by M. D. Cooper
Tanis was on her in an instant, knee on the back of her attacker’s neck, and when The Raven tried to reach for her, Tanis grabbed her arm and pulled it up behind her back.
“Looks like your armor doesn’t protect against shoulder dislocation. You should get a model that makes sure this doesn’t happen.” She wrenched The Raven’s arm up so far, the tall woman’s hand was on the back of her own head.
She was impressed that the white-haired woman only whimpered and moaned. Most people would have screamed their head off.
Either through sheer willpower, or raw stupidity, The Raven reached behind her back with her other hand to grab for Tanis, but Tanis grabbed hold of her arm.
“I was going to say you had two arms, so ruining one wasn’t a big deal, but if you want me to pull them both out of their sockets, I’m more than happy to.”
“OK, OK…” The Raven gasped. “You win, you skanky whore.”
“Now, now, your wives didn’t pay me for sex, so I can’t be a whore. You know, you should think about why they wanted to bang me and not you. Maybe if you laid off on being the big thuggish bitch for a bit, and showed them that you really cared, they wouldn’t go looking for other people to satisfy their needs.”
“How far do you want me to go?” she asked. “Up to you.”
“Fuck you, bitch. I’ll get you eventually.”
Tanis let out a long groan as she slid a hand down to her thigh. “You know how stupid it is to goad me? I have you at my mercy here, and you just told me that I need to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life? Bad plan, Miss Raven. Because I don’t want to do that, so now I’m going to have to kill you.”
“What?” the woman shrieked, struggling for a moment before laughing and saying, “What am I worried about? You don’t have it in you.”
Tanis drew out her lightwand—her civilian one, not the TSF-issue equipment—and held it in front of The Raven’s face.
“You sure about that?”
“Shit…OK…I won’t hurt you, I swear!”
“Too late,” Tanis said as she activated the blade and brought it to The Raven’s neck.
“Nooooooo!”
Tanis brought the blade around to the nape of the woman’s neck and slowly drew the blade along the right side of her back, cutting through the armor’s plates and base layer, but not her skin—though it was being burned by the heat and radiation. When Tanis reached The Raven’s ass, she stopped and repeated the action down the left side of the woman’s back.
The white-haired woman was whimpering, and the smell of burned skin filled the corridor while Tanis sliced through the armor as quickly as she could, moving to The Raven’s legs and then arms once both cuts down her back were complete.
At one point, the woman began to shift as though she were preparing to throw Tanis off.
“Try it,” Tanis said, pushing the lightwand into The Raven’s left thigh.
A moan slipped from white-hair’s lips, but she managed to keep still. A few seconds later, Tanis had completed her cuts. She then grasped the armor’s neckline and tore the back of it free from her attacker’s body.
As The Raven shrieked between gasps for breath, Tanis examined her armor and realized it had already been self-healing, as well as trying to heal its wearer.
Because of Tanis’s action, The Raven’s wounds had been torn open further.
With little concern for the woman’s well-being, Tanis pushed her enemy onto her back, grabbed the armor by the front of the collar, and tore it completely off the woman’s body.
“Faaaaaaaawk,” The Raven screamed, now lying naked on the deck. She rolled onto her side, trying to protect her wounds and keep them off the hard plas.
Tanis knelt beside the whimpering woman’s head and leant over to whisper in her ear. Normally such a move would have been stupid and risky, but with the lightwand humming near the Raven’s throat, the now-naked thug was surprisingly still.
“We’ll keep this between you and I,” Tanis said. “A little reminder for you that people are not always what they seem. Don’t think you can catch me unawares; I’ll be watching for you. Maybe I’ll even catch you in a dark corridor someday when you’re least expecting it.”
Tanis said as she rose, then she nudged The Raven with her foot. “No one hears about this. You were attacked by a masked assailant. Say it was several assailants, if you want.”
The woman at Tanis’s feet only nodded and whimpered in response.
Tanis grabbed the red and bronze armor from the deck and looked it over.
She nodded absently, picking up the discarded cloak, and then walked out of the dead-end corridor, looking for a place to stash The Raven’s armor.
A DRINK WITH NO ONE
STELLAR DATE: 02.20.4085 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Crantor Station
REGION: 0.5AU beyond Ouranos, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
When Tanis entered the bar, the first thing she noticed was Colonel Leona sitting in a far corner, nursing a beer.
Tanis ignored Colonel Leona as she walked to the bar and sat on one of the stools.
“I’ll have a Plasma Burn,” Tanis directed the bartender, a rather decrepit looking servitor that seemed to have trouble moving in a straight line.
Darla said in an injured tone.
Tanis groaned inwardly.
Tanis knew she couldn’t deny the accusation. There was something that came over her in a fight. The thrill of testing her abilities in a life-and-death struggle…. It made her feel more alive than almost anything else.
Tanis didn’t reply. She knew from experience that arguments like this with Darla could go on for some time. The AI loved to skirt around the edges of a moral debate, poking at Tanis until she gave up.
