Union in CrisisChapter 7
- 4 years ago
- 22
- 0
At midnight local time, the task group had moved in and taken up a stationary orbit on the far side of the planet, mirroring that of the LMP ship.
All elements of the assault team had gathered in the hangar bay as instructed and were awaiting instructions. The Heavy Armor troops were rechecking their powered suits while the men in the lighter raider armor lounged on the deck nearby, calling out good-natured, and often obscene, tips.
The heavy assault armor was a massive exoskeleton that could carry up to a metric ton of armor plating. The power assist servos allowed each soldier to carry weapons that would have been vehicle mounted by armies of the past. Unarmed, the exoskeleton gave a soldier the power to rip the door off of a ground vehicle and toss it like a discus.
The lighter raider armor still had armor plates, but they were concentrated over the vital areas and the unpowered exoskeleton allowed the weight to be evenly distributed over the body without putting stress on the hips, knees and ankles, all problem areas for soldiers in the past.
The command element was easily identifiable because they were wearing only armored vests and helmets over their vacuum suits. The suits themselves were woven of a tough polymer that would stop the frangible rounds usually used aboard ships, and they would provide protection against sharp instrument trauma, but they were not armor in the traditional sense.
The Gunny was standing in the middle of the bay, watching the preparations until the ship's bell rang the midnight hour.
"ATTENTION ON DECK!" The Gunny's voice rang out over the shuttle bay's loudspeakers.
"Heavies, get that armor on. Raiders, stand to. Command element, please place yourselves along the bulkhead and out of the way."
He watched patiently as his orders were carried out and when the heavy assault unit was ready, he lined them up in order of movement according to the plan. He ran them though several scenarios, some were for entries where there was no resistance and others against increasing levels of resistance from armed adversaries. He then ran them through it again, but planning for a breach of the hull instead of an open hatch.
By the time he had finished, there was just enough time left to load the shuttles before the launch window opened. The shuttles were loaded "First in, Last out" meaning that the first people to go on board were the command group since they would be last to get off the shuttle at the target. The rear of each shuttle contained an armored docking collar that could be locked to a ship's hull, allowing the soldiers inside to enter a ship without an airlock or, if needed, breach a ship without working on the hull, unprotected. This meant that the soldiers closest to the rear of the ship would also be the soldiers closest to the enemy.
Each member of the assault force had a heads-up unit that displayed information on the inside of their visors. It could display intelligence information, schematics, planned routes and targets; and even information about individual soldiers' medical status and ammunition.
Kat had received a briefing on the use of the heads-up display and its wrist mounted control panel from Bob. It was programmable so that users could set up macros to control otherwise complex sets of instructions. She had set her Comm up to mirror her display commands so that if she selected a single individual or the entire group, the Comm unit would do the same.
Once launched, the shuttles accelerated away from the parent ship and, when they reached the pre-programmed velocity, shut down the engines and coasted around the planet in a ballistic orbit. They had rudimentary cloaking capability that denied the sensors of any hostile ship the ability to lock on to the small vessels. They would coast in until close enough, and then the maneuvering jets would swing the shuttles around and push it against the skin of the ship, all in less time that it takes to describe the maneuver.
Something was happening. Pan wasn't sure exactly what, but the crew had been tense all day long. Even his normally phlegmatic keeper was scowling and impatient, trying to rush Pan back to his cabin after dinner instead of allowing him his hour of exercise. He had put up a token resistance, but when the keeper started getting angry, Pan backed down. He was not ready to force a confrontation yet.
Back in his room, Pan waited, and planned. He had managed to identify five sound and three vision surveillance devices in his room. He could disable all of them in just a couple of minutes, if needed, but he had to be sure it was worth the chance. If he acted prematurely, he would be confined to a cell in the brig and that would put a serious crimp in any plans he had of escaping.
