Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya, page 10
The burst of the Kievor blast-rifle was nearly as bright as the fusion emissions of the little ship as it accelerated skyward, but the explosion of the drop-ship itself caused the dampeners in the high-zoom video feed to black out the screen as the ship detonated. Felone just sat there in stunned disbelief as the image came back up. Of the ship there was nothing left but burning debris raining down upon the fire impervious plas-crete buildings of the ages old ghetto.
Felone was occasionally given to bouts of screaming and cursing, and upon the necessary occasion foul torture and murder, but this left her literally speechless. It wasn’t that the ship was valuable, and the pilot was certainly expendable. It was the fact that they didn’t have another small ship here to drop the rest of the Simians they brought with them.
If they attempted to bring Adjudicator down to within two hundred meters of the ground they would incinerate everything underneath for a twenty block radius. Felone wasn’t even sure Adjudicator would be impervious to the Kievor blast-rifle, and there would be nothing left of the city to insert the Simians into. It might be a quick way to get rid of Tanya, but they’d never shake the Federation Authorities afterward.
“Son of a fucking bitch!”
“We’ve got twelve on the ground.” Jason said with confidence from the hatchway to the Bridge. “That’ll be more than sufficient.” His superior smile was infuriating.
“You are not a fast learner.” Felone said with barely concealed rage. “Why is it do you think Tanya has led us back here? This is the fucking city she came from. This is ground zero for her. She led us back here because she probably knows this ground better than anyone. Remember, she was the cat burglar it took them over a year to catch, and that when she was an ignorant child. And now you think those morons you sent are going to get her! They won’t even be able to find her!”
“On the contrary.” Jason said. “They’ll be able to find her.”
“How?” Felone demanded, beginning to lose her patience.
“The transponder.” Jason replied with his maddening grin. Felone was getting really pissed off now, but this was something he hadn’t told her simply because he hadn’t thought it necessary at the time; which when Tanya disappeared he had held back as a bit of a surprise just for his own amusement.
Felone just stared at him, not willing to be baited.
“I implanted a very small passive transponder along her backbone, just in case.” Jason said, seeing that Felone wasn’t in the mood to play. “They won’t have any problem finding her.”
Still, she wasn’t confident as she ignored Jason and turned back to the video feed of the city below, despite the fact that would tell her nothing of the events unfolding below. Without bothering to look back, Felone muttered; “You had better hope so.”
Chapter 33
“This ain't her!” The Simian said, kicking the lifeless corpse toward the far wall of the room- five meters distant. A spray of blood from the wannabe gangster’s gaping throat arced out across the room as his body sailed through the air, spattering the walls and floor like a warm rain. He hit with a thud and then fell askew on the floor. The Universe wouldn't miss this one.
“Both signals are coming from the phone.” Another said as he looked at a small device in his hand.
“So much for Handler’s transponder!” A third snarled, all of them now on alert. They had spent hours slowly encircling the transponder signal, which was also coming from the phone, and it had lead them to the mistaken conclusion that they were actually surrounding Tanya. Handler’s information had never been wrong before, they’d had no reason to suspect it would be bad this time, and now they had given Tanya all the opportunity she needed.
She could have gotten one or two of them already. She hadn't even had to move from her original building. A video surveillance device gave her the ability to maintain a bird’s eye view of both the target and the attacking force. Knowing Handler’s love of mechanical devices combined with the knowledge of how very thorough Jason Cormach really was, it only seemed advisable to have a thorough medical scan done. It had been simple.
“I would like to know if there is anything foreign implanted within my body?” Tanya had asked the Kievors. She hadn't been sure what she was looking for; radio released cyanide capsules, transponders, whatever, but if there was one thing Handler had taught her, it was thoroughness.
“For a small fee . . .” The Kievor had begun answering but she’d cut him off.
“Accepted.” Tanya had said.
“In that case, it is our pleasure to inform you that your fears are well-founded. There is a small passive transponder unit implanted near your spine. It will wake up when it receives the proper signal and begin broadcasting your location. It is very low emission, so they would have to get close to activate it. For another fee, not quite so small, we could remove it.”
“Accepted.” Tanya said. “What does the process entail?"
“The device has been removed and your account charged accordingly.” The Kievor had answered immediately. Tanya didn't bother asking how, though she did ask for the device back. It was now installed in the phone the Simians had followed.
The surveillance device in her hand was rather sophisticated. With a three-dimensional grid pattern it was showing her exactly where the transponder was in the building across the street. Unfortunately not in an exterior wall room, and actually closer to the opposite side of the building, but with ten stories of carbon framing and plas-crete brick above, Tanya didn’t think it was a concern.
The blast-rifle had a fold out monopod support and Tanya set it up on the windowsill as she flipped off the safety. It only had one other changeable setting and Tanya switched that to auto. She put the butt-plate to her shoulder, and rock steady on its monopod brace, fixed the blast-rifle directly where the signal was coming from within the building, as if she had clear line of sight, and then she opened fire.
