Blade Runner: Black Lotus #4

Book excerpt: After escaping from Niander Wallace Jnr in Los Angeles, Elle, aka Black Lotus, has headed back to the desert, determined to leave her violent past behind her in search of redemption and a new life, free of bloodshed and death. But when Elle is bushwacked by a gang of desert bandits, she finds herself stranded in the backwater settlement of Fracktown, a town of two warring factions, one a community of environmental warriors, the other workers from a failing fracking mining site. Offered a safe-haven with the environmental community, Elle experiences peace for the first time in her short life. However, when Barnes, the leader of the fracking plant, has his Replicant workers withdrawn by Wallace Corp, he orders his men to attack the commune and kidnap as many of its inhabitants as possible to work as slaves at his site. Injured in the raid, the commune’s leader and ex-Blade Runner Miguel armed Elle with his katana sword and asked her to infiltrate the fracking site and rescue his wife and child, Nyoko and Kaja, from Barnes. As Elle set out to infiltrate the fracking plant she discovered a mass grave of Replicant workers murdered and dumped in the desert by Barnes’ right hand man and cousin, Koslov. Enraged by her discovery, Elle wrecked a terrible revenge against the frackers and rigged the fracking plant with strategically placed explosive devices. Rescuing the hostages, Elle returned to the commune, detonating the bombs as she left. In the subsequent conflagration, Koslov was hideously disfigured and in a blind rage ordered his men to rain hell down on the environmentalist’s commune and to wipe it from the face of the Earth…