by M. D. Cooper
The woman who had approached him shook her head. “Wrong answer. Larry’s behind me; you’re supposed to be Johnny.”
“Aw, shit,” Sean said as he lifted his pulse pistol.
The woman was a hair faster and had her rifle—a kinetic slug thrower—leveled on Sean. She had just slipped her finger off the trigger guard when Tanis drove her lightwand into the woman’s right hip joint.
It took two sharp strikes, but the blade sank in, and the woman screamed. She swung her rifle at Tanis, but by then Sean was on her, driving both his fists into the underside of her chin.
Her head snapped back with a crack, and she dropped to the floor.
Valerie was already among the other five attackers and had wrested a weapon away from one while they were distracted. She took cover behind the staircase to hack through her prize’s biolock.
Two of the enemies—including the one who lost their rifle—were approaching Valerie, while the other three were advancing on Sean. Sean had grabbed the downed woman’s rifle and was crouching behind her slumped body as he disabled the rifle’s biolock, it gave him moderate cover, but the enemies pulse blasts were rocking him back and forth.
Tanis wasted no time in rushing toward the three soldiers who were attacking Sean. She leapt into the air and drove her lightwand through the weapon of the first of the three, hoping for a repeat performance.
This woman, however, spotted the glowing wand—seemingly in midair, as it swung toward her. She jerked her weapon to the side, and Tanis’s strike missed the mark, glancing across the woman’s forearm instead.
“Where the fuck is this person?” one shouted, just as Sean finished bypassing the biolock on the weapon he held, and opened fire on the woman Tanis had engaged with.
A moment later, Valerie followed suit, driving the two enemies she was engaged with back into the foyer.
A member of the restaurant staff seemed to realize this was a good time to get out, and gestured for the guests and other staff to follow him.
Tanis closed with one of the attackers and swung her lightwand across his helmet, scoring a gash across the optical inputs. The man stumbled backward, and Sean fired three shots at his helmet, each one hitting the mark Tanis had made. The first one cracked it, the second split it open, and the third made a sickly, smushed watermelon sound.
Tanis saw that Valerie was down to one opponent, when the final enemy turned and ran for one of the restaurant doors. Tanis ran after, sliding her lightwand back into her thigh while drawing the twin blades from their place in her forearms.
The woman must have caught sight of the blades’ movement through the air, because she spun about, backpedaling as she fired wildly.
Tanis dropped and slid toward the enemy, hoping she could fit between the woman’s legs in their wide stance.
As she slid beneath the woman, Tanis drove one of her blades into a loose joint at the woman’s groin, wrenching it sideways and severing her muscles and femoral artery.
The woman’s scream came through her armor’s audible systems as Tanis rose behind her. There was a loose armor plate at her left shoulder, and Tanis drove another blade through it before kicking the woman over.
Tanis grabbed one of the rifles before following Valerie toward the door that Sera and Petra had used. Sean came behind, using his armored body to cover their retreat while his weapon swept across the room.
Valerie grabbed another rifle and an ammo pouch, as did Tanis; it ruined their stealth to be toting the gear around, but it gave them options.
The door led to a long hall, and at the end of it was a ten-meter square space before a pair of lifts. On the floor were two more of the enemy combatants.
Angela snorted.
Valerie said.
The second lift came down, and Tanis dragged one of the dead soldiers in while Sera and Petra grabbed the other. They stacked them inside the door in a gruesome barricade and waited till Angela started the lift on its climb.
Tanis nodded.
The nanocloud reached the top of the lift shaft a few seconds before Valerie and Sean’s car. The space was a large atrium—nicer than she expected for the staff entrance, but she supposed it may also double as an official entrance for anyone who didn’t enjoy the bubble ride.
She spotted a dozen figures in the same armor as the enemies below, none behind cover at present, and a man and woman in lighter armor.
The man was pacing back and forth while the woman stared off through the clear overhead dome.
The nanocloud picked up the man’s voice. “You thinking about going fishing?”
“I hate those stupid krakens they made. Who would put something like that in their oceans?”
The man shrugged. “Bored aristocrats, I guess.”
