Aspirations: A Near Future Sci-Fi Thriller

by Randal Sloan

  Luckily for Emily, the guys finished their set. She didn’t have to answer her friend. The look in Miranda’s eyes had frightened her, not that she would have admitted it, but she wouldn’t have trusted herself to answer without it showing in her voice. She wouldn’t want to hurt her friend’s feelings. She was definitely glad she was on her side.

  Things moved along pretty quickly after that. The guys headed backstage, the evening having worn on all of them. Even Christopher and Jimmy, who didn’t understand why. Miranda only had to wait a couple of minutes until the bad guys showed up, the bruises still somewhat evident on the leader. Pretending she was checking her VR as they went past, Miranda waited until they were clear of the security guy. Motioning Emily to do her part, Miranda quickly followed them backstage. She gave the security guy the tiniest little nod and he gave her a wink back. Yep, she had busted him.

  But no time for fun, she hurried backstage. She passed Christopher and Jim coming out, both looking very unhappy. Christopher caught her arm. “You don’t want to go back there. They’re about to talk business and kicked us out.”

  “That’s ok. I’ll just be a sec,” Miranda lied. “You guys go chill a few minutes and I’ll bet everything will be alright.” Her words seemed to satisfy them as they let her go. She hurried, not wanting to miss anything. She did take the time to double check her knives before entering and to turn her com on transmit.

  As she entered the room, the scene before her was tense. Mr. Kincaid, if that was his real name, was yelling at Thomas and Jason, “I don’t care what you want. You’ll do what we say, and maybe you’ll see the girl again.”

  One of the guys with him, obviously hired muscle, tried to grab Miranda’s arm. “This is a closed meeting. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Miranda easily dodged him, coming to a stop in the middle of the room. She had already calculated the path to throw the first two knives if it came to that. “Oh, I think I do need to be here. You guys obviously have Allie, and your boss just confirmed it for me. So unless you want me to hit send on the emergency VR call I queued up before I came in, you will let me talk to my friend to know she’s alright. Not that much to ask, I don’t think.”

  “Who are you?” Kincaid demanded, obviously irritated that she had interrupted them.

  Giving him her innocent look, Miranda answered him. “I’m Miranda, a good friend of the band and an even better friend of Allison, Allie to me. She hasn’t been answering my VR’s so I knew something was wrong and Jason here wouldn’t tell me. You showing up tonight answered that question.”

  “So it’s simple. I don’t care what you guys are up to. I want to see my friend, and if she’s ok, that shouldn’t be a problem. Otherwise, you’ve already done something bad, and I’m going to hit the send button. Wasn’t that a police station a couple of blocks away? I bet they could get here before you get to the doors of the building.”

  Kincaid grimaced, but he knew she had him. “I don’t know who you are girl, but you’ve got guts, I’ll give you that.” He turned to one of the muscle guys, the one who had tried to grab Miranda’s arm. “Jones, get the girl on the line. This job has gone far enough in the ditch, we don’t need the police involved in it too.” Turning back to Miranda. “As soon as you talk to your friend, you’re going to get out of my hair so we can do our business. And I better not see you again, do you understand?”

  Miranda smiled sweetly. “Oh, you’ll never see me again, I promise. As long as my friend is ok.”

  Jones brought his VR over. He only had a portable system, probably a disposable. “I’ve got them on now. They weren’t too happy about it.”

  Kincaid grabbed the VR. “Jackson. Quit wasting my time and put the girl on. They want proof she’s alive and I don’t have time to waste. The bosses are going to be calling any minute.”

  The VR flickered a moment, as if someone had covered the camera and started moving. Miranda had kicked up her hearing to concentrate on the sounds and she recognized that they were climbing stairs. Good. At least she probably wasn’t below ground. That eliminated a couple of the sites right there. She continued to concentrate.

  A door opened with a creak. It sounded like metal on metal, Miranda somehow sensing the flow of the energy moving past. Definitely metal, rather heavy, probably steel. She concentrated even more. Somehow it was as if she was pushing her second sight across the VR connection.