He had made plan after plan, and discarded them all. His exercise regimen had him more fit than at any period in his life, but he had to face the facts. He was still minus a leg, dressed in a hospital gown and his only weapons, besides his hands, were the light plastic crutches and a stylus he had managed to pocket unnoticed. The stylus had been sharpened, in the dark of night, and was in his waistband, but it was a sorry weapon against the tazers and slug throwers the crew had access to.
His only hope was for some outside distraction or emergency. After all this time, being so compliant and innocuous, he was sure that he could surprise his keeper and sow some confusion in the ranks. The chance of making it to a shuttle was slim, but he was not about to give in without a fight. He just needed the right opportunity.
The Assault Shuttles were right on schedule and the visuals from the cockpit were being piped to the heads-up displays for the soldiers in the troop bays. The troops were, for the most part, ignoring the incoming video but Kat, who had traveled extensively, was fascinated.
Most of her traveling had been by passenger liner and the view of deep space was old hat, gawking was something that first time tourists did. She had even had a chance to view open space through an honest-to-goodness plasglass viewport a time or two, a rarity on modern ships because the view screen technology was able to produce a sharper picture than the human eye could interpret. After a while, it all seemed so hum-drum. Without a sense of scale, the human mind had problems interpreting the data, understanding what it was seeing.
Kat slipped back out through the kitchen and made her way, carefully, to the sidewalk outside the diner, far enough away that she could not be seen by those inside. She took a couple of minutes to scan the street and the people passing by, wondering if Paron or the InterSys agent inside had a partner or confederate. Nothing looked out of place, but after years of doing her own kind of sneaking around and tailing assassination targets, she knew how silly it would be to make assumptions. There...
Kat's reception on her arrival at the Callabrian spaceport was a sight warmer than her arrival on Calysto had been. Helios was waiting at the gate with a big, hand-lettered sign reading "Themis Agnoset" on top, and "Ready to party?" below. The wording was surrounded by what were obviously supposed to be balloons and party favors, perhaps fireworks, and the whole thing looked like it was a grade school child's art project. Kat had to laugh at the big grin on his face and Helios stood...
Pan spent his first two months on Chonwei feeling like he was back in college, taking accounting courses with a plan to work in the family business. His brother John had encouraged him to take Corporate Finance, no matter what else he studied, so that when he took his place in the company, he could make informed decisions. He spent ten to twelve hours a day tracking the money movements between corporations, megacorps, holding companies and shell companies. It was an epic task, though it was...
Kat had thrown caution to the wind and had opened the throttles on the little sled, building up speed as quickly as possible. Since there was no atmosphere to slow her down, she figured that if she could get going fast, she could ride that speed for a long time, even after the fuel supply was exhausted. She would rather die in space than be recaptured by the ExTrans. It hadn't taken long, with the throttle wide open, to burn through the available fuel. Kat waited until the ship she had...
Kat's training at the Citadel was part of her employment contract with the Agency, an extra-governmental watch dog group that worked outside the law to police the law enforcement establishment and the politicians. She had been making a pretty lucrative living as a free-lance assassin when she had been captured by Minerva, the Sector Commanding Officer and head of the Agency's training academy, the Citadel. Minerva had made a convincing argument for Kat switching sides and coming to work...
Kat jumped ship at the first port and, despite her nervousness, it was really a non-event. She just simply went ashore during her first off-shift and never came back. She didn't have to worry about raising suspicions by hauling a lot of gear, since she owned very little to begin with. Like many of the crew who planned on spending some time on-planet, she carried a small satchel with her meager belongings inside and simply walked away. She had a few credits to her name, there hadn't been...
A team breakfast the next morning was an odd experience. They seemed like normal, everyday people and not like the kind of people Kat remembered from her past. The smugglers she knew were shifty, nervous people who skulked and lurked. These people chatted and ate breakfast, talking about the day's plans, the next step in reviewing operations for several local plants and were, generally, nice folks. Kat had to wonder if the game had changed of if her perceptions had altered over time. If...
