***
By the time she got back to her room that evening, Keera was exhausted. Her meeting with Lawinson had been fairly brief—the congressman had taken pity on her when he’d heard her news, and had kindly advised her to take some time to collect herself—but even so, she’d spent most of the day in a bit of a funk. She’d used the unexpected free time to indulge in a guided tour of the city, but she’d hardly taken anything in, her thoughts returning to Mahmoud’s fate any time there was a moment of quiet.
She wanted to believe it was an accident, as Estris seemed to, but the instilled scepticism of her training combined with emotional shock had her analysing and re-analysing every potential scenario, a thought process that continued to grumble in the back of her mind as she took a shower and changed into her sleepwear.
She forced herself to her desk, determined to try and get herself back on track, and succeeded in getting a little work done, some minor correspondence issues and housekeeping that she’d been putting off to focus on the terran negotiations. None of it was massively important, to be sure, but they were things that were easily dealt with even with her fractured concentration.
She was making headway on wading through an ancillary document for part of the changeling treaty when her door chime rang, startling her out of her efforts to focus on mundane matters and back into a state of mild wariness. She wasn’t expecting company and she hadn’t ordered room service. Perturbed, she crossed to the security panel on the wall and activated the vid feed to reveal a tall, dark-haired human male she’d never seen before. He was dressed in a dark suit and wore the gold badge of a hotel staff member on his lapel. He offered a pleasant smile. “Miss Naraymis?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“No need for concern, ma’am. Hotel security. I’m sorry to bother you, but we had a report of a breach in your suite’s systems a few minutes ago, and I just need to verify it’s a false alarm.”
Keera frowned. “I’ve been here for the past two hours and nothing’s happened. I’d prefer that you check it tomorrow when I’m out, if you don’t mind. I was about to go to bed.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but our security protocols dictate we have to verify alarms when they occur. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it will only take a moment.” He smiled winningly. “After all, there’s no such thing as too careful, in my line of work.”
Keera sighed. “All right,” she relented, thumbing the lock release, “but make it quick, please.”
“Bet your top dollar,” the man replied easily, flashing another smile as she opened the door. “Thank you for your cooperation, ma’am.”
“Bet my top dollar?” Keera said suspiciously. “Don’t you mean bottom…”
He kicked the door toward her, hard.
Keera was already stepping back on instinct, and that backwards motion was the only thing that saved her from being stunned as the door hit her solidly in the chest. As it was, the impact still knocked her halfway across the room. She just missed hitting her head on the coffee table, but landing flat on her back knocked the wind out of her momentarily.
Her assailant walked calmly across the room to stand astride her, pulling a small, low-powered energy pistol from his pocket. “Sorry about this,” he said conversationally, “but I have my orders. It’s nothing personal.”
The adrenaline of panic came to Keera’s aid just in time. As her attacker lowered the gun to aim, she jerked her leg up, catching him square in the crotch with her shin. As he doubled over with a yell of pain, she wriggled out from underneath him. She clawed the gun desperately from his grasp as she drove herself to her feet, kicking it clear across the room before he had a chance to retrieve it. Then she leapt back out of range, guard up, waiting for his next move.
He straightened up, far more quickly than she would have expected, face twisted in a grimace of rage and pain. “You’re going to pay for that,” he promised.
“Oh please,” Keera goaded, “shut up and take your best shot.”
He charged at her without warning, but she was ready. She sidestepped, letting him bull past, then pivoted, kicking him in the back to drive him into the wall. He caught himself with his shoulder, using the rebound to launch himself back toward her, again with a speed she wasn’t anticipating, and this time he connected, wrapping her in a bear-hug as he tried to wrestle her down.
Squirming and kicking, Keera tried to break his grip, but to no avail. If he got her on the ground again, the fight would be over fast. Frantic, she ducked her chin and clenched her teeth, then reared back and smashed her forehead into her assailant’s nose. He dropped her with a howl of agony, clapping his hands to his face as he staggered backwards. Grimacing at the pain pounding through her own head, Keera made a break for the dropped gun. Physically outmatched, the weapon was now her best chance of controlling the situation. Stooping, she scooped it up and turned to aim it at her attacker.
He was gone.
