by M. D. Cooper
They discussed other issues for several minutes before Joe left for an inspection on Blue Wing. Tanis took a few minutes to relax in the relative peace and quiet before rising to hit the officer’s mess for a late night meal before bed.
She whistled a tuneless melody as she walked through the halls of officer country. It was third shift and few people were about; Tanis was half watching where she was going and half paying attention to some time tables that Angela was running through in the back of her mind.
She rounded a corner and thought she caught a shadow out of the corner of her eye, a blur that was there one moment and gone the next. Looking behind her she saw nothing, and, pausing, heard only the sound of air circulation coming from a nearby vent.
Something wasn’t right. Tanis evaluated her surroundings, checking for aberrant scents, sounds, and vibrations. Sure enough, the sound of the vent was too loud.
Tanis slowed her pace and leaned back against the bulkhead, pretending to have gotten a message via Link that required all of her concentration. Instead, what she was doing was sending out preconfigured noise-cancelling nano. They spread through the corridor, determining what the actual sound of the moving air was and clearing it from Tanis’s hearing. All that was left was the additional noise. The nano attempted to triangulate and pick up its source, but were unable to do so. It appeared to be coming from everywhere.
Then a sensation prickled within Tanis, almost as though she could sense another being’s presence, and she threw up an arm to fend off a blow. To her surprise, she actually did deflect a strike. Instinct told her where the attacker would be and she lashed out with her boot and felt it connect with an unseen body. Tanis thanked the foresight that had caused her to amp up her olfactory system; that had to be what was giving her this intuition.
“You know,” Tanis spoke aloud to her attacker. “I can’t see you, but I can smell the patterns you’re making in the air currents. Why don’t you just drop this sneaky assassin thing and we can do this the old-fashioned way?”
A figure materialized in front of Tanis, every inch covered in a skintight glossy black outfit. There weren’t even any apparent openings for the wearer to breathe or see. Most likely that was done to mask IR output from hot breath. Tanis found herself wanting one.
The figure was obviously female and Tanis’s records showed that the height, weight, bone structure, and overall posture matched the woman she had fought previously on the Dawn.
No weapons were visible, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
“As you wish.” The sound seemed to come from the figure’s entire body. “Would you like to do this hand to hand, or not quite that old-fashioned?” An obvious challenge resonated in the woman’s tone. Her body posture was confident and tense all at the same time.
“Oh what the hell, Kris.” Tanis grinned. “It’s been a very long time since I tore the stuffing out of anyone with my bare hands. It is Kris, by the way, isn’t it?”
“Good memory, Tanis. Now that we’re on a first name basis, shall we get on with it?”
Tanis didn’t wait for a response, but sent a TSF-issued boot—polished so even Williams would be proud—up and around in a textbook roundhouse kick to her opponent’s head. Kris wasn’t there anymore, but Tanis hadn’t expected her to be. It wouldn’t be a very fun fight if she won with a single kick.
With that the battle was joined. Kris was skilled, something Tanis already knew, and both of the women’s limbs flashed out and were blocked or deflected by the other in turn. It was as though they were participating in a complicated dance and each had the moves down perfectly.
Even so, Tanis felt that she was at a bit of a disadvantage. No tells were offered by her opponent. Normally a grimace or a look in the eyes would give intentions away, but the featureless mask prevented that. She wanted one of these suits even more.
The moment of reflection almost caused her to fall for a feint, and she blocked the real strike at the last moment, wincing as the blow deflected off her forearm. Kris’s attacks were powerful; she was most certainly cybernetically enhanced.
She wasn’t the only one; the TSF didn’t let you above commander if you were just flesh and blood. A little carbon nanofiber here, some titanium there coupled with some X5A sinew and then you were all you could be.
“You’re not too bad,” Kris commented with a hint of appreciation in her voice.
“Not too shabby yourself. Why don’t you give up and we’ll call it a draw.”
“Not very likely,” Kris said. “I’m going to collect that credit on your head and retire somewhere real nice. Maybe New Eden.”
“Any way we could fake my death and split the take?” Tanis asked. “This job doesn’t pay for shit.”
Her comment caused Kris just a moment of pause and Tanis used that to make a daring attack with both her left foot and right arm. The blows wrenched Kris and dislocated her shoulder. A follow-up strike to the base of her skull ended the fight in Tanis’s favor.
The black figure went down in a heap, and Tanis waited for the TSF team she had called during the fight to secure the body. She had no idea how Kris had planned to get off the ship, that was something she would have to ask the woman.
“Put her with our collection. We’re gonna have us a nice long talk. And save the suit, but make sure it doesn’t have any surprises. I can think of a really good use for that puppy.”
A TEMPTING OFFER
STELLAR DATE: 3227282 / 11.25.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Trist had been moved to the medical facilities on the Intrepid, a place Tanis was already quite familiar with after her mods for the trip to Cruithne. After a couple of days, the thief was well on her way to full health, though portions of her body were now made up of silbio, the value of which was greater than most people would make in a hundred years.