  Jackson entered the room, the floor creaking under him. At least a few decades old, Miranda thought. She sensed the room around them. Something like twenty or thirty feet by fifty feet. Good. Concentrating, she sensed a window, across the room, blacked out with heavy plastic taped in place. She concentrated on the sounds outside that window. Traffic, distant but nearly constant. Better.

  “Sit her in front of the screen,” Jackson told a hidden companion. They all heard the sounds of a chair being scraped across the floor, then he spoke again, louder. “Ok boss, we’re ready.”

  The VR flickered as he took his hand off the camera. There in front of them sat Allison, still tied to the chair. She looked worse than before but not like she was being mistreated. Looking into her eyes, it was like Miranda made a connection to her. Quickly Miranda sent her a mental message. “I’m Miranda, I met you a few weeks ago backstage. I’m pretending to be your best friend, so please pretend to recognize me.”

  Even Miranda was surprised when Allie looked up at the VR and said, “Miranda. Sorry about not answering your VR’s. I’ve been a little tied up.” She gave her a weak grin. Miranda’s impression of the girl just went sky high. That was pure guts, not like her own little act of bravo where she knew none of them could really hurt her.

  Allie did something even more astonishing. Somehow, she was able to communicate to Miranda about her situation. She knew that there were three guards. Although they had not done anything to her yet, Jackson was constantly telling her that her time would run out soon. The other two had been kind enough to bring her water, telling her that she would be out soon. They obviously thought that she would be let go after the time was up. She knew better.

  Miranda stood there with her mouth open. Fortunately, everyone was still looking at Allie. Finally, she was able to get her wits together. “Allie, are you alright? Are they treating you ok?”

  “Yeah, except that they had pizza and didn’t give me any. It was probably too greasy anyway. Bad for my complexion.”

  Kincaid growled. “Enough. Shut it down, Jackson.” The VR flickered and died. He turned to Miranda. “You’ve got your proof. Now get out of here. And I meant it about seeing you again.”

  Miranda smiled. “I’m going. You just make sure she stays alright or I’ll make that call.” She turned to leave. Jones finally managed to grab her arm, totally clueless that it let her slip a spare com in his pocket. It was active so they would still be able to hear what went on when she left the room. He drug her toward the door, squeezing her arm just a little harder than necessary. Just as they reached the door, Miranda pretended to stumble, accidentally hitting him somewhere with a flying elbow. Jones let go of her arm, turning almost green, but he managed to keep a straight face. Miranda smiled and left. She knew the last was petty, but it felt so good.

  Kincaid was definitely not happy. “Ok. You have your proof. Now, are you going to do what I ask, or do I need to make a second call?”

  Thomas looked at him, his face hard. “We’ll do it. But if you break your part of it, the deal will be off. We’re going to need to know that you haven’t made that second call anyway. Some kind of proof when you give us whatever it is you want us to bring here.” Thomas knew how desperate Kincaid was, and he knew he had to buy them enough time to rescue her.

  “Fine, but this is it. You will get a package you have to sign for here tomorrow, so you’d better be here in the morning. The man will give you a disposable VR, you get 30 seconds on the line with her. Then you had better do exactly what he tells you to do.” He gave Thomas his worst scowl. “You screw this up, she
’s dead.”

  Thomas nodded. He knew he had done everything he could. He also knew what was going to come down on this man. At least he thought he did. He had seen the look in Julie’s eyes a couple of times. It scared him and he didn’t scare easy. He had grown up in a rough crowd, using his martial arts skills to keep himself alive more than once. “I’ve got it. You keep your end of it, we’ll keep our end.”

  Kincaid turned and walked out without saying another word. He really wanted to hurt someone bad, but he figured the guys in the band would be dead when the Organization set off whatever bomb it was they were delivering. Too bad. As he started out, he wondered what was wrong with Jones. He didn’t look so good. You just couldn’t get good help.

