Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (8 page)

But she had seen the pimp again! What did that mean and why was it such a powerful feeling?

Tanya could hardly believe it when the Liner finally made its departure from Mordalin space and she had not been accosted. If it had been Handler behind it, and the more she turned it over in her mind the more her conviction was growing that it had been he, then he must have assumed the Senator's Security Detail would have finished her. Caught her and killed her, as it should have, if she'd continued to walk straight in oblivious to the fact that the field-nullifier wasn't working. She didn't know how long it had been off but it couldn't have been very long. Somehow she had caught it before they had caught her, and escape possible now only because Handler thought she
had delivered
herself to her own death. It was a grievous error!

Two hours of thrust and the Liner made its jump. Tanya could hardly breathe throughout the entire time.

Chapter 17

Something wasn't right but she didn't know what it was as she slowly, very slowly, rose to consciousness. Her thoughts were slow and sluggish. She seemed to have to struggle fiercely and in a detached dreamlike way and she knew it wasn't right. Something other than the blow to her head was wrong with her. When she was finally able to
open her eyes again she saw the pimp smiling down at her. It was not a friendly smile.

Her head was spinning and her vision was blurry. Her body felt sick. She was lying on a filthy mattress in what was definitely one of the rooms of the whorehouse she had been casing. The non-stop music was distinctive. It was then that she saw the needle in his good hand. He saw her eyes follow the syringe and smiled at her ruthlessly.

“That's right!” He said. “Isn't it good?” Tanya had never felt so sick in her life. If this was what drug addiction was all about, then she couldn’t understand the appeal of it at all. It was not enjoyable. It was horrible. She felt like she could throw up at any time. She was sure she would be shortly, if there was anything in her stomach to come up.

Her weapons were gone, of course, but that wasn't first. What she noticed first was the ring on the pimp's finger and the fact that she no longer had it. Through the cloud of drug induced haze Tanya became enraged. That rage brought her off the bed in a rush but the pimp was expecting such and she was moving far slower
than
she imagined. He slapped her back ruthlessly, withholding none of his anger at the bitch who had taken his fingers. Stars swam in Tanya’s vision for a moment a
nd then her head cleared again.

“You'll learn your place here and that quickly.” The pimp said. Then he began to undress.

The memories didn't end there but Tanya wasn't trying to remember anything more at the moment. She knew where her ring had gone, at least. She now knew why she had recognized the pimp when she could remember nothing else. He had left an indelible mark upon her. She
now wished that she hadn't killed him so swiftly. She now wished she could take it all back, so she could kill him again, and take some time about doing it!

Remembering how the pimp had taken her ring reminded Tanya of the rest of her belongings. She would never be able to return to her condo. In fact she still didn't know where she was going. The thought of all of her possessions which were now lost to her brought a similar rage to Tanya as had the pimp when she saw her ring on his finger. A hatred that was simple and unreasoning. Only when blood ran red could this rage be satisfied.
Handler
had taught her that, and now she would return the lesson.

Tanya made her plans.

Chapter 18
It
wasn't until fourteen Standard days had passed that Senator Geble's Mordalin Security Detail released the news of the suspected attempted assassination to the media, and that the perpetrator had made an escape. Jason could hardly believe what he was reading. How could they have let her slip through their fingers like that? He
’
d handed her to them on a silver platter! How could anyone be that incompetent? She had apparently walked right in under their full surveillance and then just as casually walked right back out again. Unless they weren't telling the whole story, but Jason doubted that. There had been a security hush while they had tried to catch her, and now they were
releasing the news that they
bumbled
the manhunt.

“Son of a bitch!”
Jason swore, loud enough that his secretary heard in the next room. Since Jason wasn’t normally prone to outbursts of anger, it was doubly noticeable. She walked in and stood in his doorway.

“What is it?” She asked. Felone was the backbone of the Organization, if truth be known, and Jason could never have done any of it without her. It was her expertise with all things technical that kept them hidden. This office and the small amount of legal business they did here was no more than a façade, and Felone’s role in the
Organization in no way that
one of a secretary. If Jason had ever met anyone more cold-blooded and ruthless than he, it was Felone, and she added extreme competence to that cold-bloodedness. In short, she was one hell of a dangerous human being. Their history, their partnership, had been a long and bloody one.

“Tanya escaped.” Jason said.

“Oh… son of a bitch.”
Felone cursed wit
h the very same words Jason
used. And after a moment; “It's time to leave.” With that said she returned to her desk and began packing things into her briefcase.

“Tanya doesn’t know about this place.” Jason said reasonably as he followed her into her office. “I think you're overreacting.”

Felone stopped for a moment to stare into Jason's eyes. “Are you out of your mind?” She said slowly and deliberately, scorn dripping from her words. “It
is
Tanya we are talking about here. She will find this place. If we aren't very, very careful, she'll find us anyplace we go. You should never have given her those enhancements! All those credit
s spent on enhancements for an O
perative with a suppressed memory! Remember
what I told you! I told you that you would regret doing it when she remembered everything, and now I’m regretting it as well, when I’m the one who warned you not to do it in the first place, but you just couldn't leave it alone, could you, she's the perfect specimen you said, the highest physiological motor response time you'd ever seen in any human, remember? Now you're surprised she got through the Senator's Security? I'm only surprised she didn't finish the job.” Then Felone was back to packing her briefcase. She stopped and looked back up at Jason a brief moment to make one more comment; “I'm not waiting for you if you aren't ready when I am.” Then she returned to her packing.

