by M. D. Cooper
Cassie believed—and Connie hoped—that this would make a great location to take out the Infiltrator Chameleon.
Connie nodded before replying aloud, “Let me know if you need any help peeling yourself out of that pink monstrosity.”
Cassie laughed aloud. “I’ll send an S.O.S. if I need you for that…or anything else.” She added a wink before sashaying away.
Connie looked down at her swordfish. Well, I better take care of you before things go off the rails.
She’d only taken her first bite when Cassie called out,
Trying to act as though nothing was the matter, Connie rose and made her way down the hall toward the room where Cassie was fighting ‘Tanis’. Other than a few muted thuds, no sounds were coming from it, and she drew in a deep breath before opening the door.
I’ve seen Tanis fight. I really don’t want to be on the receiving end—even if it is a bot.
Screwing up her courage, Connie opened the door and slipped inside, only to narrowly avoid an elbow to the head from Evil-Tanis. She ducked to the side and saw that Cassie had a cut on her lip and was holding her hands up defensively, while Tanis threw a punch at her before attempting to kick Connie.
“Crap!” Connie blurted out, barely avoiding the attack—mostly because Cassie jumped in front and took the punch in the chest, grunting as she pushed off the wall and slammed into the Infiltrator Chameleon, knocking her to the ground.
They struggled in a rather undignified fashion up against the san, while Connie stood in muted shock, wondering what she should do.
“The breach kit!” Cassie said, jerking her chin toward a small hard-Link plug that was laying on the floor.
“Right!” She knelt down and tried to get a hand on the IC’s hard-Link port behind her ear, taking a knee to the head in the process. Her shoulder slammed into the san, and she nearly lost the breach kit down the drain, but managed to maintain her grasp and slotted it into the IC’s hard-Link port.
The bot continued to thrash, knocking Cassie free, and then slammed a right hook into Connie’s jaw. The blow stunned Connie, and she worried that the breach kit hadn’t seated correctly until the machine suddenly froze.
“Faaaawk,” Cassie whispered, touching her forehead where a deep cut was bleeding profusely. “That bitch is hardcore.”
Connie rose on shaky legs. “So, what now?”
“I’m setting up a privacy shield so no one will realize there are three people in here.”
“Good call,” Connie said breathlessly, wishing her limbs would stop feeling so wobbly.
Cassie rose and looked her over. “OK, privacy shield is up. You’re not bleeding, so clean up and get back out to the table. I’ll—”
As Cassie spoke, the door clicked open a hair, and they heard a voice on the other side saying, “OK, guys, I get it. It’s risky business, being here in my casino, but can I at least shit in peace?”
A muttered response came back, and then none other than Oligarch Alden stepped into the room.
TEETH
STELLAR DATE: 03.05.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Blue Lagoon Casino, Sargasso Mountains, Europa
REGION: Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
“Hold up,” Tanis said, raising a hand in the air. “Are you telling me that you stumbled onto the perfect opportunity to take out the Infiltrator Chameleon, and then the damn oligarch walks into the same san?”
Harm, who she was still having trouble reconciling as Cassie—or Amari, depending on which level of cover one was thinking of at the time—nodded. “Yeah, I couldn’t have planned it that well if I’d tried. I—”
“I hate you,” Tanis muttered.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been traipsing about the Sol System for weeks trying to get to the bottom of this, I nearly die in the Insi Ring ruins, spend half my time with wheels on my feet, and then get turned into the Silversquid, and you…you just walk into a fucking san, and everything falls into your lap?”
Connie snorted. “ ‘Silversquid’. I like it.”
“Well, we did travel to all the same places you did,” Cassie said. “Wasn’t all peaches. I spent a week putting panels and deck plate in place on the Kirby Jones while you were sipping drinks by the pool on a cruiseliner.”
Another snort came from Connie. “You supervised while Liam and Seamus spent a week putting the ship back together.”
“You get my point, though; we’ve all been working this thing from our angles. That is, ‘til you went and screwed it up, Tanis. What were you thinking?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Someone was shooting at the oligarch, and me!”
Harm-Cassie-Amari nodded. “Yeah, that was whoever we were trying to flush out. Would have been handy to know you were the Silversquid…or that you can sing that well. Seems like you were doing just fine down here.”
“But our poor IC isn’t, Tanis,” Connie added. “You jammed a bunch of darts into it before we could get a bead on the shooter.”
