Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (13 page)

“You sure this is where you want to get out?” Her cabbie asked. He wouldn’t have brought her here at all
except for the huge fare she offered
. It was her funer
al, though he had to admit, he had never met a more steely-eyed human in his entire life, male or female. The huge blast-rifle didn’t detract from the image.

“Home sweet home!”
Tanya said.

“If you say so.”
Tanya hadn’t failed to note the laser-pistol tucked half under his leg on
the seat as he had driven her
here, a forty-five minute ride on a nearly deserted Interstate
- this the center of the old city
. That was how large it was. The cabbie’s laser-pistol hadn’t been for her. He had made her pay by electronic transfer before he brought her out, so there was nothing to steal from him. Tanya didn’t want his money. An honest man had not
hing to fear from her, not when there
were mor
e than enough of the other type
to go around!

“It’s not all that bad. I grew up here.” Tanya said, and then she opened the door and stepped out into the familiar smells of rot, drugs, death, anarchy, corruption, mayhem and murder.
It had a distinctive odor all
its own, to be sure. It was the smell of home to Tanya and she took in a large breath and let it slowly trickle out to taste of its essence. The cab’s tires spun as the cabbie whipped his land-car around and sped away. Tanya let the safety off the Kievor blast-rifle. It whined for a half-second and then lay quiescently in her hands, the barrel leveled as Tanya surveyed her new surroundings.

There were hoodlums lounging everywhere, as was to be expected. Tanya wasn’t wearing a disguise and it was obvious she wasn’t a local despite her origin. The blast rifle was held in knowing hands
however
, and she wore full combat gear, though the helmet was clipped to the backpack for the moment. Jason didn’t know she was here yet. She took out the sat-phone and dialed the number she had always used to contact him. It rang twice and he answered.

“Tanya!” Jason said cheerfully. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“I bet you have.” Tanya said. “Now you know
where I am.
Happy hunting!
”
Tanya hung up the phone and walked over to an obviously snake-hearted hustler. When she was within ten meters of him, his eyes following the blast-rifle, she tossed him the phone. He caught it deftly.

“
Fuck
’s this?” He snarled.

“Free phone.” Tanya said with a smile as she walked away. She walked right towards the first vacant building she saw. She looked back over her shoulder as she walked up the crumbling plas-crete steps and saw
that the hustler was already gone, probably worried she would want it back and certainly ill
equipped to stop her if she
so decided. No, the phone had gone into worthy hands. It wasn’t a guaranteed death sentence, but close to it.

Tanya hunted through the basement of the building but there weren’t any openings. It took three buildings to find what she was looking for, and by then a crowd of desperate looking children followed her every move, knowing instinctively that she was one of them, that they need not fear her, and they waited for her outside of the buildings as she searched through them.

The third building proved to have a crumbling entrance to the warrens, but before she went into it she returned to the front entrance. The only thing she could give were a few spare credit notes she had in her
pocket. She couldn’t give
any of her food. She would need it, and she couldn’t scratch the surface of the hunger in this place with what she had in her pack.

She gave them each a credit note, eighteen before all was said and done, and then before word was spread and every child within a ten block radius was here she turned and made her way down and into the warrens; the only real home she had never had. And now with her memory entirely restored, she knew them better than the backs of her hands.

Tanya knew the backs of her hands very well.

Chapter 30

The subterranean passages were as Tanya remembered them, only now lit in the eerie green glow of her infra-red contacts. They still stank of the use they had once served, so long ago as to belong to another era altogether. In the true spirit of a tax-free zone, any of these buildings which now had sanitation only did so because they had installed their own independent units. Everyone else just threw their refuse wherever it might fall. The entire ghetto stank of urine and defecation. Odd that it seemed so noticeable now. She supposed that if she were here long enough, she would grow used to it once again, to where she wouldn't even smell it.

Tanya
had wrestled with the strange notion that she shouldn’t bring explosives and wire the entire warrens where she would be setting up her base of operations. If there were still children living in these warrens, and Tanya was sure that there were, it was one of the few safe places they had. If she wired the warrens, she would be causing the deaths of many children, and she couldn’t help but recall that here was where she once protected children.

Tanya could kill with a cold ruthless lack of emotion, but if there was one soft spot in her heart, it was for the lost children of the ghettos. Restored memories could be a liability, she realized, but found satisfaction with staying on the right side of the irony.

It was true that ninety-nine point nine percent of the children who survived to adulthood in the ghetto would become the newest generations of drug addicts, criminals, and worse, but the point remained; there was still that point zero one percent who
would
survive to make something of their lives. She had survived, really only
by luck, but there was no doubt in Tanya’s mind that the years she had spent here had made her the person who she had become, despite the memory suppression, and far more than the enhancements or the two decades of training she had received under Jason Cormach's tutelage.