  #

  While Kincaid was still “conducting his business”, Miranda met Emily and Kris, just outside the entrance to the backstage. They made a strategic withdrawal out to the communications van, really a small bus, that Homeland was using for a command center. As soon as they closed the door, Jimmy rounded on Miranda. “Are you crazy? Walking in there and antagonizing that man. You could have been killed.”

  Something in Miranda snapped. She pulled her sleeve up to show him her knives, her anger making her movements too fast. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “The only ones in the room at risk of dying were those three men. And the only reason they are still alive is that I need them alive until I get Allie out of there. You can either help, or you can get out of the way.”

  Completely surprised at the vehemence in her voice, Jimmy took a step back from her. Finally he said, much more contritely, “I’m sorry. I was just worried that something would happen to you.” He had seen her as only a young woman, but he quickly realized there was much more to her.

  Miranda softened a little too. “I’m sorry, too. I know you meant well. Please, we need to work together. We have to go get a very amazing girl out of the warehouse where they have her. We need to look at the maps and put together a plan. We have to do it quietly, but we have to do it now. I’m not leaving her there another minute longer than I have too.”

  Everyone in the van stared at her. They all knew that their list of targets had been a lot larger than they wanted. “You got enough from the short conversation to know where she is?” Jimmy finally asked.

  “Yes, I was able to get enough from the call to realize that she was in a warehouse about a mile from the main highway that goes south across the river. Not at the docks but not too far away from them. That narrowed it down to a handful. Then she gave me the final clue. The pizza. Pizza Shack. The pizza that smells so good, but is really greasy.” She pulled up the maps supplied by the Homeland-Space Tech collaboration. She pointed to a warehouse about 5 miles from their current location. “This is the only target on the list of possible sites that matches all those criteria.”

  Jimmy stared at her. Neither he nor his team had come up with any of those things. “You sure about this?” he finally asked.

  Miranda looked at him. “I’m as sure as I was about the exotic matter being the trigger to their bomb last time. That enough for you?”

  Jimmy just nodded. He would never forget that incident, how a student had been so far ahead of the largest task force Homeland had ever put together, and had almost single-handedly prevented a horrible disaster.

  Miranda quickly made a VR call to Carla. “Hey, Carla. I need you guys to get me everything you’ve got on Target #15 as soon as possible. We believe we’ve found her.” She laughed at the look on Carla’s face. “It looks like I’m going on another rescue mission. This time you get to watch from a little further away.”

  That brought a laugh from Carla. “You’ve got to quit trying to rescue every stray kitten out there.”

  Miranda turned serious again. “This girl’s special, like you. You should have seen her, cracking a joke and then telling me the final clue to finding her like we were just chitchatting. Completely calm. Not that I won’t try to rescue every stray kitten I can.”

  Carla looked over at someone beside her. “Ok, the eggheads are telling me five minutes and they will get you live satellite. I’m sending you everything else we got. Go rescue this stray and kick some Organization butt while you’re at it.”

  “Oh, I’m just getting started kicking their butts. There won’t be anything left to kick when I get through.” She disconnected the call. Not a sound was heard in the van. As far as Miranda was concerned, it was about time it got through to them.

  Jimmy had thought about suggesting Miranda sit out the rescue mission. He wisely decided not to mention that anymore. He did look up at the tracker board. “Your fiancé will be here in a minute. I assume you want him on overwatch again?”

  Miranda sighed. “I’ll try to talk him into it. But no, I expect he’ll be going in with me. He’s the only one that can keep up with me, and I expect he will want to have my back on this one.” She walked to the little restroom, really just a cube. “I’m going to change. Be just a sec.” She closed the door.

  Julie walked out just as Zeke came in the door. He smiled at her. “You did good, Jules. So when are we going?”

  “We should have live satellite in a couple of minutes. Then we’ll put together a plan. A few minutes, not soon enough but it’ll have to do. I assume you’re going with me?”

