“Stagmoniacin is tricky. Doesn’t always work exactly the way one wants it to. But it worked well enough. Kudos to you; you saved both of them. I knew you would.”
“Why the riddles? Why attack my friends?”
“Because you’re a riddle, Comet. You are a Wraith with friends, a family. I was trying to figure you out. The tests showed me how you work. Let’s be honest: you have the advantage. I needed some way to even the contest.”
“By throwing me off…”
“Exactly. I could hardly just shoot you from a hide somewhere. That wouldn’t be very sporting, and it would’ve been dishonorable for people like us. It had to be a face-to-face fight, and it had to be even.”
“Who hired you?” Comet asked finally.
“Oh, I can’t answer that one, Comet. Client confidentiality.” Sam lunged at Comet suddenly. Comet evaded his attack, tripping him. As he fell to the ground, he tucked into a ball and rolled back up to his feet five meters away. Comet used that one-point-seven seconds to scan the crowd that had gathered a safe distance away to watch the incredible fight – Sector Security forces, civilians, and Lucky. Lucky gave her an encouraging nod. She could do no more to help Comet. Lucky was sure Comet could win, though Comet was not equally sure any more.
Her mind went back to her last bout with Crash. We all know each other’s moves. That’s why a Wraith can’t beat a Wraith. And Raven was definitely well-versed in the moves of the Wraiths. He honored the code of not harming innocents in his quest to fulfill his mission. He would not kill anyone on the planet – except Comet, his mark.
She looked at Lucky. She ran scenarios in her head and settled on the one with a seventy-eight percent chance of success. Raven came at her again. They wrestled and flipped each other and threw each other to the ground, punching and jabbing any chance they got. Comet worked the bout in the direction of Lucky as she stood on an unpaved section of the park. She steered Raven to the packed dirt with a loose layer of dust and gravel on top. With every hit he landed, she became more frustrated and reckless. He couldn’t help but show glee at her deteriorating position and state of mind.
Laura watched helplessly. “Come on, Comet!”
With a burst of energy, Comet tackled Raven face-down in the dirt. She only had control of his legs and one arm, so with the free hand he grabbed a fist full of loose debris and threw it over his shoulder into her eyes. Comet cried out in pain, letting go of him and slapping the dirt off her face. But she couldn’t clear her eyes. She tried to open them, but they wouldn’t cooperate. Reflexive response was in control. She backed away from Sam, still able to hear him advancing on her. She could also hear Lucky’s encouraging voice to her right. She ran to Lucky and tore the gun out of her grasp and aimed it in the general direction of Raven. He froze.
“That’s cheating,” he said. Using his voice as a target, she fired. The bullet whizzed past Sam’s left ear. The onlookers cried out and ducked. They started running every which way in panic. The noise overwhelmed Hailey’s ability to differentiate Raven’s movements from anyone else’s merely by hearing. She struggled to open her eyes and find him. She let go shot after shot, missing Raven and, mercifully, missing civilians. Lucky yelled to her to stop firing.
“What the hell, Comet?” Raven cried. “You’re shooting blind at civilians!”
Hailey whipped around and pointed the pistol at Sam. “Tell me where my mother is.” She blinked and tried to keep her eyes open as they watered and closed involuntarily.
Raven approached her. “You’re out of bullets, Comet. You know that.”
“Nope. There’s one more. I’ve beaten you. Tell me where Karen is, and I won’t use it on you.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t beaten me.” Sam put out his hand and grabbed the empty pistol by the barrel. He gently wrested it from Comet’s grasp. Hailey dropped her hands and, purposely pushing on her LM, added tears to her watering eyes. Dirt dripped down her face as her tears washed her eyes.
“When this is over, will you let her go?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Raven asked, truly perplexed by the Wraith’s behavior. Then he nodded knowingly. “Your LM doesn’t work when it comes to your mother,” he deduced.
“The geeks can’t fix it.”
“So that one civilian matters more to you than all the rest,” Sam concluded. Hailey nodded, still blinking madly to clear her vision. “You’re one broken Wraith, Comet.”
