Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (16 page)

Tanya hadn’t wanted to make so much noise when she made her attack, but she’d
had little choice. The scatter-gun
meant one shot, while her laser-pistol would have required two, and it would have provided the opportunity for one of them to retaliate if they fired at the
laser’s flash as she blazed away. Both Simians had their weapons in their hands, and they were faster than most could imagine. But now she also had the scatter-gun. The thought was a pleasure, and at this point in her isolation some type of amusement was at least well deserved, if not necessary.

She leaned t
he scatter-gun against
the wall as she pulled her face-
shield down again now that her exertions were over, and now that she needed to be invisible again. Then she pulled her holstered weapons, the blaster in her right hand, the laser in her left as she waited. She didn’t have to wait too long this time. They were
coming from every direction
, and all converging on this spot.

A group of six of them slowly began working their way up the street within minutes, spread out in military fashion, using every piece of cover the street offered, and moving forward
very
slowly. Tanya idly wondered how many there were. A whole lot of them
was
her guess, though she didn’t actually know the true count of the Organization’s Operatives. She thought about how she had gotten herself into this. It was still worth it, though maybe it would be preferable to run for a while. She played a dialogue of the arguments in her head. She had to talk to someone, even if only herself and even if only in her own head.

By the way they were spread out Tanya seriously doubted she would be able to get more than two and that only by firing both her weapons simultaneously. The moment she opened
up the rest would vanish like
wisps of smoke on a strong breeze. Then they would encircle her. Or they would try to. Taking in a long breath and then easing it out slowly, Tanya stood up in the window, both weapons pointing down at the street below.

Chapter 40

Tanya chose as her targets two of the Simians who were working their way along the opposite side of the street, the two closest to her. Just a brief flicker of her eyes farther up the street to her right, and the blaster in her right hand following that flicker even as she looked back to her left to take careful aim with the laser. As her eyes locked on the left hand target both her weapons fired.

The laser shot took the closest Simian through his left eye as he looked up belatedly to find Tanya standing above him framed in the window and looking down at him over the flashing muzzle of her laser pistol.

The blaster shot was off by more than a meter, tearing a huge hole in the building next to the Simian but the concussion literally ripping him into pieces that went flying all across the street. Close was good enough with the blaster. She holstered her hand weapons and snatched up the scatter-gun as she took off at a run.

Tanya ran out of that apartment and down a long hall towards the rear wall of the old tenement building, the side farthest from the street, through another apartment and without pause she made a running stutter-step to adjust her timing. She went leaping right out the back window. The backs of the buildings, here at least, weren't as closely set together as were the sides of one building to another. It was a jump of about five meters, but Tanya's strength and coordination could not be measured in human terms. Satisfying herself wi
th a quick glance below
that there were no witnesses
as
she sailed across the span. She saw
nothing and then she was landing on the sill of the window. There weren’t any guarantees that no one had seen her.

The cracked plas-crete brick sill shattered under her weight as she landed on it, simply disappearing from under her foot the moment her foot touched it, her forward momentum crashing her bodily into the remainder of the sill itself, her right knee slapping the ruined edge and somersaulting her head first into the room.

She tucked and rolled but she still hit the interior floor hard, rolling and sliding along the floor, the scatter-gun held protectively close, and when the room’s far wall abruptly halted her slide she rose and quickly surveyed herself. She had only lost some skin from the backs of her hands where they had cushioned the scatter-gun from slamming into the floor itself, but her knee was finished. That was obvious immediately.

She was seriously injured. She walked back and forth across the room a couple times, forcing herself to walk on it to test its severity. She could barely put any weight on it at all and it was already beginning to swell.

Not good. Not good with the entire Simian army bearing down on her. She wasn’t sure how long it was going to take them to figure out how she had escaped them, but she would never be able to escape them that way again. Not until she could get into a ‘doc, and there would be no hospitals here. At least, none where surgeries to
help
people where performed.

She was sure they would be storming her recently vacated building momentarily, and if it had to be a fight to the finish then she would start finishing it now. She could not escape. It was as simple and
obvious as that. Tanya had come to the end of the line. She would run no farther.

Chapter 41

The monopod went on the broken sill, sitting unevenly where the sill was crumbled, but that was all right. Tanya was sitting a little unevenly herself, favoring her knee, her left leg tucked in Indian-style, her worthless right leg thrown out in front of her, but slightly bent and causing her to lean a bit as she settled the butt-plate of the blast-rifle to her shoulder and looked down it
s sights at the building
just vacated.

Just then explosions shook that building as the Simians stormed it from several points. Tanya held her finger just above the actuator of her leveled blast-rifle, biding her time now, just moments away from making her assault and revealing her location.

There was nothing to lose; when they did not find her there, they would expand their search to the surrounding buildings and it would be over. She would go out now at the time of her own choosing. She had lived her entire life regulated by someone else’s terms, so it had never truly been h
er own from the beginning. A
t least now, at the end of that life which had never been hers, she could choose the terms of her death. Her finger settled towards the actuator.