  “Oh yeah. You already knew that. Hey, while we’re waiting, can I talk to you outside?”

  Julie had wondered if he had picked up on the special connection she had made with Allie. As soon as they were out the door, she told him about it. “Yes, so you felt it. Somehow I made a connection with her. It wasn’t like you and me, but it was pretty special. And then the whole conversation. She directed everything, totally calm. Plus, she gave me the final clue with the pizza, burying it in what looked to everyone else like a dumb blond comment. She is very, very special and I will do whatever it takes to get her out of there.”

  Zeke agreed. “Me, too.” Then his smile got bigger. “Hey, we’ve got a whole minute until we get that satellite. What should we do—” He didn’t get the rest out. They missed several seconds of the live satellite, although they didn’t miss much. They did have to go rescue someone.

  The satellite included multiple frequencies of surveillance, including visible, infrared and something that could see through roofs and walls. They easily spotted all the guards, including one that was in overwatch for the rest. It was enough. They quickly put together a plan. It wasn’t perfect, Julie wanting to send for her mercenary team or better yet, a monk team, but there just wasn’t time. She needed to get in there and get Allie out. She didn’t trust Kincaid, and she sure didn’t trust Jackson after getting her read off Allie. She would have to make do with the DHS resources. Jimmy swore his team was top notch, so the resources were on their way. It was just a few more minutes of waiting.

  #

  In preparation for the DHS team arrival, Jimmy moved the command center to a location a few blocks away from the warehouse and the team assembled there. Julie was surprised to find that Zeke had not only brought his armor with him, but he had also brought hers. The two of them had moved off to the side and were doing their warm-ups, in particular so that Zeke could get used to the armor. She was surprised to see a few of the DHS agents start walking through the warm ups with them. They were doing a pretty good job of keeping up. She didn’t tell them that Zeke and her were both only going about half-speed.

  Warm-ups finished, Julie was pleased that one of those warming up with them had been Kris. Good. The woman was pretty good and Julie was glad that she was going to be on their team. Of the other two, Captain Windom Smithe, a man about Jimmy’s age, turned out to be the leader of the team of agents. The other was Agent Alex Zane, the agent that had been assigned as Kris’ partner. Seeing the three of them excel bode well for the operation as far as Julie was concerned.

  The team assembled under a canopy that extended out from the command center so they would all fit inside. It also had tent sides that they deployed, giving
them complete isolation from the outside world so that they could use a VR, as well as sit comfortably.

  As soon as everyone was seated, Jimmy stood up. “Welcome, everyone, to the joint operation between Space Tech and DHS. We have a rescue to complete, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time talking. Allison Winston is being held by a group of men associated with the Organization and we need to free her. The absolute deadline is tomorrow morning, well I guess that is this morning now, when they are supposed to have her on a call to prove she is ok. But we consider it is too much of a risk to wait any longer than we have to, so our intent is to go as soon as we can. We have high tech satellite access and we have very good intel on the site. I will turn it over to Julie Randolph to explain our deployment.”

  Julie stood also, looking out over the group. At least she had her armor on, so she looked a little more the part. She had also bound her blond hair behind her and darkened it with her nanites so it wouldn’t catch the light. “Thanks, Jimmy. Zeke and I are the joint part of this operation, along with Emily, who will remain in the command center to coordinate with Space Tech.”

  She looked over the group. “We believe the force guarding the girl is a mixed group, probably thrown together at the last moment. The outside force is made up of hard core Organization men that you can assume are professional soldiers. The inner group of guards came from the local criminal element, hired directly by Mr. Kincaid, who we believe is working as an agent of the Organization. Of the inside guards one of them, Jackson, should be considered a hard target. He’s the highest priority target in the attack with the exception of the sniper outside, because he would be the most likely to try to get to the girl in the event of an attack. The other two we think are just hired muscle and are not completely committed to the cause. If possible we will capture them, but not if there is any risk to our team.