He nodded and started herding Merry towards the exit. He ducked down and put Fred’s arm over his shoulders just in case. “Yes, and not a moment too soon.”
Merry smacked into the railing on her way off the belt. Vlad made some comment about whiplash and helped Fred off the belt. Fred wobbled, but appeared mostly able to remain upright. Jayne mentally scanned everyone’s bags as they got off the belt.
Vlad handed each person a ticket. “Merry, stop gawking. Fred, you have time to get a ginger ale before we depart. Do it. Jayne, here’s your ticket.”
The gang boarded the Central Line. The train looked like an aerodynamic metal sausage, which resulted in plenty of jokes from Merry. Although relatively low-frills, the interior boasted faux leather seats, dining screens on the window blinds, and complimentary kava dispensers embedded in four pillars.
Merry shoved her equipment overhead before rushing to the nearest kava dispenser. Fred limply stored his gear and practically oozed into an aisle seat. Vlad took the window seat next to Fred.
Jayne muttered to herself, “Fred’s dying. Vlad is sober. Merry is horny. And I’m…” She didn’t know what she was. Especially not in that moment. It was all so overwhelming, all she could do was shut her eyes. She recentered herself. She took a deep breath. “And I’m the best damn spy in the universe.” She opened her eyes and smiled. “Let’s do this.”
+++
The sudden spike in confidence lasted an incredible seventeen seconds before Jayne was nervously pacing up and down the train aisle. At this point, she felt like she had walked the length of the train car at least a million times. She’d been experiencing weird surges of energy, mixed with bored restlessness and pockets of calm. She fidgeted her way into the aisle seat next to Merry.
Merry dropped her tablet onto her lap and nasally teased, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How ‘bout now? Are we there yet?”
Jayne curled up in her seat. “Point taken.”
“Why so wound up, Jayne Fucking Austin?”
“No idea. Just bored I guess.”
Merry unleashed a laugh so full-bodied, she snorted.
Vlad’s head appeared on the top of the seat in front of them, resting on his folded arms. “Is there livestock onboard? Oh, it was you, Ms. Winterbourne.”
“Wow. I think what we have here is another example of why Vlad crashes and burns with the ladies. Anyway, Jayne, we've been on the train maybe five minutes.”
Only five minutes!? thought Jayne.
“Do you mean to tell me you suck that badly at entertaining yourself?”
Jayne shrugged her lips. “I don't know. Maybe?”
Merry pushed the Shutter button, which darkened her window and offered the option to look at a menu. “When's the last time you ate? I'm fungry. Looks like they got normal train food, but…”
“At the very least, it will force you to sit down,” Vlad offered.
“Thanks, asshole,” Merry responded on Jayne’s behalf. “Dude, they have chocolate-covered cinnamon bears!”
Fred and Vlad rotated their seats to face Merry and Jayne. Fred lost most of his greenish tint, but he looked utterly drained. “I could eat.”
The gang used the console to order up pizza subs, pickle chips, ginger ale, and chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. Merry pressed the button on her chair that lowered a movie screen. “How do you guys feel about Kill Them All #47: Kill Them Some More?”
Vlad grunted in amusement. “Why am I not surprised you’d be into such a testosterone fest, Ms. Winterbourne?”
“I know, you can tell I’m the arthouse type.”
“What merits would that cinematic masterpiece have? Scintillating dialogue? Universal themes and a feel-good premise?”
“Yes. Plus, hot guys and explosions,” she said in her best sultry voice. “What’s not to like?”
Jayne raised her fist in solidarity. “Preach it! Oh my god, Aaron Ledbetter was sexy in Number 32!”
Merry loaded the movie. “Wasn’t he? His character comes back in this one. They introduce his brother, who’s really the villain and way hotter.”
“Nuh-uh!”
Merry nodded with absolute certainty.
Vlad mocked Merry’s gestures and salivating tone. “Oh my god, Fred! Aaron Ledbetter is sooooo hot! I think I, like, lost 70 IQ points just listening to this!”
