Hard Strike

by Eric Thomson

  “Open the cells.” When Ben gave him a questioning look Decker said, “Where the hell else am I supposed to store you and those two sleeping uglies? Open the cells.”

  He complied, and after checking both rooms, Decker motioned at Talyn to switch places with him while he dragged the two guards into one of them. Then, Decker pointed at the explosives storeroom and said, “Now open that one.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Piet is the only one other than Eva or Gustav who has unrestricted access.”

  “That’s too bad.” Decker raised the needler and fired. Red spots appeared on Ben’s cheek. He grunted once before collapsing. “I suppose I should have shot him in the cell.”

  “Indeed. Is the MHX behind that door?”

  “Yep.” Decker dragged Ben into the cell and dropped him beside his colleagues. “But Piet will want to interrogate us himself, so he’ll be here soon. Everything is falling into place as ordained by fate.”

  “Let me ask you this, Big Boy, if Piet hadn’t let his paranoia go ballistic, how did you figure we’d get our hands on that MHX brick?”

  He shrugged.

  “No idea. But I would have thought of something in due time.”

  She walked up and down the corridor, studying every nook and cranny.

  “Why are there no surveillance sensors? If they’d bothered to wire this place into the house network, a dozen of Ben’s friends would be crawling over us right now.”

  “I noticed the same thing when Piet brought me here to commune with the Mayhem. But it stands to reason. No sensors mean no chance of anyone seeing Gustav or Eva’s victims meet a sad end and recording the event to earn extra money via blackmail.”

  “Their weakness is our opportunity.”

  “Exactly. This job would be a lot harder if the opposition only recruited honest, upright people.”

  “Congratulations on improvising yet another harebrained scheme. For a moment or two, I wondered whether you’d lost your ever-loving mind by coming clean on Alek and Gustav.”

  “If it’s stupid, and it works, it’s not stupid.” Decker sketched a mock bow. “Make sure you mention this example of my stellar ability to adapt and overcome on my next performance evaluation.”

  “We’re not done yet, Mister Wonderful. There’s still the small matter of recovering the MHX and making our escape.”

  “Not to mention sending Sera Cortez into that big sleep where she can reunite with Gustav and suffer torment for eternity. I should have shot her instead. Gustav wasn’t about to become the first minister without little Eva and her twisted soul.”

  “Not to mention that. What does your stellar ability to adapt and overcome think we should do when Piet finally joins us?”

  A hungry grin lit up the Marine’s face.

  “We pull one of my favorite maneuvers, the ambush. I’m sure he’ll show as little interest in a needler lobotomy as Ben did.”

  **

  “Has Ben reported back yet?” Yorik asked the man at the security console as he re-entered the beach house foyer after seeing Eva Cortez off.

  Anton shook his head.

  “No. Maybe he and the guys are having fun with that Zadeck woman. She’s not bad looking for her age.”

  “I sure as hell hope not. She’s also damned dangerous for her age. I’ll be in the arms room for the next hour. Prepare the boat. When I’m done, we’re dumping them in the usual spot.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Yorik stopped by his office, one of the ground floor bedrooms he’d re-purposed when Gustav hired him, and took an interrogation kit from the locked cabinet hidden inside the walk-in closet. He also pulled out a box of lethal needler loads, illegal as hell on Mission Colony, and swapped them for the nonlethals he’d carried all morning, in case Zadeck and Peel didn’t die under interrogation.

  The staircase door was agape when he entered the hallway from the kitchen, and he listened for any sounds that might tell him Ben and his colleagues were amusing themselves with the prisoners. Sometimes Gustav would allow a favored few to enjoy sloppy seconds before they dispatched his latest playthings, something Yorik didn’t condone because it was bad for morale and discipline.

  Woe betides anyone who abused prisoners without his permission now that Gustav was gone. And good riddance. Eva could be cruel, though never merely to amuse herself. But he heard nothing.