Tanis shook her head, trying to keep her tentacle-hair from flopping around. “I didn’t. That was Demetri. I was trying to stop him.”
“Demetri who works for Alden?” Harm asked, and Tanis nodded.
“Yeah, he seemed fishy to me back when I met him on Ceres. I suspected that Alden’s team would have a turncoat in it—though Darla didn’t—”
“You were suspicious of my suspicion.”
“Wait,” Tanis’s gaze slid from Connie to Cassie. “So if Demetri killed the first Infiltrator Chameleon and not the oligarch, where’s the real Alden?”
The two exchanged a sheepish look, then Connie spoke up.
“Uhhh…the orcas have him as their prisoner.”
“What?”
“Easy, Tanis,” Cassie said in a calming voice. “We were trying to get him offsite to a sub I’d called down, when we almost ran into a shark patrol. Which is nuts…who uses augmented sharks for security? One fried control chip, and everyone in this place is chum.”
“You were saying?” Tanis prompted.
“Well…we managed to avoid the sharks, but had to leave the casino grounds to get clear. That’s when we ran into one of the dolphin protest groups. They spotted who we had right away, and were…”
“Incensed,” Connie supplied.
“Yeah, in a nutshell. Some of them were ready to kill him, but luckily, these two orcas showed up and managed to calm the bottlenose dolphins down.”
“And this all happened right out in the open?” Tanis asked skeptically.
“No, we were skulking down one of the gullies at the bottom of the valley. We were almost free and clear when they found us, too.”
“OK, so let me get this straight,” Tanis said, glancing over at Alice the mermaid, who had let out a moan in her sleep. “You nabbed Alden, replaced him with my reprogrammed doppelganger IC, then whisked him off in the hopes that whoever was behind this would show their hand?”
“Pretty much,” Cassie said.
“But because they hate me so much, they sent in a second IC to do the job, but I grabbed that one, and so they just went ahead with the hit themselves?”
Cassie slapped her knee. “So that’s what happened to the second one. We were looking for it in the amphitheater when the attack happened. Problem is…now we don’t know who was doing this.”
A smile grew on Tanis’s lips. “Well, that second IC was only operating down here for a day. And it was getting its orders directly from someone we all know. My money is on him being the one who took the shot at Alden.”
“Oh?” Cassie’s eyes grew wide. “Do tell!”
“Colonel Urdon of the SWSF.”
* * * * *
Once Tanis had shared all the evid
ence they had on Urdon, Cassie sat back on her heels. “OK, Tanis. We need to do two things. One is grab that IC you stuffed in that storage closet, and the other is get you the hell out of here. We’re not equipped to hunt down Demetri and Urdon right now. We get the evidence to safety and get them later.”
“Weird that they haven’t called off the hunt for you, yet,” Connie said. “Alden’s people have to realize that it was an Infiltrator Chameleon that died in the amphitheater.”
“Yeah,” Tanis nodded. “But the real Alden is missing, and I ran off. That’s mighty suspicious. Also, they have the whole place on lockdown, how are we getting out?”
“Well, Connie and I aren’t wanted,” Cassie said. “So we’ll go get the IC. Since no one is suspecting ‘Tanis’, we should be able to get it out without too much trouble.
Cassie tapped her chin and nodded. “You’re right. In fact, what I should do is make the IC masquerade as Connie…. Walk it and all its logs out to our submarine.”
“What about me?” Connie asked. “If the IC is ‘me’, how do I get out of here?”
Cassie glanced at Tanis and then at Alice, who was still passed out on the couch with popcorn strewn around her. “Give me a second, I’ll think of something.”
Just then, the door opened, and Arnold rushed in.
“Alice? You OK? This lockdown is—hey, what are you all doing in here?”
* * * * *
Darla let out a long laugh in Tanis’s mind.
In the end, the disguises they opted for were rather simple. Connie was wearing a mermaid’s tail, her personal ident changed to that of Alice. Tanis’s mass of tentacles were crammed into a monofin divesuit.
It was a bit lumpy here and there, but considering how half the people in the casino looked, a slightly lumpy divesuit didn’t even begin to rate any special attention.
Over her head, she wore a helmet with a semi-opaque visor, and for the first time in weeks, anyone checking her ident on the Link would find that she was indeed Tanis Richards.
They’d debated her taking on Arnold’s ident, but Tanis rather wanted Urdon and Demetri to come looking for her.
