by Laer Carroll
"Infiltration, Go."
Sasha's bat-plane pilot goosed their vehicle down its planned flight path. Only moments passed before the freighter appeared out of the heavy rain ahead, plowing into middling-high seas with much white foam from stem to far behind the stern.
Her plane was coming in from behind at an angle, the theory being that anyone on the ship bothering to look outside would be looking forward. Her target was the superstructure about a third from the stern of the vessel, four stories with a promenade deck all around each deck except for the top. This was the control level with tall windows on all sides so that the captain or other officers could see what was going on outside.
There was a tall funnel just behind the 'structure, white with a broad black band around its top. One tall crane stood in the middle of the rear third of the ship. Two cranes stood in the front in a line forward. Each could let down and extract cargo from the broad holds nearby, now covered and sealed.
The plane flashed down over one side of the freighter, slowed sharply, sending safety harness restraints deep into Sasha's flesh. The plane slowed more, came to a near hover. Sasha pushed her canopy back, went to slow time, and triggered the ejection assist. It slammed her seat upward a few feet. Sasha pushed down with her legs at the same time and she popped up and out of the bat plane.
She became a ball for a few seconds and the plane slid forward out from under her. She fell, impacted and went to a crouch, recovered, and ran to the nearest point on the superstructure. A walkway around the outside of the next-higher level helped keep most of the rain off her.
No one seemed to have seen her drop onto the ship and Sasha had been scanning with her magnified vision at all the windows overlooking her drop trajectory. Nor was Oseye's or Blake's drop seen.
"Damn, Sash'. When you said you went bare you weren't kidding." Blake spoke quietly as he scanned her near nakedness with an unbelieving expression.
She looked at her companions. They were certainly not bare. They wore black coveralls and boots and had body and limb armor and battle helmets. Blake carried an M5 carbine with a flash suppressor and Oseye a light machine gun.
The three left their gathering spot and walked quickly to a door to the first level of the 'structure. The UAV surveillance equipment included limited penetration of the interior of the ship. Several hours of observation had suggested that this door and the hallway beyond was rarely used. But that could always change and the surveill penetration was not perfectly free from error.
Sasha put her ear to the door, heard nothing within, stood back to one side of the door and reached to twist the door handle. It was unlocked. She jerked open the door and rolled down into a ball and into the room then unrolled to a crouch, her two submachine pistols ready.
"Clear," she called out over the hiss and splash of the rain outside the room.
Oseye and Blake came in at a crouch, their weapons ready. Both faded left and right just inside the door.
There was no one down the long hall to left and right. The hallway to the left led to the conference room where intel suggested Storm Cloud was most likely to be questioned.
Sasha led the way and Blake acted as rear guard. They met no one though she smelled the scents of several people. Most of the odors were stale, but three were recent. Storm Cloud's scent was not one of them.
A right turn came up. Sasha listened super-sensitively and then peeked around into the corridor. No one. Another right turn, leading toward the interior of the floor.
Sasha heard them before she saw them. In a room up ahead several people were getting ready to leave. The odors of snacks which she had been smelling for several minutes told her the room was a crew mess hall or lounge.
She went to slow time and accelerated up the hall, holstering her 'machine pistols. At the doorway she sped inside and became a whirlwind, reaching, touching, bending, evading reflexive blows with inches to spare, striking when her "go-to-sleep" touches would not work in time.
A half-dozen people were fallen or falling when she saw two lone guards in a corner reaching for weapons. She spun to view the doorway where Oseye and Blake had just entered. Both were swinging their weapons to aim at the guards.
"NO!" she shouted loud enough to jar her backups to attend her. "MINE!"
She whirled, ran and leaped feet-first at a wall, struck it, flexed her legs, pushed explosively off the wall toward the two guards. She flipped head for heels and struck each of the guards with a foot, slamming them into the tables behind them. She landed, crouched, looked all around, spied her backups already checking behind a counter-top and a pantry door for additional people.
