Joe Ollinger - 10,000 Bones

Diversion Books

A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

New York, New York 10016

www.DiversionBooks.com

Copyright 2019 by Joe Ollinger

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

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

For more information, email

Book design by Elyse Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates.

First Diversion Books edition February 2019.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63576-056-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63576-055-2

LSIDB/1902

FOR STELLAN

I n the middle of a pursuit, its easy not to think about what Im chasing. Remembering it, reminding myself how it all works and why, connecting all the dots that add up to a picture of a society that needs someone to do what I dothats the hard part. That comes later. Right now, I am focused. I need to be as inescapable as the harsh realities that put me here. Ive followed the busboy since he left the restaurant, first from a distance on my quickbike, then another three blocks on foot, into this crumbling, stripped-bare tenement in the Dust Pit. Hes glanced back at me twice. He sees me, sees my blue-and-black Collections Agent uniform. Im closing in on him as he enters the stairwell, and the tension is palpable in his stiff, quick pace, in the sweat stains on his white shirt, in how tightly hes gripping the to-go bag hes carrying. So far hes been smart enough not to break into a run. I should have stopped him sooner, but I wanted to see where he was going. Hes gone far enough.

Peeking into the stairwell, I dont see an ambush, just the busboys feet hitting the stairs fast and light. I bolt after him.

By the sixth floor Im closing in. At the seventh, he throws open the door for the hallway. And then Im on him.

I lean a shoulder in and hammer him into the wall. He deflates and falls in a crumple, but hes still clutching the to-go bag, trying to keep it and its precious contents away from me as he struggles to squirm free. I hit him with a deliberate but hard right elbow to the nose. Theres a crack, and his nostrils are smeared with blood. The fight goes out of him. I whip a zip-cuff out of a pouch on my belt, slip one end over his wrist and the other over the door handle, and pull them tight.

Suddenly hes not a fleeing criminal any longer, just another poor, malnourished kid who took a bad risk. Rising to my feet, I snatch the to-go bag away, open it up, and look inside. Just what I expected. The restaurants manager was right. The busboy was stealing.

Inside the bag are little gray bones. Probably from chickens, or maybe ducks.

Money.

The Brink Commerce Boards Collections Agency is the governmental entity responsible for recycling calcium and putting it back into the currency supply. Trade and charity never got around to fixing this rocks biggest problem, and over a hundred years after calcium was made Brinks official currency, it is still the legal tender. Like any legal tender, its what makes the world go round.

I work for the Agency in Oasis City, the larger of the two main settlements on the planet. Eighty-five percent of the thirteen million people who call themselves Brinkers live here, packed densely around a rare and increasingly insufficient underground freshwater source.

A relatively young colony, Brink has been trying to reestablish some identity for the last few decades, since its no longer the far edge of the frontier. It has been almost two hundred years since the invention of faster-than-light travel, and in that time, humanity has established a permanent presence on twenty-five worlds. Of those, Brink is far from the easiest to live on. Its gravity is close to Earth-normal, its temperature is consistent in the equatorial zone, it is tectonically stable, and it doesnt have the solar radiation problems some worlds have, but its short on water, short on benign flora and fauna, and fatally short on calcium. Now that it no longer benefits from the novelty of being at the edge of settled space, its like a last chance for gas station on one of Earths old, long highwaysa staging area, a waypoint to more promising, more hospitable worlds, like Farraway and Resolve and the unexplored systems closer to the galactic core.

I dont usually come in from the field until the end of my shift, but Ive got an afternoon meeting scheduled, which is convenient because my recovery from the busboy was big enough that I dont want to risk someone trying to steal the safebox off my quickbike.

The scanner recognizes me, and I step through the secure side doors into Dispatch. Its not busy this time of day. Only a few Agents are here right now, and most of the Dispatch crew looks to be out to lunch.

Myra spots me, and I walk over to her and drop my safebox on her desk.

Hey, Taryn.

How we doing, Myra?

Ehh, been worse. She shrugs. Shes a sweet girl, a few years younger than me, short-haired and slim, ever-alert, and somehow still not cynical after a few years with the Agency. Maybe because shes never worked the field. She lifts my safebox. What we got here?

Meat remains, I answer. The usual.

Anyone put up a fight?

I avoided pulling my gun so that I could avoid reporting the incident. The busboyAli Silva was his namecould be useful as an off-the-books informant. He could lead me to his buyer if I play it slow and let him off easy. So I dont hesitate before I answer Myra, Nah.

Want to watch me coffin it?

Always. Wouldnt miss the chance to chat you up. I flash a smile. Myra has had a bit of a crush on me since we met, and I admit Ive played a bit flirty with her at times, even after I told her Im not into other women. Its nice to be reminded that Im attractive. Ive got a good tan on the face, but I dont wear any makeup other than semi-permanent lip pigments, which are only slightly darker and glossier than my natural tone. Im in great shapehell, I should be, Im on my feet all daybut Im lean, only curvy in the hips. My Collections Agent uniform fits me snugly, and its armor padding is less than a centimeter thick, but its plain blue-and-black color is less than flattering, and my mid-length, dark brown hair is almost always a wind-blown mess.

Dont get a girls hopes up, Myra jokes. She punches in some data at her terminal, then picks up my safebox. Come on back.

The few other Agents and Dispatchers ignore us as I follow her past the other desks to the thick metal door in the far wall. The weevil locker is the most secure spot in the building, lined in reinforced metal and smothered by security cameras to protect the valuable materials within. The auto-lock reads Myras ID, and she puts her thumb on the scanner. The door slides open.

An electronic voice announces us as we step through. Ling, Myra Savoy. Dare, Taryn Corrine.

The door snaps shut, and I breathe in the musty air of the weevil locker. Its warm and heavy, regulated at a constant thirty-one Celsius and eighty percent humidity. The room is large but cramped, filled with floor-to-ceiling rows of deposit chambers. The ones near the entrance are the largest, about three meters by two, and they are all marked with a Restricted Access logo indicating that human remains are inside. Those recoveries are housed separately to respect the dignity of the bodies as they are broken down. A few of them look to be in use, as usual. The rest of the chambers, though, are a meter on each side, and are each labeled with the ID and image of a Collections Agent on a little electronic display. We make our way to one of them near the back of the locker, two up from the floor. Mine.