The problem was, she was beginning to have trouble telling what was acceptable and what was unacceptable behavior in her current role. She’d grown up with clear ethics about right and wrong. Then the military had stretched that by adding ‘sometimes it’s OK to kill people’, but all of her engagements had been out in the black, where an enemy did something illegal, and then she had authorization to respond with force.
Now that she was in Division 99, nothing was clear-cut. Everything was permissible, if the situation demanded it.
She felt ungrounded.
Thank stars I have the Kirby Jones and my crew. I don’t know how other operatives do this…totally out in the wind. It must feel like nothing’s real after a while.
The wobbly servitor placed Tanis’s drink on the bartop, and she set down a few credits’ worth of hard chits. She tested the contents with a filament of nano. Once she was certain it was—mostly—safe, she took a sip, lowered the drink, and paused a minute, then raised the glass and took a longer sip. Once the liquid had burned its way down her throat, she set the cup down, finally giving it a quarter turn.
Darla let out a laugh, then a groan as Leona rose from her seat.
However, in a surprise twist, Leona skirted the tables near the door, and then left the establishment.
Well that’s weird. Tanis wondered if that meant the place was about to explode, or if Leona had just wanted to be certain Tanis would show.
The proscribed seven minutes after she’d given the signal, the servitor approached and set another drink down.
Tanis followed Darla’s directions and released a passel of nano onto the glass, letting the AI control the probes, but following along.
Nano tech was so pervasive in populated areas that you were always swallowing or breathing someone else’s nano. Most nanotech that could operate autonomously was proximity-limited, and all nano was time-limited.
The idea of nanoscopic robots just surviving forever and getting into everything, executing their programming for eternity, was enough to ensure that everyone stuck to the max-life time limits.
Luckily, keeping nano powered for any significant length of time precluded rampant swarms eating everything in sight.
Which wasn’t to say it hadn’t happened in the past.
Even so, standard mednano in everyone’s bloodstream kept the flotsam and jetsam from causing problems, and breach defense nano protected people from unpleasant things, such as nanoprobes sent into your body with orders to dissolve your brainstem, or something equally terrible.
What Tanis feared was a concentrated dose of something that could overwhelm her defenses and render her vulnerable to attack. Normal tech she would encounter on a station like Crantor was very unlikely to succeed at such a task, but the Jovian intelligence agencies? Well, they were a whole different threat level.
Darla didn’t respond immediately, instead making a hmmming sound.
Tanis pushed the drink back to the servitor.
The bot cocked its head, then reached out and took the drink back.
Tanis covered up a smile.
Tanis was about to ask Darla what value that could have for their operation—though she suspected there wasn’t one—when a voice called out.
“I wasn’t finished, Monica.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Tanis muttered as she turned to see The Raven standing in the bar’s entrance. She was wearing black light armor that looked a bit too small, along with a very angry scowl.
Tanis gave Darla an inward smile.
The thought had crossed her mind, but Tanis was feeling rather put-out after the Jovian’s attempt to hack her Link antenna, and was feeling the urge to take that out on someone.
I seem to be rather easily pissed off lately…I wonder if this is because of how Alden is trying to use me.
“Sure, ‘The Raven’,” Tanis snickered as she said the name. “Let’s go for round—”
Her words cut off as four other toughs entered the bar behind the white-haired woman.
Tanis slid off her stool and considered her odds at single-handedly taking on four armed and armored opponents with nothing more than an almost-dead lightwand and her bare hands.
Slowly placing one hand on the stool next to her, Tanis grinned at the toughs. “Sure. Let’s dance.”
A predatory smile spread across The Raven’s lips, and she took a step forward just as Tanis flung the stool at her head.
Half a second later, Tanis was over the bar, pushing
through the door to the back of the establishment. She pushed past the cooking servitors and out the rear exit into a service corridor.
The sounds of crashing from behind told Tanis she’d best not slow down, as she turned left and took off at her top speed.
She hoped that the crowds would keep The Raven from doing anything stupid, but seconds later, a shot rang out, and a round ricocheted off the overhead nearby.
Cries of alarm came from all around, with half the crowd rushing for the bulkheads, while the other half looked around, wondering what was going on.
Tanis was the only one who took off at full speed.
They took a few quick turns until they were on a wide thoroughfare. Glancing over her shoulder, Tanis was surprised to see The Raven and her gang still hot on her tail.
She almost collided with Marion and the rest of the Kirby Jones’s breach team, strolling through the station.
“Ho! Whoa there,” Marion said as she put a hand on Tanis’s shoulder. “You OK?”
“No!” Tanis gasped. “Can you help me, ma’am? There’s a group of muggers chasing me…please!”
Marion pushed Tanis behind her, and the soldiers formed up in the corridor, moving toward its junction with the larger thoroughfare just as The Raven and her crew rounded the bend.
The four veterans stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the narrow passage, and the group of toughs pulled up short. Though the white-haired woman was taller than Marion, the soldier had at least forty kilos on her. From Tanis’s view, it looked like a reed trying to intimidate a boulder.
“Move it,” The Raven grunted, catching sight of Tanis over Marion’s shoulders. “Monica there is mine. No concern of the TSF’s.”
