Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (17 page)

Tanya heard him this time, but only because he was moving through the dark and hurrying to catch up to them. When Tanya wanted to turn to see who was coming, one of the young men gave her arm a slight squeeze that was meant to tell her that whoever it was they were known to them, probably by the footfall pattern, as Tanya couldn't imagine how else her helpers could have known so unerringly who it was coming up behind them. Malcomb was at her side a moment later, and even though for him it was pitch dark, he took her side as they walked, his keen hearing and the years spent down here giving him the ability to see without eyes.

“We can talk now, if you like.” Malcomb said. “We’re safe for the moment.”

“Those men that are after me are experienced killers.” Tanya said. “I don’t want anyone getting killed on my account.”

“We don’t know
what
they are, but we know what they’re capable of.” The teen under her right arm said as he continued to help her walk along. “I recognized one of them, I knew him, or I did before he was taken and turned into whatever it is those things are, but somehow I don’t think he’s going to remember me.” In other words, Cormach was still recruiting from the ghettos.

“I’ll add that to the list.” Tanya said. Apparently no one misunderstood what that meant, even though they didn’t know who she was talking about. The Simians weren’t there of their own volition, so that meant someone above them was pulling their strings. That was who Tanya meant to kill.

“I knew the day would come when you wouldn’t return, the way you stockpiled all of that food for us; and the money.” He was saying the money had been their salvation in the end, because the food would not have lasted forever.

“Not of my own free will.” Tanya said. “It’s a long story, but the long and the short of it is that they stole my memories. I’ve thought all along that I was an amnesiac. I knew nothing of my childhood or of this place. I only just remembered this place, and you, very recently. Now I’m back, but Malcomb, I had not expected to find any I knew, not after all this time. I just thought . . .”

“Sometimes I wonder how I’ve managed to continue on.” Malcomb admitted. “The truth is, Tanya, I knew all along what you were doing, the risks you were taking, but more importantly why you were doing it, and I had no choice but to follow in your footsteps.”

“A little more successfully, I see.” Tanya said with a small laugh.

“Not at all.
It was your money and your example that made it all possible. It wouldn’t have been possible without what you did. It got a lot worse here after you left and stayed really bad for a long time. But things are getting better. I have much to show you.”

Tanya shouldn’t have been surprised by anything the Universe could offer up, but she was. She was surprised and more overjoyed than at any other time previously in her life. It was the feeling of coming home to those who love you. It was the feeling of knowing that people loved you. That she wasn’t alone anymore. It was a new feeling but Tanya thought she could grow to like it; the feeling of having a place, the
camaraderie of family and friends, and above all else, finally no longer alone in the huge cold Universe.

Tanya had not realized how important that was, how important it could be.

Chapter 44

Archtar was the last in line of his Squad of ten as they began impleme
nting the new strategy they
devised for enemy contacts, converging on both the street level as well as pouring down into the old sewers from all points surrounding the contact point, and then all converging on the center. Archtar was climbing down the rubble pile their blasters had made of the floor above while the rest stood sentinel in the tunnel below waiting for him. They were moving very carefully after the resistance that was being reported on the street level in the neighborhood where contact had been made. It was seemingly some kind of local resistance unrelated to Tanya; a gang, pissed off at the intrusion on their turf. With both them and Tanya to watch for they weren’t taking any chances and they were moving very slowly and carefully.

Those ahead of Archtar had taken positions along the walls facing both directions down the tunnel, their weapons held at the ready. Frayed nerves making everyone itchy, but it was the light filtering down into the tunnel from the building above that confused their infrareds just enough that they didn’t see the hazy greenish outlines step out of
hiding far down the tunnel until it was too late. A moment was all it took. Archtar was halfway down the rubble pile when they struck.

Laser flashes strobed out of the darkness from nowhere, a dozen or more, and cut the entire squad down like wheat under the scythe. Archtar scrambled frantically back up the rubble pile as those same lasers flashed after him, and then he was running for his life.

….................

“We walked into it.” Archtar said when he was finally standing in front of them again, back aboard Adjudicator. They'd sent seventy-three Simians and only one had returned, because he had fled. “There were hundreds of them. I barely got out with my life.”

Both Jason and Felone were well aware that he was the only one who had gotten out with his life, though neither seriously believed there had been hundreds of them. But if they couldn’t believe there had been hundreds, they had to believe there’d been a large, well-armed, well-coordinated force. The Simian’s hadn’t been highly intelligent, as they lost a certain amount of that during the process of their enhancement, but they had been well trained. And the less intelligent always made the best soldiers because they were less likely to think for
themselves,
and more likely
to follow the training they
received. That meant that their enemy, whoever this new enemy was, had been better trained and were a force to be reckoned with.

Felone could take it no longer. She had doubted the Simians would be able to get Tanya in the first place, but to have nearly their entire force wiped out, every single one of the Simian Operatives they had brought except Archtar, was inconceivable. The billions of credits that loss
represented, the decades of training which had gone into them, and the decades of work which would now be required to retrain an entirely new force, not to mention the billions of Credits, was simply more than Felone’s limited patience could suffer.

The Simian was fast and even prepared, knowing Felone and her tempers and guessing the state she would be in when he finally stood in front of her again. That was all he’d thought about on the flight up. But he hadn’t been expecting her to react
so
violently. He’d never seen Felone
move
before, and was incapable of imagining that any human
could
move that fast, or be that strong! Felone’s front jumping snap-kick took the Simian under the jaw and sent him flying through the air to smash against the far bulkhead and crumple to the floor, unconscious.