  Once on the bottom landing, he saw the arms room and the first cell also standing open, while the second cell door was closed save for a small crack. There was no sign of his men. Invisible fingers crept up the back of Yorik’s neck. He drew his needler and held it loosely at his side, barrel pointing downward before he entered the arms room corridor and looked into the cell.

  Sherri Zadeck, its sole occupant, sat in the metal chair bolted to the floor, arms behind her back, a muzzle patch over her mouth. She stared at him with terror-filled eyes while making undecipherable sounds which increased in volume and pitch at an alarming rate.

  Yorik suddenly sensed a presence behind him and tried to turn. But a powerful hand wrenched the needler from his grip while another weapon’s barrel was jammed into the small of his back hard enough to draw a gasp of pain.

  When his eyes turned back on Zadeck, she was standing, mouth uncovered, pointing a gun at him. Yorik froze in surprise and during those few seconds, whoever was behind him, Corbin Peel being the most likely candidate, stuck the weapon into his right ear.

  Then, a voice growled, “Unless you like your brains scrambled, I suggest you do nothing more than breathe until I give you permission to move.”

  “What do you want?” Yorik asked in a whisper.

  “The MHX. What else? Open the explosives room, and you might walk away from this reasonably intact. You’re just a hired gun, paid to obey orders. Don’t fall on your sword for someone like Eva Cortez. She’s just as likely to order you killed as take you to her bed.”

  “That’s what you want? The Mayhem.”

  “Yep. Can’t leave the stuff in the hands of a wacko like your Eva. So here’s the deal. I’ll drag you to the door and you’ll unlock it for me. Then, you take Sherri’s place in the cell, we lock it and leave. Is that something you can live with? Because if not, you’ll die.”

  Talyn walked over to Yorik and ran her fingertips along his jawline.

  “I’ll add one caveat. Eva needs termination, with extreme prejudice. Where is she right at this moment? Upstairs, in her suite?”

  “No.” Yorik quivered as he forcibly kept his head from moving side to side. “She returned to Ventano, to the townhouse. Eva doesn’t stick around when there’s wet work on the menu.”

  “Plausible deniability.” Talyn took one step back. “Why am I not surprised? Eva has fewer morals than an alley cat. Her marrying Gustav Kerlin should have been a clear sign.”

  She gestured at Decker with her head.

  The Marine tossed Yorik’s weapon to his partner. Talyn caught it by the barrel, tucked the guard’s needler in her pocket, and checked the loads in Yorik’s gun.

  “Lethal darts, Piet? I’m disappointed.”

  “But not surprised, right?” Decker seized Yorik’s collar and spun him around until he faced the explosives’ room door. “Open it.”

  When he didn’t immediately obey, Decker pushed the needler’s barrel against his ear hard enough to elicit a gasp of pain.

  “Okay, okay.” Yorik placed his palm on the reader, then entered the code, and the lock sprang open. Decker pulled him back, turned, and shoved him past Talyn into the open cell.

  She indicated the metal chair. “Sit, sunshine.”

  “You know what?” Decker’s voice boomed across the hallway.

  “No, I don’t know what. Why do you always ask that question? I’m a professional assassin, not a mind reader.”

  “I just had an idea you’ll love.”

  “Judging by your enthusiastic tone, I’m not so sure. Things always turn way too interest
ing when you’re excited.”

  “And they will again.”

  — Thirteen —

  “I found a box of detonators that’ll work with the MHX-19. By the way, that’s bad form, Piet. You always store detonators and explosives separately. And I thought you were a professional.”

  “We did con him into shackling our hands in front of us, rather than in back,” Talyn said. She gave Yorik a disappointed smile. “That made taking out your men considerably easier and quicker. Next time, you should restrain your eagerness to slap on manacles, especially when folks offer their wrists voluntarily.”

  An angry sneer twisted Yorik’s face. “You’ll pay for this. Mark my words.”

  “Doubtful, but if it makes you feel better... What were you about to propose, Corbin?”

  “That I play the good explosive ordnance disposal man and blow this Mayhem in place. It’ll save us from lugging it back to Cimmeria.”

  “A bit of a waste, no?”