“Me? Broken? You’re a killer for hire! You kill for money!”
“On the contrary, I do a great service to the citizens of the Empire.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, it’s logical. Let’s say someone wants to kill someone else so much that they’ll do whatever it takes to take that person down. How many innocents get caught up in scenarios like that? Blow up a whole shuttle to take out one passenger? Massacre everyone in a household to get the one bastard? Those are the things that happen when criminals go violent. Me? I get the target – only the target. No one else gets killed. If I don’t take the contract, there’s no guaranteeing the safety of the innocents in the community.”
“You’re not serious,” Hailey said. “Then what about going after me by hitting everyone around me?”
“I didn’t kill any of ’em. I told you that: I just leveled the playing field.” He thought for a micro-second. “I didn’t know about the faulty LM. That does make this a little unfair, doesn’t it? Well, can’t be helped. I have a job. Sorry for your loss.”
At that moment, the moment of his exceeding smugness, she sprang at him so quickly that even he didn’t see it coming until it was too late. She broke his nose, causing his eyes to water, then broke his left arm, then his right.
As he fell to the ground, she stomped on his ankle until it crunched under her boot. Though he ignored the pain, his attempts to hold her off were futile since his arms had no structural strength. She kneeled on his chest and put her hand on his neck. She began to constrict his airway. “Where – is – my – mother?” she demanded.
Raven knew he was defeated, but he smiled. He knew he was safe. It was her job to capture him. He also knew that if she put him in prison, he would break out. He honored his promise: “She’s locked in my ship, unhurt. It’s in the Tercero hangar, space seventeen-alpha.”
Comet resumed the normal functioning of her limbic monitor. “Thank you,” she replied, accepting his surrender. She got up and retrieved the gun Raven had dropped when she tackled him. She calmly opened the chamber and pulled a single bullet out of one of her pockets and loaded it into the pistol. Closing and cocking it, she kneeled at Raven’s side and put the barrel against his chest, in line with his steadily beating heart.
“Comet!” Lucky said. “He’s subdued. Put that gun away.”
“Twenty-seven,” Comet replied, not looking up at Lucky. She stared at Raven’s eyes. He stared back at her. She knew as well as anyone that no prison could hold him for long. “Will you continue to work as a contract killer? Last chance.”
“I have an open contract...”
“Comet!” Laura exclaimed as she saw Hailey’s finger begin to pull on the trigger. “No!”
Comet closed her eyes as Laura’s voice reached her ears. She completed the pull and the pistol kicked back in her grasp. She held it steady in her firm grip. Comet stood and lifted her head before she opened her eyes again. She looked toward the horizon where civilians were still running away in fear. She turned toward the Tercero hangar and walked away, leaving Laura standing, stunned, over the body of the retired Wraith.
Mama
It was no trick to break into Sam’s ship at space seventeen-alpha. Hailey climbed inside and found Karen Ramirez locked in a sleeping compartment. Karen’s fear at hearing the door unlock turned to joy when she saw Hailey was the one who opened it. Hailey helped Karen out of the compartment, then they hugged each other tightly. Hailey overpowered her limbic monitor’s ability to control her chemical balances and felt overwhelming lo
ve and relief. “Mama,” she said. “I’ve got you now. No one’s gonna hurt you.”
Hailey walked her mother toward home, talking gently with her about the ordeal, watching for any sign that she needed medical or mental care. “Did he hurt you, Mama?”
“No, just scared the hell out of me.”
“Did he say anything to you – why he did it?”
“He didn’t say much at all, except, ‘Keep quiet. I’ll blow this compartment if you make noise.’ Threats. But, why me, Hailey? And how did you know to come for me?”
“It’s a long story, but the short version is, he took you to ensure I’d come here.” Hailey knew Karen would not approve of the battle and Hailey’s way of ending it. She felt a wave of shame, knowing her mother would be horrified by her actions, so she let her LM resume its normal function and changed the subject. “Are you hungry? How long since you’ve eaten?”