As he spoke, the doors to the first lift car opened, and
Valerie and Sean threw out their fistfuls of conc grenades. They must have reset the timers, because the explosions came only two seconds after the throw.
Some of Tanis’s nano was taken out by the blast, but the rest was able to feed the two High Guards targeting data. Two of the mercs and the woman fell before the doors even opened on the second lift car.
Tanis, Petra, and Sera were crouched behind the stacked bodies and let fire with their own weapons. Tanis held two and fired both at the same points on one enemy’s armor, then another. When the initial salvo was over, another three targets were down.
That left eight mercs and the man.
“Hey, Phillip,” Petra shouted out into the hazy atrium. “You’re fired!”
“If you actually represented the Directorate, that might matter,” he shouted back.
“Phillip, stop this now. Airtha’s not someone you want to have running the Transcend,” Sera called out. “The military is flocking to me; anyone with an AI has realized what Airtha was doing.”
“Or you somehow subverted their AI,” Phillip shouted back, and shots rang out from several of the merc positions, striking the armored bodies stacked in their car.
Over the combat net, Tanis saw Valerie and Sean sight on the shooters and take one out with multiple shots to the helmet.
More weapons fire erupted from both sides, and another two enemy soldiers fell. The battle wasn’t one-sided, though. Tanis got hit in the side when a slug penetrated the lift-wall, and Sera took a bullet in the neck that knocked her over.
Angela chuckled.
Tanis was only half-listening to the banter. They were wearing the enemy down, but not fast enough.
As they spoke, another six mercs rushed into the atrium, taking cover and bringing suppressive fire to bear on the lifts.
Tanis was about to issue the order—which was terrifying in its own right, because the mercs could rain holy hell on them from above.
A moment later, six autoturrets came out of the walls and opened fire on the mercs from behind. Tanis took advantage of the distraction and leapt out of the lift, taking cover behind an ornate column.
The rest of the team followed her lead and advanced into the atrium. They moved from one column to the next, grabbing mags from fallen enemies and pushing the remaining foes back into the autoturrets.
A minute later, it was over.
Sean moved forward, checking the fallen mercs and kicking weapons away, while Valerie limped over to Tanis.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time…ma’am,” she said.
“You hurt?” Tanis asked.
“Just blunt force bruising.”
Though Tanis couldn’t see Valerie’s face behind the flow armor, she could hear the pain in the woman’s voice.
“And a broken femur, right?”
“Fractured, not broken.”
Sera leaned her back against one of the columns. “So, think they have a sub?”
“Not anymore,” a new voice said. “But I do.”
Tanis turned and looked toward the doors on the far side of the room to see Flaherty, once more hefting a railgun.
“You’re late,” she scolded him.
“You may not have heard it with all your shooting in here, but I blew another sub with two dozen mercs in it. So you’re welcome.”
“Testy, testy,” Sera said as she pushed off from the column and approached her escort. “You have your own sub, I assume?”
“Of course.”
Petra chuckled. “You always just show up with the big guns, or is this special?”
“The minute I heard you were going out for a fancy dinner, I began securing an evac,” Flaherty replied.
“And what if we didn’t need it?” Petra asked.
“Then I would have seen you back at the suites later,” he said with a shrug.
“Would you have told us you were watching after us?” Tanis asked.
Flaherty shook his head. “Nope. How do I look like the last-minute savior if you know I’m there? You’d get sloppy.”
“Well, now you just told us,” Petra said.
“You’ll forget,” Flaherty shrugged again.
“I’ll never forget,” Sera said, and her armor flowed away from her face as she gave the man a peck on his cheek. “Take me to my chariot, Jeeves!”
Angela sighed.
They rode the sub to the surface and transferred into a second shuttle—the mercs still held the landing pad where the bubble had descended—then flew back to the palace.
The team reclined on the seats, eating what snacks were aboard. Their flow armor was drawn off their heads and colored matte black across the rest of their bodies.
Sean had found a first aid kit with a bone stabilizer in it on the shuttle and injected it into Valerie’s thigh. She bit down on a towel and gave a muffled scream, as the injector drove a rod into her femur and pulled it back into place before applying a bio-glue.
