Outsystem (Aeon 14) (12 page)

Tanis replied.

“I never understood why someone seeking enlightenment would also want to control corporate interests,” Adrienne said. “The notions seem to be in conflict. I, on the other hand, have no such desires. I only wish to surround myself in comfort and pleasure.”

Tanis watched the woman smile lazily.

“There are actually a number of groups that use me to help them acquire work. You could consider me something of a broker. What sort of venture are you planning?”

“So you’re looking for some muscle, are you then? Any particular needs?”

Adrienne sat still for a moment, only pulsing the odd limb as she considered the requirements. “I think I can hook you up with a group that has done such things in the past. They could most likely field a team of twenty or thirty for a job like this.”

Data was delivered to Tanis and she looked it over, examining specs and the oblique descriptions of jobs performed. It matched the data on the group that had attacked the
Intrepid
and she determined that the time for her disguise was over.

Tanis’s tone brooked no discussion.

“Their what? Why would you need to know that?” Adrienne asked. Shock rippling—literally—across her face.

Intrepid
and I want to find out who hired them.>
“You’re TSF?” Adrienne asked. “I have to admit, that’s a pretty extreme cover.”

“Thank you.” Tanis allowed the flowmetal to form a mouth since her cover was no longer necessary. Besides, her voice could be very menacing. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about their job to attack the
Intrepid
and you’re going to do it with a song in your heart.”

“You don’t think I haven’t…” Adrienne’s smug expression drooped into surprise. “You’ve got a suppression field!”

“Well, it wouldn’t do for you to call in whatever thugs you have on hand to stop our little conversation. I don’t think we need for this to get unpleasant, but I won’t really mind if it does.”

Adrienne sat silently for a moment, then in a flash her entire body moved toward the far wall. Tanis realized there must be some sort of open vent that the woman could fit through. Reacting on instinct, Tanis pulsed her hove
r system and leapt into the air, coming down into Adrienne, the needle points at the ends of her legs piercing what would be a normal person’s calves.

Adrienne shrieked, twisting in pain, and Tanis spat a glob of flowmetal over her face where it flowed into Adrienne’s mouth, swelling to block out further noise.

“Easy now.” Tanis’s tone carried no small amount of menace. “This can get a lot worse if you don’t cooperate.”

The look Adrienne shot at Tanis said it all; she wasn’t willingly going to give up the person who had hired the merc crew. Whoever it was, Tanis was certain
it must be a big player. Most of the time an agent like this wouldn’t hold back after being skewered.

Angela commented.

Tanis re-established a direct Link to Adrienne. “I’m not afraid to slice and dice you, you know. All I want is a name. Who did the hiring for the crew that hit the
Intrepid
?”

Adrienne was scared, but she was obviously more afraid of whoever she had dealt with.

“No problem.” Tanis exuded calm. “We’ll just go the standard route, making you more scared of
me. You see, I’m currently a little outside the scope of my assigned duties, if you get my meaning. Not a lot of people know where I am, and even if anyone does link my whereabouts to the remains of your mutilated—but not dead—body, they’ll not get upset. Not only am I going to hurt you until you give me a name, but I’ll leave you alive for whoever you’re so afraid of as well.”

Tanis altered the state of the plas on her arms to allow motion at the joints and reached up to her head. There she extruded a thin rod of metal. She took it into her hand where it formed a gleaming blade which she lowered to Adrienne’s left leg.

Adrienne’s face slipped into an expression of fear. “Who…who are you?”

“Oh, I forgot to mention. You may have heard of me. The media called me ‘The Butcher of Toro’.”

<
About time I get to make that work for me.>

t actually always works for you,>
Angela replied.

She began slicing into Adrienne’s leg, though the skin, which appeared to be almost like neoprene in composition. Adrienne’s eyes bulged in pain, and her arms flailed, pounding the deck on either side of her. Tanis felt resistance as the blade met the cartilage that served as bone. She grimaced inwardly at the feel of it.

Adrienne’s communication was laced with panic and fear.

A rush of numbers and data memory blocks flowed into Tanis’s mind, where she passed them off to Angela.

“Excellent.” Tanis slid the blade out of Adrienne’s leg. A panel on her torso slid open and she pulled out a med-patch which she slapped on the wound none too gently. “The nano in here will hold you together long enough to get to a medic.” Tanis was about to extrude more flowmetal to bind her captive when the door crashed open and a terrifying figure stood in the entrance.

True to the strangeness of the locale, the muscle was
unconventional. It was a woman, though that was evidenced only by the stylized breasts on the gleaming black torso. All of the woman’s limbs were gleaming black as well. They were also all very thin, nearly emaciated, a look that was offset by the woman’s head, which was a large ovoid devoid of any features.

“Hurting Adrienne was a mistake.” The voice emanat
ing from the woman’s featureless head was soft and sultry, a rather odd combination considering the delivery.

“Possibly,” Tanis agreed. “But it was a calculated mistake; does that make it any better?”

The figure raised its hands and Tanis realized they weren’t hands at all, but merely the ends of the gun barrels. Handy…and disturbing.

Tanis dove to the side, or more accurately cantered to the side as the guard fired on her. The initial shots missed, but then a few impacted Tanis, some ricocheting off her chest, a few hitting solidly enough to crack the plas covering her body.

Tanis angled forward,
pulsed her hover system to its maximum and balled her hands into hard plas fists. She smashed into the woman, and they flew through the opening into the bulkhead beyond with enough energy to lodge the woman’s head in the wall. Not waiting to see how long it took the freakish enforcer to extricate herself, Tanis sped down the hall at top speed. She burst into the bar area and wove past the sinuous dancers and the human furniture.

Outside the bar she made a quick course adjustment to avoid colliding with several hovers that floated by. She raced behind one and angled herself to float horizontally alongside it. The man driving the hover cast her a strange look, but didn’t say anything. No point in getting involved in other people’s issues on Cruithne.

Angela deployed nanoprobes and they watched the black-skinned woman emerge from the bar and scan the traffic outside. She moved into the throng and started making her way in the direction Tanis had gone. Most likely she had access to external cameras that had let her know which way to go. Tanis slipped ahead of her cover and raced through the crowd, still horizontal, and hopefully out of sight. Her earlier wanderings proved beneficial as she made use of several establishments and predictable throngs to mask her escape. Moving through a maze of levels and across the main hub of the station she worked her way toward her departure craft.

The original exit plan for leaving
Cruithne wasn’t so precipitous as reality dictated, however, the times on the departure clearance requests displayed submission times only minutes after their arrival on the station. It was almost as though Angela knew her. Less than an hour after the confrontation in Adrienne’s dressing room, Tanis was pulling away from Cruithne and heading back toward Mars.

Trent. Not surprising; it just added
fuel to the reaction when it came to hunting him down. The real key now was to see if the information would help her trace who was paying Trent’s salary.