But Felone wasn’t finished and Jason dared not open his mouth as she walked calmly to the Simian’s side and began to crush the life out of him. First she stomped on the Simian’s right kneecap, her face twisted into a bestial snarl of rage as she brought her foot down with every bit of force at her command, the bones snapping and crunching under her inhuman strength.

The Simian woke up then and began screaming as she stomped on his left kneecap, but Felone was hardly finished. Jason wasn’t weak of stomach, but he had to leave anyway. The screaming continued for a long time, its echoes reverberating through Adjudicator’s empty corridors like the beckoning call of Hell itself; and Jason Cormach wasn’t sure it wasn’t tha
t at all. Hell was calling for
I
t
’
s
own; Jason Cormach was not looking forward to the day he would have to answer that call,
because even though he was anything but religious, he knew very well what that call would mean for him.

Chapter 45

“Wow!
An entire building!”
Tanya said as she made herself comfortable in the old chair. All of the furnishings were ratty but the place was large, clean and well kept, the windows sealed in one manner or another, mostly old pieces of carbon sheeting, some with sections of crates or whatever other flotsam they had been able to find for free in the ghetto. Malcomb retrieved a scissors out of a box and brought it over to her. Then she realized what he meant to do. “That won’t be necessary. My knee will be fine in a day or two.”

“No it won’t.” Malcomb said. It had swollen to twice its normal size and it was seriously stretching the material of her fatigues. “You need to let me look at it. That’s a serious injury.”

“There are other things that have changed about me as well, Malcomb.” Tanya said. “I recover a lot quicker than an average person.”

“You always did Tanya, but I’m still going to need to look at that knee.” He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, Tany
a saw, so she explained. She
meant to anyway, no reason to hide anything from Malcomb. “I heal even faster now, Malcomb. They did something to me, gave me bio-medical enhancements, like those others, but not quite the same. My knee will be completely healed in a day or two.”

“You’re knee may be shattered.” Malcomb said simply. It was obvious to him that it was not something that could heal on its own, if it ever healed at all.

“It will still heal on its own. It won’t be perfect, but I’ll have it fixed later.”

“You always were hardheaded,” Malcomb said, taking the scissors back and returning it to its drawer, though not because he believed her knee would be healed within a couple days, but because he could clearly see Tanya wasn’t going to be swayed; “You’ll change your mind in a day or two.” He sounded like a real doting father might.

“Having it my way is only a recent development.” Tanya said with a smile of genuine warmth, the smile feeling odd as it stretched her face in a way her face wasn’t often used to being stretched, and then she began to tell him ev
erything, in a sense Malcomb
the only friend she had never had, and it was feeling really good to be able, finally, to just spill it all out. It must have been hours before Malcomb finally interrupted her;

“Do you think this Organization will be sending more Operatives?”

“I don’t know,” Tanya said, “but I do know I’ll have to be leaving. I can’t bring this down on these children and destroy what you’ve done here.”

“What I’ve done here is create a place of s
anctuary for the children of this
ghe
tto; you’re still a child of this
ghetto no matter how long you’ve been gone, Tanya.”

“I appreciate that, but it changes nothing for me.” Tanya said firmly, and clearly saw that Malcomb recognized the firmness of her resolve as well. Malcomb sighed.

“You’ll at least be here the two days it takes your knee to heal.” Malcomb said, trying to hide his smile. It would be a lot longer than two days before she was able to travel.
A lot longer.

“I’ll be here that long.” Tanya agreed, not hiding her own smile; Malcomb did not believe, but it
was
hard to believe. He would see, because one way or another, even if her knee wouldn’t heal, she was still leaving. Tanya did not know what Jason Cormach would do next, but she wasn’t going to have it occurring here. Things were now different.

Chapter 46

Under the cover of a cloudy night sky and her thermal retardant clothing, face shield in place, Tanya slowly approached Starlark. It was a bold move but it wouldn’t be so easy to find another such fast ship as Starlark on short notice, and there was no guarantee Jason wouldn’t be fully aware of her every move and simply wait for her to lift off in her new ship. If she was going to make a run for it, then she wanted to make that run in Starlark.

It had not been easy to convince Malcomb to take them, but Tanya had left him and the children, there were over two hundred now in his group, with a much larger pile of Credit Notes than she had left him the
first time. Except this time, she was leaving them in his own newly established bank account with a newly generated tax-payer identification number and Federation Citizenship to go along with it; everything necessary to make Malcomb the newest member of the tax-paying caste.

Tanya
t
hen left him in the care of an excellent
medical facility after a brief sojourn in the ‘doc herself to repair her knee, a twenty minute process. Malcomb’s Rejuvenation treatment
already paid for when Tanya
said her goodbyes. Probably for the last time, but at least this time she was given the opportunity, and she took advantage of it.

The cloudy sky above was a blessing as Tanya had not planned to wait. No way would she bring another army of Simians down on her family, though she was now of the opinion tha
t the Organization had no more O
peratives to send. Well, none besides Jason or Felone themselves, and Tanya was positive Jason didn’t have the balls. Felone she wasn’t quite so sure about. Felone had always been the wild card, in Tanya's opinion.

Better that she went now. She did not believe Jason would have the balls to fire on a ship departing under Ground Control Clearance no matter how infuriated he might have been over the destruction of his entire Simian force, as such an act would have every Federation Warship on a destroy on detection alert for Adjudicator. That they would follow her wherever she might go went without saying, but Tanya was prepared for that as well; looking forward to it, in fact.