  “Fine. You can carry the brick in your bag. But consider this. We’re about ten meters below ground, in a hole surrounded by granite. That means when the MHX blows, most of the explosion’s force will shoot upward rather than outward, limiting collateral damage. As a bonus, it’ll vaporize the Cortez family’s bunker and remove an eyesore from the landscape.”

  “And you’d like to see what a kilo of Mayhem can do in the real world instead of watching simulator results.”

  “That goes without saying, honey. You know me. Making stuff go boom is my second favorite hobby, right after making you—”

  Talyn cut him off. “Let’s not embarrass poor Piet with a description of our intimate habits. His stomach may not be strong enough.” She turned a cruel gaze on her prisoner. “Or are you a voyeur along with all your other perversions, Piet?”

  “There,” Decker said. “I rigged the detonator along with a timer. Nice inventory, Piet, even if you don’t know squat about proper storage. Now to finagle an anti-tamper device, in case someone decides to be a hero instead of running for his life.”

  “You want to let these sad specimens escape when they’re guilty of aiding and abetting Gustav and Eva’s myriad crimes? When they intended to kill us and feed our bodies to ravenous reptiles? Are you turning sentimental in your old age?”

  “I’m not a cold-blooded assassin, darling. I prefer to give even the scummiest of scumbags like Piet a fighting chance.”

  “Why?”

  “To feel better about my life choices. The urge comes from owning a soul. Aha! That should do nicely. A few more minutes and we can blow this joint, in both meanings of the word.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll shoot Yorik. That way he won’t feel a thing when the MHX turns Eva’s beach house into a crater.”

  “A true angel of death, that’s what you are.”

  Talyn turned her head to blow a kiss across the corridor. As she expected, Yorik chose that moment for an attempt to recover his weapon, but before he could take more than two steps, she fired a dozen tiny darts into his torso.

  He skidded to a halt, glanced down, surprise writ large on his face, then up at her again before collapsing under the effects of the fast-acting neurotoxin.

  “I believe they call this being hoist on one’s own petard,” she said to the dying man at her feet. “If you’d been carrying legal, non-lethal loads, you might merely wake up in a few hours with a nasty headache. Say hi to Gustav for us. Don’t worry about Eva. She’ll join you soon.”

  “What are you on about?” Decker asked in a distracted tone.

  “Piet went out fighting.” Talyn knelt beside the dying man and rifled through his pockets. She found nothing more than an identity wafer, which she kept.

  “You enticed him into trying for his gun, didn’t you?”

  “I did. And he loaded it with neurotoxin-coated darts. Perhaps he committed suicide.”

  Decker chuckled.

  “Suicide by assassin. Cute. There, I’m done. Any preference for the timer?”

  “Your call. Just make sure it’s enough to let us get away from ground zero.”

  “Thirty minutes should do the trick. What about Ben and his sleeping buddies? They won’t come to for another hour or more.”

  She didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he heard her open the other cell door, then the weapon in her hand coughed three times.

  “Problem solved. The bastards aren’t sleeping anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were the sort who’d rape their female prisoners if Piet didn’t tell them otherwise.”

  “Ah. Right. Of course. Should I ask about your intentions for the rest of the guards?”

  She stuck her head into the explosives storage room. “Don’t you already know the answer?”

  “Fine. Do what you feel best. There, the timer’s set.”

  He joined her in the corridor and slammed the door shut, cutting off anyone without the right palm print and access code.

  “As a man once said, the die is cast. Thirty minutes until detonation.”

  He glanced into both cells, finding three dead guards in one and their equally dead security chief, crumpled in a heap, eyes staring sightlessly at the wall, in the other.

  Decker raised a hand as if holding something. “Alas, poor—”

  “Don’t,” Talyn growled as she slapped him.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Say it.

  “Say what? Alas, poor Yorik! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy? That’s what you don’t want me to say? Fine, I won’t.”

  She gave Decker a look of utter disgust.

  “Sometimes, you can be such an asshole.”

