Cypher: Chronicles of Rah

by Scott Hopkins

  Violet and I stared at his broken body as it hung on the edge of one of the machines. I had hoped I'd feel a sense of finality or satisfaction upon seeing the man who murdered my handler, among so many others, meet his doom. Instead, the only thing I felt was a heavy pit in my stomach at the loss of a chance to find answers to a whole host of lingering questions.

  "Violence, my dear..." I paused, considering the sudden impromptu nickname. A smile stretched across my face as I realized there would need to be a small level of control placed on Violet if we were going to work together. "…it works better if we interrogate the baddies before we throw them off a bridge."

  "Make sure you tell the baddies that the next time they're trying to smash you with a metal pipe," she responded with a sly grin.

  "Touché," I said, giving her a dramatic bow.

  "Would telling you that I know where he was staying matter now?" she asked.

  My head jerked, to catch her eyes. She grinned bigger as our eyes met. All I could do was shake my head and smile as I walked back to retrieve my gun.

  ***

  "Marvin, open sesame.”

  The card she pulled from the back of the small handheld device went into the key slot, but the real trick was how talking to her little device convinced the door to open without so much as an alarm or protest.

  Being a standard small apartment: bed, bathroom, kitchenette and a small table with a couple of chairs, there wasn’t much to search. By the state of the room, it looked as if he hadn’t done much besides sleep there in the few days he had been on the station.

  "I don't suppose I need to tell you where to look. He's a trained operator."

  Violet nodded as I offered guidance. The futility of this search was not lost on me. I understood that he could have been carrying all of his information on a crystal, or had it locked away somewhere that only he could find or access. I took heart in the fact that he'd had little time to prepare his hunting grounds prior to catching sight of me, so I hoped it was possible he hadn't had time to hide.

  After three hours, we had essentially torn the living space apart searching. Violet sat across the small round table from me as we stared down at the three small items we'd found in the room that were not part of the original decor: a data crystal, a credit chip and a Republic Ident card which we both assumed had to be fake.

  "Well?" Violet asked, looking up from the items to me.

  "Unfortunately, we don't have time to pursue this,” I responded, grabbing the three items. “I have a drop I need to meet in two hours, and we still need to prep the field."

  "You want me on the ground with you or observing?" She inquired.

  "I promised this time I'd be alone. But I'd appreciate the overwatch."

  I realized there was a chance that this whole situation was a way to bring the Cypher out into the open so she could retrieve it. Still, the truth of the situation was that my instincts told me she was exactly what she came across as: a strong-willed bounty hunter with a penchant for violence and a drive to support her own enlightened self-interest.

  We didn't bother putting the room back the way we found it. Eventually, the owners would find him and realize they'd lost their rent along with any recovery of damages. His fate couldn't be helped, and neither could the state of the room.

  Locking the door behind us, I led Violet through the station to the locker I had stashed my gear in. Pulling a small black bag out, I checked the contents. The Cypher remained exactly where I left it, wrapped up in a black velvet bag on the bottom of the pack. Pulling an autoinjector and a vial of Promium from the bag, I inserted the vial into the injector and applied the tip to the skin under the waist of my pants. With a soft hiss, the vial emptied into my body.

  "What's that?" she inquired as she watched me.

  "Promium. I have a condition that requires regular injections." I fed her a deliberately vague answer, realizing that giving her too much personal information too soon might be dangerous. I hadn't made it as long as I had in this job by being careless or letting my guard down, no matter how attractive and alluring the reason.

  "Damn, I wish someone had told me about that,” she replied with her usual mischievous grin. “It would have been much easier to track you."

  "There's a reason no one thought to use that to track me" I said with a wink. The reason of course was that no matter how deep the compromise of our network went, the intimate details of the program that had altered me were buried somewhere deep in a Republic archive under some obscure codename only the people in charge of the program remembered. As far as anyone knew, I was a ghost and only maybe a handful of people in the whole galaxy knew my real identity.

  "Of course," she responded, then started laughing.

  ***

  "Did you bring it?" the tall muscular man asked as we stood across from each other, a small crate filling the space between us. I recognized the man from the original drop. He'd been the lead man who'd taken the spray of blood from the unfortunate woman who took my bullet. Neither his demeanor nor his wardrobe had changed much since the last time we crossed paths.

  His face still looked way too serious, and his suit was tailored and dark like so many private security forces I'd run into over the years.

  "Of course. Do you have my creds?"

  "Forty thousand," he said, pulling a credit chip from his inner coat pocket.

  "You know I can't be sure, but according to the late Mr. Hood, it's not complete." I baited the hook, watching his face.

  "Who?" he asked, his face barely changing.

  "Mr. Hood. You know, the portly gentleman your soldiers killed on Taldera a few weeks ago. The last time I tried to sell the cube."

  Now it was my turn to be surprised as his face barely flinched. Either he was a very good operative who could hide his emotions well, or he really had no idea what I was talking about.

  "The last time we were supposed to meet on Talmeria, someone started taking potshots at my men." He replied with very little change in his expression.

