by M. D. Cooper
Tanis leaned back, bringing up the woman’s history. Born on Europa to a wealthy family, she had left the life of privilege at age thirty. From there she joined Tomas’s Marauders, a semi-legit private army that hired itself out to local governments to protect trade routes and natural resources. A rapid rise through the ranks ensued until a falling-out with the command forced her out of the organization.
From that time on it appeared she had been operating as a freelance assassin. Several jobs on Venus, a high profile hit on an Earth politician, and a string of probable killings on Vestra, Ceres and the Hildas asteroids.
“Never worked in the Jovian sphere though,” Tanis mused.
“That we know of—the JSF doesn’t exactly share everything with us.”
“It’s entirely possible that she’s here on some other task.”
Yau cast Tanis an appraising look and the major sighed. “I know, I know—that would just be too handily coincidental. Though with Cho’s population, that sort of coincidence is a bit more acceptable.”
“Except that she was last seen on ring 20. If we had solid intel putting her on ring 142 or something like that, then I’d be in complete agreement.”
Tanis nodded. “Your logic is irrefutable. I assume TSF intel and the Callisto Intel Agency are both looking for her.”
“You assume correctly. I’ve set up our tactical net to alert us if there is any news.”
“I’d really thought that Strang had gotten over this whole assassination thing.”
“He could be going after another target: Terrance or Captain Andrews.”
“I don’t know…at this stage, killing either of them wouldn’t set the mission back by much at all. Strang strikes me as the complete-at-all-costs sort of guy, not get-final-petty-revenge type.”
“Maybe he’s both.”
They went over the general plans for the day before leaving the mess to attend to their various duties. Tanis walked to her temporary office and on the way scheduled the pickup of her effects and their transfer to the Intrepid after it had docked. She also went over the security clearances for the caterers and general staff who would be at the docking ceremony. Everything seemed to be in order, but something still nagged at her. Her gut hadn’t told her to buy and slather on this armor for nothing; somewhere a thread was loose, and she was going to find it and pull.
It was just before noon when an anomaly in a shipping manifest caught her eye. A series of containers which were destined to arrive at the Intrepid’s berth tomorrow had arrived today. Rather than holding them and delivering on schedule, the courier had delivered them to one of the warehouses just off the main dock. That in itself wasn’t particularly odd; however, they had been inspected twice. The inspection logs and timestamps were backwards—it was either a system error, or someone had opened the record to fake an entry at the same time someone had it open to enter a valid entry.
Feeling restless, Tanis decided to look into it herself. Checking the Marines’ assignments, she realized that none of them were available to go with her. Trist was also off gathering information on a different ring. No matter, the dock wasn’t far, just a twenty-minute walk. It would give her time to stretch her legs and get a bit of exercise.
Two hours and fifteen minutes.
The halls were relatively empty as most of the local staff was at the mess getting the noon meal out of the way before the final preparations for the Intrepid’s arrival began. The corridor widened as she came to the storage area just off the dock. A worker strolled by pushing a hover pallet and gave her an appreciative look. Tanis couldn’t imagine why. In the last two thousand years, no Space Force dress uniform sported a cut that flattered a woman’s body. Maybe it was the hair; she had grown it out rapidly since her trip to Cruithne and it was just past her shoulders now. She hadn’t had long hair in decades and was determined to keep the indulgence since her remaining time in the military was short.
She arrived at her destination and stopped outside the door. The portal to the storage area was sealed and in order; she transmitted the override codes to its pad. After a moment the indicator flashed green. Tanis grasped the handle and stepped inside, scanning the room for the cargo she was looking for.
She took one step past the door and felt her scalp squeezed slightly as the armor, normally pliant, solidified around her head. A warning on her HUD indicated that she had been struck by a blow to the base of her skull. The kinetic force spread down to her shoulders and they solidified as well, spreading out the force of the impact. Unused to the effect, Tanis tried to face her attacker, but her instincts conflicted with the armor’s efforts to protect her and Tanis lost her balance and fell to the deck.
The impact caused the armor to freeze entirely and Tanis made a mental note to do some more fine-tuning. In the second after she landed, Tanis decided that since she was down, playing unconscious might be a good way to identify her ambusher. She closed her eyes and switched her vision to the feed from her ever-present nanoprobes.
Not surprisingly, the figure that stepped out from the shadows was Herris Santos. Her face was twisted in what Tanis assumed was the woman’s approximation of a smile, and in her hand she hefted a thick pipe. A short bark of a laugh escaped her lips as she leaned over Tanis’s body.