“Fucking barbarism here,” she said after Sean pulled the stabilizer away. “Why doesn’t that thing have pain suppressants?”
Sean looked at it. “Oh, shit…that was a separate prep injection I was supposed to run.”
“Sean…” Valerie seethed, as her subordinate backed away.
“Uh… sorry, Major. I didn’t think the thing would do that without auto suppressing.”
Valerie threw her head back and took a few steadying breaths. “Well, it still hurts like all fuck, so do you think you could apply the mother fucking pain suppressors now? I’m low on nano after all that shit down there.”
She glanced at Tanis and Sera, who were smirking. “Uh… sorry for my language.”
“What language?” Sera asked as Sean nervously approached the major once more.
Thirty minutes later, they reached a landing pad at the palace and, though they’d left the weapons in the shuttle and could not possibly hide anything beneath the second-skin of the flow armor, the palace guards checked them over very thoroughly.
As they were examined, Petra talked with their lieutenant about the attack and detailed their escape, leaving out the stealth capabilities of the flow armor.
Eventually they were allowed back to their suites.
“Stars, I’m still famished,” Sera said as they entered.
Tanis nodded in agreement as she stepped into the main room. Her gaze landed on a cloaked figure sitting on one of their sofas, and she reached for her lightwand. The figure pushed back its hood and revealed herself to be the empress.
“Seems like you had an eventful evening,” Diana said. “I’d like to hear all about it.”
EXPLANATIONS
STELLAR DATE: 08.11.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Imperial Palace Guest Suites
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
Tanis eyed the empress for a moment before casually walking into the room. “Just your average evening assassination attempt,” she said while dropping into a chair across from Diana.
“Based on what you’re all wearing,” Diana waved at their matte-black Mark X FlowArmor, “I’m not certain if you’re the targets or the assassins.”
“We’re well-prepared targets,” Sera said. “I’m really annoyed, too. That restaurant was amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Diana nodded. “Yes, it’s quite impressive—though I never had the heart to tell them that they got the ship’s name wrong.”
“See!” Tanis tur
ned to address Sera and Petra. “The ship is the Titanic.”
“Surely that’s not what you came to talk to us about,” Sera said. “I have to admit that I’m surprised to see you here alone.”
Diana nodded. “My guards think I’m in my rooms. I have a few ways to get around undetected; makes my life a lot easier, not to have every action recorded and monitored.”
“And where are our other three guards?” Tanis asked Diana—though Valerie had already found them on the team’s private network.
“Nearby. I asked them if they could wait across the hall in an empty suite for the time being. I imagine they’re still monitoring the room, though. I think these three should go join them.
Tanis glanced at Valerie. “We have injured.”
“We have medical facilities here. Though I imagine yours are much better than ours—us being lowly Inner Stars denizens, and all.”
Tanis chuckled. “That would be true. Valerie, you can return to the ship or get a medic to come down.”
Valerie nodded. “I’ll be across the hall.”
Sera and Flaherty exchanged several long looks before he left with Valerie and Sean, and Tanis re-swept the room with her nano.
Sera took a seat beside Tanis while Petra walked to the room’s bar and poured herself a drink.
“Anyone else want anything?” she asked.
“A water would be nice,” Tanis replied.
Sera glanced at Tanis and shook her head. “All-business-Tanis tonight, is it?
Tanis nodded, and Sera turned to Petra. “A sweet white wine, if there is one.” Then she turned to the empress. “Are you here to chastise us for making a mess?”
Diana shook her head. “I couldn’t care less about that. I assume you were having some trouble with…what was it, ‘Airtha not being the one you’d want running the Transcend’, and how ‘the military was flocking to you’.”
“That’s some fast intel gathering,” Tanis said with a wry smile.
“Alexandria is a complex place, with the population of a hundred star systems; this planet requires a firm hand to keep under control,” Diana replied implacably.
“What you overheard has to do with the rest of the story we wanted to tell you earlier,” Petra said as she finally took a seat. “The death of Sera’s father has sparked a civil war. Airtha was her father’s capital.”