  "An unfortunate misunderstanding," I said with a smile. "As it turns out, there have been a number of factions working to retrieve this, along with me."

  The man simply nodded.

  I placed the cube on the small crate, sitting softly on top of the felt bag I'd been carrying it in. The man set the credit chip down on the table. I picked up the chip, scanning it with a handheld reader, standard issue for this type of transaction. The standard reader simply checked the balance on the credit chip. Mine had been modified a few years ago by a trusted asset into a skimmer to pull the credits from the card and transfer them during a drop to avoid any “trust issues.” After the credits were collected, they followed the same parameters as all my personal accounts, moving around a lot out of the view of my previous benefactors.

  Once the reader confirmed the transactions had been completed, I looked up at the man. "Pleasure finally doing business with you," I said with a nod. "If you're ever in need of my services, please don't hesitate to contact me. I promise to keep the weapons fire out of it."

  The man's face shifted slightly, the most incomprehensible smile curling the edges of his mouth as he picked up the Cypher, placed it in the bag, and turned to leave. I waited until he was well out of sight before turning back toward where Violet was perched. As I walked through the door at the other end of the room, Violet jumped down from a stack of boxes to land directly beside me.

  "Well? That seemed to go smoothly enough." She commented.

  I nodded. "Oddly enough, yes. I rather expected something different to happen, but I am happy that damnable thing is out of my hands now."

  After a moment, she said, "And they didn't try to swindle you. That's curious."

  "Nope, I'm not complaining. I'll transfer the amount to your account as soon as you give it to me."

  "Don't bother. We're going to need all the credits we can get our hands on if we're going off the grid." She replied.

  I was dumbfounded by the response. I h
ad been happy to pay her off for helping me and not collecting on my head. My overpowering instinct toward self-preservation drove that train, but her suggestion that we would need the funds together was an exciting prospect I had never imagined.

  ***

  We spent the next week digging through the data trail connected to the items we'd found in the assassin's apartment. The credit chip had been a payment for expenses and his job so far, minus the success of liquidating me. The origination point of the credits on the chip met a relative dead end being an unassociated account located in a Republic bank. It was a trail we could follow, but I didn't expect it to go any further.

  As I suspected, the identity card had been a fake, but the quality and the level of detail involved in creating an ID like that and associating it with an established cover identity told me that the creator of the card was well placed, well financed and well connected, either in Megacorp or Republic circles. Either way, all it told me was that whoever had ordered the eradication of an entire corporate espionage unit had a lot of power and play.

  Then, there was the final piece, the data crystal. Our would-be assassin could now be credited with over one hundred and twenty kills. Based on the information we found in the crystal, the operation had been limited to one assassin. I found it hard to believe that one man was responsible for the death of so many trained operatives, but there it was.

  In an effort to keep operational control and secrecy to a minimal level, whoever put the plan in place wanted it to happen slowly, with a minimum of warning to the teams. By my estimation of the data he had available on all of the teams and their missions at the time, there were less than a handful of teams still active, and from the activity on the usual communications channels, all had gone silent.

  We were still no closer to solving the problem than we were before, except we knew there were others out there who were in the same boat I was. It wasn't much, but it was a direction.

  "Where to now?" Violet asked me with a playful quip to her voice.

  "Dunno, love. Maybe we can track one of these other fellows down and get some answers.” I grinned at my new partner. “Either way, it should be fun!"

  ###

  Epilogue

  Rah’s thoughts were on Kelvis’ message as he walked along the corridor to the target’s room. Why now? He thought the timing was the most curious part of the whole equation. Could he have just uncovered it, or had it simply taken Kelvis this long to track him down? This had been the closest Rah had been to Republic space in two years. How could Kelvis have known they could get to Freeport 5 in time? As Rah came around the corner, he hesitated.

  “Vi, we have a problem,” he whispered to the food tray.. “There are two guards, not one!”

  Resolved to not let the plan go awry, Rah pushed forward. With only a moment of concentration, he told his body to start secreting pheromones that would cause confusion. One of the advantages of being a burned operative, genetically manipulated to serve a function, was that if they didn’t kill an agent when they burned him, they can’t take away his skills.

  Rah had never been too sure what they did to him, as much of his memory prior to the procedure was missing. They wanted an operative who could talk his way through corporate espionage rather than fight his way in. Leaving his targets unaware of anything that might have happened tended to keep retaliations low. Rah had been efficient and effective at his job, figuring out how to manipulate different pheromones to create different effects let him woo women and put men off their guard. He wondered if the organization who he’d worked for considered how dangerous Rah coupled with an operative with a penchant for violence might be.

  An invisible cloud of chemicals floated around Rah as he approached the end of the hall. The goal, behind door number two, was prime for the taking, but blocked by the two seated men, who looked like holovid wrestlers. As a rule, Rah would have no doubts about Violet’s ability to subdue even the largest threat, but he started to wonder as he looked them up and down. Both men stood as he approached, one stood closer to Rah than the other guard, who stayed closer to the door. It dawned on Rah that the way the men staggered their position gave the one farther back a clear field of fire.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. I have breakfast for 913.” The first guard looked at Rah, then back to his companion, both of their brows furrowed with uncertainty. The ex-spy knew the chemicals would take a moment to affect them, so he simply waited with a patient smile on his face.

