Mercury (The Pendulum Arts #1)

Chapter 1

1 — Now

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Marvin Mercury is dead.

I should know. I killed him.

But the first time I hear the confirmation, I’m drunk on Raf Tagrian ale, and a couple of slum-bound cyborgs are duking it out in the corner of the bar. One guy has two bionic arms made out of scrap metal and sparking circuitry. The other has a state-of-the-art prosthetic leg—state of the art about six decades ago. Kicks and punches hit and miss, tables overturn, and half the bar crowd cheers when leg guy knocks one of arm guy’s makeshift hands out of commission.

I’d join the betting pool, but I’m not in the mood, even though my Axiom card has two million chits on it thanks to my accumulated back pay. I’m not in the mood because there’s a screen bolted to the back wall of the bar, out of the reach of the cyborg battle’s destructive path. And on that screen is a curvy woman whose eyes are heavy with black liner, a woman reading from a prompt who says:

“Senator Marvin Mercury was found dead in his home this morning by two of his personal guards. He was shot twice in the head with a psy-beam pistol. Nothing appears to have been stolen from his home. And, as of now, no terrorist group has taken responsibility for the senator’s death. The police are currently operating under the assumption that the murder was a contract killing, but they have thus far refused to release a suspect list.”

I down another shot of ale and rub my temples. I’ve had a lot of jobs over the last millennium, and not all of them have been squeaky clean, but the Mercury hit was a nasty affair from start to finish, most notably because it wasn’t a hit at all—it was a necessity.

If I’d known Kasha was going to throw me into this shit storm, I’d have flicked her off and dived back into my cryo pod. I could do with another century of dreamless peace. Especially now.

I lean back in my flimsy chair and peer out the bar’s shaded front window. The street outside is teeming with capital police. The pristine white uniforms stand out miles away in the dirty slums, and all who see them coming hide wherever they can. A few kids in a nearby alley hop into a dumpster I know is filled with waste from the neighboring butcher’s shop. A woman with a baby in her arms throws herself into an uncovered manhole rather than face Lieutenant Markov, who’s leading the police park.

The brutes systematically invade every building they pass. Five or so men break away from the group, bust down doors, storm inside, and, if they face any resistance, shoot up the place. I’d like to think most of them are using stunners, but my past experience with the Union police  has taught much about their methods: prisoners are taken only when requested, and witnesses are considered an “unnecessary liability.”

So it’s smart to run from the police. Smart to hide.

And it’d be smart for me to leave the bar right about now and locate a hole in the ground where the bastards will never find me. Except such a hole doesn’t exist. The capital is on lockdown. The dome shield is up. Two way. No one goes in. No one goes out.

If I were a better assassin, I’d have gotten the hell out of this dump before the sun rose, before Mercury’s perimeter guards walked through the front door and saw his body on the floor. I’d have swapped my face out for a more innocuous one using the latest nano-surgery. I’d have hopped on a transport to the Kieran Station and then boarded a ship to the outer colonies. I’d be a ghost now, camping out on some distant, nameless moon, waiting for the heat to die down. I’d be in the clear.

But I’m not a better assassin. In fact, I’m not an assassin at all.

So the police burst through the bar door to find me sitting at a table in plain sight, drinking ale and mumbling to myself in old Earth English. They surround me, guns drawn, and shout to their leader: “We’ve got him!” Then Markov storms inside, ordering the civilians in the bar to vacate the building immediately.