Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya

'Tanya'
By Ronald Wintrick

Copyright 2012
By
Ronald Edwin Wintrick

Amazon
Edition

Chapter 1

She was running for her life, exerting every ounce of strength
. H
er pursuer
was
right behind her
. H
is footfalls on the plas-crete sidewalk beating themselves into her consciousness as they steadily caught up to her. She had no
time to look back to see but
had reached the
place to which she was fleeing. It was a
rotten gaping hole in the mortar foundation
of a massive tenement building.
One of
thousands of such entrances throughout the ghetto that let into the old sewers below
- now known as the
warrens
.

Tanya
jumped straight into the opening with t
he footfalls of her pursuer
right behind her. S
he slipped and slid, gouging out a long deep patch of meat along her lower thigh on the rough ed
ged opening
. She hit the ground
within
and instantly turned with
the scrap of carbon
to slash at the hand
reaching in for her through the opening.

Her pursuer had not expected the beautiful, frightened, filthy slip of a girl-child to turn on him. Nor had he expected the razor sharp scrap of carbon. He had not expected the raggy street urchin to turn and attack, like a crazed animal rather than a human being.

Tanya was a thirteen year old ghetto-vagabond who had already seen the worst life had to offer and clea
rly understood what this one wanted with her. She’
d seen him before, with his girls, and now apparently he had seen her. There was no law here in the tax-free zone, so whatever could
be taken and held was property. T
o be sold or bartered to the constant stream of those who frequented this place.

Whatever could be taken and held was the property of the holder. That was the only law of the ghetto, the tax-free zone. That was the only law Tanya knew, so she would struggle just as ferociously to escape the jaws of a predatory lizard as she would this man, or the many others like him who thrived in these places. The outcome in both cases would be the same.

Showing the coordination of a trained gymnast, the ferocity of the gladiator, or maybe it was only
her utter terror
which
drove her.
Tanya spun as her feet hit the ground, slashing at the hand reaching in for her. The piece of carbon was sharp, its edge only one atom thick, but of this or anything else which would be learned in an educational institution Tanya was unaware. She knew there were places where people lived normal lives, but of those place’s inner workings she knew nothing. She could neither read nor write nor even spell her own name.

Tanya knew only that the merest touch of the scrap would sever anything of flesh and bone. She took off the last three fingers of his le
ft hand with a desperate stroke
. The fingers left
the hand to flip almost as in freeze-frame through Tanya’s vision. Before the first s
quirt of arterial spray
left the severed ends of newly shortened fingers, she was running again while he screamed his agony and despair
.

T
hen she was gone into the darkness of underground passages she knew better than the streets above. Better than she could remember her own mother, now seven years gone, and a killing ground for anyone foolish enough to
attempt to follow her. Many followed. They wanted the credits she would earn. Many just wanted her
alone. They wanted her blond hair and her blue eyes
, because she was different and
because she was beautiful.

She stood out in a
nearly homogenized
race. Her mother and father ca
me he
re from someplace else, but
hadn't survived long once they
got
here. Her father
simply failed to return the last time he
went
out, the victim of a violent social structure he had not been able to adapt to quickly enough. Tanya understood intrinsically what had occurred, her father’s sad but smi
ling face still in her memories. He was tormented
with the knowledge of his failures but trying to put a brave face on it
for her
.

Her mother had worked as a prostitute at the end, but there was little else she could remember of those times. They had not been good times. As a thirteen year old girl, Tanya was now well acquainted with the lusts of men. Those who had pursued he
r recently
met death in the underground warrens, the scrap of carbon flashing out of darkness too Stygian to comprehend, then Tanya fleeing like a ghost while the predator t
urned prey pumped his blood
onto the thirsty plas-crete.

.
………………..
Those old memories faded away even as Tany
a came to understand what
she was remembering, and then her target walked into the cross-hairs of her scoped flechette rifle and her thoughts returned to the business at hand. There were better weapons for this type of sniper
work, but this job wasn't
work
. This was personal. Tanya
took
a brief moment to note the hand; it looked to have been repaired to perfection, as well as his youth restored through Rejuvenation, but she knew that these were recent changes. That he had climbed the ladder of success and he had been just recently
able
to afford it. She had thoroughly researched him, and she had learned everything there was to learn. What a shame for him that his succe
ss was to be so briefly enjoyed!

The flechette rifle was merely her touch. It would shred him like hamburger. They would have to pack his body into sandwich bags. He was walking out of a restaurant with three of his girls. Not the same girls he'd had then. All of those and many more had died along the way
working
for him, that life a brutal and short
one for the girls caught
in it.

His now opulent lifestyle was financed by dozens of whore-houses in several ghetto locales, which was why Tanya was here. She had seen him by accident only, but instantly remembered him with a flash of knowledge like a stab of brilliant light from the blackness of a childhood forgotten. Amnesia, she had been told, though why she suffered it and knew nothing of her childhood was a mystery. With sight and surfaced memory had come the first glimpses into her forgotten childhood- the first tha
t she had ever received. She
then studied him and learned everything about him- far more than the government records show
ed
- as well as his
quasi-legal ghetto
activities. She
learned everything, and now she was here.

