Got a mission for you, if you can tear yourself away from the R&R facilities. Lucky.
“This is really close. Two-hour compression jump. Dacara needs you to deal with a rebel threat.”
“Got me a transport?” Hailey asked, already starting her walk to the hanger level of the Scabbard.
Laura walked alongside. “Yep. Dock 32-A.”
“Thanks for getting me a job to do. Next time you insist on R&R for me, can you make it that beach one on SRB11? I want to learn to surf.”
“I’m sure you’ll pick it up in seven seconds. And I’ll see what I can do.”
At Dock 32-A, Laura and Hailey boarded the transport. “What, you’re coming along?” Hailey asked her handler. “I’m a big girl; I can go by myself.”
Laura said nothing.
“You’re suffocating on the Scabbard, too, huh?” Hailey guessed.
“I’m perfectly happy working at the Scabbard, but a little fresh air is also nice. Dacara is a lovely planet.”
“It’s not gonna be so lovely if rebels get a foothold there.”
“They won’t. Comet’s on the job,” Laura said with a smirk.
Dacara
Hailey was already dressed in her Wraith armor when she stepped off the transport. In the crowded spaceport, she was met by the head of Sector Security, Captain Nicholas Hunt. “Captain, I’m Agent Ramirez of SWORD. Do you have any updates from the past two hours?”
“It’s been quiet, but we did get this threatening comm message earlier today.” Captain Hunt handed his comm to Hailey as they started walking. “My car’s right outside.” Hailey followed the captain to his car as she listened to his account of recent rebel activity. Even without her helmet on, she sensed someone in the crowd was following her. She stopped walking and turned around as Captain Hunt walked a few paces forward before realizing she wasn’t next to him anymore.
Travelers swarmed around Hailey, but one man stood still, staring at the Wraith. He wore black clothes and shoes: a civilian mirror image of Hailey in her jet-black combat suit. His face bore the scars of many battles, but his subtle smile bore the arrogance of a man who knew whom he was facing.
It was noisy in the terminal, but he spoke to her from meters away in a low voice barely above a whisper. Hailey focused her enhanced aural abilities in his direction and heard him say, “I am going to kill you, Agent Ramirez.” Once the shock of the unexpected statement passed, Hailey suppressed the urge to laugh out loud. The stranger continued, “I’m ready for a bout. How about you?”
Hailey put her hand on her holstered gun, then considered the hundreds of people in the immediate vicinity. She could not put innocent civilians in danger. She knew she wouldn’t hurt any of them, but she didn’t know what this Wraith-wannabe would do. She scanned his body, looking for a firearm, and found none. She took her hand off the holster.
He smiled. Then he looked at his chronometer. “I think Lucky isn’t.”
“Isn’t what?” Hailey asked. An explosion on the tarmac shattered windows and sent a panic through the crowd. The throng buffeted Hailey as she tried to make her way to the window facing the tarmac. Outside, she saw the SWORD transport, disguised as a regular commercial ship, in flames from the center to the tail end. Laura lay on the tarmac, unmoving. Hailey leapt through a broken window and ran to her. “Lucky!” she cried as she flung herself to her knees next to Laura. She carefully turned Laura onto her back and checked her vital signs. Hailey breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Laura’s heartbeat and breathing. Her clothes were tattered, and her face and hands sported many small, bleeding wounds.
The Sector Security Captain finally caught up to Hailey. “The rebels did this! This is more than I thought they were capable of!”
Hailey took a clean strip of bandage from one of the many compartments on her suit and gently wiped the blood away from Laura’s wounds. “This wasn’t rebels, Captain,” Hailey said. “You need to take charge of the mayhem in there,” Hailey instructed. “But first, comm for an ambulance.”
“Yes, Agent Ramirez,” Hunt replied.
The pilot emerged from the half-burned ship’s cockpit hatch, coughing as he made his way to the SWORD personnel. “Agent Ramirez, what happened?” he asked between coughs.
“A failed attempt to kill Handler Schwartz.” Hailey looked up at the man. “Are you hurt, Agent Phillips?”
“No. Just inhaled a bunch of smoke before I got out.”
