Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (3 page)

“You never do.” He said, resuming their conversation just as if it had never been interrupted.

Most of her
jobs were politically motivated
and easy enough to understand- o
ne po
lit
ical faction against another t
he prize the lucrative political positions. Sometimes
entire planetary governments
fought unseen wars with
other planetary governments, one politic
al representative at a time- b
ehind the facade of cooperation
they showed the populace
.

It was practically day to day business with them. She never knew nor cared or even bothered to learn the politics, but there were
always
plenty of jobs which required her expertise. Someone
wanted this
job
done up-
close and personal and the pay had been commensurate. Her jobs took her all over human space, and though the politics changed from one planet to the next, the greed and malice of men did not. Mankind’s avarice would never end, Tanya surmised, until mankind owned the entire Universe and probably not then either.

It was a twenty minute drive to the Space Port where her small ship was dock
ed and it wasn't until they
arrived that he brought up the old question.

“I think I've pretty much given up.” Tanya said with a small laugh. Until recently she had. Tanya lied so smoothly even her unknown mother wouldn't have known the diffe
rence. A lie detector
wouldn't have been able to detect it, which was why her handler wasn't bothering to run
it
on her now. He had trained her himself and he knew of what she was capable. In essence, there was little she was not capable of. He couldn’t tell if she were telling the truth or if she were not, she was far too good for that, and her conditioning had been the best. She should never be able to break it, but you could never tell with
humans
like Tanya. There was always that first time, though it hadn't happened yet with any of his Operatives, and he had many. He had been doing this job for over two hundred years now and as much as Tanya was an expert in her field, he was an expert in his.

“You know I worry about you.” He lied, though it wasn't a complete lie and that lending it the sincerity he wanted it to contain.
It wasn’t
that he coul
dn’t lie just as smoothly himself
, but again, with
people
like Tan
ya even the slightest innuendo c
ould be noticed.

Tanya received immediate clearance to depart and rose rapidly into the sky. Once the attitudinal thrusters had accelerated the ship to nearly
Mach’s number she lit the main thruster and smashed through the sound barrier as she exited the upper atmosphere. On ordinary missions she would often have to lay low on the planet where the hit
occurred
, sometimes for long periods, because anyone
departing
directly after an important assassination would
naturally
fall under immediate suspicion. She had killed many an important politician and seen space ports closed for days, but business had to go on and they
were always reopened before
long.

She checked the designated bank account via the Ultra Net. She
possessed
many such bank accounts, under many names, on many worlds, and saw that the transfer was already there. It wasn't for her to care who her targets were. In fact she
had no idea who she worked for.
Her handler was her liaison and her life was  . . .
easy and uncomplicated
. She disconnected from the Ultra Net and jumped for warp-space, her mind entirely somewhere else.
 

Chapter 5
Tanya crept from one shadow to the next,
wholly
concealed
and as much a part of the night as any nocturnal predator, while she observed the group of thugs in front of the nearly derelict building she had chosen as her next target. It
took
several hours to get here, having come the entire twelve blocks underground through the warrens, the only really safe place Tanya still had and the only way she now traveled.

She knew the pimp would be out looking for her and it complicated matters that were already much too difficult. Existence had become hand to mouth and now she had to sneak everywhere she needed to
go. Hungry children could not be told there was no food because it was too dangerous to go out. Tanya would not be able to do any of her regular scavenging n
ow either, not with the pimp
looking for her, and the pickings had become nearly non-existent with the larger numbers of people who were out scavenging. Most of them were children, and though there
was always
much hunger here, there had always been something to find. And even though this place was poor beyond poor there was still charity. Those who
were able
put things out occasionally, but now Tanya couldn't even check for those.

It wasn't only a matter of watching out for the pimp, but of not knowing if anyone passing by might be looking to collect a small reward for her capture or outright murder. In her case
they would wish to
capture
her if they could accomplish it and then a life of drug addiction and
forced prostitution until she died. This much Tanya understood as well as she understood what would happen to her own group of children if she couldn’t continue to bring them food. The outcome would be the same.

The group she watched in front of her now, the security detail at the front entrance of the whore/drug house, was like any you might find anywhere
and ev
erywhere
throughout the tax-free zone. Drug dealers and pimps for the most part, slinging their unending supply of drugs to the infinite stream of tax-payers who came here for those purposes. Within the building an unending party of drugs, booze and sex roared uninterrupted forever. Only the cars parked out front and the faces of the security details changed. Nothing else did. It was a place of death and horror for the girls caught within its deadly web. It was a place of death and horror for most everyone caught in its web.

Tanya was too young and too uneducated to understand politics or society's need to have places like this. Without them to cater to the surprisingly large percentage of the population who needed one or another or even all of the vices offered within, they wouldn’t be able to have their civilized places either.

Mankind’s civilization, his bright and shining cities, his majestic fleets of ships, and all else, were really little more than a façade to dupe the foolish. All that was necessary to see the real truth was to barely scratch the surface of that faça
de, because just beneath the majority
festered and rotted in its own filth and excesses. The civilized places survived because those who were uncivilized
were forced to come
to these places to practice their vices.

