by M. D. Cooper
Tanis felt a pang of worry for Lovell. He was one of her crew, and his safety was her responsibility. Rage began to build within her, and she forced it back down, slowing her breathing as much as she was able.
she replied, the frustration in her tone echoing Tanis’s own.
Tanis sighed, leaning against a bulkhead once she was out of view of the MPs.
The colonel’s queue acknowledged receipt of Tanis’s message, and she waited patiently to see if she’d get an immediate response.
Just over forty seconds later, Higgs’s gravelly voice came into Tanis’s mind.
Higgs replied.
The colonel’s tone was softer than his words would have implied alone, and Tanis laughed in response.
Tanis bit back a surprised remark. The colonel had never said anything like that to her before. So far as she could tell, he disliked something about everything she did.
Can’t imagine what it would be like to be someone he didn’t think does a good job.
The colonel cut the connection, and Tanis’s small amount of elation was tempered by an irrational image of the Kirby Jones completely dismantled in the bay, destined never to fly in the black again.
Tanis pursed her lips. Colonel Green’s division, the ninety-ninth, was known as the Mickies; Military Intelligence and Counterinsurgency. They were the ones who made sure that the federation stayed together, no matter the cost. Usually, if something weird was happening and MICI was around, you knew who was behind it.
But Tanis didn’t think that the Kirby Jones’s lockdown and the general nonsense surrounding the Norse Wind was Green’s style—for a Mickie, she was rather direct.
Unless it was all a ridiculously elaborate test for Tanis and Darla.
But that didn’t explain Unger—or rather, Captain Tora of the SWSF—meeting with Admiral Deering.
This enhanced level of bullshit is far more than even MICI would go through to mess with someone they were testing upgrades on.
Darla made a sound of agreement.
Tanis felt her hands ball up into fists.
Tanis nodded in approval. The time to trust logs and database entries was over—granted, there were enclosed drydocks on Vesta more than large enough to hide the Arizona. The search could ultimately be futile.
She turned out of the short passageway that led away from the docks and into a larger corridor that led out of Sector 33. The bags of clothing slung over her shoulder were sure to be a liability for whatever she and Darla had to do next, so Tanis wanted to drop them off at the Grand Éire.
The fastest route to the nearest maglev platform was through a nearby service corridor, and Tanis turned into it, picking up the pace, trying to burn off some nervous energy.
It wasn’t often she felt totally in the dark, but this was certainly one of those times. She needed some sort of lead, and she wasn’t going to sit around anymore waiting for it.
She dodged to the left side of the narrow corridor as a man leapt out of an alcove and fired a pulse pistol at her.
The concussive wave rippled through the air where Tanis had been walking a moment before, close enough to make her arm feel as though it had been slapped.
Dressed all in black, the man pivoted, the weapon moving toward Tanis once more—but again, when he fired, she’d already moved.
She dropped low, releasing the shopping bags, and rolled to her left, coming up next to the man, her enhanced L2 nervous system and augmented reflexes making it seem as though he was moving in slow motion.
Her right hand clamped down on the pistol’s barrel while she grabbed his wrist with her left, pinching his nerves and causing his hand to spasm.
Seconds later, the weapon was in her hands and aimed at her attacker, who backed away, still not having uttered a word.
“What the hell is going on?” Tanis asked while threading nano into the weapon, triggering a breach routine on its biolock. “You the same idiot who attacked me in the san?”
The man didn’t reply, but she saw his shoulders tense and suspected that he was. He must have been a fool to think he could take her a second time—especially now that she’d worked out the balance issues she’d experienced during their prior encounter.
“Who se
nt you? What is going on?” Tanis demanded again, advancing on the man, raising the weapon threateningly.
She could just make out his eyes behind the shroud, and saw them dart to his left, an action that caused her to pull feeds from Darla’s optics.
Sure enough, there was a faint heat signature approaching from Tanis’s right.
Tanis said, feeling the cold calm of life-or-death combat come over her.
She took a menacing step toward the man in black just as the pulse pistol’s biolock released. But instead of firing at the visible attacker, she whipped her arm to the right, telegraphing the move, and fired twice at the stealthed attacker.
The first shot hit, but the second missed as the attacker dove to the side. As Tanis had hoped, her visible attacker’s attention turned in the direction of his backup, and she took advantage of his distraction to reach out with her left hand, grab his wrist, and yank him to the right, sending him stumbling toward the stealthed opponent.
The two assailants collided, and Tanis fired two max-power pulse blasts at the pair, watching—and hearing—with satisfaction as both fell to the ground.
The man in black rolled onto his back, moaning. The other opponent was faintly visible to Tanis now, the person’s stealth systems partially damaged by the high intensity pulse shots.
“Surrender!” Tanis ordered, and for a moment the second attacker paused, but it was just for an instant.
Then the figure rushed toward her.
She fired one more shot from the pulse pistol, catching the onrushing enemy in the side, but it wasn’t enough to knock the person back, and they slammed into Tanis, causing them both to fall to the deck.
Tanis was on the bottom, fending off blows as best she could, while the attacker—a woman, by her weight and what Tanis could make of her build—straddled her.
Tanis said as she grasped her adversary’s hand, releasing a passel of nano.
She scrambled backward just as her attacker’s stealth armor shut off. Sure enough, her enemy was female. She was a few centimeters shorter than Tanis, and wearing a black skinsuit, but carrying no weapons.
