Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (23 page)

“Crazy bitch isn’t she?” Jason’s voice commented over the open com channel. “Don’t forget who trained her!” He sounded quite pleased with himself and his arrogant cockiness enraged Felone even more than Ta
nya’s lucky shot ever could
. Still, she didn’t open the channel to respond. Jason had always been a bette
r talker than she
, had always been an expert at getting under her skin, and she knew that this tactic was an attempt to infuriate her further so that anger would rob her of her cold reason.

Jason would already have imagined correctly how pissed off she would have been at Tanya’s successful attack, even if that attack meant very little in the end. Felone knew this much about herself at least; that if she did respond he would succeed in angering her further, and she wasn’t about to allow Jason to indulge in baiting her.

She turned off the com channel completely without responding as she pondered her next step. She was still perfectly secure in her ship and it would be back to normal shortly, nothing a quick stop in an orbital repair yard somewhere couldn’t fix up in a jiffy, but the attack seemed
to change things for Felone, in particular the way she thought about Tanya.

Felone had always been
a solitary hunter until she
met and partnered with Jason. She’d never been hunted in her own turn. She was always the hunter, and always the one to dictate the terms in her every endeavor because she was always the one who acted first, decisively, and always permanently.

But Tanya was not going to play within the parameters with which she was familiar. Tanya was going to change the rules, and with a change of rules always comes uncertainty. Felone did not like uncertainty, but with two of her engines crippled there was little she could do about it at that moment. With these thoughts as well as others weighing heavily upon her, Felone turned her ship and began to accelerate, at half of what had already been a maddeningly slow rate, towards the closest industrialized world on her celestial map. It was a planet called Breaton and it would have a relatively safe harbor to shelter her while quick repairs were made.

She didn’t pay attention to what Jason was doing. She could find him at any time and nearly almost anywhere. He wouldn’t be able to dig out the high-powered frequency-specific homing device she had implanted in Adjudicator because the circuitry of the homing device was integral to Adjudicator’s OS. It was in fact a part of the OS and could not be removed except by someone who was
extremely
proficient in IT, and he certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to let someone of that qualification come in and work on it, and anyway, she had encoded some
extremely
damning evidence into the device, just in case. He didn’t know this, but if he
was
stupid enough to bring in an outsider,
though she was sure he would not, then to hell with him. The evidence implanted in the OS put Jason as the sole operator of the Organization. Felone had long since removed anything incriminating about herself, so it was almost amusing that Jason had stolen her.

So let the Devil take
His
own,
she thought,
but the scaly red bastard will have to wait a little while longer for me
. Until the end of the Universe, as far as Felone was concerned and very much meaning to make it so, very much confident she would be the lone survivor when this was finished and only one stood triumphant.

Felone was far older than Jason could ever imagine and she had overcome unbelievable hardships just to survive. She’d always been victorious in the past
and
had no reason to think she wouldn’t be now, her confidence very much what made her such a terrible foe. An evil smile even cracked her lips at the thought. One way or another, she would skin her cats alive. She very much wanted to hear their screams.

Very much so!

Chapter 62

Tanya swam up weakly from abysmally nauseating depths, the light of consciousness a small wavering pinpoint that she struggled towards and which began to slowly grow in dimension to meet her. Eventually, and with great struggle she finally reached it and passed through, finding
herself
back in cont
rol of her body and
able to crack open her
eyes to find the Universe spinning wildly as Starfire flipped end over end, aimless and without power on a voyage from nowhere.

Not that she had been sure she would regain real space at all. One in a million ships which entered inner space under normal conditions never returned, ships which had entered well above minimum velocity, were well-maintained, well crewed, and for which no other explanation for their malfunctions seemed to make sense. One in a million just si
mply vanished without a trace f
r
om
inexplicable
causes
.

The ratio of ships which never returned from inner space rose drastically if those ships did not gain minimum velocity before entering, though there had never been any conclusive studies done by humans on the subject, and any others who had weren’t sharing their knowledge, the Kievors in point of reference.

There weren't many
human
pilots that were willing to embark upon this scientific endeavor, and even fewer corporations willing to spend their R&R credits throwing ships away into the void of inner space for the remote chance of somehow making a profit from it. In actual practice, most research done by corporations these days was conducted by stealing their competitor’s secrets rather than engaging in the actual hard work of real R&R. It was simply faster and cheaper.

Tanya began to slowly bring Starfire back online, reactivating each system separately and waiting for it to boot up into its stable active state before reactivating the next system, not at all sure the delicate systems wouldn’t have been damaged in some fundamental manner by the twisted physics of their slow entrance into inner space. Astrogation had just become stable, and her displays came up and began showing
her celestial location when the warning chime for an incoming jump signature sat Tanya straight up in her seat.

No time now to consider the risk of firing up all her systems at once- Tanya did just that and using the attitudinal thrusters quickly adjusted Starfire’s end over end flip, bringing her to rest pointed away from the incoming signature. It was coming in right behind her and there was no other reason other than her presence for anyone to be exiting here. There was nothing here but open space and Starfire. Tanya was sure that whoever it was, they weren’t exiting here for simple peace and quiet.

Tanya brought her main thruster up to half burn and felt the comforting gees crushing her into her seat, nothing even remotely uncomfortable at only a half burn, but now sure that her little ship was goin
g to operate as desired she
pushed it to full throttle away from the red beeping dot on her astrogation display.