“There was a man in the space port who knew the ship would blow.”
“A rebel?” Phillips asked.
“No. This is an attack on SWORD. It’s personal.” Hailey looked back to the terminal with the blown-out windows. She expected to find the man in black watching with glee. But he was not there. Hailey suspected he had disappeared into the panicked population and was long gone. “Phillips, we need to get back to the Scabbard. Comm for a new transport, and warn them to scan for explosives on every SWORD ship on every planet.”
“Yes, Agent Ramirez.” A fire crew arrived and battled the blaze successfully. Agent Phillips stood watching as he initiated a comm with SWORD. After a few minutes, he returned to Hailey to report. “Transport’s on the way. ETA: Two-and-a-half hours.”
Hailey heard the distant sound of sirens getting closer. She looked at Laura and ordered her to hold on until the medics got there.
Awake and treated, Laura lay on a hospital bed while Hailey paced the floor around her. “Well, this is new,” Laura remarked. Hailey continued to pace. Laura put a hand to her head, feeling where the bandages had been placed over her wounds. “Am I going to live?”
“You’ll be fine,” Hailey replied tensely. Laura waited for more, but nothing more was forthcoming.
“Comet, what happened?” Laura asked.
“Explosive on the ship. It definitely blew from the inside. But how?”
“And why?” Laura added. “Lucky thing I was already out of the hatch.”
“Did you see someone? A man, one-point-eight meters tall with all black clothes, dark hair, bronze skin, grey eyes.”
“I hardly remember getting off the ship. I’m a little scrambled upstairs,” Laura said, tapping her head lightly.
“The ship was on the tarmac for seven-point-four minutes before the explosion. How did he get onto the ship, plant the bomb, and get out to where I was in seven-point-four minutes?”
“Who?”
“The man in black. He said he was going to kill me, but then he said, “Lucky isn’t,” and the ship exploded. That was an attempt on you, not me. And Lucky isn’t what?”
“Lucky.” Laura got quiet as she pondered her nearly fatal experience. After a minute, she spoke up. “There must’ve been a second guy.”
“How would he know your code name?” Hailey changed directions. “And he didn’t target the cockpit, so the pilot was not the intended victim.”
“What did this guy say to you, exactly?” Laura asked.
“He said he was going to kill me, that he was ready for a bout, then he said, ‘I think Lucky isn’t.’ He checked his chrono. He must’ve been the one who planted it. He must’ve heard me call you Lucky.”
“Have you contacted SWORD?” Laura asked.
“Yeah. They’re sending a new transport and a new agent to take over the case on Dacara. They want me to find this guy in black.”
“It seems he’s intent on getting to you,” Laura remarked. “I think you just need to keep your three-sixty radar on and you’ll see him again.”
“Then I’m gonna kill him,” Hailey vowed darkly.
“Comet,” Laura began.
Hailey stopped pacing. “He nearly killed you, Lucky. He vowed to kill me, but attacked you. He has to pay for that.”
“It was a sloppy attack. I’m not even badly injured.”
“Yeah. It was sloppy,” Hailey agreed. “Who does this guy think he is? He threatens me as if he even has a chance of laying a hand on me, then botches the attack on you.”
“Some kind of profe
ssional killer, I assume,” Laura posited.
“A hired assassin?” Hailey asked. “What makes you think that? Professionals are more successful than this guy, aren’t they?”
“You didn’t recognize him, did you? If he had a personal grudge against you, then he must know you.”
“Maybe he’s avenging a friend or relative,” Hailey guessed.
“Or he was hired.”
“So, two questions to answer: who is he, and why is he targeting me? We need to go back to the Scabbard and do some research.”
“That’s my line,” Laura said.
Hailey looked at her friend. “I’m glad you’re OK.”
“That’s my line, too,” Laura replied with a smile.