“That would put you at negative 300,” she scoffed back at him.
“Which is exactly the amount of intellect needed to appreciate the Kill Them All movies. Oh, excuse me. You’re being governed by a more southern body part when you watch those movies.”
Merry looked away from the screen. “Excuse me, Vlad. Do you have brains in your butt?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘Do you have brains in your butt?’”
“No?”
“That makes you a dumb ass.”
“Get a room! Always the bickering with you two. Only the praying mantis has a more cutthroat mating ritual.”
Merry crinkled her nose with disgust. “Wait, what are you saying?”
Fred smirked, “It was pretty obvious to me.”
“Glad to know you’re feeling better,” Merry snapped at him.
Their food arrived. Jayne helped the server get their food off the cart.
Vlad cleared his throat and raised his bottle of ginger ale. “I’d like to propose a toast. To our first trip as a family.”
Fred, Merry, and Jayne clinked bottles with Vlad. Jayne felt a little more relaxed as she drank her ginger ale. Fred’s burp punctured the pleasant stillness of that feeling. She frowned slightly.
“Hey Jayne?” Merry interrupted her thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t paced this whole time.”
+++
Theron Techcropolis Gateway Building, L45, Theron Techcropolis, Armaros
24 hours earlier…
Jayne propped her feet on her desk and started playing with her LED lava ball. “We’re gonna need key cards if we want inside.”
Merry continued typing with one hand, rubbed her eyes with the other, and somehow polished off a large portion of her kava.
Jayne watched her. “How the hell do you do that?”
Merry cocked her head to the side. “Do what?”
“Nevermind. Anyway, key cards. We need one.”
Fred put down his tablet. “Why can’t we just come in through the ceiling?”
Merry scowled in disbelief. “Like Santa?”
“Yeah, why not?”
Merry paused, curling her lips together in thought. “I almost don’t know what to say right now, Fred. That’s… That’s just… damn.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “What? We have to get in somehow.”
She took a deep breath before addressing Fred and somehow managed to gesticulate wildly between keystrokes. “Okay, even if it were a good idea to send Jayne down the chimney as Espionage Claus—which it’s not, in case you’re wondering—how in the world do you suppose we would get to the ‘roof’ without being noticed?”
“Maybe a hover ship…?” Fred scrambled.
“Dude, you deal in illegal weapons and you don’t know jack about surveillance?” Merry exclaimed. “This is a top-secret facility that’s not supposed to exist. They’re going to monitor the airspace, and teleportation isn’t a thing.”
“Yeah,” Fred thought. “You think we would have figured that out by now.”
Jayne tossed the ball and caught it. “Then the roof is out.”
Fred blushed and adjusted his glasses. “I mean, we wouldn’t have to steal a key card if we did that…”
“Okay, so we need a key card,” Merry concluded. “What if we, and by we I mean Jayne, knocked out a guard?”
Vlad examined his finger nails and slyly shot a gaze at Merry. “You really need to talk to someone about your violent tendencies.”
“What?” she deadpanned. “The guard would be incapacitated and Jayne would have fre
e access.”
Jayne spun slowly in her chair. “But I’m a stranger. Don’t you think they’d know I would be out of place?”
Merry twisted a lock of blackish purple hair. “Say the word and I’ll get you a uniform.”
Jayne bobbed her head slowly as her chair turned. “Uniform… That might work.”
“And we’ll get a giant cake for you to jump out of,” Fred countered. “Jayne, that’s completely nuts. A place that locked down would totally know you’re not a new employee.”
Vlad snickered. “I’m still on Jayne jumping out of a cake.”
Merry glared at him. “Chill the fuck out, will you?”
Fred took two pillows off the settee and sat on the floor. “Is there any way it could work? I mean, if we could make her look the part, who’s to say she’s not part of the new cadet class or something?”
Jayne sat back in her chair. “No, maybe we could make it work. We could get a uniform.”