Shivering with adrenaline, panting with a mix of panic and exertion, Keera checked the entire suite to make sure he really had left, then locked the door before sinking to the floor, heart pounding in rhythm with her head. Massaging her aching forehead gingerly with her fingertips, she sat for a few moments, too shocked by the encounter to think straight, but as her heart rate calmed and the throbbing in her skull subsided slightly, she was able to take stock of the situation.
Luckily, nothing seemed to have been damaged or broken in the brief scuffle. Keera herself was more or less unharmed beyond a stinging carpet burn on her back from her first fall and the throb in her head from the butt.
Looking at the desk, she could see all of her gear appeared to be there—he hadn’t had a chance to take anything. She swept her gaze across the room, pausing when she spotted a metallic wristband lying on the carpet near the coffee table.
Her breath caught. He’d dropped his comm unit.
Replaying the fight in her mind, she realized that she must have pulled it off his wrist when she’d clawed away the gun. Stooping, she picked it up and activated it, surprised to see it had no security protocols enabled.
Opening the main menu interface, she soon saw why. The unit was almost completely blank, with no net traffic, no calls, no community chats, none of the activity or applications she would expect on a personal module. All it had stored was her own personnel record from her work, a pinned map of the hotel location, one encrypted file package, and a list of five contacts: Bronwen, Dolos, Honold, Jones, Xox. Far too short a list to be someone’s complete social network. It had to be a disposable unit, a pay-for-usage metered device that would allow him to stay in touch with a specific group of contacts but keep them segregated from his regular network while he carried out his attack on Keera.
Cold fear slithered unpleasantly in the pit of her stomach, crawling up her throat and making it difficult to breathe again. All the evidence was pointing her to an unpleasant but irrefutable conclusion, one that made her heart hammer against her ribs.
Her attacker had been a changeling.
And he’d been sent to kill her.
It all added up with frightening ease. The idiom confusion, his quick recovery from a blow that should have incapacitated a human male, and the speed of his reflexes pointed to his species. The disposable comms device and the masquerade as a member of the hotel staff marked him as practiced in deception and undercover work. And his tactics had all the hallmarks of classic changeling training—create an opening, strike hard and fast, and if compromised, disengage. Which meant that she hadn’t seen the last of him. Well, likely she’d seen the last of that skin, but if he had her targeted, she could expect another attack in due course.
She might have been compromised, she realized next, her fear redoubling. Somehow, somewhere, she’d slipped up, tipped someone off. Or, perhaps more likely, it was what she had initially feared: the Sentinels had marked her for execution, regardless of her true identity. This had been a premeditated attack intended to take her out, implemented by an a
gent operating with a back-up crew. Which would mean Mahmoud’s death hadn’t been an accident, either…
She pushed herself to her feet and hurried over to her computer. The protocol for these situations was clear: if she had reason to believe she was compromised, she should call in and then go to ground until she could be extracted by the Service, or until she received further orders. Under no circumstances should she try to continue her mission while there was a risk of it being blown.
She was about to call Estris when she remembered he had ordered her not to call. Was it conceivable that he was in on what had just happened? Or that he had been replaced by a Sentinel?
… Don’t call in again before your next scheduled check.
Had his order been genuine pedantic observation of procedure, or an attempt to freeze her out so that she wouldn’t get in touch with someone else and expose him before his associates had a chance to deal with her? She didn’t want to believe that—she’d known Estris for years, he’d been her handler for her entire assignment to the Marauder capital. He’d been her anchor back to her real life, the only contact she had who knew who she really was.
You don’t want to end up being this year’s object lesson… do you?
That thought drove a spike of panic clean through her chest. Had Estris been trying to warn her, or had he made the call himself? Had the Service decided to terminate her before she was exposed, or… Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. You only broke tradecraft once to check in—they don’t wipe agents for that.
But if I have been compromised…
“Get a grip, Keera,” she said out loud, sucking in a few deep breaths to try and slow her racing heartbeat, control the fear scrabbling at her throat. “Get a grip. Calm down and think this through. Don’t do anything hasty. Act, don’t react.”