Helios had agreed to deliver the parts in six weeks, through an intermediary whose contact information Mbosa supplied. There was to be no further contact with Mbosa again, under any circumstances. Mbosa had also supplied Helios with a copy of the information his sources had dug up, and with which he was threatening him. If Helios failed to deliver, or if even a whisper of Mbosa's involvement in the deal came to light, the information would be sent to both the local Peace Keepers and to...
Kat and Vlad spent a lot of time together, since he was the head of her 'security team'. She was amused by the euphemism, knowing that they were her jailers and sure that most of them would much rather just shove her out an airlock and be done with it. She was not confined to her cell, exactly, but she was not free to roam either. She could take meals in the common mess if she wanted, but doing to was a hassle to everyone involved. Her guards would clear an area of the mess, ejecting...
Consciousness came back slowly. At first, she wasn't even sure she was awake. The few sounds she could hear were muted and her eyelids refused to obey. She couldn't find her body, though she knew that was silly, and she was relieved when that lack of sensation was replaced by the pins and needles sensation of her returning circulation. Even though she was newly awake, all she really desired was to sleep for a couple of days. That not being conducive to survival when one has been kidnapped,...
She was finally ready to take that first step. She had the weapon, a plan, an escape route and a target. It starts tonight. The intervening years had not been kind to little Kathleen Andrea Mackey. The Peace Keepers had placed her in a group crèche with a hundred or so other orphans and unwanted children. Run by the state, the children continued to receive a basic education, enough to make them useful members of the prole class, but not enough to inspire them to excel. They were to be taught...
Kat slept until hunger woke her. According to her fingernail chrono, it was 2100 hours local. The time didn't mean much to her since she had no idea how much time had passed since she was abducted, nor how long she had slept. Her stomach was telling her she hadn't had anything to eat in quite a while. "Computer, increase lights 15%." Kat sat up and was unsurprised, but still annoyed, to find that she was naked under the covers. Of course a person had to go into Cryo sleep naked, and she...
The elevator took a surprisingly long time to reach their destination and, though there was no way of knowing what level they started on, Kat was sure that they were now many levels underground. The doors opened onto a pleasant but generic looking lobby, akin to what you would expect from a solicitor's office. The desk marked reception was unmanned and the room, empty. Three doors led from the room, all of them unmarked. The garishly dressed young man preceded her out of the elevator and...
"Themis, report to Minerva." That terse command cut through her concentration. She was working a devilishly difficult FTL course calculation and math was not a favorite subject. She had studied long and hard for this exam, and any interruption was unwelcome. That this particular interruption meant she would have to leave the test half-finished caused her to let out a small groan. "Can I finish the exam later" she asked, as she rose from the table and gathered her gear. "I am only half...
At zero-dark-thirty, they arrived at the spaceport and made their way to the private hangers at the far end. The walk wasn't a long one, but it gave Kat ample time to notice that Bob's limp was gone and that he was moving around easily, smoothly. She cocked an eyebrow at Bob, and then nodded to his leg. "Feeling better?" Bob, looking a little sheepish, lifted his pants leg and showed her a very slick, expensive looking prosthesis. "Thing cost a fortune and upkeep is enough to make your...
Ducking behind the door so that when it opened, it would shield her from view, she held her breath. The door opened and Kat could hear someone pause in the doorway, speaking to another person outside the room. "I don't care if he is the Secretary General of the damn Union. The patient is not to have alcohol while taking the medication I prescribed. If Dr. Graham has a problem with my instructions, he can complain to the Administrator." He said, stepping past the door and into Kat's view....
It was several long, tense minutes before status reports started coming back over the common frequency assigned to the assault team. They had, apparently, caught the civilians with their pants down, figuratively speaking. There had been no real resistance, but a collision alarm had sounded once the civilian ship sensed the shuttles in near proximity when the stealth fields had dropped for the final maneuvers. The crewmen were sprinting to damage control stations and struggling into vacuum...