The first bolt blew a hole in the exterior wall and exploded mostly inside the building, consequently blowing out a much larger section of the wall in a shower of brick and dust that rained down into the street below. By then the next bolt had flashed through the new opening and exploded inside the building. It shook visibly under the explosion as some structural support was struck and damaged in the blast. The blast-rifle just continued kicking against her shoulder as she now raked it back and forth throughout the building. Suddenly, a matter of only seconds after she began firing, the entire structure collapsed straight down upon itself with a gigantic, earthshaking roar.
Tanya was running. Straight down a twisting flight of stairs and towards the warrens below. It was entirely possible that some of the Simians had survived and escaped, and it might be easy picking them off as they tried to get free of the rubble of the building, but that wasn't in Tanya's game plan. This would be a guerrilla action from start to finish. Harass the enemy. Pick them off one by one. Then disappear as mysteriously as you arrived. Jungle warfare in the concrete jungle was not something she learned under Jason Cormach’s tutelage. This she learned on her own, right here.
Second unanswered blood was hers.
Chapter 34
Tanya didn't know how many Operatives the Organization had in its employ, but however many of them there were, this was still a large city. They could not be everywhere at once, so their only option, Tanya decided, would have been to split up, try to make contact, and then call in the rest of them to the point of contact. Now more than a kilometer distant from the site of her first attack, she lay where she had been standing vigil for the past three days, watching through a hole in the wall of this building that appeared to have been created in some long ago fight.
Tanya hadn’t been sure how long she would have to wait for them to find her since the destruction of the drop-ship would slow their insertions, so she was mildly surprised when two of them walked into view, searching along the street below, watching windows and very much taking their time as they moved forward. Tanya could hardly blame them.
One of the two, on the far side of the street, had acquired severe simian qualities. Its face was nearly overgrown in brown hair. The backs of its hands were thick with fur as well. It walked in a kind of mincing fashion that looked awkward, but wasn’t. It could move faster than thought, almost.
It looked right up the sights of her leveled blast-rifle as it caught the peripheral motion of Tanya stepping into the window opening and throwing the blast-rifle to her shoulder- even though she was five stories above it.
The Simian’s weapon instantly leapt from its holster into its hand and was coming up fast, even as Tanya depressed the actuator. The blast-rifle spewed a blazing ball of energy which rushed down like striking lightning upon the Simian, which disappeared in a thunderclap explosion. It was an uneven competition and there was nothing left of the Simian when the dust cleared. They stared into one another's eyes as the blast-rifle's discharge raced down upon it, and even knowing that it was dead, it still tried to make that last shot.
Tanya was thinking these thoughts as she was running, having only remained long enough to see what became of the Simian out of morbid curiosity. She ran out of the room she was in, down the hall and through an open door, and then using the same step pattern she used so long ago, her left foot launching her towards the sill, right foot landing solidly and then launching her across the space between the buildings and through the open window of the next building. Tanya was no longer a thirteen-year-old barefoot ghetto-waif, and she landed running, blast rifle swinging in her arms, and was racing down the exit stair for the basement and the warrens below.
She nearly reached the ground floor when the front doors of the building exploded inward under the concussion of another Kievor made blaster, the entire building shaking under the assault. It was a hand-blaster in this case, Tanya recognized without any hesitation, because once having heard one you could never mistake the sound for anything else. They were distinctive.
The Simian must have seen her jump from the one building to the next and was now coming for her. Tanya didn’t hesitate. She threw the blast-rifle to her shoulder and fired right through the forward facing wall of the fire-escape staircase and aiming for the unseen front steps on the other side of that wall.
Her first shot blew a huge section of the plas-crete brick wall out into the street at projectile-weapon velocity. The Simian was caught right in the spray of brick and debris and smashed with a dozen or more bricks that instantly pulped him and threw him across the street. His weapon flung from newly nerveless fingers and flew off in another direction, Tanya noting where it fell as her eyes snapped to the struggling Simian.
It was putting up a heroic struggle trying to lift its twisted body from the street, but it was a losing battle. Its back was broken. Blood was pouring from its mouth as it bled out internally. But even broken, it could still be deadly determined. Tanya looked down the sights and without hesitation depressed the actuator and the blast-rifle bucked against her shoulder, a last time.
Chapter 35
Tanya woke with a start, not knowing immediately where she was, her mind still groggy from the six days without sleep. She had to piss! That was what had woken her, but those weren’t her immediate thoughts. She looked at the small roll-up computer screen hanging on the wall and the red blips that were blinking in several places on the display. It represented a large area of the warrens, passive sensors she was installing everywhere she went, and those red blips could be locals. But Tanya did not think so.
So far she had encountered no one in the warrens nor found any sign that any permanent residents had lived down here in recent years at all. So she concluded that her adversaries must be searching the warrens for her. The digital time and date readout on the screen told her she had been asleep nearly twenty-four hours. She felt like shit, but there was work to be done!