On the replacement transport heading back to the Scabbard, Hailey paced on the main passenger deck of the ship while Laura rested in a lounge chair. The transport was small, but compression-capable. SWORD owned several such craft for short runs to nearby Core planets. If agents needed to go farther, the SWORD transport would deliver them to a nearby planet with the necessary commercial or military transport to go to the outer Core planets and the Frontier. Usually, Hailey’s single passenger ship, Meteor, was stowed aboard the larger, compression-capable ship she traveled on, but for the trip to Dacara, her SWORD ride had taken her directly to her destination. She was glad that Meteor was not aboard, as the cargo bay was destroyed in the blast.
She was also relieved that Laura was not seriously hurt. Hailey was not sure how she would’ve reacted to losing her handler and being assigned a new one. For Hailey’s whole career, Lucky had always been there for her. Lucky was a loyal friend and an excellent researcher. Any time Hailey sent a comm or hyperwave to Laura asking for information, Laura came back with exactly what she needed.
Laura was the one who led her to the information about her past and her family. Laura was the one who kept her in contact with Karen Ramirez, Hailey’s mother, arranging for jobs on Karen’s planet to be assigned to Comet whenever they came up. Laura was the one who brought Spice to the asteroid in the T’skala Nebula, rescuing Comet and four other people trapped there.
At least Lucky will be safe on the Scabbard while I hunt this guy down, Hailey thought as she paced. The assassin could never reach Lucky on the Scabbard. The only ships that ever docked there were owned by SWORD. No other ships, pilots, military arms, or companies knew where the Scabbard was. It was truly a place one could only get to if one had already been there before.
With no sufficiently large planet or star or asteroid nearby to “latch on” to for a compression jump, how SWORD ships traveled through compression to the space station was knowledge and tech the geeks of SWORD would never share with the Empire. Neither would they share their Wraith implant technology. It was SWORD’s intention to remain ahead of every other interest in the United Orion Empire. The rest of the population just had to develop their own tech at their own pace.
After two hours in compression, the ship landed in the Scabbard’s hangar. Rested and looking much better, Laura led Hailey to the library where they took over a research room and scanned thousands of photographs of known male criminals who were not in prison. The photos flashed on the wall at a staggering rate. Hailey watched the stream of baddies, recognizing a few of them, but not seeing the man from Dacara. In another part of her brain Hailey pondered the untouchability of SWORD and the Scabbard as she tried to make sense of the assassin’s absurdly bold threat. “He’s not any of these guys,” Hailey declared.
“Then he doesn’t have a criminal record. There must be hundreds of assassins-for-hire in the Empire that we don’t know about.”
“Lucky, do we have a database of all citizens in the Empire?”
“Well, public records are public, of course, but you’d have to sift through a trillion records…”
“I’m thinking that the guy must’ve been recorded on security cameras at the port on Dacara. If I can spot him, then we can do a facial recognition search through all public ID records.”
“Good thinking, Comet. I’ll comm Dacara right away.”
Lucky came through, once again, getting the security recordings from the Dacara space port. Hailey scanned through, finding the moment she and the man in black faced off in the terminal. “There he is. Is this angle OK for doing an FRS?”
“Yes, that should work.” Laura started the computer working on the facial recognition search. “This could take a while. There a trillion people in the Empire. How about we grab something to eat?”
“Good idea.” The pair walked together to the mess hall. They passed one of the trainees Hailey had pummeled earlier.
“Agent Ramirez,” she acknowledged respectfully as she passed.
“Swat,” Hailey returned, reciprocating the respect with the use of her code name, instead of “trainee” or “kid” or “loser.”
“One of your playmates?” Laura asked.
“She’ll be a good fighter one day. I think she has a new respect for Crash.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I beat both of them soundly, but I couldn’t beat Crash.”
“Good thing there’s not an evil equivalent of SWORD. Can you imagine fighting criminal Wraiths all the time?”
Hailey agreed. They turned into the mess hall and went to the buffet line. “Seven-layer casserole. Must be use-the-leftovers day, huh?”
Laura chuckled. “Yeah.”
“I thought that when I graduated from the ‘junior’ mess hall, I’d never see leftover-mash meals again.”
“Stop complaining,” Laura chided lightly. “This looks pretty good.”
