by M. D. Cooper
Tanis sent Darla a mental laugh.
Her AI made a tsking sound.
“Hey, didn’t mean anything by it,” Sawyer held up his hands. “I’m just out of sorts, worried about Alden’s visit.”
Tanis nodded stoically, careful to keep a grin from her lips. The only noteworthy Alden she knew of was the Jovian oligarch, leader of the Jovian Combine. The man liked to travel, and he also liked his privacy. His coming to Ceres for a vacation in a mid-range hotel at the edge of the planet’s most storied mountains made sense.
“I get that, too. Sorry about the whack I gave you,” Tanis said to Sawyer before replying to Darla.
“Looks like you check out,” Sawyer replied. “I suppose I can forgive a knock, since I shot at you.”
Neither spoke for a moment, and then Tanis asked. “So, what now?”
“Well…I guess you have a lead with this Kaebel guy. I’ll see what I can find on him. Maybe it’s best if you keep looking at the hotel, and I keep a lower profile; they’re getting a bit sick of me there.”
“That sounds perfect,” she replied, grateful that it meant Sawyer was going to stay out of her way. “You should probably grab your rifle and head out. I’m going to go to that next rise and do some more katas before I head back to the hotel.”
“Uh, OK. Sounds good, Agent Sasha.”
“Sawyer,” Tanis hissed. “Never out loud. I’m ‘Bella’. Got it?”
The man blushed furiously. “Right, yeah, sorry.”
JOURNEY’S END
STELLAR DATE: 02.22.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Kirby Jones, Approaching Ceres
REGION: Main Asteroid Belt, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
“Sweet stars above.” Connie wiped her brow as she looked over the holodisplays in engineering. “I can’t believe we pulled this off.”
“Ship-shape and ready to shoot,” Seamus intoned, while Liam added, “Fixing shit in outer space is what we do.”
“You two are like a couple of kids in a candy store, aren’t you?” Cassie asked. “Just love playing with the expensive toys and big guns.”
Seamus shrugged. “We have to take what joy we can, it’s not like we actually get any action down here.”
“Seamus!” Connie exclaimed in mock indignation, and the E-3 gave her a puzzled look, then his eyes widened.
“Oh! Whoops! I just meant that we don’t actually get to shoot bad guys. We do all the work, and Lieutenant Smythe gets to do the pew-pewing.”
Cassie snickered. “Right. If that was a slip, it sure was Freudian. But I know how the commander feels about fraternization on the ship…. Not going to make my first meeting with her a tongue-lashing.”
“A tongue-lashing?” Liam burst out laughing, and then clamped his mouth shut, his face reddening. “Damn, now I can’t get that image out of my mind.”
“You’re welcome,” Cassie said with a wink as she sat at her console and pulled up the shield readouts. “Glad we have these things working again. We were flying through the black, just waiting for the first wrench some idiot dropped to hole us.”
Liam reddened further. “We don’t talk about dropping wrenches in space. It’s not nice.”
Cassie snorted as she turned in her chair to look at Liam. “The ole slippery suit fingers get you once?”
“Try three times,” Seamus elbowed Liam.
“Dude, we were under attack, and the EM fields were messing with the repair drones. I didn’t see you on the hull while Hellas Raiders were shooting at us.”
“Really?” Cassie asked, her eyes wide and flashing signs of being impressed and a little star-struck. “I had no idea the Jones had seen action like that.”
“Commander Richards is a serious trouble magnet,” Seamus grunted.
Connie cast a judging eye at Seamus. “Bitch all you want, but at least we don’t have boring, do-nothing deployments like most ships our class.”
Cassie was now giving Liam a hungry look. “Thought I’d landed on the wrong ship, with the state it was in, but now I’m starting to see things in a whole new light.”
Liam widened his stance and gave a nonchalant shrug. “Just doing my duty.”
An almost giggle-like laugh escaped Cassie’s lips. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“OK, everyone, keep your shipsuits on,” Connie growled as she turned and walked to the door. “I’m gonna go make sure Jeannie hasn’t killed Smythe. They’re starting to wear on each other, being alone up there on the bridge.”
“Good luck,” Cassie waved to Connie. “I’ll keep the boys entertained.”
“Lovell?” Connie glanced at the overhead.
“If anyone so much as touches the fastener on their shipsuit, vent the bay.”
She walked out into the passageway, shaking her head as she sent a message to Cassie.
Connie sighed and gave a rueful shake of her head as she climbed the ladder shaft through the ship’s stacked decks to the bridge.
When she arrived, Corporal Marion was lounging in one of the seats, appearing to be asleep, though Connie knew better. Lieutenants Jeannie and Smythe were at their consoles, not speaking.
She could have cut the tension with a knife.
“How are things up here?” she asked loudly as she stepped onto the bridge. “We’re all set below, just need to cross-check readings on the bridge and get your sign-off.”
Marion made a snorting sound and then stretched. “Ahhhh…what time—shit! I must have dozed off. I’d best get to my team, they’re probably getting close to brawling over losses in their latest poker match.”
Connie sat at the engineering console and glanced at the far-too-still backs of Jeannie and Smythe’s heads.
Marion barked a laugh.
The soldier stood a good chance of crushing Harm, even with the extra booty cushion he had going on as ‘Cassie’.
Connie didn’t have to see Marion—who was now down on the crew deck—to know that the woman was flexing and kissing her biceps.
“Things look good up here, Lieutenant Smythe,” Connie said aloud. Your board green?”
“Yeah,” Smythe grunted. “Shields, weapons, scan, all the boxes are checked. Backup systems green. Ship’s good to go.”
“Everything good on helm?” Connie asked Jeannie.
“Right as rain,” Jeannie replied.