Between them on the deck lay the pulse pistol, and Tanis eyed it for a second, waiting for the woman in black to make a move.
“Who do you work for?” Tanis hissed. “What the fuck is going on?”
“You know what,” the woman whispered. “Where did you put it?”
“It?” Tanis asked, genuinely confused. “The only ‘it’ I care about is the Kirby Jones. I ‘put it’ in Bay 8129, and I’d like to see it again. Right after I see your face and find out what the hell is going on around here.”
“The quantum logic core,” the woman said, ignoring her. “We know you have it.”
“Seriously,” Tanis exclaimed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Does this have something to do with the Norse Wind?”
The woman cocked her head. “You really don’t know…”
“Stars! What don’t I know?”
The woman didn’t respond, and instead reached behind her back. Tanis didn’t wait to see what her enemy was going to pull out, and dove to the ground, grabbed the pulse pistol, and fired it three times at the woman’s abdomen, draining the last of its charge as the blast lifted her adversary into the air and flung her backward.
Tanis was back up in an instant, but Darla called out in her mind.
“Fuck!” she swore, and turned to run.
* * * * *
Forty minutes later, Tanis arrived back at the Grand Éire. She’d taken a dockcar back to the resort, using it only after Darla had shut down the vehicle’s NSAI and piloted it manually.
All the while, she waited for some sort of alert on the station’s networks. Something either about the fight, or calling for her arrest.
Neither occurred. It was as though the altercation in the maintenance corridor had never happened.
Even so, Tanis wasn’t about to trust that no one was looking for her, and ditched the dockcar while still a twenty-minute walk away from the Grand Éire.
Instead of using the resort’s main entrance, Tanis took a lift two levels up, and worked her way through a warren of maintenance corridors to one of the employee entrances. It was slow work; Darla had to gain control of internal sensors, corridor by corridor, to mask Tanis’s progress, but eventually they had passed through the more densely monitored areas.
Tanis shrugged.
Tanis sent her AI a conspiratorial wink.
Sure enough, as she turned into the narrow corridor with a door at the end bearing the words ‘Grand Éire Employees Only’, she caught sight of Liz punching her security code into a panel next to the entrance.
“Liz!” Tanis called out as she jogged down the passageway.
Liz turned and her eyes widened. “Commander Richards?”
“Please, just ‘Tanis’,” Tanis said as she approached.
“Ummm…sure. What are you doing here?” Liz asked.
Tanis gestured at her disheveled appearance. “Well, I got in an altercation out on the station, and I’m a bit mussed up. I don’t want to go through the front, so I was hoping someone could let me in the side door, here. Sure am glad I came across you.”
“Ummm…I’m not really supposed to…” Liz said, looking nervous.
“It would make me happy, and if it comes up, just tell whoever asks that I insisted.”
Darla gave a conspiratorial chuckle.
Now Darla groaned.
While she spoke with Darla, Tanis gave Liz a sweet smile, and hoped that the woman would be agreeable. Her next option was to make a scene, but that sort of thing wasn’t really in her nature, and she rather liked Liz.
“OK, Com—er, Tanis. I’ll take you through to the service lifts.”
“Thanks, Liz. I’ll be sure to leave you something special.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Liz said as she finished punching in her code and pushed the door open, holding it wide so Tanis could pass through. “You’re a lot friendlier than most of the guests; that alone is worth it.”
“Nonsense.” She shook her head. “It would be my pleasure.”
She struck up a conversation with Liz about places she’d been to on Venus, and was telling the girl about her favorite restaurant in the city of Tarja, keeping the discussion light, when Darla broke into her thoughts.
“Shit!” Tanis muttered aloud, and Liz glanced backward.
“Commander Richards? Is everything OK?”
A pair of mainte
nance workers walked past, so Tanis only shook her head, and gestured with her chin to the lift doors ahead.
To her credit, Liz picked up on her meaning.
When the service lift’s doors closed, Tanis turned to her. “I have another favor to ask you.”
“What is it?” The porter’s eyes were wide with curiosity.
“I don’t want to put you in any more danger than you may already be in, but someone is trying to kill me, and it seems they’ve already searched my suite.”
“What!?” Liz gasped, and her mouth hung open.
“Something crazy is afoot on Vesta, and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it, but I need somewhere to lay low for a bit. The Grand Éire is massive; do you know of anywhere I could hide?”
Liz appeared pensive for a moment, and then a smile slowly spread across her lips. “Oh, I have the perfect place!”
* * * * *
The lift stopped one level below Tanis’s floor, and Liz gestured for her to exit.
“This level is all one suite, and has been vacant for a few weeks. The previous guests had a bit of a…rambunctious party in one of the rooms, and completely destroyed it. They made a pretty big mess across the whole suite—most of it is cleaned up, though. One room is not, because the Éire is suing the guests, and the insurance company won’t approve the repairs until the lawsuit is complete.”
“Really? That seems like a lot of effort,” Tanis replied. “Why not just fix the room and start getting money from guests again?”
Liz shook her head as she led Tanis down a short corridor to a pair of double doors. “The room was sheathed in Lunar Marble, the red-veined stuff that they mine under New Austin. They completely ruined it—smashed some…spoiled the rest. It’s worth a mint, and the guests are more than wealthy enough to pay for it.” She punched in the access code, and pushed the doors open. “Anyway, the court case got pushed back a month, so this place will be sitting vacant ‘til at least then.”