She forced herself to regulate her breathing, tried to get a plan together. She needed to relocate, at the very least. If she wasn’t going to call for back-up right now, she was dangerously exposed, since her enemies knew exactly where she was. Trying to keep calm, she threw on some casual clothes and made her way down to the bar, accessing the complimentary comm network to book a new room at a much smaller, cheaper hotel a few blocks away. Then she went back to her suite and packed up most of her belongings, leaving only a few easily replaced items to make it appear as though she was still in residence. She set the suite’s communications console to forward any calls to her directly so she wouldn’t miss them, set the privacy status on the security system to “do not disturb,” grabbed her bags and headed to her new hotel, doubling back on her route twice to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Once locked in her windowless, mid-floor room, she shoved the cheap office chair in front of the door to provide advance warning of any intrusions, and settled on the floor behind the bed with her would-be killer’s weapon close at hand.
It was a long time before she got any sleep that night.
JENNIFER
Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Earth, Modeus System, Assembly Space
The museum was busy.
So much the better, Jennifer reminded herself as she and Thud walked arm in arm toward the entrance. With more traffic underfoot, there was inherently more distraction for the security staff. She noted several queues of school children snaking toward the group entrance, brightly coloured shirts making them easy to spot in a crowd. Once inside, each group would be a vibrant little pool of chaos. Better and better.
All right, here we go, she told herself as they joined the security search queue, taking a deep breath to calm the butterflies fluttering around in her belly.
“Performance jitters?” Thud cracked as he heard her exhale.
“Every time,” Jen agreed. “You?”
“Hell, yeah. You remember how much I used to shake before combat drops?”
“You weren’t the only one,” Jen recalled. “Man, I hated doing those. Hated to be in the hands of another pilot.”
“I always said you had trust issues.”
“And you were totally right,” Jen admitted as she stepped through the detector with a smile for the youthful uniformed guard. He smiled back, a full-on grin that had less to do with professional courtesy than it did with appreciation of Jen’s figure.
“Enjoy your day with us, ma’am,” he offered.
“Aw, thanks, hon,” Jen drawled, blowing him a kiss. Thud scowled, shoving her in the back to keep her moving and keeping a possessive hand on her backside as they headed into the vestibule.
“You’re incorrigible,” he grumbled.
“Just keeping in practice,” Jen shrugged impishly. “Besides, I’m trying to be distracting, remember?”
“You’re succeeding admirably,” Thud observed. “You’re enough to make a good dog break his leash, particularly dressed like that.”
“Well, if you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?” Jen grinned back. It wasn’t that she particularly cared about her appearance; she considered herself pretty low maintenance, and most of the time aboard ship she could be found dressed in cargo pants and a vest, donning her more practical light armour, boots, and duster combo when out and about in town. She rarely wore make-up (except when she wanted to hide her tattoo to be more inconspicuous, like now) and owned nothing even remotely approaching formal wear. For the op, she was casually dressed in typical summer tourist style, skin-tight fitness shorts, trainers and a fitted souvenir t-shirt she’d bought the previous day—hardly model or movie-star chic. That said, she was rigorous with her fitness regime, and she knew her body was in pretty good shape, and that confidence let her indulge her flirtatious side. And besides, if people were enjoying looking at the Checkpoint Charlie stencil across her tits, then they weren’t going to remember her face.
Thud had similarly decked himself out in tourist civvies, and the two of them had spent some time over the past few days practicing the gestures and touches peculiar to intimate couples. They were planning to pass themselves off as colony-born honeymooners, and for such a ruse to work they needed to be comfortable with the physical contact. It was weird for both of them—although they were good friends, they’d never even been remotely attracted to one another. Their shared background camaraderie was a big help in lieu of the required romantic allure, however, and Jen had found herself enjoying Thud’s company more and more as the time slipped by. It boded well for any future co-operation.
“All right,” she said softly as she pulled her ear-jack from her pocket and slipped it in, tuning her comm wristband to the agreed team frequency. “Dolos, come in?”
“Receiving you, Bronwen,” the cyborg answered promptly.
“Great. Thud and I are in the museum, starting to make our way to the main hall. Status report, all positions.”
“Standing by,” Wai-Mei responded. “Waiting for my go.”
“Working on it,” Solinas offered, his voice sounding somewhat thick, as though he had a blocked nose. “Should be in the next five minutes.”
“Did you catch a cold or something?” Jen queried. “You sound all bunged up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bronwen,” Solinas retorted. “I can’t catch your human diseases. It’s just a lousy mike.”
“Fair enough.” Jen rolled her eyes at Thud in exasperation. “Dolos, status?”