“The great and mighty Tanis Richards. You don’t seem particularly tough to me. Didn’t take much at all to knock you down. I’d better seal you up, though. Your AI may be rebooting from the blow; once it’s back online I’m certain I’ll have some company.”
Great, a soliloquizer, Tanis thought. She hadn’t run into one of those in a while.
She had determined to see where this would go but suddenly regretted the decision to play dead when she felt a dampening net being thrown over her. Immediately she and Angela felt their Link cut off and all contact with her nano cloud ceased.
Tanis felt her body being lifted and placed into a container. The hum of a hover unit sounded followed by the sensation of motion.
They were silent after that, but Angela was building up a map of where they were going and inserting it into Tanis’s mind. It was based off the shifts and jolts they felt inside the container and net; the result may not have been entirely accurate, but it should be close. After all, it did have to conform to the area’s layout, and with luck their destination wouldn’t be too far away.
One hour and fifty-three minutes.
CHAPTER 30
STELLAR DATE: 3227347 / 01.29.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: District QR7, Ring 19C, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)
REGION: Jovian Combine, Sol Space Federation
The feeling of motion continued for roughly twenty minutes. Angela’s readout indicated nearly a kilometer had been covered in that time.
The container was opened and Tanis looked up, directing a bland stare at the face looming over her. Well, at least it was a one hundred percent positive ID on Herris Santos; so much for coincidence.
“I see you’re awake. I hope you don’t mind your little bit of reloca
tion. My employer wanted to bring you somewhere nicer for our little chat.”
Tanis didn’t speak. There was nothing to say—giving in to the enemy’s banter never got you anywhere.
“Well, I suppose I should make you marginally presentable; I doubt that Mr. Strang is going to want to look down at you in this container.”
Angela commented.
“Any chance you could loosen this net? I have this wicked cramp.” Tanis gave a benign smile. “I promise, I won’t mess up whatever the next step in this adventure is.”
“They never said anything about a weak sense of humor, or weak attempts to get information. I was hired to capture you, and I’ve done so. I’ll collect my pay and be gone.” Herris’ smile was wicked. “Unless they want to pay me a bonus for some extra work.”
Tanis nodded inside the net. “I hope for your sake that he doesn’t do to you what he’ll do to me.”
“I don’t think you know what he’s going to do to you.”
“I have a pretty good idea. It’s going to suck.”
Herris laughed. “I imagine you’ve got that part right.”
Tanis had taken the time during their conversation to look over her surroundings. They were in a conference room; it was ten by twenty meters and had a large wooden table occupying most of the room’s center. She and Herris were at the end furthest from the double doors. After a few minutes the doors opened and two men stepped in.
They gave off the bored appearance that was typical of corporate security, but Tanis could tell by their movements that they were likely ex-military. They looked the room over slowly, deploying their probes and checking for leaks and traces. She noticed them casting Herris as many cautious glances as they did to her. A glance at the assassin told her that Herris had noticed their caution and was amused by it. Once they were satisfied, several more security types came in, followed by Arlen Strang.
“Good work Miss Santos, you’ve done what many others failed to do.”
“You should have called me from the beginning—I would have saved you a world of trouble.”
Strang rubbed his jaw and smiled. “I believe I may do that the next time I need such services.” He looked down at Tanis wrapped in the suppression net and gave her a winning smile. “So good to meet you, Major Richards. We’ve been on each other’s minds so much I don’t doubt that we are both finding this a bit anticlimactic.”
Tanis slowly looked up at him, her eyes simmering with rage. “You realize that you have gone from simple legal penalties, to death. You won’t survive this encounter.”
“My, you are every bit as cocky as I’d been led to believe.” He waved an arm around him. “There is nothing you can do; you are fully under our control.”
“It’s something we’re trained for. I got an A in smugness and cocky back in OCS.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least. Though I imagine seeing the Intrepid destroyed in a rather spectacular fashion will do something to modify your attitude.”
Tanis couldn’t read Strang at all. She couldn’t tell if he was excited that he was finally going to get his victory, or if he was considering this purely from a profit and loss perspective. She decided to go on the offensive against his pride.
“I’ll give you points for boldness and a grand vision, but not so much for the execution. You haven’t really garnered a great track record—I don’t expect you to be able to pull something like that off.”
Strang’s look betrayed no emotion. “I don’t know what you thought was going to happen here, but I’ll tell you what’s not likely. You’re not going to goad me into telling you my plans—sorry to burst your bubble.”
Tanis changed approaches and grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty unburstable. So what’s your reason for this gracious invitation?”