Kat was early for her 0800 6th Day meeting with Minerva. When she had returned to her apartment the previous afternoon, she had a message telling her to report to the Sector Commanding Officer at 0800 the next morning. The tone of the report was very official in a way that was hard to pin down. Her previous communications from Minerva had always had a more casual tone, like that of an advisor. This was definitely an official Sector CO to junior Agent message. Kat couldn't help but grin....
One of the three ships had moved to block their travel lane while the other two had taken up station to either side. The lead ship had launched a pair of shuttles that were rapidly closing the gap between the blocking ship and the passenger liner. The crew reported the closing distance in a calm, business-like manner, estimating time of arrival and, based on trajectory, the possible destination. There were three hatches on the forward part of the ship that could, through the use of a mating...
Pan stared after her, daring to hope but realistic enough to realize that she had avoided the issue. If Helios had just now been heard from, that means that there was some trouble with that meeting they had planned. Pan dressed as quickly as he could, tossing his sweaty garments, and the wet towel, into his locker to deal with later. He sprinted the distance from the medical wing to Minerva's office, arriving right on her tail and out of breath. Minerva glanced at him, rolled her eyes, and...
The bridge of the UNS Spirit was humming with activity. The light cruiser, part of a two ship scouting element for the UNS Invincible's battlegroup, was involved in Operation White Flag and had observed a blacked out ship of unknown origin pass through their sensor net almost twelve hours ago. Operation White Flag was a training mission and they were supposed to be looking for the members of the UNS Vigour's battlegroup as they moved into the sector designated for the simulated battle....
Jack sat with the team in a conference room waiting for the potential clients team to arrive. He was telling his colleague how he had scored last night with a mature blonde in a tight little red dress and high heels. When the knock at the door indicated the arrival of the other team and leading them was the blonde woman in a business suit. She looked intimidating in her power suit and heels, hair pulled back and coiffed in a bun. She was wearing tortoise shell reading glasses. As she sat down...
Her thigh was rubbing my pussy as she was pressing her pussy hard on my thigh. I obediently co-operated and reciprocated each of rub by rubbing her pussy with my thigh. Her arms cuddled me and she kissed me all over my face and licked wherever possible. I could sense her breath was hot and steamy.Our breasts were pressed hard against each other and I could feel our nipples were already hardened. In a moment she lowered her head and started sucking one of my nipples. It was too sensual that...
I was so excited when she buried her face on my chest and I could sense she was inhaling deeper. My hand moved slowly away from thighs and upwards and smoothly caressing her belly. I pulled her more closer and tightly held her and kissed her cheek and took a deep breath. The natural aroma of her skin mixed up with the perfume that she wore was so exciting and intoxicating. She changed her posture by sitting on my lap facing me directly. Now, it was easy for both of us hug each other and...
When the door bell rang, I knew it is Jessica whom I have called an hour ago to come by. Since it was Friday evening, I told her already to spend the weekend with me at my apartment. She very reluctantly agreed. Since we are c***dhood friends, I knew she won't refuse. I hurriedly wrapped around the housecoat rushed towards the door. As I expected, it was Jessica, coming straight from her office. I returned from my work much earlier today.The moment I opened the door, I was surprised to...
I remember the sound of luggage rolling across concrete as he turned. The ripple he made in time frozen on my brain, the image of his sway. I stole that parting glance and tasted the air through which he had passed, brushing against me a sweet memory. He said something, or hinted at something perhaps but only to my eyes. It was understood, the secret that can be bought between men. In the past it went unnoticed by most, but things are a bit different now. A moment cannot be held at leisure. It...
She was not allowed out after dark, not today and not ever. Once the sun went down, her father would lock the door, throw the three large bolts and drop a wooden beam across the door frame. The windows all had bars that didn't open, but when darkness came the metal shutters would be closed, blocking out the sights and muffling the sounds of the street outside. The halls outside the door were patrolled during the day, but at night they were mostly deserted. Even through the metal sheets and...