Neither had turned to look at her as they spoke, and Connie blew out a long breath.
Connie laughed, remembering the time Tanis had made Seamus do that.
She rose and stretched, gathering her wits and fortitude, and shoring up her ability to handle whiny officers. Then she walked in front of the pair, snapping her fingers to get their attention.
“Soooo…what’s up?” she asked while folding her arms across her chest.
“Nothing,” Smythe shrugged.
“We’re all good,” Jeannie replied.
Connie stared at them each in turn, and then pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, letting out a long groan. “I can’t help it. I’m the beer mom.”
“What?” Jeannie asked.
Lowering her hands, Connie said, “Look, if you two want to go fuck, just do it. I’ll make sure that Tanis doesn’t find out. But just get it out of your systems already.”
It was a long shot, and she didn’t expect it to work, but to her amazement, Jeannie glanced at Smythe and shrugged. His eyes lit up, and five seconds later, Connie was alone on the bridge.
“Holy shit…I can’t believe that worked. I kinda feel like I deserve a beer.”
Connie realized that, with the two lieutenants gone, she was stuck on the bridge.
“Shit! I don’t get paid enough for this.”
A PLAN
STELLAR DATE: 02.22.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: The Golden Gazelle, Hunting Lodge
REGION: Ceres, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
By the time Tanis returned to the hotel, Darla’s taps into the local PD’s systems—which were easier to breach than the hotel’s food service—confirmed that Inspector Sawyer had reached his station.
She’d also picked up an update from the planetary STC, indicating that the Kirby Jones was entering a polar parking orbit—which was strange, considering they probably had some cleanup to do after what she knew was a hasty departure from Vesta. A berth on Insi would make far more sense.
As she walked across the hotel’s manicured lawns to the rear entrance near the pool, the sun began to rise once more. Its rays, coupled with the hike, warmed Tanis enough that a sheen of sweat began to form on her brow.
she groused to her AI.
Her AI let out a snort.
Darla was silent for a moment before saying,
Tanis sent Darla a look of mock-indignation in her mind before checking on the Infiltrator Chameleon’s location. It was in one of the hotel’s restaurants having lunch—a BLT…again. She wasn’t hungry enough yet to eat kale, and decided to take a swim to cool off.
Bella’s preferred swimming attire was nothing at all—which the hotel allowed—but Tanis didn’t care for the stares that earned. She settled on a high-cut, one-piece bathing suit with one of her silk coats adding another layer.
She’d tucked her lightwand into one of the coat’s inside pockets, and when she reached the pool, she folded it up and left it on a chair with a towel covering it. Only a few people were around, and she didn’t think anyone would mess with someone else’s things, but it still worried her to leave a weapon in the open.
Tanis didn’t reply as she slid into the water and flipped over onto her back, languidly working her way across the pool before reaching one end and kicking off toward the other.
She watched her surroundings through her nanoprobes, which had suffused the hotel—though she had to be careful to have them only send small data bursts. Oligarch Alden’s advance team was starting to do in-depth sweeps, and though her Mickie upgrades were top-notch, she knew that the security for the leader of the Jovian Combine could probably pick it up if she wasn’t careful.
Worry over what she was going to do wouldn’t stop gnawing at her, try as she might to relax in the pool’s cool water. Her crew was up in space, taking orders from a machine that was pretending to be her, while she was pretending to be a TBI agent who was pretending to be a martial arts expert on vacation.
It was becoming clear that someone in the new agency she worked for was going to use ‘Tanis Richards’ to assassinate a head of state, probably relying on her ship’s firepower as a backup if necessary.
Even if it came out that the hit had been performed by an Infiltrator Chameleon, Tanis knew that the death of Oligarch Alden—while she was at the same hotel—would spell the end of her career in not only Division 99, but the Terran Space Force as a whole.
I guess Peter would get his wish, and I’d have to join up with the Marsian Protectorate—if they’d have me.
With that thought lingering in her mind, she resolved to set a deadline. If a clear c
ourse of action didn’t arise by the end of the following day, she’d take out the IC. That would disrupt whoever was behind this enough that hopefully they wouldn’t be able to pull a backup into place.
Not only that, but she could show the IC to Alden’s security, and they’d likely scrub the oligarch’s visit all together.
Of course, I could just do that now, and probably achieve the same end.
Tanis mulled over the thought, but she knew that route had one fatal flaw: it wouldn’t reveal who had tried to have her killed in that dressing room on Mars 1. At present, whoever had sent the Infiltrator Chameleon still thought that they had been successful at killing her—which was the one advantage she currently possessed.
They may have failed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe them a healthy dose of payback.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Harm was behind the attack and subsequent events. She had to keep it as a possibility, but it didn’t seem at all like something he’d do—the man had put a lot on the line to see her through the events back on Vesta…. She didn’t think he’d done all that only to throw her away at the first opportunity.
She considered telling Darla her plan, but decided not to for the time being. The determination to take decisive action by the following evening—and the near certainty that, when push came to shove, she could call on Harm for aid—had caused a considerable weight to fall off her shoulders.
Enough that the swim through the cool water was actually becoming relaxing.
Too relaxing.
Tanis quickly checked her feeds to ensure nothing untoward was occurring anywhere nearby, seeing only a few patrons milling around the pool, and a few swimming innocuously nearby.
OK…a few more laps.
LOYALTY
STELLAR DATE: 02.22.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: The Golden Gazelle, Hunting Lodge
REGION: Ceres, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
To maintain her cover as Bella—and to maintain her cover as Sasha the TBI agent with Sawyer—Tanis once again spent much of the evening with Kaebel in the bar, carefully watching the oligarch’s security team as they surreptitiously added their own surveillance and security equipment throughout the hotel.
