by M. D. Cooper
Out of the corner of her eye, Tanis saw the man—who was still weathering a barrage of bottles—fire his pulse rifle at one of the servitors, slamming the thing against the bar. Then her attention was back on the woman.
A pulse blast rippled through the air, catching Tanis in the hip, but she didn’t slow, slashing wildly with the plasma torch as her opponent backpedaled.
The woman reached the table and grabbed a chair, flinging it at Tanis, only to watch in terror as the plasma blade sliced it in half.
Tanis snatched half of the chair out of the air and flung it back at the woman, catching her in the side of the head with one of the legs.
The blow stunned her, and she staggered backward, falling into the sunken seating area.
Movement out of the corner of her eye caught Tanis’s attention, and she turned to see the man—bleeding from a cut on the side of his head—leap across the table before he slammed into her at full-force.
Tanis fell back onto the ground, and the impact momentarily knocked the wind out of her. The man was on top of her then, one knee on her chest, the other on the arm that held the plasma torch.
“Just stop it!” he yelled. “You can’t—”
His words ended in a grunt as Tanis twisted her arm free; at the same moment, she swung a leg up and kicked him in the back of the head.
He fell forward, right into the plasma torch’s searing lance, half of his head burning away in moments.
Instead of falling limp, the man began to thrash and spasm. Either his nervous system had gone haywire, or his mods had.
She scampered backward, trying to get out from under the wildly thrashing man. Her perception of time seemed to slow as she kicked him away, only to see his leg get caught in the hose for the plasma cutter.
She twisted to the side, but it was too late. The torch’s handle was wrenched from her grasp, and the lance of plasma swung around, cutting off Tanis’s right arm.
“Fuck!” she screamed, both terrified that she was about to die, and also surprised that there was no pain.
She managed to roll away from the thrashing man and the plasma torch that was caught around his leg. Then the torch cut through the hose, and the emergency safety valve kicked in.
The plasma sputtered out, and Tanis breathed a long sigh of relief, clenching her teeth before looking at the stump of her right arm that protruded from her shoulder.
That was when the pain hit her.
Tanis was trying to regain the power of speech, when a sound came from the sunken seating area, and the woman rose on shaky legs.
She stumbled toward Tanis, but stopped at the sight of her partner.
“You’re gonna die, bitch,” the woman whispered, and Tanis couldn’t help but wonder if that was indeed what would happen next.
The woman bent over and picked up the man’s pulse rifle, casually checking its charge as she advanced.
“I’m going to make it hurt, though. You’ll tell me where the quantum core is, and then I’ll have some fun. Everyone’s bought off, no one is going to fi—”
A loud snap sounded, and a wet patch appeared on the woman’s chest, spreading outward. A confused look came over her face, and then the would-be killer fell to the floor.
Tanis heard footfalls to her left, and turned her head to see the last person she’d expect to save her.
“Harm Ellis?” she whispered as a wave of dizziness came over her, and she fell back against the chill unit.
“In the flesh,” he said, still holding a pistol on the woman as he approached. “Shit, you got banged up!”
Tanis nodded slowly. “One in the bedroom…down to the right. Make sure he’s secure.”
Harm nodded and pulled out another pistol, passing it to her. “Just in case.”
She fumbled with the weapon, but managed to get it turned around and gripped in her left hand as she tried to breathe calmly.
“Yeah,” Tanis all but whispered. “You can say that again. That was my favorite arm, and it only just got all healed up after Unger broke it.”
“Why not, keeps me from focusing on how close that plasma lance came to my head. You know…the place where both our brains are.” She began to shake, and the gun slipped from her grasp.
The last thing she remembered was Harm striding back into the main room, and saying something about her going into shock.
TANIS UPGRADED…MORE
STELLAR DATE: 01.21.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Suite 1301-1, Grand Éire Resort
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Consciousness returned to Tanis like a bucket of cold water hitting her in the face.
Not the water, the bucket.
Correction, lots of buckets. It felt like every part of her was aching.
“Harm,” Tanis whispered. “He here?”
“ ‘Bodies’? Plural?”
