Running On Empty

By Bill Blais

In 2136, humanity makes its first proven alien contact. In 2137, James Herrick is framed for killing it.

Herrick is a small-time criminal with a streak of bad luck and an attitude to match. Past his prime, he depends on biomechanical upgrades to give him an edge, but upgrades are expensive -- even on the lax-lawed planet of Gidae -- and he's already dodging his mechanic's enforcers when he gets framed for killing the alien.

Now, Herrick must outrun not just the enforcers, but the local police and the intergalactic military, not to mention whoever framed him in the first place. His only hope is a do-gooder scientist who believes the alien is still alive and who must gamble on Herrick having a conscience after all.

Herrick couldn't care less about aliens, intergalactic politics or even doing the right thing, but to save his own skin he'll have to make an exception.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Blais
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311753038

Bill Blais

Bill Blais is a writer, web developer and perennial part-time college instructor. His novels include Witness (winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Fantasy) and the first two books in the Kelly & Umber series. Bill graduated from Skidmore College before earning an MA in Medieval Studies from University College London. He lives in Maine with his wife and daughter.

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Running on Empty

Bill Blais

Running on Empty

First Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Bill Blais

www.billblais.com

Cover art copyright © 2014 by Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe

All rights reserved.

http://www.hideyoshi-ruwwe.net

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Also by Bill Blais

Kelly & Umber series

No Good Deed

Hell Hath No Fury

The Devil You Know (coming 2020)

All Prophets are Liars series

Witness

Other Titles

Have Mech, Will Travel

The Revisionist

Fragile

Dedication

This book is dedicated to missed deadlines, broken promises, and how hard it is to give up when someone believes in you anyway. Thank you, Mary.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 1

Oh, please, Phyllis groaned.

What? It's a classic government cover-up, Cyke said. All the way.

Does anybody else want to talk, Phyllis groaned. Herrick? Some random mall shopper?

Herrick smirked as he pretended to look at a rack of T-shirts in the novelty shop. He'd only met Cyke, Phyllis and Rankin a couple weeks ago, but he already knew better than to get dragged into one of Cyke's conspiracy theories. Phyllis seemed to enjoy pushing his buttons, though.

Okay, listen, Cyke said, his words interspersed with chewing gum. You remember that bomb at that observatory out on Fola II a couple years back? The one they blamed on the Earthers that killed everyone in the lab?

Of course. What's that got to do with anything?

Just wait a second. So the GF told us it was a dirty bomb, right? Well, what they didn't tell us is it was one of those bio-engineered bastards, the kind they keep telling us can't ever be made because nobody has the tech or anything.

Oh, for crying out loud, Cyke.

What? Cyke continued. You think the quarantine was put up to keep things in? Uh-uh. It was to keep everybody out. The GF put the spin on that whole thing faster than you can spit. Why? Because we had no defense. People would go nuts if they had a clue the government was even experimenting with this stuff!

So you're saying the GF planted a dirty bomb to kill civilians as an experiment?

No, see. That's just it. Fola II was really a Federation research lab, not an observatory!

What about that crazy Earther who confessed?

He was just a dupe, Cyke said. Ask anybody. The GF dumped everything on him when the experiment went kablooey and hit the nets.

Ask anybody? Like who?

I got a friend who knows a reporter who was there, Cyke said, obviously excited by her interest. He saw the bodies. There wasn't a scratch on any of them. He said the GF threatened to lock him up and throw away the key if he ever told anyone.

Phyllis snorted. And the one person in the whole universe he told just happened to be your friend?

Yeah, Cyke said, either unaware of, or ignoring, her taunt, but totally encrypted, though. The GF is years behind on top-end encryption stuff. It's almost embarrassing, actually.

Herrick again glanced over the racks and across the open mall hallway. The target and his goons were still in plain sight in the chocolate store. There were two in the shop with the target -- who looked to be buying a year's supply of over-priced chocolate -- and two more standing by a cart that sold mugs and towels with images of Gidae's famous two-sun sky. Those, plus Fatty and Stupid in here, were it. Herrick sighed and flipped through some more T-shirts. This was so stupid.

Whatever. I still don't see what this has to do with the Ketyl.

What? Cyke was incredulous. A dirty bomb kills everybody in a top-secret GF research lab -- without a scratch on them, remember -- and then two years later we get another case of a bunch of dead bodies, also totally unharmed? You think that's coincidence? Not a chance.

Not a chance? Are you high? Phyllis was laughing. That's got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say, and that's saying something.

What do you mean? It's right there!

Right there? You're telling me you actually believe there's a connection between the Fola bombing and the alien?

No, that's just it, Cyke sounded triumphant. There is no alien. It's another GF cover-up for more--

Okay, Phyllis interrupted. I'm done.