“I don’t know how long I was in that compartment…”
“I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this, Mama. I’m going to track down the guy who started this. You don’t need to worry; I won’t let them hurt you.”
“Who, Hailey? What’s going on?” Karen never asked Hailey before about the details of her work. She knew what Wraiths did. She knew they tangled with dangers and difficulties beyond the abilities of even the marines. She knew they made quick decisions and took whatever measures were necessary to complete the mission. She didn’t usually want to know the details of Hailey’s work. She was just glad to see her daughter every few years when work brought her to Light One.
“Don’t worry about it, Mama. We got the guy who locked you in that ship.”
“Then who are you going after?” Karen asked.
“The person who put him up to it.” Hailey stopped at the first restaurant they came across. “Let’s get you something to eat. We’ll start with some water, yeah?” She settled Karen into a booth and intercepted the first wait-staffer she saw. “That woman needs water right away.” Hailey’s appearance – her face and hands covered in blood and grime – made the waiter back away in fear. “I’m not gonna hurt you. Please, just get some water right now.” The man nodded spastically and hurried away. Hailey returned to her mother.
“So, what’s it gonna be?” Hailey asked, trying to sound cheerful. The waiter appeared with two glasses of water and a whole pitcher besides. “Thank you,” Hailey said to him. “We need food right away, too.” She looked at Karen for her order.
Karen looked at Hailey. “You know you frighten people when you talk like that.” She turned to the waiter. “May I please have the torrondo sandwich and salad combo?” she asked, taking the glass of water and drinking the contents within five seconds.
“Yes, ma’am. Right away. Anything for you, ma’am?” he asked Hailey.
“I’ll have the same, thank you.” The waiter left the two women staring at each other across the table. “What?” Hailey asked. She was also parched from her fight with Raven and consumed her glass of water in one stream. She refilled both glasses from the pitcher as Karen watched.
“Do you have that limbic thing working right now?” Karen asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you turn it off?”
“Technically, it doesn’t turn off. I simply over—”
“Whatever!” Karen blurted. “I want to talk to my daughter, not Agent Ramirez.” Hailey looked at her mother and slowly shook her head. “Why?” Karen implored.
Hailey broke eye contact. “I just compl— I mean, I caught the… Mama, I can’t talk to you about my work, and if I override the… if I feel the results of what we’ve all gone through for the past several days, I’ll probably fall apart right here in this diner.”
Karen changed seats to share the booth bench with her daughter. “Hailey, I couldn’t take care of you when you were a child. Let me take care of you now.” She put an arm around Hailey, encouraging Hailey to rest her head on her loving mom’s shoulder.
“I’m supposed to take care of you. You’ve just been kidnapped and illegally confined. I know there’s more to resolve than just getting you out of there.”
“I guess we have something in common now. We’ve both been kidnapped and rescued,” Karen said softly. Hailey laughed briefly. She realized her mother was stronger than she ever thought. She had endured worse than Raven’s abduction when she lost her daughter, and then her husband so many years ago. Because her mom wished it, she disabled the LM’s hold on her brain chemistry. Instantly, she felt the need to hug her mom.
“I would’ve done anything to get you back, Mama.”
“I know the feeling,” Karen said, caressing Hailey’s hair. “What do you need, my Hailey?”
Her mother’s embrace was the safest place she could be, so she opened herself to the woman she loved and cried for a minute before she spoke. Finally, she confided in her mom. “I’ve seen such ugliness in the galaxy. I’ve done ugly things. Sometimes I just want to get away and never go back.”
“I’ve heard these words before, love.”
Hailey looked into Karen’s face. “Papa?”
Karen nodded. “Your papa said the same thing to me before we got married.”
“Papa was a good man, wasn’t he?” Hailey asked.
“Yes. Very good. And kind, and thoughtful. SWORD made him into a steely-eyed, one-man army, but he never lost his humanity.”
“Uncle Carter told me about him saving some dogs one time…”
Karen chuckled. “I never heard that one, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Mama, I have a perfect memory of every hideous thing I’ve seen over the past fourteen years. And I just saw another.”
