by M. D. Cooper
“You must be Yora,” the woman said. I am Adrienne, as you may have guessed.”
A connection presented itself over a secure Link; Tanis opened it and responded.
“So, to the point and without pleasantries. Normal, I suppose, for one of your type. You sculpt yourselves into paragons of beauty and power and then abstain from pleasure entirely. I, personally, would not be able to resist.”
“I never understood why someone seeking enlightenment would also want to control corporate interests,” Adrienne said. “The notions seem to be in conflict. I, on the other hand, have no such desires. I only wish to surround myself in comfort and pleasure.”
“There are actually a number of groups that use me to help them acquire work. You could consider me something of a broker. What sort of venture are you planning?”
“So you’re looking for some muscle, are you then? Any particular needs?”
Adrienne sat still for a moment, only pulsing the odd limb as she considered the requirements. “I think I can hook you up with a group that has done such things in the past. They could most likely field a team of twenty or thirty for a job like this.”
Data was delivered to Tanis and she looked it over, examining specs and the oblique descriptions of jobs performed. It matched the data on the group that had attacked the Intrepid and she determined that the time for her disguise was over.
Tanis’s tone brooked no discussion.
“Their what? Why would you need to know that?” Adrienne asked. Shock rippling—literally—across her face.
“You’re TSF?” Adrienne asked. “I have to admit, that’s a pretty extreme cover.”
“Thank you.” Tanis allowed the flowmetal to form a mouth since her cover was no longer necessary. Besides, her voice could be very menacing. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about their job to attack the Intrepid and you’re going to do it with a song in your heart.”
“You don’t think I haven’t…” Adrienne’s smug expression drooped into surprise. “You’ve got a suppression field!”
“Well, it wouldn’t do for you to call in whatever thugs you have on hand to stop our little conversation. I don’t think we need for this to get unpleasant, but I won’t really mind if it does.”
Adrienne sat silently for a moment, then in a flash her entire body moved toward the far wall. Tanis realized there must be some sort of open vent that the woman could fit through. Reacting on instinct, Tanis pulsed her hover system and leapt into the air, coming down into Adrienne, the needle points at the ends of her legs piercing what would be a normal person’s calves.
Adrienne shrieked, twisting in pain, and Tanis spat a glob of flowmetal over her face where it flowed into Adrienne’s mouth, swelling to block out further noise.
“Easy now.” Tanis’s tone carried no small amount of menace. “This can get a lot worse if you don’t cooperate.”
The look Adrienne shot at Tanis said it all; she wasn’t willingly going to give up the person who had hired the merc crew. Whoever it was, Tanis was certain it must be a big player. Most of the time an agent like this wouldn’t hold back after being skewered.
Tanis re-established a direct Link to Adrienne. “I’m not afraid to slice and dice you, you know. All I want is a name. Who did the hiring for the crew that hit the Intrepid?”
“No problem.” Tanis exuded calm. “We’ll just go the standard route, making you more scared of me. You see, I’m currently a little outside the scope of my assigned duties, if you get my meaning. Not a lot of people know where I am, and even if anyone does link my whereabouts to the remains of your mutilated—but not dead—body, they’ll not get upset. Not only am I going to hurt you until you give me a name, but I’ll leave you alive for whoever you’re so afraid of as well.”
Tanis altered the state of the plas on her arms to allow motion at the joints and reached up to her head. There she extruded a thin rod of metal. She took it into her hand where it formed a gleaming blade which she lowered to Adrienne’s left leg.
Adrienne’s face slipped into an expression of fear. “Who…who are you?”
“Oh, I forgot to mention. You may have heard of me. The media called me ‘The Butcher of Toro’.”
Angela replied.
She began slicing into Adrienne’s leg, though the skin, which appeared to be almost like neoprene in composition. Adrienne’s eyes bulged in pain, and her arms flailed, pounding the deck on either side of her. Tanis felt resistance as the blade met the cartilage that served as bone. She grimaced inwardly at the feel of it.
A rush of numbers and data memory blocks flowed into Tanis’s mind, where she passed them off to Angela.
“Excellent.” Tanis slid the blade out of Adrienne’s leg. A panel on her torso slid open and she pulled out a med-patch which she slapped on the wound none too gently. “The nano in here will hold you together long enough to get to a medic.” Tanis was about to extrude more flowmetal to bind her captive when the door crashed open and a terrifying figure stood in the entrance.