Hailey stopped complaining. It was mostly in fun, anyway. She was not very picky about what she ate. She saw food as fuel and many days on missions grabbed anything with calories. As they ate together, Thadeus LaMont entered the mess hall. He sighed when he saw what food was offered but took some anyway. With his plate loaded, he turned to find a place to sit. He sighed again when the only empty table was the one next to Laura and Hailey’s.
“Thadeus,” Laura said upon seeing him. “How are you today?”
“Schwartz, Ramirez,” LaMont acknowledged as he sat down. He didn’t answer Laura’s question. Laura and Hailey shared a look. “You two catch the man who blew up our plane?”
“No, sir,” Laura replied. Her direct superior was an unpleasant man who disliked Comet ever since she came to the Scabbard demanding information that she did not need. Every Wraith understood from the beginning of training that they would know what they needed to know when they needed to know it. We don’t answer to our assets, he had told Laura when Hailey went off-script.
“Oh. I thought that since you are sitting here having a leisurely meal, that he must be locked up by now,” Thadeus said, digging into his casserole.
Laura rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “We’re waiting on an FRS. It’s takes a while to go through nearly a trillion IDs.” Hailey purposely stayed out of the conversation. She knew LaMont disliked her, but he was Laura’s boss, and she didn’t want to make trouble for her handler. Hailey decided she’d point out her extreme restraint to Laura later – when they were alone – so Laura would know how much Hailey cared about her. She smiled at her own joke.
“Something funny, Ramirez?” LaMont asked.
Shit. “Funny? No, sir. Well, yes, sir. I just had an amusing thought about Handler Schwartz and myself.”
“Hmph,” LaMont replied, returning to his meal. “Everything’s a frittin’ joke to you,” he muttered, audible only to a Wraith with enhanced hearing.
“Thadeus, bury the hatchet already. Comet is a great agent and you know it.”
“Then why does trouble always swirl around her?” LaMont asked. “First her strike, then she needed a rescue, and now she’s pulled from a real assignment to hunt down a killer with a personal grudge. She’s always wasting our resources for personal reasons.”
Laura was taken aback by LaMont’s coldness toward an asset who carried heavy personal bagg
age yet remained an exemplary agent. “You can hardly blame Comet for the actions of psychotic citizens. She didn’t create the crisis in T’skala, and she doesn’t even know this new bastard.”
“Hmph,” LaMont grunted again.
“Excuse me, Lucky, I’m finished eating. I’ll be in the library.” Hailey got up to leave. Laura joined her, unable to tolerate the presence of Thadeus LaMont. When they were in the hall, Hailey said quietly, “Thanks.”
“How he can be so hostile is a mystery to me,” Laura fumed.
“Lucky, you’re getting emotional,” Hailey teased.
“That’s your fault, too.”
“My fault? What did I do? And what do you mean: too?”
Laura stopped walking and faced her asset. “When I couldn’t find you – when you were in T’skala – I was legitimately worried. I realized that I actually have feelings for you.”
“No,” Hailey replied with a hint of a smile. “How is that possible? Is your LM malfunctioning?”
“Shut up, Comet,” Lucky said with a suppressed smile. “You’re like… a kid sister to me. I care about you, all right? I want to protect you.”
Hailey knew she also had familial feelings for Laura, but they were always in the background. At that moment, though, she wanted to feel them front-and-center. She pushed on her limbic monitor and her background emotions flooded to the foreground of her consciousness. She looked at Laura, wanting to hug her and thank her for being her friend, her protector, her advocate. But Laura’s face showed concern.
“What’s happening?” Laura asked.
Hailey snapped back to dispassionate mode and replied, “What do you mean?”
“Your musculature, your heartrate, your respiration, your facial temperature all just went out of whack for a moment.”
Hailey searched for an excuse. She needed to steer Laura clear of any thoughts that her LM was faulty. In her need to protect Hailey, Laura might turn her over to medical personnel to have her LM “fixed.” Hailey’s ability to control the implant was a secret she was intent on keeping, even from Laura. She cursed herself for the brief indulgence in glorious emotion. “I was practicing my fake human response. It comes in handy on missions. You were getting all sentimental; I thought it was a good opportunity to show you how good I am at it. What did you think?”
Hailey's Comet Anthology Page 18