While she was relieved to be wearing her own name again—if not her own skin—the one thing she was a little worried about was the prospect that somehow her helmet would come off, and Silversquid would be linked to Tanis Richards.
That was the sort of thing that could never be scrubbed from the nets.
Even so, she squared her shoulders and swam down the submerged passageways that led toward the staff entrance with Connie at her side, as though she had every right to be there.
They had just turned a corner and were in sight of the exit when a voice called out from behind them.
“Alice! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Connie snorted, blowing bubbles around herself as she turned, careful to keep her hair over her face.
“We’re in fucking lockdown, Alice,” Damon snarled as he approached. “And I need you entertaining guests, not entertaining guests.”
Tanis made a move to get between Connie and Damon, but the engineer swam forward.
“Look, Damon. I know you think you’re something special, but do you know what we all call you behind your back?” Connie asked.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Damon demanded, surprise registering on his face at being backtalked by one of the staff.
Connie chuckled. “Well, I suppose that I spoke a bit out of turn. There’s nothing that we all call you, because we can’t decide between ‘barnaclehead’, ‘whale diarrhea’, or just ‘shitstainsforbrains’. Honestly, I think all your octolegs are making up for something.”
Damon’s mouth hung open, but once he recovered from his shock, he began sputtering with rage, bubbles floating from his mouth. Finally, he composed himself enough to shout, “You’ll be scrubbing algae off the tanks with your tail for the rest of your life, Alice!” He stopped abruptly, and his eyes grew wide as he peered at Connie. “Wait a second…you’re not—”
Tanis couldn’t help but smile as Connie punched Damon in the gills. Seven times. He’d gone limp, but Connie drew back a fist to hit him again.
“The pair turned and raced toward the door, knowing that the moment anyone saw Damon drifting in the hall, things would get hairy.
They reached the door and were passing under the Auth & Auth arch when someone behind them cried out, “What the hell?”
For a second, Tanis forgot to keep swimming, but then she saw the sharks turn toward them, baleful eyes focusing on the two people swimming by.
Shit! Those things are fast, she thought, as nature’s favorite eating machines raced toward her and Connie.
Tanis knew that if she weren’t stuffed into the divesuit, she could outswim the beasts, but that wasn’t an option, especially with Connie struggling to maintain a good clip with her regular legs inside the mermaid’s tail.
The stretch of seabed between them and the edge of the casino’s property was devoid of any cover. Tanis gauged the distance that she and Connie still had to swim, and knew they wouldn’t come close to making it—assuming the sharks would even stop at the property line.
As Connie swam on, Tanis slowed and turned, reaching into her divesuit to pull her lightwand free, grasping it clumsily in her gloved tentacle.
She knew that, in the water, the electrons would bleed off in under a minute, which meant she had to wait until the sharks were upon them to activate the weapon.
It didn’t take long for the sleek makos to close, and seconds later, the blade was glowing brightly in the water as she slashed at the first beast.
The blow caught it in the side of the nose, cutting through to the bone, and the shark veered away just as the other one closed in, angling to take a bite of Tanis’s monofin-encased ‘legs’.
She jerked them out of the way just in time, slashing at the second shark and managing to cut its dorsal fin half off.
The first shark was already circling back around, its tail slashing through the water as it picked up speed. T
anis managed to cut its face again, nearly losing her arm in the process.
As the fight with the makos continued, the water began to turn red, obscuring her vision. The sharks became indistinct blobs, and Tanis was wondering what it was going to take to defeat them when one of the creatures came up from below. She twitched her ‘legs’ out of the way, but the beast managed to get its teeth around her arm, taking a sizeable chunk out of it.
Tanis was grateful that the limb was nothing more than tentacles stuffed into the divesuit, but her relief was short-lived as her lightwand flickered and shut off.
Tanis didn’t reply as she frantically scrambled backward, slapping her monofin at the first two attackers, desperate for some amount of cover.
Then, just as the other sharks arrived, a series of grey shapes shot past Tanis, and the water bloomed red with blood as a dozen shrouded forms thrashed in the underwater mist.
Tanis stared in wonder, eventually able to make out at least twenty bottlenose bulls, all swimming around their hated enemies, sharp teeth tearing the makos to shreds.
Even so, the casino’s defenders were managing to hold their own, getting bites in on several of the dolphins. Tanis worried that the bulls were going to suffer losses, when a pair of orcas arrived, one biting the tail off a mako in its first pass.
Less than ten seconds later, the sharks were all dead.