They were sitting in one of the lounges in the medical facilities, each with a cup of coffee. Tanis was taking hers black, something that a lot of time in the field forced you to like whether you preferred it or not, while Trist was drinking some concoction that could only have come from Ganymede; it consisted of several different spices, milks, creams, and possibly some actual coffee.
“I gotta hand it to you folks,” Trist said. “You sure know how to make a girl feel at home—if home were a fluffy, cushy prison.”
“You’re not a prisoner…exactly,” Tanis replied.
“Kinda feels like it with virtually no Link access, no permission to leave my room unless I’ve got a couple of burly types with me, and no knowledge of what my future holds.”
“Well, what do you think we should do with you?” Tanis asked.
Trist cast her a sidelong glance. “You’re not tricking me with that one. I’ve been around long enough to know someone’s looking to see if I’ll hang myself with the line they give me.”
Tanis smiled. “Sorry.”
“Just sorry? Why am I the one guiding this conversation? Didn’t you come here to see me?”
“I did, I’m just trying to decide exactly what to do with you. You won’t testify against the STR, which means that I don’t have a lot of use for you. However, sending you back out into the system is a bit of a death sentence and I don’t feel totally comfortable with that either.”
“What? The cold-as-ice Major Tanis Richards, the Butcher of Toro, would feel bad about me getting my head blown off? I think your reputation is a smoke screen.”
It was Tanis’s turn to cast a glance at Trist. “I thought you had no Link access.”
“Oh I don’t, at least I don’t right now. I managed to slip past the safeguards a few times until some broad named Amanda gave me the smackdown. Took me a bit, but I got past her eventually and w
as wandering through some personnel files when some guy named Bob came into my mind and told Sue and I that if we even sent a photon across the Link he would turn our brains off. Was a real jackass about it too.”
Tanis’s eyebrows rose considerably. “You got a visit from the Intrepid. He doesn’t deign to speak to us mere mortals much anymore. You should be honored…or possibly scared witless that he addressed you.”
Trist’s eye widened. “He wouldn’t really…”
“Who knows; he’s a very advanced AI, there aren’t any others like him in the human sphere.”
Trist whistled. “Good thing I hadn’t implemented my plan to get past him.”
“Good thing indeed. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to offer you this deal.”
“Finally we get to it.”
“We’ll grant you and Sue immunity from extradition in the SolGov territories. Any past crimes committed in those areas, or against organizations based in SolGov controlled space will be pardoned. In exchange for that we require your testimony against Trent.”
Trist considered it for a moment. “Not going to be good enough. STR will come after us, or even if it doesn’t we’ll live our whole lives waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Well, we can’t get you pardoned by the Jovians, they won’t budge. It’s possible they will once we nail the STR, though.”
“No, I’ll tell you what I’ll do it for. I want in.”
“In?” Tanis asked, though she was pretty sure that she knew what Trist wanted.
“Yeah, in. I want to be on the colony roster.”
Tanis raised an eyebrow, wondering how the GSS would feel if she circumvented them to get a known criminal onto the Intrepid.
“You do have decent credentials, but you really don’t pass a lot of the other screening parameters.”
Trist crossed her arms. “And I want my mods upgraded. I want a real eye with all of the extra performance and I want a normal-looking hand. Everything state of the art.”
Tanis leaned back and took a sip of her coffee. Stuff tasted like bile. “How much of you is still human?”
“Fifty-fifty, depending on what you count my new secret ingredient as,” Trist said. “Sue would, of course, like her specs upgraded as well. I’ve got the full requirements in a file that I’m sending you.”
Tanis received it and looked it over. It was quite the request, though honestly not even worth mentioning in the grand scope of the Intrepid’s construction, or even the cost of her more basic security enhancements.
“I’ll have to discuss your addition to the roster with the colony leaders. As for the mods, I’ll schedule the surgeries as a show of good faith.”
Trist all but beamed. “I’ll give you the testimony of a lifetime.”
“Just stick to the truth.” Tanis sighed.
CHASING MYRRDAN
STELLAR DATE: 3227239 / 10.26.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Jessica was developing a strong distaste for space travel. Before this assignment, the furthest she had been for work was Luna with a couple of vacations on Venus.
Those trips had been on commercial liners with all the comforts of home. Her precipitous exit from Cruithne had put her on a scow without any passenger amenities and a distinctly limited supply of sexual partners.
Customs was a brief affair. Mars, though it had a semi-autonomous military and security forces from Terra, was more than willing to cooperate with the TBI and its agents. Jessica was on a maglev within half an hour of arriving on the Mars 1 Ring.
She couldn’t help but admit that there was a certain charm to the Mars 1 Ring that wasn’t immediately apparent on the vids. The passage outside her train was a large, vaulted corridor featuring art-deco accents. She had never seen anything like it on High Terra with its function over form styling.