“Harm seems pretty resourceful for a corporate tagalong just keeping an eye on Enfield’s latest project,” Tanis noted as she finally got the courage to open her eyes and gaze at the bandaged stump that was all that remained of her right arm.
Tanis looked around and saw that she was on one of the sofas in the suite’s mainspace. Slowly, mindful of how much her body ached, she pushed herself up to half-lay against the back and armrest.
“Did he say why or how he showed up out of the blue?”
Tanis closed her eyes as a wave of dizziness washed over her. She took a steadying breath, and pinged one of the servitors over the Link to bring her a glass of water.
When it arrived, she tried to reach for it with her right arm, and then shook her head, letting out a rueful laugh. “Guess I’ll have to adjust to being a lefty for a bit.”
As she’d spoken, the suite’s door had opened, and Harm walked in, a large crate trailing behind him.
“Not for too long, I hope,” he said with a grim smile. “We didn’t put all this effort into you just so you could get sidelined by something stupid like a plasma torch.”
“Glad to know how much you value me,” Tanis muttered. “What do you have there?”
Harm glanced back at the case. “Portable autodoc, plus a new arm. Not organic; you’ll have to make do with being a bit more of a cyborg for now.”
Tanis shrugged. “I suspect this won’t be the last time I’ll have a temporary prosthetic. I don’t really have the safest line of work.”
Harm stepped down into the sunken seating area and sat across from Tanis. “So, I think you have a story to tell me… especially since I just covered up a pair of homicides for you.”
“Covered up?” Tanis asked.
Harm leant back in his seat, crossing an ankle over his other knee. “Well, I put them on ice,
so to speak. I’m not fully prepared to throw in with whatever you have going on here, but given that unknown assassins were attacking you in your rooms, I’m going to go with them probably being in the wrong.”
“Seems safe on the face of it,” Tanis said with a half-smile. “Of course, I lured them there, so that muddies things.”
“Lured?”
“I ordered food. They were the dessert.”
Harm cleared his throat, raising an eyebrow. “Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”
Tanis took another sip of water as she stared at him. “I’m not sure that you have clearance to—”
“Let me stop you right there,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall further protests from Tanis. “I’m passing you my credentials, which are Alpha-Level secret.”
Tanis’s eyes grew round as she looked over Harm’s real rank. “Colonel?”
He nodded. “MICI, just like Green—only she doesn’t know that. I’m embedded with the L2-AI program inside Enfield to make sure whatever they’re doing is on the up-and-up. I was particularly interested in how you two would work out, so I put in to be on the oversight team.”
Tanis chuckled. “Just had no idea what you’d be overseeing.”
“Oh, I had some idea. You have a penchant for finding your way into interesting situations. So lay it on me. What’s going on?”
With a final gulp, Tanis polished off her water, and launched into the tale of the last few days. She explained to Harm about the missing ships, the task she’d given Connie, and how she couldn’t get in to see the Kirby Jones.
As she ran through the events, she began to worry that she’d blown things out of proportion—that somehow, there was a logical explanation for everything that had occurred. But as the frown on Harm’s face deepened, her doubts dissipated.
“That’s a lot to chew on,” he said when she’d completed the story, including the information about Captain Tora-Unger, who was bound for his dinner reservation any minute now.
Darla added.
Harm ran a hand through his hair. “Well…if it makes you feel any better, neither do I. I’m going to have to reach out to some contacts to see if anyone has ops going on with Deering. Seems like if she were colluding with the Diskers in something off-book, it would be on someone’s radar.”
“What about talking to those SWSF officers?” Tanis asked. “If you go now, you can probably still grab them.”
“I don’t think so,” Harm shook his head. “I’m not going to run after them half-cocked. We already have one of their people here that I can interrogate. I also need to double-check that my tracks are covered, and that no one is going to come looking for us here. I do like your moxie, though. No one is going to look for you hiding just one floor down from your assigned rooms. There may be hope for you, after all.”
Tanis didn’t respond to the barb, but instead pushed herself upright. “So then, I suppose it’s time to set your autodoc to work on me.
Harm nodded. “Yeah, the sooner we get you patched up, the better. I have a suspicion that things are about to get interesting.”
* * * * *
When Tanis woke, she immediately checked the time and saw that just over twelve hours had passed, making it the middle of Vesta’s third shift.