Sasha checked the two guards. One was dead, his neck broken. The other was unconscious and might never awake, except that she bent down and sent healing for his concussion. She also ensured that it would be hours before he woke.
As she was checking the unarmed people closer to the door Oseye passed her to listen in the hallway. Blake came near her and spoke quietly.
"All clear. Jesus, Sash'. No wonder you cleaned up at the Olympics. I've never seen anything like that in real life."
Assured that the sleepers at her feet would stay that way for several hours Sasha joined Oseye in the hall, Blake following her. The short distance to the conference room was uneventful.
As she had expected the room was empty. She had had no scent of Storm Cloud on this floor. He was on a different one .
"He's not here. Has never been here. Come on."
She returned to the crew lounge and stationed her backups just outside the open door, looking in opposite directions down the corridor.
There were only a few minutes (8:56 minutes by Sasha's internal clock) before the attack craft would launch a two-pronged attack at each end of the freighter. They would also drop a squad atop the control room and capture it. There would likely be shooting, which might be a signal for the insurgents to kill Storm Cloud.
Sasha lifted two of the better-dressed (and she hoped more knowledgeable) crew into chairs, a short Eurasian man and a taller Caucasian, and bound them with strips torn from their clothing. Then she woke them.
They came groggily awake then jerked fully awake. She must look very fearsome, especially after their experience with her. She was barefoot, wore only a skimpy pair of shorts and a sports bra, both blandly grey, and her skin was a bronze almost red. Her hair was in a sleek pony tail. Her face incongruously was the one she had worn for years, strikingly beautiful. The "war paint" on her cheeks and around her eyes would make that seem very strange.
Or maybe not. The Mystic Warrior fantasy movies had been popular all over the world. They might have little doubt that one stood over them for real.
"Where is my kinsman?" She spoke in English. When the Eurasian showed no response, even to her hyper-sensitive senses, she repeated it in Spanish. That got a response from both of them.
The white man looked stubborn. The browner man did too, but his fear was greater.
Sasha leaned over the white man and let her eyes go completely bloody red. She hissed like a snake. Both men jerked wildly in their chairs.
"Where is my kinsman?" She leaned further still and licked the man's throat, sending nearly uncontrollable fear into him. The sharp smell of urine and feces came from him. She shifted, did the same to the brown man.
"I don't know!" blurted out the white man.
"Then you are useless to me. Except as food."
She returned to him and bent to kiss his throat, sending him unconscious. She continued to kiss him, making loud sucking and smacking noises. Then she unbent. Clear against his white skin, chosen to be visible by the Eurasian, was a blood-red hickey.
"I'll tell you! I'll tell you!"
"Oseye! Blake! Come here!"
All three of them listened to the man's instructions. Twice Sasha had to make him repeat or clarify.
"That clear?" she said to her two companions. They nodded. Blake looked a little sick though only Sasha could have detected it. Oseye was am
used.
"Then you will live," Sasha said to the frightened man. She struck his head to fake a concussion and sent him to sleep with her micro-messengers. Then she cut the ties which bound him and the man she had supposedly killed by some sort of vampirism. She quickly laid the two out on the floor, straightening their limbs and turning their heads to the side so they could not drown in their drool.
It was three minutes till attack time. Sasha was running out of options.
"Catch up! Or don't!" she said to her two companions. Then she unholstered the M5 from over her shoulder and dashed out the door of the room, retracing some of her steps and then taking a turn toward the interior of the floor and the elevator .
She flashed around the elevator and plunged into the stairs beside them, leaping completely down each landing for two stories, then cautiously looked out into the hallway off one landing.
Seeing no one she ran gazelle fast down the hall and made a left and a right turn. The scent of Adrian Storm Cloud was strong. He was on this floor as she had been assured by the fearful crewman.
At the closed door where she hoped to find the Colonel she paused, listened at the crack to the door.