The rivalry between High Terra and Mars 1 had been going on for centuries. Mars 1 was the original planetary ring, but High Terra claimed superiority in all areas. The two rings competed in every way from design to political clout to sporting events.
The maglev rose up to the top level of the ring and she was amazed at how much open space the ring had. High Terra was more urban than not, while Mars 1 was almost entirely parkland. From what she could see, there were raw wildernesses on the ring.
The maglev continued to rise above the surface of the ring and the train accelerated to over a thousand kilometers an hour before giving a slight jolt as it flew out into open space. The local web indicated that the train would accelerate toward Mars and skirt the exosphere before using its own velocity to escape and arch toward the far side of the ring. It was a bit disconcerting to essentially be in a train floating through space, but it did shave over twenty-thousand kilometers off the trip.
Jessica spent the trip alternating between dozing and reviewing her leads on Myrrdan.
During the trip to Mars she had learned that Myrrdan had been spotted on the Mars 1 ring and later on the Mars Central Elevator Exchange. A contact in Mars Intelligence had placed Myrrdan there via a tap on communications in and out of a front that sold false identities.
Mars Intelligence had managed to work out a common signature the identities used and had tried to track their use but were stymied when the IDs started popping up in use all over the MCEE and Mars 1.
If Myrrdan had secured one or more of the IDs, he was covered by a seemingly random pattern of use. At least random to Mars Intel.
Jessica had been after him for over a year and was beginning to get a feel for his games. He could only feint so many times before his moves showed the true action rather than hiding it. Suspects always gave away more information when they got clever in their attempts to be elusive.
The pattern here was the same as the one she had followed on High Terra, when it led her to Jameson and a dead end. The same patterns were at play here—but this time she could see the dead ends for what they were.
If her hunch was correct, he was headed to the Mars Outer Shipyards and now so was she.
The maglev train would intercept one of the elevators that rose up from Mars 1 to the MCEE, and from there she could catch another train that would take her up the stalk to the Mars Outer Shipyards.
Other than some amazing views, the trip was uneventful—though when she stepped out onto the station platform she was surprised about the level of security on the MOS. What was more interesting was that, in addition to station security, she saw a few MSF and even TSF uniforms.
A quick scan of local news sources informed her of the colony ship Intrepid and its various security issues. Jessica found herself wondering if perhaps Myrrdan was trying to sneak aboard the colony ship, or if it was coincidence.
It would be the easy conclusion, but with the colony ship being constructed, there were hundreds of freighters at the shipyard at any time, not to mention several TSF frigates under construction at the far end of the shipyard.
Jessica decided to head for the stationmaster’s offices to see if she could get direct access to the records for the ships under construction to see if anything stood out.
Getting directions on the local net, Jessica discovered that she was roughly a hundred kilometers from the stationmaster’s offices—which was more of a complex than an office. She managed to wedge herself into a crowded connecting train, glad that she had decided to send her armor directly to her lodgings.
As the train accelerated and gently jostled its passengers, Jessica felt a sharp prick in her left shoulder. Reaching up to rub it, she couldn’t help but gasp as her eyes locked with what had to be her quarry.
Myrrdan!
BAIT
STELLAR DATE: 3227284 / 11.27.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
“I don’t know how much I like this plan.” Trist fidgeted. “I sort of get th
e feeling that I’m bait.”
“That would be because you are bait,” Tanis replied. “However, you’ll be very safe bait, especially since you are just their secondary target. They’ll be jumping at the chance to get at me with the minimal protection I’ll have on Mars 1.”
“Yay, so I’ll be secondary bait right next to the primary bait.” Trist sighed. “How did I get myself mixed up in this?”
“I believe it was by leading a life of crime and wrongdoing,” Joe’s tone was caustic.
Trist turned on him. “Yeah, you try growing up on the lower Callisto rings. Either you dish shit out or you eat it. I chose not to do the eating.”
“She does have a point, sirs,” Williams said. “I’ve been to Callisto; it’s nice up top, the part most tourists and visitors see, but down below it’s a real heap—the classic scenario of the poor maintaining the system for the rich. They could probably run it cheaper with bots, but why fix what they can ignore?”
“Be that as it may,” Tanis checked over her equipment one more time, “it doesn’t change the fact that our course of action is fixed. We’re going to Mars 1 to give our depositions. We’ve got our route covered and while I expect that they’ll attack before we make our destination, I don’t think it will be anything a few squads of Marines can’t handle. Mark my words, by the end of this day we’ll have Trent.”
Trist’s expression grew dark and Joe, Williams, and Tanis all got a glimpse of a very different woman than the one she had seen recovering in medical.
“Any chance I can get a few minutes alone with him?”
“Probably not,” Tanis replied. “Though for what it’s worth, I echo your sentiment.”
“Don’t worry,” Trist turned her hand over and flexed her fingers. “I’m pretty sure I could remind him.” She glanced up at Tanis and Joe. “Sorry, I guess that sounds a bit stupid—but he did kill my best friend. I’m finding that pretty hard to let go of.”