It wasn't as if they couldn't run the Organization from the ship, Jason thought resignedly as he watched out a viewport as the planet fell quickly away behind them. Moments later they entered jump and left the System behind for good, Jason wondering suddenly if they would ever return. Jason was not a man used to running from a
nyone. The simple fact was
it would not be a matter of courage or proper security with Tanya. With her the attack would come from nowhere when least expected, and she would not fail. Tanya had never failed, not once. Tanya did not fail. Not only did Tanya have the highest motor response time of any human Jason had ever tested, but
the fact of the matter was
her response time was nearly
double
that of any other human he had ever tested. Add to that the fact that Jason had paid to have Tanya given the best bio-medical enhancements available. A restructuring of her muscle tissues with regenerated DNA copied from the cells of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal pre-human remains.

Jason normally used the DNA of apes for his Operative’s enhancements because it was cheap and almost always effective. But it quite often
produced odd side-effects. There was always some degree of mental degeneration when enhancing with ape DNA, not always noticeable without testing, but in most subjects it was usually almost always a distinct loss of mental acuity, as well as other oddities, fur in odd places chief among them.

Jason had hoped to get a lot more use out of Tanya. He had not expected her to remember. She was not supposed to have been able to. The suppression technique was supposed to be unbreakable. The second l
argest sum of credits Jason
spent on Tanya
had been her suppression. He
paid to have the best. Of course she had more than repaid him. She had repaid him a million times over. It was amusing to him, as he thought about it then, at least finding some small humor in the situation, that the
smallest amount of money he
ever spent on Tanya had been in purchasing her in the first place.

Chapter 19

Tanya was a prostitute and hooked on drugs. She could no longer remember how long she had been there in that place of horrors. It seemed like an eternity and
had assuredly been over a year. H
er willpower had been completely usurped by the drugs she now had to have. She could no longer live without them. She was physically addicted. It seemed a small price to pay, to let the unending stream of men use her body, as long as the needle was always available. It was.

The needle was always available. As much as she could use and she used it excessively. She didn't really notice anything about the men
anymore, unless there was something truly unique about them. The very first time she had seen Handler was in one of these me
mories, when he and the pimp
walked in to her roach infested room together.

“This was the cat burglar?” Handler asked with some skepticism.

Tanya’s pimp held up his hand for Handler to see. The stumps of his fingers were now perfectly healed over, that incident having occurred so long ago
at that point
that i
t
seemed to belong to another lifetime entirely. The Tanya of old
had been
free and in charge of her own destiny, but now, her life was little more than a blurry haze of meaningless days melding into meaningless nights and the needle always ready. The message to Handler was clear. “She's the one all right. She took my fucking fingers, the bitch!"

Tanya hadn’t known what it was that Handler started doing next. He had a machine in a briefcase and he began placing electrodes in various places on her body. When he had all the electrodes emplaced he turned on the machine and began watching whatever it was it was telling him.

“She's barely above average.” Handler lied several minutes later, while hoping his pounding heart wasn’t audible. It wasn't as though this one would know how to read the test results, but he might know how to read another man, and he was afraid his excitement was plainly written on his face. “She is beautiful, though. She's worth something for that. I'll give you a thousand.”

The price rose to eighteen thousand by the end of their bargaining, still a paltry price to have to pay to own another human being, much less to possess Tanya! Apparently to prove that the reason he was purchasing
her was sexual he took her immediately, right there in her roach infested room, the first time of many to come. Now Tanya understood the reason she had forgotten her past. Her memories had been suppressed. Tanya wondered now if all of Handler's Operatives had been stripped of their memories the same way that hers had been taken, or if she had been a special case; he had simply been unable to help himself and then had to suppress those memories later in order to use her as an Operative.

If he had been able to control himself then, then Tanya wouldn’t have had to have her memories erased
, would likely have joined the O
rganization eagerly, and probably would have been eternally grateful to him for saving her from the horror which her life had become! It was an error that could not be taken back, however, and now he would have to die.

Tanya had made the right decision, she decided, as she watched out the port as her ship slowly drew up to the Kievor Trade Station. She had no idea what she as was going to do there, but the Organization was extremely powerful, employing many Operatives, so there was nowhere she could go within human space where she could be sure o
f her next breath. The fact
she had gotten out at all was a miracle. If it
was
her operation and the roles reversed Handler would not have gotten out. She would've made sure. In retrospect it seemed extremely arrogant and sloppy of him, but just because he had erred once did not mean he would err again. He would have every one of those Operatives out hunting for her, and those seemed like insurmountable odds.

That meant she had to kill him first. That meant she needed resources. She had never
visited
a Kievor Trade Station, but the stories were
almost unbelievable; a lawless land where anything went, where thousands of various
races
of aliens came to trade and congregate. And fight. The Luxury Liner's internal address system interrupted her further thoughts.

“Go
od evening ladies and gentlemen;
Captain Abrams at your service.” The announcement began. “I always like to give a friendly warning to those of you who have never visited a Kievor Trade Station previously. As you know there is no human law aboard this Trade Station. There is no law at all! There are few humans and even fewer alien races
which
will
be sympathetic to you. You will receive no outside aid once you have debarked! I am hoping you have all booked passage knowing what business you are about. The Kievor Trade Station is an extremely dangerous place. Under no circumstances should anyone leave this ship without being fully armed and proficient in the use of those weapons. I further recommend that you go in groups of at least fifteen. This ship leaves tomorrow at oh-twelve hundred! Do not be late! We do not take roll-call. With that said, enjoy your landfall.”