Merry shook her head and sat back from her laptop. The dark eyeliner around her round eyes made her look like a raccoon. “He may have a point. You want to get a uniform from a facility that’s not supposed to even exist. I really don’t think they have pictures of it online. If you want to walk around in a uniform, then you need to incapacitate a guard. But once he notices his key card missing, won’t that put the whole place on lock down?”
“Probably?” Jayne shrugged.
“When I saw that fake Human Resources server, it didn’t include any staff lists. The two admins were the only ones I found. The whole thing is shady in a way only the government can pull off. I’m not even sure about the grain farm set up. They will definitely smell the proverbial rat.”
Vlad took a sip of his tea. “As much as I don’t want to admit it, I completely agree with Ms. Winterbourne. I believe Jayne can get the drop on a guard—don’t get me wrong—but a cover story about why they’d let the newbie cover solitary is all risk and no reward.”
Jayne rolled her lips together. “So how are we getting in?”
Fred looked up from his tablet. “Jayne could get herself arrested and pick pocket a key card.”
Vlad shook his head emphatically. “What if she gets frisked? Don’t they do cavity searches in prison?”
“Sounds like a great time to me.”
“I guess Merry just volunteered for the mission,” countered Vlad.
Jayne plopped her elbows onto the desk and rested her chin on her folded hands. “So far I either have to put a sleeper hold on a guard and steal their clothes or get myself arrested and practice my thief skills.”
“Does sound like it’s smarter for Jayne to get the key card before she gets in and shimmy around the vents,” Merry commented.
Fred contemplated each of his cohorts individually. He texted furiously on his comm. No one noticed him leaving.
“So where does that leave us, Chief?” Merry asked.
Jayne tapped her lips. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
New Germany Sector, Tarem Ring
Present time…
“Attention ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching the New Germany Sector station. Please return to your seats until the train comes to a full stop. Again, please return to your seats until the train comes to a full stop.”
Vlad nudged the drooling, sleepy Fred. “Wakey wakey, Fred.”
The half-conscious Fred swatted at Vlad’s hand.
Merry gingerly held her laptop with both hands. She looked over at Jayne, who sat with her arms wrapped around her bent knees as she stared out the window. “You ready for this?”
Jayne’s voice was quiet when she responded. “In the Academy, they taught us, ‘you can only be ready to not feel ready’.”
“Well, shit,” Merry laughed as she folded her laptop away and then hauled her three bags over her shoulder and across her body, “then color you prepared.”
The gang made their way off the train, semi-encumbered with their gear. Jayne studied her colleagues. Vlad was silent with an irritable look in his eyes. Fred was tripping over his own feet. Merry was sneaking a look at every male Tarem dweller she walked by. Jayne was trying to feel ready about not feeling ready.
“What’s that look, Ms. Austin?”
Jayne turned to see Vlad watching her. “I was just thinking about something. Anyone looking at us would think we were like anyone else.”
The group strode through the shuttle station and out into the main ring. Merry led the way, navigating on her tablet.
Jayne walked confidently and whispered to Fred to do the same. “Walk like you’re meant to be here,” she told him. Fred straightened his shoulders and walked more purposefully, but within minutes he was back to his usual apologetic gait.
Jayne shook her head and decided it was probably better to just let him be himself.
+++
As they walked, the corridors of the station gave way to more industrial walkways. The crowds thinned, and after leaving behind the well-inhabited areas, the smells increased. Smells of rust and chemicals. Smells of industrial and human waste. Aromas of processing units and life support systems.
Jayne walked a couple steps behind her so she could see the coordinates on Merry’s tablet. “I reckon we’re getting close to the bowels of the ring here.”
Merry grunted an affirmation. “Yeah, haven’t seen a window onto the other parts of the ring since we left the shuttle station.”
A moment later she slowed her pace.
Fred, who was bringing up the rear, bumped straight into Vlad, who had had to stop abruptly lest he did the same to Jayne. “Ugh, sorry Vlad.”