She took quick stock of her situation, and her first observation was that the surface beneath her was firm, and the ceiling was close.
“Am I on the dining room table?” she asked aloud.
“Coulda at least got me a pillow,” Tanis muttered as she flexed her fingers on her right hand. “They feel stiff.”
Tanis lifted her arm, surprised at how natural it felt. Granted, she thought as she looked at the pale pink flesh, it looks entirely natural.
She raised her left arm to compare the two, and couldn’t help but be impressed by how perfectly her prosthetic right arm matched her organic left one.
“Did the autodoc have any issues?” Tanis asked as she pushed herself into a seated position. “And where’s Harm?”
Tanis rotated her arm, able to feel the pivot points in her shoulder moving differently than before. “And Harm?”
Tanis swung her legs over the edge of the table, and walked to the bedroom she’d claimed. “Of course he did. People like him always have to be in control.”
Once in the bedroom, she got dressed in a pair of black pants and a fitted grey top. She rummaged through the bags from her shopping trip and found a black jacket, which she pulled on overtop, wincing as her shoulder reminded her that it was still healing from the autodoc having mounted a new limb to it.
“I hope that Harm’s errands include getting us some weapons,” Tanis said as she walked back out into the suite’s mainspace.
Tanis’s gaze swept the area, and she saw three pulse pistols and two rifles resting on the bar.
“I’m about done with pulse weapons,” she commented while walking across the space. “Though I suppose they’re better than nothing.”
“Yeah, bordering on compulsion. Have you been keeping an eye on the crew? They OK still?”
“Jeannie? Really?” Tanis asked. “Wasn’t aware those two frequented the same establishments. Any word on Lovell? The thought of him trapped on the ship while it’s in lockdown is killing me.”
“Anyone else having any issues?”
“Good,” Tanis gave a curt nod. “Less to worry about.”
“Given their lack of luck with me, I’m surprised they haven’t already,” Tanis admitted as she examined the weapons on the bar, and slid one of the pistols into an inside pocket of her jacket.
“Makes me wonder why Admiral Deering’s not bringing down the full force of her command.”
“Maybe. Did Harm get IDs on our friends from last night?” Tanis asked, trying to put together any puzzle pieces that would tell her what was coming their way next—or maybe even something that could give her a next move.
“And the one that I captured?” Tanis asked.
“Shit,” Tanis muttered. “His mednano couldn’t heal him?”
seful.
Tanis closed her eyes and pursed her lips, for some reason feeling more guilty about the man’s death. “Great.”
She had heard stories about MICI agents and their methods. On the surface, the Military Intelligence and Counterinsurgency consisted of analysts and advisors, not field operatives. But everyone in the Terran Space Force knew that MICI agents were placed throughout the military: inside other chains of command, secreted within the other space forces that operated in the Sol System…they even held positions inside civilian organizations, which Harm’s position with Enfield Technologies showed.
They were the military’s ghosts, doing jobs no one wanted to know were being done.
And here I am, mixed up in the middle of one of their operations…maybe two.
“Well,” she said as she turned from the bar and walked through the dining area to the kitchen. “If I’m going to be playing the waiting game, I may as well do it on a full stomach. Good thing BLTs taste almost as good cold.”
Darla advised.
“Why? A BLT has everything I need. Fruit, veg, meat, the whole deal.”
“It’s a skill.”
PLAN
STELLAR DATE: 01.22.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Suite 1301-1, Grand Éire Resort
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Harm didn’t show up for another five hours.
During that time, Tanis didn’t sit idle. She determined that her best bet to find out what was going on—short of abducting Captain Tora-Unger—was to get aboard the Kirby Jones.
Of course there was the matter of the MPs guarding the bay’s entrances.
Getting around the military police without getting into a firefight was key. Tanis wasn’t about to start shooting at her own people to solve the mystery—even if they’d probably shoot at her.
A part of Tanis wanted to march into Higgs’ office and demand that he do something to get her access to the Jones, but she knew that wouldn’t work. Higgs couldn’t countermand an order from Admiral Deering’s staff—even if his chain of command didn’t go directly up to her.
