James Swallow: Fallen Angel

You always suspected something like this was going on, said a voice inside her mind. And now you know for sure.

The older man was talking. “We don’t want this,” he snapped, gesturing sharply at the suit. “I have a wife and a daughter in Lima! A life! I did not agree to come work for thieves and kidnappers!”

“Now, wait,” said the Asian man. “We should hear them out-”

“No!” The voice of the grey-haired man rose to a shout and he stepped toward the suit, shaking his fist. “You have no right, you have taken us against our will! This is a criminal act! Release us now!”

“We were informed this gentleman would be difficult,” said Khan, with a sigh.

“Yes…” said the executive. “I had hoped he might change his mind. But I see that is not so.” Something passed between the man in the suit and Khan, a sly look and a turn of the head.

It was enough for the mercenary to draw his pistol, and in one smooth motion, place it on the old man’s chest and pull the trigger. The gun barked and the grey haired man was thrown back against his cryo-capsule by the blast.

The fixed, machine-like smile on the executive’s face did not waver in the slightest. “Would anyone else like to contest the details of their new contract?”

Faridah’s hand flew to her mouth and she recoiled from what she had seen. The casual brutality of the execution made her gorge rise, and for a long second she felt like she might throw up. An edge of panic in her movements, Faridah scrambled to her feet and sprinted away back up the ramp, back toward the parked VTOL.

She did not see Khan looking up toward the spot where she had been hiding, his brow furrowing as he parsed the sounds of movement gathered by his aural augmentations.

***

“So, the damage is not as bad as it looks,” Evelyn began, as Faridah raced up the Osprey’s drop ramp. “I think

we’ll be able to make it back to ArcAir without any more-”

“Spin it up,” Faridah broke in, before she could finish her sentence. “We’re leaving.”

Her friend saw the pallid cast to her face. “Ri, what is it? What’s wrong, did that asshole Khan do something?”

Faridah frowned, the echo of the gunshot still ringing in her ears. “I saw…,” she started to speak, but she

couldn’t say it aloud. “We… We’ve got to get out of here right now!” The words had barely left her mouth before a low, skirling alarm tone sounded, and the shadows of men in

ballistic armor appeared on the ramp, moving swiftly toward the landing pad with their weapons drawn.

As the Belltower troopers drew level, the Osprey’s twin rotors were already chopping at the air. The downdraft beat hard at them, making it impossible for the troopers to draw a bead on the aircraft. Still, they opened fire, ten-gauge blasts crashing from the muzzles of their Widowmaker shotguns.

The VTOL lifted off with a full-power surge to the engines, kicking up a small hurricane of dust and loose debris that blinded the troopers and covered the aircraft’s escape.

***

“They were firing at us!” Evelyn gave Faridah a hard look, her voice rising. “Why the hell were they trying to bring us down?”

“Did you hear the shot?” Faridah’s gaze was fixed on the view out of the cockpit. “Before?”

“What?” Evelyn’s expression became one of confusion. “Look, if we just go back there, you can explain all this, right?”

Faridah shook her head, angling the Osprey to thread the needle through a suntrap in the upper deck of the city complex. “That’s not gonna work.” The aircraft dropped through a wide open void in the pangu and fell into the shadows of Lower Hengsha.

Evelyn heard the firm refusal in her friend’s tone and was silent for long minutes. As they turned inbound toward the artificial reef and the ArcAir landing strip, she found her voice again. “Faridah, what did you do back there? You can tell me. Was it something about that cargo?”

People. There were innocent people in those containers. The words pushed at her lips and she wanted to shout them out loud. Murder. We’re party to kidnapping and a cold-blooded murder. But instead her throat

tightened and she found she could not speak. Faridah was suddenly very aware of the implant in her skull, feeling the false weight of the augmentation as if it had grown heavier because of what it now carried. There, in the memory buffer of her black box, was the footage of Khan executing the Isolay scientist. A killing caught in motion. She could not unsee it.

All she had to do was blink-click the right series of commands and the footage would replay in her mind’s eye. The gunshot. The old man’s rag-doll body hurled away by the blast. She felt sick again.

Faridah shuddered and shook her head. “We…have to land.”

***

The Osprey came down on the south pad and Evelyn unstrapped, climbing out of her seat to face her. “Talk to me,” she said, raising her voice to pitch it over the sound of the rotors as they slowed to idle. “I’m your friend, I’m in this with you. Remember? You and me against the world, right?”

“Right,” Faridah replied, in a weak voice. But still she said nothing. An icy chill filled the pilot’s gut, the color draining from her face. After what she had witnessed, could she put her best friend at risk by sharing that knowledge? The Belltower troopers had been coming for her; but Evelyn Carmichael was just someone who was unlucky enough to be friends with a reckless, foolish woman whose conscience had pushed her over the edge.

Faridah looked up, out of the canopy, and her gaze found Jai Cheng. He stood on the flight apron near one of the jets, and he was staring right at her. He had a vu-phone pressed to his ear and in his expression there was absolutely no hint of the friendly, affable guy Faridah had got to know over the months she had worked for him. In that second she realized her grave mistake in coming back to the ArcAir landing field.

Cheng was talking to them right now, she knew it instinctively; on the other end of that call there had to be someone from the Red Arrow demanding the head of Faridah Malik on a platter.

“I’m sorry…” She said. “Ev, I’ve put you in danger.” “What are you talking about?” said the other woman. Faridah did not get the chance to reply. There was a clanking sound from the rear compartment and she

turned in her seat to see Lau climbing into the cargo bay.

Lau was what passed for security at ArcAir, and both Faridah and Evelyn had learned early on to avoid him. A former go-ganger from the bad side of Beijing, he was all angles and foul moods, his shorn scalp covered with violent tattoos depicting fiery dragons and monstrous animals. Barely contained by the mock-leather biker’s rig he wore, Lau had a tricky manner and a thuggish attitude. “Hey,” he said, addressing Evelyn. “Cheng sent me. Wants

to talk to you.” He pointed out on to the apron. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

“You should do what he says,” Faridah said quickly, before her friend could protest. “It’s okay.”

Evelyn gave her a suspicious look. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll see you in debrief?”

“In debrief, yeah,” lied Faridah. “Be right there.”

Lau waited for the other pilot to step off the open drop ramp and disappear out of sight, then he pulled a

compact MAO automatic from his belt loop and aimed it into the cockpit. “Good girl,” he sniffed. “Now don’t make me put a bullet in that pretty guilao ass of yours. We don’t want to make this any harder than it has to be.”

“No,” said Faridah. Her hands were still on the controls, and outside the Osprey’s pitched rotors were still turning lazily.