“Wanna tell me about it?” Karen asked gently.
Hailey’s eyes threatened to drop tears again. “You’ll be so ashamed of me, Mama.”
Karen frowned. “I’ll try to understand. I’m sure you calculated the best response to the situation.”
Hailey turned her face away from Karen’s. She looked at her hands in her lap. “I’ve always tried to avoid killing people, even bad people. But one day, I just snapped. I hesitated taking down one bad man, and he ended up detonating explosives that killed twenty-seven people. The math was all wrong. One is way less than twenty-seven, and an innocent is a hundred times more worthy of saving than the scum I go after.” She took a sip of her water. “So, I made a decision that I wouldn’t hesitate again. One warning unheeded, and that’s it. And that’s been my MO for the past year. In the cosmic morality ledger, I think I’m still in the black, but…”
“You feel guilty?”
“I remember every kill without regret.”
“Do you feel like a bad person?”
“I feel like a non-person. You said Papa never lost his humanity. I think I’m losing it.”
A knock on the window shook Hailey out of her confessing. It was Lucky. “Is Karen all right?” she asked through the glass. Hailey nodded, then glanced at her mother and smiled weakly. She beckoned Lucky to join them inside, then turned to her mother.
“That’s another SWORD agent. You can’t let her know about the limbic monitor, OK? You understand? If SWORD finds out, they’ll try to fix it.”
Karen looked horrified, then got her face under control and greeted the agent as she sat down across the table from them. Hailey resumed the function of her limbic monitor. “Uh, Lucky, this is my mother, Karen Ramirez. Mama, this is my handler, Laura Schwartz.”
“I’ve heard so much about you,” Laura said, reaching across the table to shake Karen’s hand.
“Hailey’s mentioned ‘Lucky’ once or twice, though not a lot of details about your work,” Karen replied cordially.
“It’s not that interesting to non-SWORD people, I think,” Laura deflected. She looked at Hailey’s tear-streaked face. “Hey, Comet, you all right?”
“Yeah. The damn dust is still bothering my eyes.”
“You could see what you were doing out there, right?” Laura asked without giving
away the fact that Hailey had appeared to be shooting randomly into a crowd of people.
“Yeah. I had to do something unexpected. I realized that he played by the rules, so I had to appear to break them to throw him off kilter.”
“Well done, Comet. Ms. Ramirez, your daughter is an excellent agent. Smart, quick, accurate, and she always gets the bad guys.” Lucky’s words were complimentary, but her tone betrayed concern.
The waiter brought the food to the table and noticed a third intense woman had sat down. “Uh, would you like anything, ma’am?”
“You got any stir fry?” Laura asked.
“Uh, this is more of a sandwich place…”
“That’s fine. Another plate of whatever they’re having then.” She smiled briefly at the anxious waiter, trying to set him at ease. He hurried away. “Have you been scaring the civilians, Comet?” she asked lightheartedly. Neither Hailey nor Karen found any humor in Laura’s question. “Well, Ms. Ramirez, are you all right? You’re unhurt, I hope.”
“Hailey saved me before anything really bad happened,” she answered.
“Comet always saves the day. Just last week she saved Sla—“
“Lucky, I need to wash up. You’re pretty dirty, too. C’mon. Mama, we’ll be right back.”
Hailey grabbed Laura’s arm and led her quickly away to the wash room. Once inside, she rounded on her handler. “What the hell are you doing? Karen doesn’t need to know Carter was run over. They’re friends. You want her to worry about him, too?”
“Sorry, Comet. I wasn’t thinking. I’m still recovering from the shock of seeing you shoot an unarmed man, point blank! What the hell?”
“I told you before: one warning. He wasn’t going to stop killing people. He admitted it. If I didn’t shoot him, Ram would blow the implant in his brain anyway. And since Ram is in sick bay thanks to Raven, it’s not on his to-do list, is it? I’m just helping out. Efficiency. That’s all.”
Hailey's Comet Anthology Page 23