Starfire slammed her back into her crash seat just as the Universe began to vomit up the incoming ship. It was invisible to any of her optical feeds, washed out
behind the massive plume of her own
fusion flame, but identifiable to her on her scanners. Starfire immediately tagged her as Adjudicator before that monstrous ship had even entirely exited. Starfire pegged the distance as 0.000372 light seconds- too close! That was well within effective firing range of Adjudicator’s photon cannon. Tanya cranked Starfire to port only the barest moment before a thick ruby red beam carved through space where she’d just been.

Tanya estimated the time it would take for Adjudicator’s cannon to recharge, and slammed Starfire to the side, again to port. The photon
beam passed harmlessly
far off
starboard just as her ship reached jump velocity. Tanya opened her e-panel and activated the jump engine.

The sound of whining impotence and
a
wisp of smoke erupted somewhere behind her, and at the same time Starfire entered its self-preservation mode and deactivated the jump routines, only a moment faster than Tanya as she stabbed at the abort switch. Not having counted the seconds since the last photon attack Tanya desperately pushed the stick all the way forward and was thrown up into her restraint collar as Starfire plunged just under the next attack.

The game lasted only moments longer, and then the much faster ship had outrun Adjudicator’s cannon range, but Tanya’s problems were only just beginning.

Jason could hardly believe his luck when Starfire turned and ran for Breaton. He pursued for several hours, as if he really wanted to catch her, though there was actually no chance of catching the grossly overpowered ship unless he wanted to jump ahead of her, the thought giving him a moment’s pause as he considered it, but then he cut his engines, as if to wait for Tanya to come out of Breaton’s orbital docks, as if fearing to make an open attack now that they were within the system proper.

What was likely to occur would certainly be interesting to watch from a front row seat, but more comfortable, and much safer, sitting right here in a comfortable recliner with a good whisky in hand. And the whisky was superb.

Chapter 63

Felone was dockside purchasing personals when Starfire came in. She had not been expecting either of her enemies to follow her here and once again it seemed she had underestimated her opponents, whichever of the two it was who was showing the balls to attack her here, in person. The prickling sensation at the nape of her neck, Felone had always been sensitive like this but much more so since her enhancement, sent her diving to the side without thought, her purchases seeming to float in the
air on
their own as they slowly realized the hands holding them had vanished, and then they fell clattering to the deck.

Felone moved without hesitation, pure instinctual action, just as a filament thin red laser beam passed through the empty space where she had just been. She rolled and came up with twin Kievor blasters, but whoever had taken the shot at her was nowhere to be seen amongst the chaos of fleeing crowds, people and aliens rushing in every direction except towards her and seemingly one other place down the corridor by one of the shops.

Then Felone saw her, no disguise, no attempt at deception, bold as brass. Instantly Felone was again reacting, no time to fire, no time to think, this time diving to her left and behind a heavy carbon post as Tanya stepped out from the doorway of a shop no more than fifty meters from Felone. Tanya’s eyes locked on Felone’s as she made a small adjustment to the aim of the laser pistol in her right hand, her left hand steadying the weapon for the shot, the barrel lining up behind Tanya’s cold blue eyes and the air once again crackled with the energy of the filament thin red laser and the smell of ozone.

Felone kept the post between herself and where Tanya had just been as she quickly back-stepped away from the post, her Kievor blasters held out at arm’s length, one held to either side of the post, expecting Tanya to come into one of her sights momentarily, or expecting her to be waiting to take a shot when Felone showed herself around the post, but as she drew further back and could see where Tanya had been, there was nothing.

Tanya was nowhere to be seen. That did not mean that she’d gone. It did not mean that at all, but when beset by uncertainty Felone always chose to retreat and regroup until the uncertainty
was
eliminated. She turned and ran, leaving her purchases forgotten on the deck, not running because she was afraid of Tanya, but because she didn’t like the odds. Tanya knew exactly where she was but she didn’t know where Tanya was, and Felone did not like her position or cover- out in the open right in the corridor while Tanya could be shooting from the cover of a store entrance. Tanya would be showing herself again in a moment and Felone had no idea where the attack would come from.

Having to run now meant she would live to fight another day, and her ego was unaffected. But her mind was spinning. Tanya was showing herself to have some of Felone’s own traits, most notably the willingness and decisiveness to act instantly and
determinedly
.

As she ran
she thought about how well Jason really had trained Tanya, and found herself holding this against him now, as well. When she was through with Tanya Jason would get his turn, and when she finally got her hands on him, he would be screaming for a very long time. The end of the universe wasn’t coming anytime soon, after all. Despite her situation, Felone smiled at the thought.

Felone decided then that she was actually beginning to enjoy this, that she was going to fully enjoy seeing this through to its inevitable end, because Tanya was proving to be a far more able opponent than she had expected. And like every other truly competitive human, Felone had to admit that she would enjoy this contest of strength and cunning with Tanya, who was undoubtedly the closest to her equal that she had ever seen.

Add the fact that Tanya had balls of brass just like herself and Felone grudgingly decided that she owed Tanya a measure of her respect. That was something new. Tanya might prove to be a more enjoyable experience than she had at first imagined and she began to anticipate the next move on the chess board of their contest.