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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Everybody knows you can't transmit anything living between planets and habitats--just dead, inert matter. A secret agent gets killed in the rebel-infested Beltway and his body is 'mitted to Earthome. He arrives alive. He knows why, and both the government and the rebels want to know too.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Challenging Destiny, 1999
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2002

66 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [87 KB], eReader (PDB) [35 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [22 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [21 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [71 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB], hiebook (KML) [85 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [53 KB], iSilo (PDB) [18 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [23 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [51 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [34 KB]
Words: 6477
Reading time: 18-25 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Graham Eckinian sat in a darkened pub corner, facing the door. As he waited to rendezvous with the Beltway OSA courier, he again mentally checked his fly-fishing gear inventory, ready for the return trip to Earthome, and retirement.

Without warning, a beamer bolt slammed into him, turning his nerves into tendrils of fire. He screamed in his mind, but his body didn't listen. His body arched back at an impossible angle and he twitched as nerves overloaded by the beamer bolt discharged like lightning.

He fell to the floor. Someone screamed. For a moment, Graham smelled blood and urine, then nothing. His body jerked again and again. With each uncontrolled spasm, he heard his bones crunch and grind. But the sound came from a distance and receded, as if he drifted away from the source.

The scream he heard, his own, also faded until it too came from somewhere, someone, else.

The pain reached a crescendo beyond which he sensed death. He ceased to struggle, to protest.

His vision blurred. Light and color coalesced into a bright spot in the center of his vision. The universe dimmed, until only the spot remained. The bright light intensified for a moment. Then it too faded, winked out.

"What's your hurry?" the night shift transmitter tech told the OSA agent. "He won't complain." The tech nodded toward the long, narrow box in the center of the brightly lit 'mitter receiving bay. The white plasteel box had no labels, but it was clearly a casket. The tech had read history, knew what a casket looked like. But he'd never seen one. It gave him the creeps, and his bravado masked superstitious fear.

The stony-faced agent signing the manifest receipt pad made him nervous too. Orthodoxy Security Administration spooks always did. They were the ubiquitous strong arm of the Orthodoxy, the pervasive state religion, enforcers of official righteousness. They killed for the greater good.

They all had hard, shifty eyes behind mod Gormand Trillin shades. They wore shiny white shoes, neat conservative suits, a comm jack behind one ear, and the ubiquitous bulge under an armpit not quite concealing a .38GV Gunnison hand beamer.

"Just following orders," the agent said. "Like you." His lips curled in a humorless smile.

Another agent stood alert by the door.

"Yeah, right," the tech muttered, shifting from foot to foot. He was curious about why OSA had used a public 'mitter rather than their own, but he had no plans to ask. The sooner the spooks left, the better he'd feel.

The agent before the tech nodded to the agent by the door, who whispered into his comm and a plain white Isuza cargo skimmer backed silently up to the cargo door. The skimmer was clean, new. It had tiny exhaust baffle caps that made all government motor pool vehicles stand out in a crowd, and an OSA shield on the door.

The skimmer rear door slid up and two more agents, near twins to the two in the bay, emerged. They secured a dolly under the casket front and rear and rolled it into the skimmer, entering with it. The door slid shut, and the skimmer pulled away into the night. The process took seconds.

The tech breathed a sigh when the skimmer left. He wiped sweaty hands on his coveralls. "OSA transmits dead body to Earthome from Beltway," the tech muttered, imitating a tabloid headline. He looked again at the manifest receipt. "#081942-AA, fro: OSA BelTC to: OSA ChsTC, 0130 16Mar0445." Ident marks, time logs, security locks all checked.

"Okay," the tech said, "not my business." He tossed the manifest aside and turned back to the tabloid screen.