Good. She heard his voice inside, then that of another. She did not bother to attend to the meaning of the words.
She waited. The attack should be happening...right about now. She took three steps back, to the wall farthest from the closed door. She holstered the M5 onto her back and drew one of her pistols.
A shot came, muffled and weak from distance and the absorption of sound by the ship. Then three more came, also far away, then the sound of a fully automatic weapon.
With her back she pushed off from the wall, ran at the door, leaped and kicked at the door near its knob with both of her feet. The door slammed open and upon striking the inside wall of the office tore completely off its hinges.
SSasha dropped to a crouch, pistol aimed inside the room, seeking a target. She saw a sprawled unconscious or dead Asian man on the floor against one wall, saw Storm Cloud crouched and pointing a pistol at her from behind a heavy metal desk, and flung both arms wide. Anyone pointing a gun at the Colonel was likely to end up dead.
"Hello, Uncle," she said in Spanish. "They been feeding you well?"
Storm Cloud pointed his pistol toward the ceiling, stood, chuckling .
"They haven't fed me at all."
"Well," she said, standing and holstering her pistol. "We'll just have to raid the ship's galley as soon as our friends talk everybody into being polite. Meanwhile, why don't you put that away and take this off my hands."
The shapechanger reached over the shoulder and unholstered the M5 there. She also handed over several magazines for the weapon.
She drew a pistol again and returned to the doorway. She stood so she could see around the door jamb, only the side of her face showing. Storm Cloud joined her, looking the opposite way to avoid being surprised by their own or anyone else's soldiers.
Three hours later the freighter was completely secured, the last of the original inhabitants flushed from hiding places and captured or killed. Wounded were being treated in the ship's infirmary by Bluebird medical personnel, momentarily helped by Sasha, though they did not know that, who had made sure all wounded would recover well. A couple were badly enough injured that they had to be airlifted through the thunder storms back to the rear-base field hospital.
An Intelligence crew had gathered all paper and computer records into one treasure trove. They were at work studying it and sending copies of it back to the US for more sophisticated study. One finding had already been made which was worth passing on to Anna Prince.
"The instigators of the insurgency was a clan of the Japanese yakuza," said Prince. She was sitting at a long table in the freighter's officer dining hall sipping coffee. Beside her Adrian Storm Cloud was making up for lost meals with a large meal of his own. Opposite him Sasha, still in her identity as his niece April, was eating an even larger meal .
Beside her Captain Ishbel was watching her with poorly concealed awe at her appetite. Prince's statement drew his attention.
"What the Hell are Jap gangsters doing interfering in Philippine affairs?"
Ishbel's grey-haired Master Sergeant was not too occupied with his own coffee to speak.
"Intel has some theories. They all sound half-baked to me."
Prince shrugged. "We'll find out. Then maybe I'll send a team to reason with them."
Blond Blake on Sasha's side opposite the Captain snickered. "Just send April. You should have seen her 'reason' with a roomful of crew. If I'd blinked I'd have missed it."
Oseye nodded her head. She was sitting beside him. Beyond her was "Cheerleader" Lilith and "Schoolmarm" Sarah from the advanced-testing group. They had piloted the bat planes on the raid.
Sasha said to Anna Prince, "What's going to happen to this ship?"
"I haven't decided yet. I'm leaning toward taking it into Bluebird, along with most of the crew. Their hands are a bit dirty, but for the most part they were just hired hands, most too afraid of the yakuza to interfere with what went on here or to jump ship.
"By the way, thanks for not killing any of them, April.
"As for the bad guys and their strong-arm hires, Adrian and I are thinking about returning them to their bosses, as a 'good will' gesture or something."
Blake laughed. "I've got a feeling they might prefer just being shot out of hand."
Oseye said to the Colonel, "What's next for you, sir? "
He put down his spoon, looking unhappy. "I'm attending the service for our three dead from the squad which was ambushed. Then I have to notify their next of kin."