These may have made her the
skilled fighter that she was
, but her years here
gave
her the instincts which, above all else, made Tanya the rabbit which had grown teeth and would run no further. Mankind itself had risen from prey animal to dominant predator, and Tanya had only done wha
t those primordial instincts
dictated that she do; stop running from the predators and take her natural place.

The door to the old hideout/safe-house was wide open when she returned there. It didn't appear as if anyone had been living in it for a very long time. The old memories rose up again and washed through her, as vividly as if they had only just occurred in a wash of forgotten emotion and reminiscence that the sight of her childhood
home
had brought rushing up through her. She couldn’t help but wonder which, if any, of the other children had escaped the miasma and death of the ghetto?
Probably none.
That was the harsh nature of these places.

The corroded hinges squealed when Tanya tried the door, but she was prepared for that. A little weapon oil and the old carbon hinges were rotating freely without complaint. The little hidden room was as perfect for her needs now as it had been for all of them then. Barred from the inside only a blaster would get her out and before that they would have to find it.

That wouldn’t be easy. No one had found it then and no one would find it now. There would be no way to detect her either, not through the thick plas-crete walls. The little hideout had served her and many other
children well. She wouldn’t be spending much time here in any case. For any military operation a base camp was needed. A safe zone where a soldier could sle
ep or lay up if injured. It
served her as a child, and it would serve her now. She immediately began making her preparations.

Chapter 31

Tanya’s thermal retardant combat-gear, helmet and pull down face guard dampened her thermal signature to below detectable range for lo
w-powered infrared contacts, though
she wasn’t
positive the Simians would
bother wearing the
ir own
in the first place. Their night vision was supposed to be far superior, though hers had been excellent in the
first place.

The years she spent in the warrens
adapted her already excellent natural senses to their peak before
she
was
enhanced. Still, she hoped that the first group of Simians came unprepared, not realizing where Tanya m
eant to take them. She had
never
revealed the secrets of her life in the warrens to J
ason Cormach. She’d never
had the slightest desire to converse with or co
nfide in him at all
- she had not suffered Stockholm
syndrome. She had not enjoyed Jason’s attentions and she had shared nothing with him
. And now,
her only interest was
in finding the oppor
tunity to slit his throat
.

The decayed windowsill was cloaked in the darkness of the night. If a person could see in the dark and got close enough, all they would see was her helmet and a pair of piercing blue eyes looking out from under its rim. This was just down the street from the location where she had
been initially dropped off by the cab, her hideout in the warrens below more than a half-kilometer distant. It might have been on the other side of the planet for anyone hoping to follow her. There was kilometer after kilometer of old sewer system tunnels running under this decayed ghetto city that were only a killing ground for those brave enough, or stupid enough to do so.

This was the third night since her telephone call to Jason. Tanya
did not
doubt some of her adversaries were already here, and more coming as rapidly as jump ships could carry them. But this
was the
playground of her youth. More than a dozen men had been meted their fates at the hand of a child wielding a scrap of carbon, and Tanya remembered every one of them as if those incidents had happened yesterday.

Her most vivid memories were of the life she had spent here; as if these things had only just recently happened, and not in an entirely different life, and the fact that she had just remembered them meant they hadn’t had the time yet to get old and fade away out her mind. Cold memories of that
girl-child and the men who
met their fates at her hand had drawn Tanya back here. There was no more fitting place to dish Jason his due
than the place in which she
originally
met
him.

When they came, they weren’t trying to hide their presence. The little ship nearly lit up the ghetto as bright as day as it came in, decelerating hard and fast. Tanya was running for the other side of the building the moment she detected the descending ship but by the time she got to a window the ship was already rising, its cargo safely unloaded. Tanya threw the blast-rifle to her shoulder and led the little ship in its ascent back into the sky, and though there would only be a pilot aboard now, Tanya would draw first blood.

The blast-rifle slammed her shoulder as her finger settled on the actuator. The ball of energy released by the blast-rifle flew straight and true, the ship rising into the path of the oncoming blast. At the last moment, only milliseconds before it struck, the pilot saw his impending death and tried to throw his ship over, but it was far too late. The ship exploded and rained fiery debris over the city below.

Tanya looked at the weapon in her hands for a moment before she began to run, hardly believing the absolutely incredible destructive power of the weapon. And first blood was hers!

Chapter 32

Sitting on the bridge of Adjudicator and viewing one of the ship’s exterior feeds, Felone watched the progress of the little ship as it dropped the first squad of Simians. The ne
arly black ghetto-city below the
ship was highlighted by the fusion drive, and would probably have been visible to the naked eye from one of their ports, had she cared to look. She did not. The drop-ship came in fast and made a high-gee deceleration at the last moment. The Squad was quickly inserted, twelve Simians, Felone watching from the drop-ship interior-cam as the Simians jumped free and fanned out. And then the exterior hatch was closing, the ship having barely touched down before it began rising rapidly into the sky.

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.