resident Sewer rats poking their heads out of their holes. A few of them were pointing feeders our way. The Real Story gives those high-definition cameras away to anyone who wants one. They keep the show’s insatiable video feed streaming 24/7. It wouldn’t do to have my face all over the Basement, so I turned my back on the locals and knelt to get a closer look at the deaders.

They wore blue coveralls, all right. Two men, one woman. Nothing particularly remarkable about them, except … I picked up a weapon caked in gray shit and turned it over. A stunner, a Mark II by the looks of it. The Mark IIs were still pre-market. No one was supposed to have them. I was still carrying the Mark I, and reluctantly at that. But this new model—no one was supposed to have these yet. Hell I didn’t even have one.

That made me curiouser. I unzipped one of the fellow’s coveralls. Underneath, he was wearing finer sweat catchers than a Martian factory worker could afford. I looked at his shoes. Same story. These guys weren’t displaced Resistance types a long way from home. These guys—and one gal—were professionals.

“Mustafar’s dead,” Darrow said behind me. I could tell by her voice that her eyes were getting wet. “And for what? Why?”

That same desperate need-to-know from earlier. I glanced sideways over my shoulder. “These guys weren’t Ghosts.” I wrinkled a lip at the irony.

There was a pause. “Why do you say that?”

“Too well dressed. Too well armed. See those pieces?” I gestured at the stunners laying in the sludge. “Pre-market. Ghosts use the cast-off weapons they can scrounge from reclamation. No way they could get their hands on pre-market tech like this. I doubt these are even on the black market yet.”

“Maybe a patron—”

“He buy them silk undies too? And these coveralls—they’re thicker than you’d expect for factory grunts moonlighting as terrorists. A heavier weave. Dyed to look like Martian worker duds, but more than that.” Something tickled the back of my brain. Multiple things, actually, like puzzle pieces trying to fit together.

Darrow peered over my shoulder. “I see what you mean.” The no-nonsense marshal had displaced the grieving woman in her voice. “What’s that?”

“What?”

She pointed at the neck of the woman lying next to the man I’d unzipped. I reached over and pulled the gal’s collar down to get a better look. “Huh.” Those puzzle pieces seemed magnetized. They wanted to come together, but they weren’t quite ready to yet.

“Huh what…”

“That’s the Greek letter Epsilon.”

Darrow stared at me.

“You should read more, Marshal,” I smirked. “Epsilon is the Erkennen brand.

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