The executioner turned out to be almost too easy. A retired Peace Keeper, he was almost a legend among those still on the job and he had a soft spot for prole hookers. Flash a little leg, slip him a mickey and take out his tongue. All Katy had to do then was leave him chained in a half-filled tub with his own whip activated. She later heard that it was 3 days before the smell alerted the neighbors. The real problem was the Governor. She had been watching, waiting and learning everything she...
Kat spent the time until planet fall in her cabin, except for meals and a trip to the gym. Minerva had given her some case files to read and, despite Minerva's assurance that her gear was unmolested, she examined each piece in detail. Since she had designed her own gear, she was confident that she could spot any major changes or additions. She even downloaded the code for the multi-purpose communicator to see if they had slipped in a worm. She didn't know whether to be relieved that she...
Her first week was a blur of medical scans, academic testing and evaluations by instructors in a hundred different areas of expertise. The medicos pronounced her fit, with no hidden defects or diseases in her genome but the academic testing left her feeling wrung out, and not a little embarrassed. She had assumed she was as educated and worldly as the next assassin, but found that her early education was woefully inadequate. Since leaving the crèche, Kat had indulged her inquisitive nature...
"Next!" The 'Path' instructor, the man who Kat still thought of as the Chief, was Minerva's husband and the hand-to-hand combat instructor for the Citadel. 'Path' was fighting technique that traced its origins to several ancient disciplines on Old Earth. Part Savate, part Krav Maga with some Judo-style grappling included, it was a fast, brutal art that did not lend itself well to tournaments. It taught its practitioners to injure, disable and kill opponents as rapidly as possible. Kat...
Pan would have been almost unrecognizable to those he had left behind at the Citadel only a couple of weeks before. Never a muscular man, he had always had the wiry, whipcord strength of an athlete, a runner. The past weeks had pared that down to the most basic essence, stripped every ounce of fat from his frame and re-sculpted him. His cheek bones stood out like knife blades from his sunken cheeks and his jaw, always strong, had a chiseled look of weathered stone. His eyes, normally a...
Kat stepped out of the boarding tube into the Bougainville space port on Clerc, and scanned the crowd. She was adept at spotting security types, her livelihood had depended on staying under the radar, after all. She cataloged three overt and two covert watchers as she strolled through the concourse. The three, dressed in identical blue blazers and gray slacks, had the appearance of spaceport security. For all their studied casualness, they stood out from the crowd specifically because they...
"Chief, it's Themis." Kat wasn't sure she was doing the right thing, but time was speeding by and she had to get to Aste. The Chief sounded wary, as he responded to Kat. "Is there something you need, Themis? I am told that you asked specifically for me. I have to tell you, I would have cleared this through Minerva before talking to you, but she was unavailable. It is not normal practice to be calling Instructors when you are," he paused, searching for a harmless euphemism, "on...
Kat slid the door open as quietly as she could, the movement catching Bob's eye. He lifted an eyebrow and she gestured towards the door, holding up a hand with 4 fingers extended, and then made her hand into a gun shape. Bob, his brow tightening, extracted his arm from around the blonde, set his drink calmly on the bar and then, in a movement that was faster than Kat believed him capable, he clipped the blond behind the ear and lowered her to the floor. Sliding over the top of the bar, a...
Pan woke slowly, his consciousness rising from sleep in stages. Pain came first, but distant, hovering at the edge of his awareness. It was like the pain you feel in the memory of a recent injury. Then came the voices, but they were indistinct, as if they were in another room. There was movement around him and he felt a soft breeze flow past his face. His eyelids were strangely heavy, but when he finally forced them open, all he could see above him was a bright bar of light that hurt his...
The return trip to the camp was only a ten minute drive, had they driven directly there. Instead, they circled North and came towards the camp from the opposite side. As they neared the top of the ridge, keeping the hilltop between them and the camp on the other side, Bob pulled to a stop. They climbed out, and with a look, split up. Kat headed along the ridge line north for a hundred meters, then lowering herself to the ground, she edged forward under the low brush and grasses. Easing...