  “We didn’t order any breakfast.” He noticed the familiar glaze fill their eyes as the chemical hit their brain.

  “Well, of course, you didn’t. The guest in 913 did. I have the bill right here.” He held up a small black bi-fold. Both men stepped closer, their minds foggy with Rah’s suggestion of an order the foremost thing on their mind. Both men stepped up to the cart, the guard farther away forgetting his training as they flanked the right and left sides of the cart, leaving the front of the cart open to the door.

  “Excuse me!” Violet, suddenly standing at the end of the cart with a spray can in each hand, the nozzles pointed at the guards. Both men turned toward Violet as distorted reasoning showed on their faces. A cloud of gas filled the air before them as it sprayed from each can into their faces. Within seconds, both men dropped to the floor with resounding thumps

  “Nice!” Rah exclaimed as he pulled two small cylinders from under the cart. He handed one to Violet, then moved with familiar efficiency toward the two doors that flanked the center door. They pulled cover tape off the sticky strips and placed the canisters at the bottom frame of each door. A thin wire tied to the door handle ensured the canister would trip when the door opened.

  With a smile, Violet stood and moved to the target door, pulling a black handgun from a shoulder holster. Rah stepped up to the frame side of the door with the key card. With a nod from Violet, Rah slid the key card into the slot and waited for the green bulb at the top of the lock to illuminate. A long moment passed as they both watched, realizing the key was not going to unlock the door.

  “Are you kidding me?” His head shaking. “And this was going so well.”

  Rah slid the key into the slot once more. With no difference in outcome, rolling his eyes in frustration he pulled the key out. “Vi, my love. Please!” Rah implored with a welcoming gesture. Rah pulled his gun and traded places with Violet as she inserted a small card in the slot and pulled out her small handheld computer.

  “You know, this would be so much easier if I could just blow the door!” she said with a grin as she checked her computer. “Marvin, open sesame!” she said to the device.

  A moment of silence passed until the small light on the keypad turned green and they heard a noticeable click. Violet returned the card and computer to a pocket of her jacket. She pulled her handgun back out before turning the knob and pushing in the door.

  “Who the hell are you?” a rather obese man yelled at them as Rah and Violet burst into the room.

  Violet quickly moved straight for the man as Rah closed the door and ensured the locking mechanism activated. The large man stood on the far side of the bed, his belly testing the limits of the rope that held his hotel robe closed. His thinning gray hair still showed signs of moisture from a shower. He had a long handlebar mustache that dipped down past the edges of his lips, and a sharply pointed goatee on his round chin.

  “Guar—” He started as Violet grabbed him, a white rag pressed hard against his mouth. Rah moved over to the desk, where a silver briefcase sat. He expertly checked the locking mechanism.

  She finished taping the large unconscious man to a chair he barely fit in. “I don’t suppose we have time to get the combination out of him,” Violet mused.

  Rah searched around the room to make sure there were no other decoy silver briefcases. “I’d say that’s a no. Let’s go, Vi!” Rah grabbed the case as two loud bangs resonated through the hallway outside, shaking the walls and doors. Rah looked to Violet, and her devilish smile reminded him how he
appreciated her attention to details as looked toward the balcony.

  “Plan B!” she joked as she pulled a small rectangular transmitter from her inside coat pocket and pressed a button. A third explosion vibrated the door and walls as unintelligible yelling sounded from outside the door. Violet pulled a small roll of gray cord from a pouch on her hip. Unrolling the soft pliable cord, she placed it in a circle in the middle of the floor.

  “Gentex, really?” Rah quipped before stepping back against the wall.

  Violet shot her uncertain companion a crafty look as she placed a small piece of metal with a blinking light on the edge of the cord and walked to the wall by Rah. On her small transmitter, she pressed a second button. A fourth bang filled the room, causing a large circle of dust to appear in the floor. Violet stepped up to the hole and looked down at the plaster and ferrocrete now gathered rather untidily in the room beneath them. With an excited grin, Violet dropped into the hole and disappeared. Rah shook his head in disbelief and, after dropping the case first, followed suit.

  They both assumed a very casual nature as they strolled through the hallway to the elevator. Rah concentrated on filling the air around them with a pheromone that meant to make people not take notice of them.

  The duo emerged from the elevator stepping from the compartment and out on the ground floor, into a scene of chaos. Hotel personnel were running around, trying to calm guests and coordinate evacuation procedures. A security guard stood talking to someone who Rah guessed might be the manager of the hotel and a number of local constables.

  Rah and Violet stayed with the crowd as the hotel personnel guided people out of the building. Once free of the throng of guests, Rah and Violet strolled to the parking lot and their newly acquired vehicle, ready for a quick getaway.

  The burned spy looked over at his companion, and laughed internally at the mischievous grin she wore as she tossed the briefcase into the back seat.