“I am hacking in the credentials for Xox now,” Dolos reported. “I require two minutes to complete activities.”
“I’m in position,” Honold replied. “It’s a lovely day out, ain’t it?”
“Sure is,” Jen agreed. “OK, stay sharp. We are go on Solinas’ signal. We’ll check-in again after the signal. Stay off the freak till then.” She clicked the comms off and took a moment to centre herself. This was going to be the worst part. The waiting. She took a few deep, slow breaths and then nodded to Thud. “Ready, buddy?”
“Yeah, reckon so. I came prepared for all eventualities.” He opened the bag he was carrying and beckoned her closer.
Jen peered into the backpack, and cursed as she saw the o
utline of a handgun. “Thud, what the fuck?” she whispered harshly, stunned. The job was going to be risky as it was, and adding weapons to the mix would do nothing but provoke an uncontrollable escalation if things went wrong. While she rarely went unarmed in the rough and tumble systems beyond the Assembly’s control, in systems controlled by the governing council’s member races and obedient to the rule of law, there was no need to carry. There was almost zero risk of being assaulted, kidnapped, raped, or otherwise enduring any of the more unsavoury blood sports crime meccas like Hel’s Market tended to encourage.
“You like it?” Thud was grinning like a kid with a new Christmas present.
“No, I… how did you even get that through the security scans?”
“It’s got a polymould body and mechanism, and it’s kinetically charged,” he explained. “It uses a solid ammo block—the charge shatters the block and spits out the shards as rounds. Neat little bit of kit, they’re all the rage on Ganymede. It’s just a holdout, not meant for more than about ten shots. You buy them in packs of five. Disposable. I got the whole pack there, you want one?”
“No!” Jen hissed, scowling. “I explicitly said no weapons.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t feel like taking the risk.”
“Taking the risk?” Jen repeated incredulously. “This is Earth, not some backwater moon in the Lazarus Depth! Concealed carry is illegal.”
Thud arched an astonished eyebrow. “You’re worried about breaking the law?”
Jen glared at him. “We’re not doing anything illegal yet,” she ground out from between clenched teeth. “In point of fact, if we do this right you and I won’t be breaking any laws until we pick the package up from the bank. But if you get caught with that before then you’re gonna do a century or so in the deep freeze.”
“Then let’s make sure we don’t get caught, babe.” Thud winked at her, shouldered the bag, and pulled her by the hand down the corridor toward the main display.
“Asshole,” Jen growled under her breath, but she let him lead her along the gallery. “Wait up, honey,” she pleaded more loudly as they reached a large knot of people clustered around some ancient Greek statues. Time to test their assumptions about crowd reaction before the big show. “C’mon, slow down, I wanna see all these things. They’re cool. Y’know, some of them are even older than the dirt we got on Erebus.”
Thud sighed ostentatiously, but he slowed his pace. “Well, I want to see the alien stuff. Templars and Guardians and all that neat galactic warfare shit. This old schoolbook crap is boring as hell,” he retorted, drawing a few disapproving glances from passers-by.
“We’ve got all day, baby,” Jen pointed out in a plaintive whine.
Thud sighed again. “All right, if it’ll stop you bitchin’. Though I’m pretty sure you only want to look at the statues of naked dudes.”
“Aw, baby,” Jen purred, patting the front of his pants suggestively, “you know me so well.” She bounded over to one such statue and pointed at the crotch with a leering grin. “Good job you’re bigger than that, stud, or I’d never feel a thing.” Flicking a glance around, she caught the gaze of an elderly woman staring at her with an expression of rigid disapproval, and favoured her with a scowl. “Fuck you lookin’ at, Grandma?” she demanded belligerently.
The woman looked away hastily, and Jen smirked at Thud as she sashayed back over to him and draped her arms around his neck. “Looks like that works pretty well,” she murmured as he pulled her in for a hug.
“Shit, Jen, you keep this up, you’re gonna make me laugh. And then the gig’ll be up,” Thud protested, giving her ass a firm squeeze that was part play-acting, part rebuke.
She nipped at his earlobe with her teeth in response. “Focus, Sarge. Focus. You’re supposed to be a pro, remember?” Releasing him, she jerked her head toward the back of the building. “C’mon, let’s get into position. So to speak.”