"We need to move. We'll load the mule with whatever we can lay our hands on and get the hell away from here." Bob handed the silenced pistol, and four spare magazines, to Kat and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He pocketed the rest of Vega's gear and led the way to the mule. It only took a few minutes to drive the mule directly over the ridge to the camp, Kat at the wheel and Bob riding passenger with the rifle across his lap. A couple minutes more and they had everything they could...
Pan chafed at confinement to his room. He had been poked and prodded, measured, weighed and bled; again and again for three weeks. Every day, after lunch, the nurse and a physical therapist would bring him crutches and encourage him to move around. He couldn't leave the medical bay, but they had him stumping up and down the passageway. During the rest of the day, he sat, and waited. The staff provided him with a book reader and access to the ship's library, but only the entertainment...
They finally found a narrow land bridge that spanned the chasm, six days south of their original route. With Kat driving, and Bob walking ahead, scouting and guiding her, they were able to get the mule across to the other side though not without a puckered sphincter or two. Twelve days wasted. The rest of the trip was anti-climactic and they were able to find the mining town of Champlace only two days later. The town was much smaller than the Port. It had two primary streets that met in a...
The crash site was easy to find. They had located a dirt track, hardly a road at all as much as a path through the forest that previous vehicles had torn, and they followed it until they spotted the first shattered tree tops. The forest was thick and heavy, the canopy almost completely blocked out the sunlight, but where the flier had torn through the tree tops, the sunlight flooded in, bleaching the color out of the forest floor. A blind man could have followed the trail from there and the...
Pan quickly settled into a routine. He would stump around the ship after breakfast, trailed by his keeper. He was exploring the limits of his allowed territory. Then back to his room where he would play some mindless bit of holo drama fluff that he could completely ignore while reviewing each step in his mind. He was firmly fixing a map of this part of the ship in his mind. After lunch, he would take a similar walk-about, but vary his route, memorizing the placement of various restricted...
It was a long day of forced inactivity. They traded off every two hours and Kat, exhausted, slept when she could. The temporary lumberjacks came back to the camp in the early afternoon, and put in a couple of hours trimming and shaping the logs they had cut. They added them to the already stacked wood under the tarp on the partially built structure, and then retired to their cabin. The officers only came out of the ship once all day, and were seen lugging a single small pack each, back to...
Jonesy, an embarrassed grin on his weathered face, noticed Bob smiling and scowled. "What the hell are you smiling about?" Bob held both hand up in a gesture of surrender and shook his head, trying to wipe the smile off but failing. "Oh!" Jonesy turned back to Kat again. "I almost forgot the other interesting thing. When the reports started flying back and forth about you guys, a ship appeared on my sensors. It had been lying doggo in orbit, probably pulling the same stunt I was and...
Katy sat in her little hideout, staring at the crumbling walls and was at a loss. Since that day she made her vow to get revenge on the people that had killed her parents, she had been working towards this day. Today. It had only been what, four or five hours? Since the governor was splattered all over the plaza. The city was crawling with Peace Keepers, the streets packed with people who would turn her in for the price of a good meal or to gain favor with the planetary government. She had...
"Um, unless you have an accountant in your pocket, I don't know that I have a lot of choice. From what Minerva said when I asked her, there is a list of approved people that Agents can contact. People that the Agency trusts not to divulge information and so on." "Kat, I don't have one in my pocket, but I have the number of one programmed into my Comm." Pan's expression turned pensive, for a moment, as if trying to make a decision. He pulled Kat back down into his lap before...
The fifty creds Kat got for her first strong-arm job was enough to keep her fed for a month, but it didn't take long before word-of-mouth had netted her more work. Within two weeks, she had accepted two more, similar, jobs. It seemed that there were a lot of scumbags who needed to be taught a lesson. Kat, when she was being honest with herself, didn't really like the work, but she consoled herself by only taking jobs that she agreed with, whose targets were, for one reason or another,...
They never did make it to a table set for two. The conversation was brisk and entertaining and Kat got to hear about David as a boy as the two brothers traded good-natured barbs. Anna filled her in a bit about Pan's extended family and about her and Pan's brother. John was the older brother by ten years. Unlike their father, John did not have the passion for engineering and found, instead, that he had a gift for numbers. After graduating, he took over the financial side of the business...