  “That’s one of my many talents.” He blew her a kiss. “But if it’s only sometimes, I must be slipping. Come on. If our car’s gone, thirty minutes will buy us just enough time to leave the danger zone.”

  They encountered the first of the remaining guards in the kitchen. Talyn felled him with Yorik’s gun before the man could open his mouth.

  “That makes four, plus Piet,” Decker muttered. “We saw six on the terrace, not including Anton, which means there are at least three left. Did you want to hunt them or can we recover our gear and bugger off?”

  “With any luck, the survivors will stick around and find themselves blown into orbit.”

  Anton half rose from his chair when they entered the vestibule. Talyn shot him in the face without warning. He fell forward, face hitting the console before slumping to the floor.

  “Five down.”

  They recovered their own weapons but kept the captured needlers. Decker glanced at the surveillance console.

  “Looks like three of them are sleeping.”

  “They’ll get one hell of a wakeup call in,” she glanced at her timepiece, “twenty-five minutes.”

  Decker was first at the front door. He stopped abruptly.

  “Shit. Our car’s gone. One of Piet’s boys must be taking it back to the rental lot, in keeping with the general plan to make us non-persons.”

  “I bet Anton keeps keycards to their speeders in his desk,” Talyn replied, turning back to the console. “Choose which of the two you want.”

  “The Nostromo Overlander looks nice. Armored too. Probably the one Piet uses.”

  “He no longer needs it.” Talyn stepped over Anton’s body and rummaged through the drawers beneath the bank of video displays. “Where are you? Aha! Here we go. How about we take a car each?”

  She tossed a keycard at him.

  “Sure.”

  To his relief, both vehicles came to life at their approach. They reached the main road, almost seven kilometers away, in a matter of minutes. Decker pulled the Overlander off to one side and climbed out.

  “You’re bound and determined to watch, aren’t you?” Talyn asked as she joined him on the large flat stone he’d turned into his viewing bench.

  “Why pass on the chance to learn more about MHX-19’s effects? Call it professional deve
lopment if you want. We know where to find Eva, so there’s no hurry.”

  “On the contrary, we need a berth on the next ship headed for Cimmeria. The idea that there could potentially be hundreds of kilos of the stuff in DSA hands chills me to the core. Especially if those maniacs are handing it out to whack jobs like the Mission Colony Freedom Collective, which was, until yesterday, run by a guy whose extra-curricular activities make most perverts seem like normal, law-abiding people.”

  “If you’re chilled, I’ll warm you up.” Decker wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. “Fortunately, he received the death penalty for his crimes, thanks to yours truly. Gustav won’t be diddling underage kids anymore, or murdering anyone who crosses him.”

  “Sure, yet you have to wonder how many Gustav Kerlins are out there?”

  “Probably quite a few. The universe is filled with awful people. But one thing at a time, right? Once Eva’s out of the way, we need to call home, report on this DSA whose existence everyone seems to have missed and tell them about an unknown quantity of MHX-19 going walkabout. I memorized the factory and depot markings, so at least they can launch an investigation. We should also suggest a direct action unit from the 1st Special Forces Regiment be sent to Cimmeria. If they don’t screw around and put them on a fast starship, it could show up a few days after us. By then we might have found where the rest of the MHX is being kept, along with whoever is running this Democratic Stars Alliance.

  “Since we both agree it’s probably another Coalition scheme to cause political chaos, the boss should bless us with everything he can. As far as I know, the Cimmerian Gendarmerie doesn’t have an anti-terrorism task force, and if the DSA problem is interstellar, it’ll be ours to solve anyhow. Maybe you can rope in your friend from the Constabulary Professional Compliance Bureau when we land on Cimmeria. I doubt the Coalition has suborned one of the last incorruptibles and I don’t want to risk approaching anyone at Sixth Fleet HQ, in case it still suffers from a Black Sword infestation or worse one from the Sécurité Spéciale.”

  “Agreed. You’re getting good at this, Zack. I’m impressed.”

  He stared at her in mock dismay.

  “You took this long to be impressed by my abilities as a black ops ninja? I’m hurt.”