“Stop Tanya.”
Th
e voice said. Tanya flopped
onto her back bringing the blast-rifle over and cente
ring
it on the old man standing in the doorway, holding up empty hands to show her that he was unarmed. She did not know him, nor had she heard his approach. It was a thing to
keep in mind; whoever he was, he could move without making a sound. If he had, she would have heard it.

“How do you know my name?” Tanya demanded.

“You speak now.” Was all he
said.
Tanya was nearly thunderstruck as she looked at the old man. He looked to be about ninety, but that probably meant he was somewhere in his sixties or seventies. If he was in his late sixties or seventies, then…

“Malcomb?”
Tanya asked. He bore a slight resemblance to that long ago personage only recently remembered, but those memories brilliantly clear in her mind. Tanya could hardly believe it was him. The years had not been kind to him, whereas with her numerous Rejuvenations she looked barely older than she had then, which was obviously how Malcomb had recognized her.

“You had better let me help you.” He said as he walked up. “They’ll be coming soon.”

He was far stronger than he looked and he helped her up, his gaunt frame hiding a wiry strength that had been beaten into it by the brutal daily struggle for life here. He poured an eloquent look into her eyes after he’d noted her swollen fatigues, but when he spoke, it wasn’t to her. Nor was it words. It was the squeak of a rat.

Instantly more than a dozen well-armed youth rushed noiselessly into the room from the hallway and took up defensive positions around the windows. All looked to be professionals, if you discounted their relative youth, but Tanya had neither heard nor even know
n
they had been there and that meant they
were
professionals. Professionals trained in the same school Tanya had attended.

All were armed in one fashion or another. A few had really old projectile rifles, but mostly old lasers of one variety or other, and Tanya pointed to the scatter-gun she had left leaning against the wall as three youths detached themselves from the group and began helping her out of the room. Malcomb glanced at the weapon and turned back to nod once.
She and Malcomb, and the other children of that long gone era, had lived this role before and knew what the other would do in any given situation better than a twin knows what his own sibling will do; it was not necessary to speak vocally to communicate because they had developed their own type of
signing
, when Tanya couldn’t spe
ak, to bridge the communication
barrier with one another and now Malcomb had transmuted that form of silent communication into a battle/defensive language with this new group.

It employed the
same signs Tanya and Malcomb
used to communicate with one another all those years ago. As the three boys helped her out of the
room all Tanya could think
was the fact that not only had Malcomb surv
ived, but
had continued to provide for the children of the ghetto since Tanya had disappeared!

Tanya had truly come home.
Home to the only family she ever knew
.

Chapter 42

The scope of what she was witnessing was almost beyond imagining. The
dozen or so kids who
set up the defensive perimeter around the room where they’d found her were only part of a much larger group. They hustled her down through the old tenement building towards the
warrens below, moving Tanya as quickly as they could, the entire group, or whichever part of it was here at this moment, slowly pull
ing
in behind them as they descended.

Tanya was reassured by their precision; she had not thought to tell Malcomb just how dangerous the Simians were, but by the well trained orderly actions of the group, the absolute quiet in which they functioned, left little doubt in Tanya’s mind that Malcomb and this group knew their business. He would not have survived to his age here if he hadn’t.

They had just reached the warrens when the sound of fighting erupted from above, the Simians running nearly blindly into the tail end of the unexpectedly large resistance. The distinct detonation of a number of projectile weapons was followed instantly by blasters. The children’s lasers were relatively quiet unless they struck something explosive, but the effectiveness of this group’s lasers could be defined by how quickly the blasters were silenced.

It was over in only moments; those Simians not caught in the immediate attack quickly falling back from the vastly superior firepower. They’d been expecting one and found many. At this point, Tanya could only guess at the true numbers of Malcomb’s little army.

Tanya was positive none of this group was wearing thermal imaging contacts,
yet
every one of them still moved confidently and quickly through the absolute blackness with perfect ease. Suddenly she realized she wasn’t the only one who knew the warrens so well.
They all knew the way as
well
or
even better than she.

Malcomb
would know the underground mazes better than anyone. Of that there could be no doubt. Sixty years Tanya had been gone, and all the while Malcomb had been here; that same Malcomb had been one of the children Tanya had sworn to protect! Now he was protecting her. Just one more point to be reckoned with Jason Cormach.

If she had never lost her memories, she would have returned here sooner to see what had happened to the children, and would have discovered and rescued her oldest and only friend. Tanya added it to the list of reasons why she was going to kill Jason Cormach and then Felone after him. The list was long one, but Tanya put this addendum at the top of the most grievous things Jason Cormach had done, far and above anything else. And he wasn’t even aware of it! As far as Tanya was concerned, he’d never get the chance.

Chapter 43

The main body of the group soundlessly disappeared in the darkness behind Tanya; here one moment, gone the next. Tanya did not know what they were planning and she wouldn’t break the silence to ask the three who remained with her. None had spoken yet, nor would they until they were in a secure location. The fact that these young men, in their early teens, were so well trained could only mean one thing; they lived where rules were not broken in the harsh struggle for survival. Those who did break them didn’t last long. The brutal conditions crushed the weak and hardened those who survived.