Tanya knew that this place was different, that there were
also
many
other
such places as this just on Marvo alone and that these kinds of places could be found on most worlds, but she only knew of this through eavesdropping on people who didn't know she was listening. She had never been out of the tax-free zone since she had arrived, and she could barely remember that time. It was part of another life. It was said to be almost impossible to get out unless you were a tax-payer. Tanya wasn't. Her entire world could be measured in a twenty block radius, and the ghetto was far larger than that. How large Tanya did not even know.

Tanya was ignorant and uneducated, little more than an animal living in a burrow, but when she looked at these thugs she now saw something else. They took what they wanted. They killed if you got in the way of their taking. They had things; food, weapons, clothing and even money. They had fancy cars and shiny jewelry. Tanya had come to the
inescapable conclusion that the only way to get anything out of this life was to take it. Take from the only ones who had enough to take from. She would not steal from
the good people who inhabited this place
. They were her own kind
, as she saw it
,
and she would not take from her own kind
. That only left one other option. Take from the strong.

Tanya tried to hold
the memory as long as she could as it slowly slipped away, but it faded completely and she was once again left with only a brief addition. Instead of trying to delve into and fully remember it now, she put it out of her mind. That was the easiest way she knew to remember things; put it out of your mind and when your mind had something to offer, it always let you know. In any case, she knew she wouldn't be able to remember any more now. Her attempts to see further into the past had brought only frustration.

She had spoken to no one of her resurfacing memories, but then, Tanya was entirely without friends. In most senses she did not much like the human race of which she was a part. If she needed a man she went out and used one, but she didn’t bring them home, and never got close. She most certainly never saw the same man twice, though Tanya was anything but promiscuous. Human needs were h
uman needs and occasionally
had to be fulfilled.

The only person she was at all close to was her handler, who was called Handler when the need to address him personally arose, or Mister Handler when contacting him through his Organization. She was only close to him through work. Of her work itself she had few complaints. Most of her targets were politicians, and since most politicians were swindling low-down skunks who would sell their own sisters for a
trinket it didn’t bother her at all to rid the Universe of them. Another would pop up to take that one’s place, as she saw it.

Tanya's goal in life was wealth, and if a few politicians got what they deserved along the way, so much the better as far as she was concerned. Her concern was wealth, maybe retirement. Where she wanted to retire, New California, they did not accept the merely rich. They only accepted the super-rich.

Tanya's new target was going to be one of th
e hardest jobs ever
. The target was an actual Senator; a very powerful man and under the protection of Federation Security Forces. The Feds shot first and asked questions later. It was their job, among other things, to protect the Elected Body of the Federation and they took their job very seriously. To compound matters the Senator lived in the country in a nearly inaccessible region. Easily accessible by air or spaceship, but not so much so if you needed to get in without bei
ng noticed. Of course, if he
lived in space it would have been even more difficult, probably impossible, so she had that to be thankful for.

The Senator's home-planet was Mordalin. A Senator had to spend a certain amount of time each year on his or her home-planet to
maintain Senatorial eligibility
and as far as Tanya knew Handler may have been waiting quite a while for this opportunity when Senator Geble had to spend his allotted time on the surface of Mordalin. It would be the only time Tanya would have any chance at all to make contact.

Contact would be all that she needed. Long range, short range, it mattered little, but she wouldn't be able to do it inside an armed Federation Warship, or the Halls of Government on Earth itself. No
amount of money could induce her to take a job where she wasn't sure she could get out afterward. She was a paid assassin, no more and no less, in it for the money and the money alone. The only Political Party she was interested in promoting was the Tanya Party, and it wasn't a Democracy.
Chapter 6
The
mansion was
guarded
electronically by the most sophisticated security system credits could buy, and was actually monitored by trained
human
specialists. The grounds surrounding the mansion were wired. The woodlands around the grounds were wired. All monitored twenty-six hours a day. The significant factor was that the Feds were no longer guarding him
however
. Not on the surface of Mordalin. He was now being guarded by a Mordalin Civil Security Unit supplemented by mercenaries, undoubtedly well trained and every one of them expe
rts, but they weren't the Feds.

Still, the more Tanya studied the problem, the less she liked it. She would be able to get in with some very careful planning, but getting out was going to be the problem. It was a great deal of money to do this job, but hiding-out in the woods on Mordalin for months
after waiting
for an extraction while things cooled
down following
the assassination would not be fun. It could also
prove to
be extremely dangerous. If the Security Forces were confident of her continued presence they wouldn’t give up the
hunt
. With an entire planet's Security Forces searching for you, and knowing your general whereabouts . . . . !

Tanya had accepted the assignment, however. She had never attempted to back out of a job before, once she had agreed to it, and
she was sure Handler wouldn't take it well. Especially if Tanya’s first time backing out of a job was this job. There wouldn't be enough time for
him to set up another O
perative. Tanya
wasn't sure there was another O
perative who could do it. The hardest jobs always fell to her. The money was right as rain on this one though, and Tanya had let her greed talk her into something she was now mildly regretting.