True to the strangeness of the locale, the muscle was unconventional. It was a woman, though that was evidenced only by the stylized breasts on the gleaming black torso. All of the woman’s limbs were gleaming black as well. They were also all very thin, nearly emaciated, a look that was offset by the woman’s head, which was a large ovoid devoid of any features.
“Hurting Adrienne was a mistake.” The voice emanating from the woman’s featureless head was soft and sultry, a rather odd combination considering the delivery.
“Possibly,” Tanis agreed. “But it was a calculated mistake; does that make it any better?”
The figure raised its hands and Tanis realized they weren’t hands at all, but merely the ends of the gun barrels. Handy…and disturbing.
Tanis dove to the side, or more accurately cantered to the side as the guard fired on her. The init
ial shots missed, but then a few impacted Tanis, some ricocheting off her chest, a few hitting solidly enough to crack the plas covering her body.
Tanis angled forward, pulsed her hover system to its maximum and balled her hands into hard plas fists. She smashed into the woman, and they flew through the opening into the bulkhead beyond with enough energy to lodge the woman’s head in the wall. Not waiting to see how long it took the freakish enforcer to extricate herself, Tanis sped down the hall at top speed. She burst into the bar area and wove past the sinuous dancers and the human furniture.
Outside the bar she made a quick course adjustment to avoid colliding with several hovers that floated by. She raced behind one and angled herself to float horizontally alongside it. The man driving the hover cast her a strange look, but didn’t say anything. No point in getting involved in other people’s issues on Cruithne.
Angela deployed nanoprobes and they watched the black-skinned woman emerge from the bar and scan the traffic outside. She moved into the throng and started making her way in the direction Tanis had gone. Most likely she had access to external cameras that had let her know which way to go. Tanis slipped ahead of her cover and raced through the crowd, still horizontal, and hopefully out of sight. Her earlier wanderings proved beneficial as she made use of several establishments and predictable throngs to mask her escape. Moving through a maze of levels and across the main hub of the station she worked her way toward her departure craft.
The original exit plan for leaving Cruithne wasn’t so precipitous as reality dictated, however, the times on the departure clearance requests displayed submission times only minutes after their arrival on the station. It was almost as though Angela knew her. Less than an hour after the confrontation in Adrienne’s dressing room, Tanis was pulling away from Cruithne and heading back toward Mars.
Trent. Not surprising; it just added fuel to the reaction when it came to hunting him down. The real key now was to see if the information would help her trace who was paying Trent’s salary.
CHAPTER 10
STELLAR DATE: 3227189 / 08.24.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Tanis eased into the chair at the head of the SOC’s conference table. Her leg muscles were still sore after being pulled out and replaced; high heels adorned her feet to ease her down after having her feet en pointe for days. The flowmetal still covered her head, but she had gotten an additive to change it to her skin’s color and texture. In a few days she would have it removed, but first she needed to debrief her people and be brought up to speed.
“That was some crazy jaunt you went on.” Evans’ voice held a hint of reproachfulness. “And that getup you went in. I don’t know how you stood it, barely being able to move for days.”
“It really wasn’t that hard.” Tanis shrugged. “Once I was on my way I was pretty much committed to seeing it through.”
Everyone else filed in as they spoke and once they found their seats Tanis called up the data she had retrieved on the table’s holo.
“So all roads lead to Trent right now. He’s the guy who did the nuke job, and the guy who hired the mercs. We haven’t worked out who he’s taking orders from, but it has to be someone with deep pockets.”
“It seems weird, sir,” Ouri said. “Why would they have those mercs ready to disrupt the VIP event if the nuke was supposed to have gone off? If it had, we certainly wouldn’t have been throwing any parties.”
“Don’t forget,” Lieutenant Amy Lee said, “the ball was supposed to happen four days earlier, but was postponed because one of the transports from Venus was delayed. They must have had the mercs on standby or called them back in after the nuke failed.”
“Right you are.” Tanis reached up to run her hand through her hair and was reminded that she currently didn’t have any. “Damn cover…,” she muttered.
“It’s a good look for you, Major.” Evans grinned, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Gonna get your skin back?”
Tanis regarded him for a moment, tempted to spit a glob of metal over his mouth. She decided not to, but only because it abused and undermined her authority. It was still a close call.
“Yeah, I’m trying to get the procedure scheduled for tomorrow. I know I really can’t feel it, but I swear this stuff itches like mad.”
“So what’s our next move?” Terry Chang asked, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand.