Because I'm right and you know it.

Because you're an idiot and I'm done talking to you.

So you think it's crazier to think the GF is secretly developing biological weapons than to believe that a shape-shifting alien showed up out of the black, nuked the entire crew of a KNA patrol ship with a single missile, had himself a press conference, and then disappeared to some secret location under government protection for the past eighteen months because he caught a cold? That doesn't scream cover-up to you?

Cyke, it was on the news. Everybody saw it.

It was on the news; it must be true, Cyke mocked. I bet you think flu shots are for keeping you healthy, too.

What?

Oh, come on. Everybody knows they're the easiest way for the government to track us. One shot can carry trillions of tracers, any one of which can be tagged by a halfway decent RFID scanner. You walk into a store or a restaurant or a starport or whatever and Beep! Beep! Here I am, Big Brother! Just out to pick up my milk and --

Enough. Rankin's rough voice in their ears cut the conversation short. Countdown from 118, 117, 116. Mark.

Herrick checked his wrist automatically. The embedded digital display matched Rankin's count, with the local time readout beneath it: 26:28:05.

Mark, he said.

Mark, said Cyke.

Mark, said Phyllis.

Good, Rankin said, Give me status. One?

Herrick lifted up a shirt with the slogan 'My parents went to Gidae and all I got was this lousy T-shirt', but his eyes were focused out in the mall beyond.

Target still in the chocolate store on the corner, he said softly. Goons still spread around looking obvious.

A loud, cheap remake of an Elvis tune began to play off to Herrick's left, followed by a barking, choppy laugh. He rolled his eyes.

Two of the bodyguards had wandered over into the novelty shop when the target had first gone into the chocolate store. Herrick had initially skimmed the exit routes again and alerted the team for a possible abort, but the guards had ignored him completely.

Instead, the heavier one had followed as the tall one worked his way around the store, through fake vomit, pop-up snakes in peanut cans, double entendre board games, and the endless collection of over-the-hill themed birthday cards as if he was fourteen years old.

Now he was laughing that stupid laugh at a fake mounted fish flipping its tail to the recorded music.

Stupid and Fatty are still in here with me, Herrick muttered. Over.

Two? Rankin said.

Cyke popped a bubble of his gum. Got a chemical fire over in District Four, a gang fight in Three, and two domestic disturbances in Seven. Nothing here, though. All the mall cameras are running the loop I made from last week and I'm ready to drop the lights and lift the locks on both exit paths. Over.

Three?

The rent-a-cops just passed by so we've got another twenty minutes, minimum, Phyllis said. Other than that, the lot's quiet, the van's warm, the exit's clear, and I'm ready to roll. Over.

And I'm a hundred meters from the Exit Path A, Rankin said. Alright, we've got 96 and counting. Everyone's got the plan, now stick to it. And remember, comm silence from now until rendezvous, so stay sharp. Over.

Herrick rolled his eyes as he put the T-shirt back on the rack. Rankin was taking this way too seriously. This was a no-brainer; a quick snatch-and-dump, that was all. Kidnapping was definitely a pay-grade up from the other crap work Gleason had been doling out, but it was still brain-dead work -- courier runs, break-ins, intimidation; the kind of stupid junk he'd run since he'd been a kid.

The problem was, he hadn't been that kid in years.

That made him think of Fulger and he scowled at the rack of T-shirts.

Jackass. Thanks to that idiot, he was not only down two brand-new retractable aerofoils, he was down the money for the botched job they'd run for Scratch which was supposed to have paid for the damned things, and Scratch wasn't big on refunds or excuses.

On the other hand, at least he wasn't dead, like the kid.

His own idiot fault, Herrick grumbled to himself. And because the kid had been such an idiot, Herrick was now stuck here, on a job he was pretty sure he shouldn't have anything to do with. It was a cakewalk with a nice payoff, which was almost always too good to be true, but he needed the money and it was possible that the job was as stupid-simple as it sounded.

The goons were goons, even down to the painfully obvious dark glasses and suits they were wearing inside the mall, and the target looked like somebody's accountant or something, probably up for ransom or being squeezed for dirt on his boss. They didn't have a name for him, just a visual which they'd only gotten from Gleason yesterday -- a short-ish, balding, Norwegian-looking guy with a weak chin -- that wasn't in any of Cyke's databases.

Rankin had complained about that, but it was fine by Herrick; even when a job paid well, it never paid well enough to know.

As the countdown passed 60, he scanned the area again. The target was still buying out the chocolate shop and the goons still in their spots. Around them, the mall was pretty quiet with only a half-hour left to closing on a weeknight.

Herrick sighed. In and out and over with. If it went south, he had the apartment in Ödegaard.