Anna Prince sighed. "Their families will be well-taken-care-of. Not that that will be much of a consolation."
"Then I'm going to stay close to home for a while," said Storm Cloud. "Katie has taken this latest harder than usual. Maybe I'll retire."
The Master Sergeant said, "Not going to happen. But if you do it seems like there's another Storm Cloud to take up the slack."
He leaned forward so that he could talk around his captain. "By the way, how much truth is there in this Mystic Warrior stuff? I mean, you were running through the jungle, without night goggles, as fast as I've seen anyone run."
Sasha was saved from answering by Sarah. She leaned forward and looked back at the sergeant from her position at the other end of the table. She spoke in her most school-marmish voice.
"The records suggest that there apparently was a real Comanche warrior in the 1700s who had extraordinary physical powers. They were probably recessive genetically, since there were never more of them. But it's not unthinkable that a few of those characteristics should be passed down for generations before seeing somatic expression.
"Comanche, incidentally, is not the name the original aboriginals called them—"
Blake snickered loudly. "You should have seen her psych out that crewman to find out where the Colonel was."
He went on describe Sasha's interrogation. Neither he nor Oseye had seen Sasha turn her eyes red, since her back had been to them, but it was clear to her that he knew something extraordinary had happened .
But there was no sign of that in his exaggerated retelling. Instead he made it seem she had faked being some sort of vampire so well that she had terrorized the freighter-crew member.
He also was faking being a coarse and none-too-bright gun hand, which Sasha knew to be false. Well, about the none-too-bright anyway. She felt warmth inside her for him and for Sarah. The two were covering for her, downplaying her abilities and misdirecting the Captain's and the Sergeant's attention.
Anna Prince and the Colonel may have passively joined in the effort. Storm Cloud continued to eat and Prince listened with a smile on her face.
Chapter 6 - Flying High
Sasha next saw Anna Prince on the Fourth of July. She also saw Katie Storm Cloud.
The holiday was on a Friday so Storm Cloud's wife took Thursday as vacation to make a
four-day holiday. She traveled in one of the regular hypersonic air-bus flights which Bluebird Security used to transport personnel and small cargo between the East and West Coast. With her she brought her son Hugo and his wife and their three children, ranging from four to eight years old, two girls and a boy, the eldest.
She and Colonel Adrian Storm Cloud had a second home in California, since the last two years or so he had spent a week or two each month at the Bluebird Camp Pendleton base. It was located in San Clemente, an upscale coastal city within a short commute to Pendleton. It was almost three homes, three single-story wings arranged in a square U around a big patio. The open end of the U faced toward the ocean and, the house being on a hillside, had a good view of the water.
There she met their daughter Stephanie and her husband and three children, two boys and a girl, the eldest, who lived in San Diego. The ages of all the children were in the same range, so they happily acquired sun burns together on the San Clemente beaches and in other outdoor pursuits.
On the Fourth Anna Prince joined the families. So did Sasha and her family, at an asado presided over by her father, who was (justifiably) proud of his cooking, especially of meat, a staple of Argentine diet. Adrian Storm Cloud was happy to let him do the chef duties, since Katie considered him at best a ham-handed and at worst a disastrous cook. Her father and the Colonel happily chatted away in Spanish while the party went on nearby .
The party, which officially started at noon, was a large one. It included a Mexican family who lived in one of the wings. The father took care of the grounds, the mother and her two oldest daughters the house work. Usually there was little of the latter, since Storm Cloud was punctilious in his house husbandry and often ate at Pendleton, sometimes at the Bluebird part of the base and sometimes at the Marine part. The frequent Bluebird personnel on short-term assignments who stayed in the house were equally good about cleaning up their own rooms.
When Sasha arrived in her air car, accompanied by her two sisters and her two best friends, Katie Storm Cloud met her inside the house and took her aside in the living room. The tall slender blonde hugged Sasha fiercely, then put her at arm's length, holding her by each shoulder.