“Well, we need to figure out who Trent works for. Hopefully some of this data”—Tanis gestured to the holo—“will help us out. That’s going to be you and you.” She gestured to Terry and Ouri. “You’ve got the lab AI and feel free to ask Angela for help as well; we’ve got to figure this thing out before we get hit again.”
Everyone regarded her seriously and nodded.
“I also noticed in your reports that there have been several anomalies lately.” Tanis brought up the pertinent data.
Ouri nodded. “We’ve had some little bits of sabotage on some inbound shipments. We’ve traced most of it back to various anti-colonist folks. Stuff from Earth is especially prone to being tampered with. The effects have been minor, but it’s the things that seem to be happening after cargo gets checked in that is upsetting me.”
Tanis had not read the reports in detail and signaled for Ouri to summarize as she scanned them.
“Well, we had one instance of some lithium being ‘misplaced’. It was put in a cargo pod when it was due for engineering. That was relatively benign. We’ve had some other instances of equipment that checked out fine upon arrival, but was broken when time came to use it. As much as I hate to say it, I think we have someone inside of our security curtain.”
“I’ll spend some time looking over various logs, but you folks know what to do there. See who was on, who was around, that sort of thing. Also, it’s possible that someone is managing to use of someone else’s access. Check and see if there is anyone that seems to be in certain areas without going through any surrounding checkpoints.”
Ouri nodded. “Good call. I wasn’t going to do that since I didn’t think anyone could penetrate the exterior with fake credentials, but you’re right; once in, they could get to more benign areas with less overview.”
“Well folks, you’ve been doing good work; I’ll leave you to continue it.” Tanis rose. “I’ve got to go face the firing squad now.”
“Otherwise known as Admiral Sanderson?” Evans asked.
“So he found out, did he?” Ouri asked.
Tanis grimaced. “He got back from Mars early and tried to find me for a progress report meeting. Apparently he wasn’t pleased that my progress had me elsewhere.”
CHAPTER 11
STELLAR DATE: 3227211/ 09.15.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Tanis and Commander Evans were relaxing in the officer’s mess, enjoying a bit of time away from the SOC and a few of the perks of rank. Tanis had to admit that she was enjoying Evans’ company quite a bit of late. She had even privately admitted to herself that if they weren’t both military she would consider pursuing him—maybe it would be possible after they got underway and were no longer officially in the military. In the meantime she would take what time in his easygoing company she could.
“So how are things looking out there?” Tanis asked before taking a bite of her sandwich.
“Tidy as you could dream. Not a single ship is deviating a millimeter from its plotted course.” Evans leaned back in his chair and took a long drink from the cup of coffee in front of him.
“Those rumors of ‘Trigger-happy Joe’ I spread about must be doing their work.” Tanis grinned around her mouthful of food.
“Ugh…were you raised in a barn?”
“Sewer, actually.”
“Really?” Evans’ expression was a cross between shock and
curiosity.
Tanis nearly choked as she laughed. “Now that was a funny look…of course not,” she said when she was finally able to breathe.
Evans grinned sheepishly. “You have an amazing poker face. Remind me never to bet against you.”
“You’re in luck, Commander; I’m not a betting woman.”
“You’ve been here over a month; eventually you could just call me Joseph.”
Tanis’s face grew more steely—not from the flowmetal, that had been removed and her natural features were back in place. “Now, Commander. I don’t think that would be appropriate. It’s imperative that we keep our relationship strictly professional.”
“I…er…I didn’t mean that, sir.” Evans spoke.
Tanis gave him a dead serious look for a long moment before breaking into a wide grin.
“Damn!” Evans shouted. “That’s just cruel… You took a decade off my life.”
Tanis chuckled. “Don’t worry, Joseph, you can get it back in regen.”
“There; theatrics aside that wasn’t so hard was it… Tanis.”
“You’re mighty forward for being so jumpy.” Tanis smiled.
“I must have a split personality,” Joseph replied. “But keep that on the QT, I don’t want to lose my pilot’s credentials.”
“No fear of that; you’ve got things in such good shape I’d let it slide even if it were true. Your wings are top notch.”
“Well, with the number of people applying for this colony we’ve got top people in pretty much every profession on tap.”
“It certainly is handy.”
“So… Anything of interest happening on the dock side of things? Bombs, kidnappings, rumors of dire plots?”
“Unfortunately it’s been quiet as a mouse.”
“How’s that unfortunate?” Joseph asked.
“See, that’s why you’ll never be a real intel officer. With what those guys were willing to do up to this point, you can bet they haven’t given up yet.”