Excuse me, he said, maneuvering between the goons and towards the rear of the shop. Stupid was laughing at an over-sized squirting flower gag now. Fatty was obviously not as into the gags as Stupid was. He wheezed tiredly as he let Herrick by.

It took some doing for Herrick not to yell at both of them to at least try to do their jobs. A bullet for each one would be best for all concerned.

At 30 seconds, he was crouched behind a stand of old movie posters at the back of the shop, tightening the laces on his reinforced shoes while his legs powered up from idle to active. Stupid and Fatty were between him and the exit now, but they wouldn't know what hit them.

He pulled the hood of his exosuit up from under his jacket as he thought about how he was now trying to pay for upgrades he'd barely used. No upgrade was cheap, particularly not illegal ones like Herrick's, and now he was on Scratch's bad side twice over after that botched job at the scientist's house. Herrick had been dodging the master mechanic's collection flunkies for weeks until he could scrape up the money. Which brought him to the mall and this damned job.

His jaw tightened. Stupid Fulger.

Adjusting the fit of the thin, wetsuit-like material of the exosuit under his chin, he again thought about selling it. It would cover what he owed to Scratch, and it was his backup in case Scratch caught up to him and Herrick didn't have the money, but it had gotten him out of more scrapes than he could count and he didn't want to lose it.

He had found the exosuit almost by accident during the trip from the Middle Eastern colony of Jadid Misra to Emirene, one of the smaller, semi-independent outpost hubs. A guy on the ship had been acting like some kind of playboy, chatting up a different lady each night. Herrick had ignored him until he'd overheard the guy at one of the bars bragging to some bimbo about how he was a security agent for a celebrity going incognito on the ship. Herrick hadn't believed a word of it, but the bimbo was eating it up and that -- plus the fact that the guy liked expensive clothes and platinum bracelets and spent money like water at the bar -- had made Herrick decide to lighten the man's load a bit.

Casing him back to his suite had been no problem and neither had been getting inside when the guy went out for another night and another floozy. There hadn't been much worth picking up, though, mostly just expensive clothes and a bit of jewelry in a drawer. He'd almost missed the exosuit hanging at the end of the closet like just another suit.

Herrick had almost left right then. The guy apparently hadn't been lying, after all, which meant he was a bigger fish than Herrick wanted to be mucking with.

He was also an idiot, though, leaving it right there in plain view. Exosuits could stop a bullet at point blank range or the stab of just about anything short of an atomic knife. The material stiffened up in the area right around an impact, turning into a protective shell. It still left a hell of a bruise and it couldn't keep up against full-scale automatic fire or bigger artillery, but it did help against tazers and the like, diffusing the energy somehow.

They were mostly used by the military, but Herrick had seen a few on bodyguards for bosses or, sometimes by the bosses themselves, depending on the level of paranoia. They were also worth more than Herrick had made on jobs over the last couple years, yet there it had been, begging to be taken.

He had managed to wait, though, even putting the jewelry back where he'd found it to avoid attracting suspicion. After the ship had docked in Emirene, he'd followed the guy from the baggage carousel to the cabs. When the idiot actually took his bags into the men's room to splash his face and slap on some more cologne, he'd practically given Herrick permission.

He had intended to hawk the suit for the considerable credits -- easily his biggest single score, and totally out of the blue -- but the more he thought about it, the more he realized how useful it would be. He and the playboy had been about the same build and when Herrick tried it on in the bathroom stall of a fast-food restaurant after making sure he was clear, it turned out to be a good fit. A bit short in the arms but good otherwise, and keeping it had turned out to be one of the smartest choices he'd ever made.

His legs blinked 'Ready' on his wrist display. Below it, the countdown ticked away: 8, 7, 6 . . .

He frowned and quickly pulled his night-vision wraparounds. Smart choices hadn't been his strong suit lately.

Adjusting the fit of his gloves, he got up into a runner's start and watched the timer run out.

Chapter 2

What the--?

Fatty and Stupid hit the ground about the time Herrick used his momentum to launch the first goon in the chocolate store over the counter. The second goon had barely reached his gun when Herrick kicked him square in the stomach, knocking him through a glass shelf display and into the wall.

People had begun to call out in the darkness, but without any mall alarms going off, there was only a vague confusion.

The target had dropped to all fours and was trying to scramble away. Herrick snapped the Kevlar-coated black bag from his pocket with one hand and grabbed the target's leg with the other, hauling him back.

No! Please!

The target squirmed, but Herrick knew the drill and was already yanking the drawstring closed when the bullet caught him in the shoulder. His exosuit kept the slug out, but it didn't stop the impact from shoving him right over the target, who was still struggling in the bag. More bullets shot through the space he'd just vacated, shattering glass and blowing holes in the thin walls.

He cursed himself for being sloppy