Pan left the following morning, shipping out before lunch and while Kat was in class. Before breakfast, they had barged into Minerva's office and announced their plans to marry. Minerva did not look particularly pleased about the development but didn't try and forbid them. The Agency did not have any rules about co-workers marrying, though it did frown on fraternization between Agents and trainees. Kat, for her part, spent the day in a funk. She had opened up to someone and had found a...
Kat had used the money she was getting from jobs to improve her station in life. She had rented a loft in a building that was not completely falling down and had running water that was even hot sometimes. It had a lockable door and she had the entire top floor to herself. She had begun to acquire belongings, some old, second hand furniture and even a few luxuries. One of those luxuries, though most wouldn't think of them that way, was a set of knives that she had stolen and paid to have...
Dinner that night was as much fun as it had been the last time. Even if it was bittersweet, with Pan being in the Delta Sector, Kat still enjoyed just sitting and spending time with Pan's brother and sister-in-law. The more she heard about his childhood, and about his family, the more she couldn't help but wish that her family were still around. Over after-dinner drinks, John finally broached the subject of her finances. "Okay, Kat. Time to get down to business! With what I was able to...
She followed Paron out of the elevator car and down a richly paneled hallway to where it ended in a set of massive doors. Paron opened one side and strode through, nodding, but not speaking, to a young woman behind a desk just inside. The room was simple, but elegant, furnished in uncomfortable looking furniture and modern art, obviously the outer waiting room for this firm where lesser people would be forced to cool their heels. Through a second set of slightly smaller, but no less elegant,...
Kat was given the choice of a company-owned apartment, a small, one-bedroom affair with a view of the next apartment building, or of getting her own place in the city. She made the decision to take the company apartment for at least a month while she got more familiar with the city. She spent that entire first month in her office, leaving for meals and at quitting time. Here she applied herself to learning everything she could about the Agency setup and about the firm for which she was...
Kat hesitated, her mind flashing through different options. She briefly considered turning around and going back towards the passenger elevators, but rejected that option as too revealing. She didn't want Paron to know that she was aware of his spying. She was more interested in why he would be so blatant, so obvious about his interest in her. If he was a spy for InterSys, then he shouldn't have been so clumsy. Kat entered the elevator, nodding at Paron but not saying anything. They had...
Paron's body was found within minutes, his throat cut from ear to ear, and stuffed up under a delivery vehicle on the loading docks of the office tower. The security video showed Paron stumbling to the dock and hiding behind a stack of pallets until a vehicle pulled up a minute later. A man got out of the passenger side, a hooded jacket covering his features, and he walked over to Paron. Helping the wounded man stand, they headed back to the vehicle but the path they took led them behind a...
Kat was almost back to the bridge when a pair of armored men came out of a side passage and spotted her. Their weapons snapped up, pointing directly at her and one of the men lunged forward, grabbing her arm and shoving her against the wall. "What the hell are you doing out here? All passengers were ordered to the dining area." His voice was rough and filled with contempt. Kat looked him defiantly in the eye. "I am a paying passenger and not some crew member that can be ordered around. I...
Kat had the beginnings of a plan. She had been fooling herself, thinking that she could take up a normal life after her years of struggle on Ovid. She had no marketable skills, and what little knowledge she did have was self-taught and centered around violence in its many forms. If she wanted to be a normal citizen, she would have to start over and go back to school. She would have to hope that she could find some way to support herself until she reached a level that would allow her to find...
"Themis, is it? You may call me Vicar Gauss, or sir." The officer, Gauss, was staring at her with interest, gauging her reaction to the use of her Agency code name. Since Kat already knew there was a leak and she didn't have to fake a response. She simply stared back, not speaking and not showing any reaction on her face. Gauss nodded, and then sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands. "Where is the other Agent who boarded with you? We are...