“I have reason to believe you know a few very interesting secrets about something on the Intrepid. I know about that trip down to Mars you and Captain Andrews took, and have strong suspicions about what you brought back up. I’d very much like to gain access to the Intrepid’s net so I can pull the specs for that little secret before we destroy it.”
“And you think I’ll give access to you?”
“I think you can be convinced.”
“I really don’t think you want to go that route.” Tanis gave her captors a benign look.
“Why not?” Herris asked. “I find myself rather looking forward to it, then I get that extra pay I mentioned.”
“Because I’m not restrained by the suppression net anymore.”
“You what?” Herris’s smug superiority cracked and a look of concern showed beneath it.
While she was being transported, Angela had configured some nano to extract bits of the armor and configured it to solidify. The effect was several thousand nano with very sharp knives. They just finished cutting through the threads on the back of the net and with a grand gesture, Tanis stood up and raised her arms in the air.
A look of shock passed across every face and Tanis couldn’t help but smile. A moment later every gun in the room was aimed at her.
“What? Not what you were expecting?” Tanis asked.
“Oh for fuck’s sake! Just kill her!” Strang yelled before he turned and stormed out of the conference room.
No one else moved. The six security types and Herris all eyed her for several moments. Tanis took the opportunity to deploy probes to create a detection field for the armor—the more warning it had about incoming fire the better.
She was not surprised when Herris shot first. Tanis accelerated her perception and felt her surroundings effectively slow down. She held herself steady as the bounty hunter’s finger squeezed and a bullet left the chamber, heading for her forehead. Here she would find out if the armor was worth its exorbitant cost Milliseconds before impact the armor became rock hard from the top of her head down her neck and across her shoulders. This time Tanis didn’t try to move or compensate, but rather tensed her legs to absorb the shock. Just as advertised, the armor deflected the bullet.
The slug ricocheted off her face and into the wall. All eyes looked at Tanis’s forehead, to the wall, and back to Tanis.
“I sort of have that effect on all of you, don’t I?” Tanis smiled confidently. “What can I say, I’m truly amazing.”
Tanis used the last moments of surprise to launch herself at Herris. They crashed to the floor and Tanis proceeded to deliver blows to the woman’s neck and solar plexus, her hands locked into solid fists by her armor. Her opponent gasped for air and with an augmented thrust, lifted Tanis bodily and slammed her into the edge of the table. Her armor locked up and while the effect was somewhat disconcerting, it did cause the bounty hunter’s attack to not hurt at all.
The lack of pain allowed Tanis to recover quickly, and before Herris had a chance to get back on her feet, Tanis pointed her fingers, signaled the armor to lock and slammed her now solid hand into Herris’s eye.
Screaming a string of curses that Tanis couldn’t even understand, the
woman covered her face and tried to slide away. Tanis delivered several more blows to Herris’s thorax and stood, ignoring the thrashing of the body at her feet.
A moment after Tanis looked up, her vision tinted and the nano probe’s video feed in her HUD showed that all six of the security guards had fired their laser pistols at her. The armor absorbed the energy from the beams, focused and released the light in one blinding pulse. She heard startled shouts of shock and when her vision cleared the guards were all covering their eyes.
“You guys can’t hurt me with those, but I can hurt you.” Tanis snatched up Herris’ handgun and panned it between the guards while stepping back against the wall. “Drop your guns and spread ‘em on the table.”
Five of the men complied, but one decided to try another shot. Tanis fired several slugs into his chest. He grunted and fell over, his life saved by body armor under his suit.
“Get up, and get spread.” She took careful aim at his head.
He stood slowly, but Tanis’s nano video feed showed her one of the other guards edging away from the table, reaching for something inside his jacket. Without moving her arm, Tanis rotated her prosthetic wrist at a biologically impossible angle. Her handgun was pointed directly at his head.
She didn’t even look at him. “Keep moving. I promise you a very short, sharp pain in your head, but everything will be all right after that. If push comes to shove I only need one of you alive to talk.”
They got the message; she could shoot them all as fast as the weapon could chamber the next round—in less than a second based on the specs of the pistol.
“So, now that the ground rules are established, is there any chance any of you know what it is Strang’s planning to do?”
No one said a word.
“Oh come on; you guys hear things, follow him places. You must know something.” Her comments continued to be met with silence and Tanis considered her options. “OK, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m actually tired of torturing people. It’s really not that pleasant for me—makes for some really unpleasant dreams.”
Tanis paused and her voice changed. It was deeper, slower, and dripped with venom.