Vlad turned and looked down at him. His eyes feigned anger, and then his face broke into a smile. “No worries,” he chuckled.
“I think we’re here,” Merry told them. “The corridor just up there will take us through into the area around the facility. We’ve been lucky so far avoiding security, but around that corner, things are going to get decidedly more difficult.”
Jayne nodded and, after a quick glance at her team, started in the direction of the corridor Merry had been talking about. “Come on then. Let’s get this done,” she called back quietly.
The others followed, now with more urgency in their step.
As she approached the corner she noticed that just beyond the next section there was an area that had a lot more foot traffic—uniformed foot traffic. Some in atmosuits or maintenance overalls.
That’s when she saw their target.
“Hey, guys,” she called back in a loud whisper. “Check this out.”
She pointed to a burly man in plain clothes standing next to a metal door, appearing to bark commands to thin air. Merry looked through her Binoco-Cam, zooming in for maximum detail. The short video appeared on her handheld within two seconds.
“Activate scan, Officer Fredericks,” the man barked.
An infrared light scanned him from his feet to the top of his skull, pausing at his eyes. Jayne looked at Merry. Merry sighed, “Well, the good news is Jayne found the high security area. The bad news is we’re going to need more than a key card.”
Fred scuffled closer. “What do you mean?”
“That’s a retinal scan,” Jayne told him.
Merry turned to Fred. “Why didn’t you get us something to get Jayne past a retinal scan when you got the key card?”
Fred backed up, palms exposed to Merry as if she was mugging him. “My contact didn’t mention a retinal scan. You’re the computer nerd. Maybe you should have been the one to know about it.”
Merry took a taser that looked like a pressed powder compact and a small switchblade knife out of her bag, continuing to glare at Fred. “Looks like we’re going to have to take someone’s eye out…”
Jayne put a hand on her arm. “No one’s taking anyone’s eye out. I’ve got a better idea.”
Vlad fished his gold cigarette case out of his pocket “This is going to be good,” Vlad chuckled to himself.
Jayne dumped the gear she had been carrying, straightened her atmos-suit and confidently strode past the gang, towards one of the armed guards. She called loudly to no one in particular, “I’m going in.”
She hadn’t got five yards into the adjoining corridor when the guard readied his weapon on her. “Stop where you are!”
Jayne swiftly and decisively marched towards him, yelling, “hey, which one of you motherfuckers can take me to the Head Honcho around here? I want to speak to your boss!”
Within seconds, the armed guard and two of his buddies had Jayne in handcuffs, pushing her through a second gate just out of view of her team. The guards pushed her through the lobby, bypassing the metal detectors and full-body scans, and shoved her into a makeshift holding cell. Jayne could hear the short, stocky guard mumble something about not being able to do intake until the ‘token female’ CO was back from lunch in about 20 minutes before scanning his retina and securing the door behind him.
Jayne did some small stretches, surreptitiously activating the comm in her jacket. “I’m in.”
“Rigging holding cell cam now,” Merry reported immediately. “Get to the vents. I’ll guide you from there.”
Jayne looked around the tiny cell and found a ceiling vent in the corner. She waited for two guards to pass her cell before she rolled onto her back. One of the more practical skills she learned at the academy was how to, more or less, train her body to be double-jointed. She bent in her knees and pulled her cuffed hands under and around to her front. I love a man in uniform, she thought. Because a man is never going to check for bobby pins. She slid one from her hair and picked the handcuffs. They dropped to the floor with a dull clank. She slide the knife she had stowed inside the sole of her boot and clenched it with her teeth. Then she climbed onto the bench and maneuvered the vent cover open.
+++
Secure Sector, New Germany Sector, Tarem Ring
Jayne crawled as cautiously as she could through the filthy air ducts, trying to land her knees and arms softly enough so she did not make too much noise, or drop through them. Vents lining both sides of the ductwork allowed patches of light to provide enough illumination for her not to smack into corners.
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