Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya, page 2
Then it fell to the oldest to be the next provider. For over a year Tanya had been the sole provider for this group, and it had not been easy. She knew what he was asking her; he thought she was selling her body. This wasn’t the first bounty she had brought in recently, and how else could she get a whole bag of rice! She had been doing very well for the group lately, in fact. She had also now lasted longer as the provider than any who had come before her, at least in her time here. She also knew how important her role was for the children. There were none old enough to take over for her. They would all die without her.
The ghetto was also getting meaner by the month. A provider could eke out a living scavenging, or at least Tanya had been able to when she took over as provider, but the pickings had been getting slimmer and farther in-between lately. Tanya had watched helplessly as the children began to bloat from starvation, and she had decided to do the unthinkable.
The unthinkable was how she had been providing and also why she wouldn't have answered his question even if she could. Selling her body would have been by far the slighter of the two evils, and much less dangerous. Tanya sat up in bed, the dream as vivid in her mind as reality, the dream remaining in her mind even after she woke, and then she realized it hadn't been a dream. It had been another remembrance, another brief flash of memory from her past. She had been a thief! Stealing for her group of children! But how she had been stealing was still a mystery Tanya couldn't remember. What she had seen in the brief flashbacks was all she knew.
It was the middle of the night but Tanya got out of bed anyway and stood looking out on the garishly lit city below. She knew she shouldn't be standing in the open window. That taking unnecessary chances was a rule she never broke, but for the moment she didn't seem to care. All she could think about suddenly were the old memories. They were like flashes of someone else’s life. A Tanya from another life which she could not remember, but must come to terms with if she truly wanted to understand herself.
Tanya contemplated questioning her handler about it, her contact with the Organization, the man who had recruited her so long ago that her memory of it seemed hazy and incomplete. She’d been doing this job since her mid-twenties. She had been working a mundane job and somehow, she couldn’t remember exactly how, the Organization had taken her in and given her this occupation- a career as a paid assassin. It was really a very good living and her life had been easy and uncomplicated since.
Easy and uncomplicated? Tanya pondered those thoughts for a moment and wondered; where had they come from, and why? Her life had been anything but easy and uncomplicated, if you looked at it from an outsider’s view or measured it against the lives of other tax-paying citizens.
Yet the thought had been strong, reassuring, and repetitive. This was not the first time she could remember having this thought. Suddenly she realized, as she opened this line of reasoning and began observing her stray memories objectively, that she was seeing an odd link in her own past. Why hadn’t she seen it before? She took a cold hard look at herself, now realizing clearly that she was always telling herself this story about how easy and uncomplicated her life was, and that somehow, somewhere along the way she had come to believe it.
Nothing seemed to make sense to her the way it always had. She could only guess at the meaning of these intrusive thoughts and memories. Bringing this up to her handler was out of the question. She did not know what this was all about and Tanya was reticent by nature, always careful. It wasn't just her occupation. It was her and why she was so good at what she did. She did not take chances.
She let the foolishness slip away and quickly moved away from the window. If there was one thing Tanya did not do, it was risk her life needlessly. Tanya was very fond of her life, even if she now realized she was no longer fond of her occupation. In fact she had never been fond of it. She’d never liked it in the least, but for some reason she could not now fathom she had kept telling herself that she did. The sensation that passed through her then, an electric shiver that raced up her spine, completely set her on edge. Tanya was always alert to the warnings of her subconscious, and of little doubt this was one now. But what was it warning her of?
Chapter 4
The sign in the front window reported that the martial arts academy was accepting students. Tanya stopped to study it as if this were the first time seeing it. No one would recognize it wasn't. No one would recognize her. She turned and opened the door and went in, looking like a young society girl who might like to learn how to kick her rich boyfriend in the balls the next time he cheated on her. The instructor looked at her a bit longer than was necessary before he spoke, some inner perception at odds with the image, but it was a polished one and he didn’t follow his intuition.
“May I help you?” He asked as he walked over to Tanya, halting just out of arm’s length, almost far enough to seem impolite. She could sense his inner confusion; it was apparent in his hesitant body language and the strange look on his face. His senses were telling him something his eyes were not and he should have paid attention. That was the exact reason Tanya always listened to her’s; things were not always as they seemed. He could never comprehend how quickly she could move. She shouldn't have been able to. No human should have been able to, and the short distance between them not enough.
“I saw your sign when I was passing,” Tanya said, stepping forward with her left foot a little as she turned and pointed with her right hand at the sign in the window. Her eyes followed her pointing finger and he naturally turned to follow the cue.
The stiletto fell into her left hand as she loosed it from her sleeve-sheath. It was little more than an elongated carbon icepick really, and now within reach her left hand shot up and forward and buried it all the way to the hilt under his chin and up into his brain. She left it there while he figured out he was dead, and before he could even fall she was out the door. She was halfway down the block before the students and another instructor came pouring out of the building in pursuit.