Though he
actually never harmed her, other than the deep scrape, and conversely she had ha
rmed him, the fact remained he had tried. He
tried to catch her, and if he had caught her he would have beaten and raped her, strung her out on drugs and then prostituted her until the end of her days. If she was stronger than most and survive
d until she became too worn
to draw even the worst dregs of those who purchased such things, she would be cast aside as the useless flotsam she had become
and then to
die a quick death of starvation on the cold streets.

Tanya didn't forget such things. Tanya didn't leave enemies behind herself, even if they would never know who s
he was. Even if they would never recognize her
with the years
gone
by and she
grown and changed!
Tanya didn't leave enemies behind herself, and maybe just a little vengeance for all the girls, though that was hardly the primary reason. Tanya wasn't interested in correcting the wrongs of the Universe. There were far too many for that, had she cared about such things; her concern in this matter was entirely personal.

Tanya's finger slowly depressed the trigger as
she exhaled a slow even breath. T
he cross-hairs
were rock-
solid steady on her target. The flechette rifle sighed in her hands. She held the trigger
depressed
, not letting up, the cross-hairs remaining centered on his body even as he was flung ba
ck into the building behind him-
Tany
a anticipating the reaction
with the precision that only an exper
t could know.

P
leased by the remorseless spray of flechettes, thousands upon thousands of micro-thick aerodynamic flying razors tearing through his body, literally shredding him as the girls leapt away from the silent death assaulting him from nowhere, screaming in silent horror through the magnification of her scope.

When she had expended the magazine
Tanya quickly slid back from the edge of the roof-line and rose to her feet. Still wearing her gloves and the weapon clean, she spun like a discus thrower and launched the weapon out into the air towards the roof of the next adjoining building. It sailed through the darkness invisibly and landed with a clatter. She ran towards the opposite edge of the roof from which she had been firing and when she reached it simply dove out into a swan dive and began the twenty-one story drop to the plas-crete street below.

The wing-
suit didn't have lift and wouldn't hold her in the air long, but four blocks away Tanya pulled the rip cord of her parachute and came to a rough landing in the small park she had already designated during her planning. She rolled and came up, quickly dise
ngaging the harness and simultaneously
scanning the park for witnesses, but she had seen no one as she was floating in and there was no one here now, lucky for them.

Tanya was wearing a ski-mask and no one would be able to identify her from a description of a black wing-suited ninja that floated out of the sky, but she wouldn’t have hesitated to terminate any who had been unfortunate enough to be here when she arrived. She would neither be stopped nor later identified by anyone, and that was a rule Tanya did not break.

She left the parachute where it lay and made good her escape, the ground car exactly where she had left it, and no one yet the wiser.

Chapter 2

Tanya ran through the twisting warrens still fearful she was being pursued. Running and fighting, had become her existence. Her feet were hard and thick with calluses
tougher
than shoe leather. She had no shoes and didn’t need them. She could not remember ever having any. After running in the wrong direction and after making sure she hadn't been followed, she turned and made her unerring passage through the consuming darkness.

She couldn't see anything
-
there was no light
trickling d
own from above at all-
but she didn't need to visibly see to know where she was going. This place, a monstrous derelict building, and the old sewer systems that ran under it and under all the ruins here, had bee
n her home since her mother had
died, some six years ago. A worthless measurement, as time had ceased to have meaning for her. Existence was hand to mouth and that was what Tanya knew.

The squeak of a rat was the call of the sentry. Tanya returned the call.

“Come in.” The sentry whispered.

Tanya moved forward until she was standing beside the sentry. She couldn't recall his name quite yet although she
remembered now
who he was. Perhaps the name would come to her, but for
the moment
it remained elusive within her newly resurfacing memories. She was beginning to remember a great many things since she had seen, recognized, and assassinated the pimp.

The sentry gave the signal of the day, a complicated series of knocks on the old carbon door and a small slot in the door opened, allowing a shaft of pale light to spear out into the darkness of the plas-crete tunnel.

“It's Tanya.” The sentry said, though that wasn't really her name. That was the name they
gave her when they
found her, though of that original group six years ago only a few remained, and only children who had been younger than Tanya at the time she had been taken in. The door was unbarred from inside and Tanya entered. The door closed softly behind her and the makeshift bar was thrown back in place.

W
hen
the door was closed they allowed themselves a small bit of light, the lamps coming on once the door was sealed and there was no chance of the light betraying them. Their only light source
s
were several old but nearly indestructible crank-lamps that were used by many who lived in these places where there was no electricity. Tanya moved over to the room's one table as the children all gathered around her. From the folds of her rags she produced the treasure she had procured and set it reverently upon the table.