The entire ghetto-city had become as quiet as a grave as the locals caught sight of the Simians about their business, most not wanting to become the Simian’s business, because no matter how hard some of the toughs here thought they were, none wanted any piece of the obviously enhanced, very well armed army of Simians prowling their midst. The locals weren’t unaware of the temper of the Simians either, and what being in the wrong place at the wrong time could mean with them. Having already lost a number of their own and obviously no closer to catching the perpetrator, they were taking some of their frustrations out here and there. So the streets were deserted. The people were hiding, or locked behind whatever doors still possessed locks.
Tanya did her business while she contemplated the red blips and what they would mean for her. None were close to her hideout, her two previous attacks both carried out far from here, but the Simians were now searching for her in her own warrens. It might be a small part of the entire group, still searching the city, and now the warrens as well, in small groups as their only hope of rooting her out. Or perhaps they had figured out she was toying with them and now they were all down here? The blips on the screen couldn’t tell her that. It would take years to emplace sensors throughout the entirety of the ghetto and Tanya was quite sure it would be over long before that, one way or the other.
Her odds no longer seemed all that great, but it was a fight she had fought here before, many times, and it was a fight that had to be fought or she would spend the entire remaining length of her short life running from Jason Cormach and the Organization’s Operatives. They would never give up.
This was the ground of her choosing. It was her home-ground and certainly she knew it better than Jason Cormach or any of his Simians. She was also the Tanya of her remembrances, the little girl who decided she was no longer going to run. She ate a double ration of protein concentrate and then forced down some fiber, and went back to bed. She wondered, with a small smile of satisfaction, how much rest the Simians were getting? She didn’t think it could be much, not with Jason Cormach breathing down their necks. She immediately fell back asleep, that small smile still curling her lip.
Chapter 36
It was as good a place as any and fitting, Tanya decided. The same place she used when she was a child. The blast-rifle would be no good for close-in work down in the tunnels because if she fired it in close quarters the concussion channeled back down those narrow passages could very well rip her apart as well.
The blast-rifle, her backpack and a few other things would go into her old hiding place. The hand-blaster she would keep with her for a last ditch offensive, should that become necessary, and hopefully to take a few of them along for the ride. Being taken alive was not an option. Her hand-laser would be her weapon of choice. She placed that in a well-worn holster, and then sheathed her short swords. They were loose in their sheaths, which went on her back in place of the backpack. The backpack she stuffed up into her hiding spot with the blast-rifle and the rest of her things.
Tanya knew exactly what a one-atom edged carbon blade could do to a human body. Remembering the bare scrap she used as a child, it felt like she was being given the chance to rewrite her history, going into it knowing everything she had done wrong the first time. The odds were about the same, Tanya decided, but she had changed. Would it be enough?
If the Simians hadn't initially come equipped with infrared contacts or goggles, they'd certainly have them now. Adding to the discomfort of the thermal retardant clothing she was already wearing, she would now have to pull down the thermal facemask as well. It would be stifling when fully sealed, and in the rare case, if worn too long, was known to cause pneumonia. But it would be little more than a discomfort for Tanya. And it was completely worthwhile, because with it in place she would be invisible to their infrared contacts.
Invisible in the warrens in which she could run full speed through the pitch dark without her infrared contacts. She’d done so thousands of times, often just for the joy of it, sometimes fleeing for her life. But for the Simians, and Jason and Felone after them, there would be no joy. Tanya knew every twist and every turn, and with her suit now sealed she would be invisible to anything but a spotlight.
Tanya wouldn’t allow herself to underestimate her enemies, though. There was every chance they would all come wearing thermal retardant clothing, which would complicate an already difficult situation, but Tanya suspected that if they had been wearing thermal retardant suits when they began searching the warrens for her, then they had long since been forced to give them up by now.
It was difficult just to wear the suits at all, but if the wearer was active as well, and they would have to be to hunt for her, then she doubted they would have been able to stand more than several days inside those suits. She had rested for over a week, secure in her sealed hideaway. A week of rest for her had meant a week of further frustrations for her enemies, and it was a reasonable hope that they had given up their thermal retardant suits.
The more she frustrated her enemies the less rationally they would act. They were already straining at the bonds of their conditioning and training, having spent weeks searching through this ghetto-city for her and so far finding only death. The reason Tanya had been the best of Jason’s Operatives was her patience. A patience she had learned as a child in these very warrens, hidden in a nook in the dark while searchers hunted for her nearby, often coming within meters of her in the darkness, their crank-lamps unequal to the task of finding her in her nook or crack in the wall. When to move even a muscle, to twitch, to cough or sneeze, even just to breathe heavily, would have meant instant discovery and death or worse. The week of torment she just inflicted on the Simians had not been a test of her patience at all, she reflected with some amusement, and neither would the next.