The high-performance land-car came to a near halt in the street beside her as she ran, the passenger door rising as it screeched up beside her. Tanya jumped in on the run, and tires spinning it raced away down the street.
“Any problems?” Her handler asked. It wasn't all that often that he showed up personally for these types of things, but he did so occasionally. Still, the timing now seemed odd to her. Now that she had begun to remember some of her past.
It also now occurred to her that he always asked her how she was progressing towards remembering her past. Looking at him now, she knew he would ask her again, after some small talk. It always seemed like mere courtesy, but now Tanya wasn't so sure. Suddenly Tanya wasn't sure of anything and she did not like the feeling.
“No problems.” Tanya answered. There never was. “I would have preferred being allowed to take them all though. You know I don't like leaving witnesses.”
Her handler looked at her and her Asian disguise, the eyes even pulled into slants with surgical stitches that would slowly disintegrate over the next forty-eight hours. It was the perfect disguise for the perfect Operative. He saw the entrance he was looking for and pulled the ground-car into the underground parking garage. Just as quickly found a parking spot, and flipping open a hidden control panel on the dash activated the alteration. Just a color, ID beacon and tag change, but the ground-car could do much more. It could even go as far as a model change, but that wouldn't be necessary this day. The mark had not been politically important, the reasons for the hit had not been offered and he had not asked, but it had not been politically motivated. If this had been a political hit the streets would now be locked down tight as a drum with security checkpoints going up everywhere. This wasn’t such a job and there was little to fear, once having escaped the area of the attack itself. He backed the car out of its parking spot and they pulled back out onto the street.
“You never do.” He said, resuming their conversation just as if it had never been interrupted.
Most of her jobs were politically motivated and easy enough to understand- one political faction against another the prize the lucrative political positions. Sometimes entire planetary governments fought unseen wars with other planetary governments, one political representative at a time- behind the facade of cooperation they showed the populace.
It was practically day to day business with them. She never knew nor cared or even bothered to learn the politics, but there were always plenty of jobs which required her expertise. Someone wanted this job done up-close and personal and the pay had been commensurate. Her jobs took her all over human space, and though the politics changed from one planet to the next, the greed and malice of men did not. Mankind’s avarice would never end, Tanya surmised, until mankind owned the entire Universe and probably not then either.
It was a twenty minute drive to the Space Port where her small ship was docked and it wasn't until they arrived that he brought up the old question.
“I think I've pretty much given up.” Tanya said with a small laugh. Until recently she had. Tanya lied so smoothly even her unknown mother wouldn't have known the difference. A lie detector wouldn't have been able to detect it, which was why her handler wasn't bothering to run it on her now. He had trained her himself and he knew of what she was capable. In essence, there was little she was not capable of. He couldn’t tell if she were telling the truth or if she were not, she was far too good for that, and her conditioning had been the best. She should never be able to break it, but you could never tell with humans like Tanya. There was always that first time, though it hadn't happened yet with any of his Operatives, and he had many. He had been doing this job for over two hundred years now and as much as Tanya was an expert in her field, he was an expert in his.
“You know I worry about you.” He lied, though it wasn't a complete lie and that lending it the sincerity he wanted it to contain. It wasn’t that he couldn’t lie just as smoothly himself, but again, with people like Tanya even the slightest innuendo could be noticed.
Tanya received immediate clearance to depart and rose rapidly into the sky. Once the attitudinal thrusters had accelerated the ship to nearly Mach’s number she lit the main thruster and smashed through the sound barrier as she exited the upper atmosphere. On ordinary missions she would often have to lay low on the planet where the hit occurred, sometimes for long periods, because anyone departing directly after an important assassination would naturally fall under immediate suspicion. She had killed many an important politician and seen space ports closed for days, but business had to go on and they were always reopened before long.
She checked the designated bank account via the Ultra Net. She possessed many such bank accounts, under many names, on many worlds, and saw that the transfer was already there. It wasn't for her to care who her targets were. In fact she had no idea who she worked for. Her handler was her liaison and her life was . . . easy and uncomplicated. She disconnected from the Ultra Net and jumped for warp-space, her mind entirely somewhere else.
Chapter 5
Tanya crept from one shadow to the next, wholly concealed and as much a part of the night as any nocturnal predator, while she observed the group of thugs in front of the nearly derelict building she had chosen as her next target. It took several hours to get here, having come the entire twelve blocks underground through the warrens, the only really safe place Tanya still had and the only way she now traveled.
She knew the pimp would be out looking for her and it complicated matters that were already much too difficult. Existence had become hand to mouth and now she had to sneak everywhere she needed to go. Hungry children could not be told there was no food because it was too dangerous to go out. Tanya would not be able to do any of her regular scavenging now either, not with the pimp looking for her, and the pickings had become nearly non-existent with the larger numbers of people who were out scavenging. Most of them were children, and though there was always much hunger here, there had always been something to find. And even though this place was poor beyond poor there was still charity. Those who were able put things out occasionally, but now Tanya couldn't even check for those.
It wasn't only a matter of watching out for the pimp, but of not knowing if anyone passing by might be looking to collect a small reward for her capture or outright murder. In her case they would wish to capture her if they could accomplish it and then a life of drug addiction and forced prostitution until she died. This much Tanya understood as well as she understood what would happen to her own group of children if she couldn’t continue to bring them food. The outcome would be the same.
The group she watched in front of her now, the security detail at the front entrance of the whore/drug house, was like any you might find anywhere and everywhere throughout the tax-free zone. Drug dealers and pimps for the most part, slinging their unending supply of drugs to the infinite stream of tax-payers who came here for those purposes. Within the building an unending party of drugs, booze and sex roared uninterrupted forever. Only the cars parked out front and the faces of the security details changed. Nothing else did. It was a place of death and horror for the girls caught within its deadly web. It was a place of death and horror for most everyone caught in its web.
Tanya was too young and too uneducated to understand politics or society's need to have places like this. Without them to cater to the surprisingly large percentage of the population who needed one or another or even all of the vices offered within, they wouldn’t be able to have their civilized places either.
Mankind’s civilization, his bright and shining cities, his majestic fleets of ships, and all else, were really little more than a façade to dupe the foolish. All that was necessary to see the real truth was to barely scratch the surface of that façade, because just beneath the majority festered and rotted in its own filth and excesses. The civilized places survived because those who were uncivilized were forced to come to these places to practice their vices.
Tanya knew that this place was different, that there were also many other such places as this just on Marvo alone and that these kinds of places could be found on most worlds, but she only knew of this through eavesdropping on people who didn't know she was listening. She had never been out of the tax-free zone since she had arrived, and she could barely remember that time. It was part of another life. It was said to be almost impossible to get out unless you were a tax-payer. Tanya wasn't. Her entire world could be measured in a twenty block radius, and the ghetto was far larger than that. How large Tanya did not even know.
Tanya was ignorant and uneducated, little more than an animal living in a burrow, but when she looked at these thugs she now saw something else. They took what they wanted. They killed if you got in the way of their taking. They had things; food, weapons, clothing and even money. They had fancy cars and shiny jewelry. Tanya had come to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to get anything out of this life was to take it. Take from the only ones who had enough to take from. She would not steal from the good people who inhabited this place. They were her own kind, as she saw it, and she would not take from her own kind. That only left one other option. Take from the strong.
Tanya tried to hold the memory as long as she could as it slowly slipped away, but it faded completely and she was once again left with only a brief addition. Instead of trying to delve into and fully remember it now, she put it out of her mind. That was the easiest way she knew to remember things; put it out of your mind and when your mind had something to offer, it always let you know. In any case, she knew she wouldn't be able to remember any more now. Her attempts to see further into the past had brought only frustration.
She had spoken to no one of her resurfacing memories, but then, Tanya was entirely without friends. In most senses she did not much like the human race of which she was a part. If she needed a man she went out and used one, but she didn’t bring them home, and never got close. She most certainly never saw the same man twice, though Tanya was anything but promiscuous. Human needs were human needs and occasionally had to be fulfilled.
The only person she was at all close to was her handler, who was called Handler when the need to address him personally arose, or Mister Handler when contacting him through his Organization. She was only close to him through work. Of her work itself she had few complaints. Most of her targets were politicians, and since most politicians were swindling low-down skunks who would sell their own sisters for a trinket it didn’t bother her at all to rid the Universe of them. Another would pop up to take that one’s place, as she saw it.
Tanya's goal in life was wealth, and if a few politicians got what they deserved along the way, so much the better as far as she was concerned. Her concern was wealth, maybe retirement. Where she wanted to retire, New California, they did not accept the merely rich. They only accepted the super-rich.
Tanya's new target was going to be one of the hardest jobs ever. The target was an actual Senator; a very powerful man and under the protection of Federation Security Forces. The Feds shot first and asked questions later. It was their job, among other things, to protect the Elected Body of the Federation and they took their job very seriously. To compound matters the Senator lived in the country in a nearly inaccessible region. Easily accessible by air or spaceship, but not so much so if you needed to get in without being noticed. Of course, if he lived in space it would have been even more difficult, probably impossible, so she had that to be thankful for.
The Senator's home-planet was Mordalin. A Senator had to spend a certain amount of time each year on his or her home-planet to maintain Senatorial eligibility and as far as Tanya knew Handler may have been waiting quite a while for this opportunity when Senator Geble had to spend his allotted time on the surface of Mordalin. It would be the only time Tanya would have any chance at all to make contact.
