Reason For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 1) (28 page)

If Hanna thought Valerie moved fast before, it was nothing compared to her now.  In a blink the woman was gone and Hanna scrambled to keep up.  Darting through the door, she hit the close button and looked for Valerie as she heard a scuffling noise.  The woman was standing just down the corridor with her arm tight around the neck of a man.  He was a big body builder, wearing light armour without a helmet and Valerie held him easily down on his knees.

The man’s face was turning a dark shade of purple as she squeezed his throat.  He hit her arm again and again with no response.  He tried slamming his elbow into her side and although it made her grimace slightly, she did not release the pressure at all.  With a last kick of his legs the man slumped down in Valerie’s arms.  She held on for another moment and eased him to the floor.

“I’m surprised you didn’t shoot him,” Hanna said quietly

“It would make too much noise.  Where do we go now?”

“We need to get to their mainframe.  It’s in the centre of this floor.  We go down this corridor and take the first turning on the right.  It will then be the fourth door on the left.”  Hanna explained with a glance at her datapad.

“OK,” Valerie pointed to a nearby door.  “Open that.”

It was only a simple lock and Hanna quickly opened it.  She glanced back and saw Valerie lift the big man easily over her shoulder.  Hanna glanced inside, it was a storeroom.  As Valerie not too gently dumped the man in the room, Hanna reset the lock so that it could only be opened from the outside.  That man was going to have to use his Pulse pistol if he wanted to get out.  She then saw that wouldn’t be an option, Valerie stripped him of the power packs and pocketed them.

“I’ve re-programmed it so it can’t be opened from inside.”  Hanna told Valerie as she closed the door behind her.

Valerie only nodded before stalking down the corridor and Hanna dashed after her.  This time the older woman left her guns in their holsters, Hanna presumed it was so she could deal with anyone they came across without any noise, like she did for the security guard.  They moved slowly and Hanna kept checking behind them.  It was easily possible for someone to come out of the doors they passed.  They came to the turn without incident and kept going.

Hanna was beginning to think they would make it to the mainframe room without any problems, when a door opened on the right, only two metres from Valerie.  A man stepped through followed by a woman.  Both wore light armour, but like the man before, neither had their helmets with them.  They looked up in surprise and just as the man was going to say something, Valerie struck swiftly. 

Her left fist punched into the man’s throat and his eyes widened in shock, followed quickly by horror as he found he could no longer breathe.  The woman, who was just behind him, went for her pistol, but it didn’t do any good, Valerie was already passing the man and her right fist came across in a vicious back hand.  It struck the guard right across the cheek and Hanna jumped at the crack it made.

The woman flew backwards against a wall and when she stopped, Hanna was amazed to see her head rest onto her shoulder in a very unnatural angle.  Valerie must have broken the guards neck with a single punch.  The man was now on the floor, clutching his throat as his face got darker and darker.

“Hey.  What was that?” a voice emanated from the still open doorway.  “You alright, Sandy?”

Valerie drew her pistols.  It was so quick, Hanna didn’t see the actual movement.  It was like the guns went instantly from their holsters to her hands.  Valerie was firing her pistols as she stepped into the doorway, Hanna heard zipping noise from the magnetic coils launching the tiny metal darts out to Valerie’s targets. 

Hearing cries of pain, shouted curses and confusion coming from inside, Hanna stayed outside, not even daring to look in.  She put her back to the wall next to the door and tried to stay as close to it as possible.  Her instincts were still in good shape even if her mind was struggling to cope with the carnage Valerie was inflicting.  Hanna kept looking both ways down the corridor.  She was ready to shout in case any more came along.

All too quickly it was over and there was silence from inside.  Hanna held her breath and screwed up the courage to look around the doorway.  Just as she was about to she almost screamed when Valerie stepped out completely unscathed.

“Clear.” Was all the woman said before bending down to pick up the female guard she killed.

Bile rose in Hanna’s throat from the woman’s head flopping around her neck as Valerie carried the body inside.  Hanna heard a thump from dumping the corpse in the room and stepped out to get the man.  He died at some point in the last minute.  Hanna felt a twinge of guilt that she didn’t even notice his passing.

Picking him up as easily as the others, Valerie threw him inside with a heave of her arms rather than carry him in.  She turned to Hanna.

“Can you seal this room as well?”  Her voice was as cold and lifeless as ever, it showed no sign she just killed two people with her bare hands.

Only able to nod in response, Hanna plugged her Quartz into the lock and could not help glancing around the doorway.  Just inside lay the two bodies Valerie dumped in the room, the man was slumped over the body of the woman.  The room was a break area for the guards, with tables and chairs set out in front of a kitchen unit at the back.  There were also comfy chairs down one end in front of a VI screen.

Valerie’s handy work could be seen all around.  Two guards had been sitting at a table and now one was sprawled forward, the back of his head blown out.  The other had come off his chair and lay on the floor, his dead eyes staring up to the ceiling, with a neat hole above them in his forehead.  The kitchen unit was splattered with blood, bone and Hanna guessed the pink globs to be brain matter. 

A guard lay just in front of the kitchen.  His ruined face told the tale of a shot to the back of his head.  He had not even had the time to turn around before Valerie shot him.  Over by the entertainment screen, a guard lay to one side and she had actually been able to draw her weapon.  It did her no good and she was just as dead as the others.

The last body landed backwards on the table below the screen, scattering the game controls and drinking cups.  The man’s eyes seemed to be staring right at Hanna and the bile rose up her throat.  This time her stomach heaved and she had to fight throwing up whatever was in there.  Hanna had seen many awful sights in her young life, but none came close to this much carnage.  What bothered her most was Valerie’s complete lack of emotion.  Hanna expected something, breathlessness as though she had run a mile, a pale face, excitement at having survived, or even enjoyment from the kills.

Looking back at the woman, Hanna could see none of this.  She stood there waiting in the corridor, a statue showing nothing of what Hanna saw in all the other killers she met.  Steeling herself and forcing her stomach under control, Hanna drew on Valerie’s lack of emotion, to concentrate on the task at hand.

It took her only a few moments and the door to that horror slid shut.  Hanna completely wiped the doors system and with a single command, her Quartz dumped a power surge into it, frying the memory.  It would take a complete hardware and software replacement or heavy equipment to open that door now.

“Done?”  Valerie questioned when Hanna unplugged her datapad.  She nodded in response, not trusting her voice. 

They were close now and with Valerie in the lead, they got to the mainframe room without meeting anymore guards.  Shaking her head at the simplicity of Safelifes programming yet again, Hanna soon opened the door.  Cold air flowed out causing her to shiver and Valerie was inside in a heartbeat.

Following her in Hanna found no one for Valerie to deal with this time.  There were rows of servers running back ten metres on either side, with narrow gaps between them for maintenance.  After sealing the door behind her so only she could open it Hanna went to the only desk in the room.  It was a small terminal with a single chair and Hanna slipped into it.

Activating the terminal, she plugged her Quartz in and shivered as she waited for it to sync.  The buildings environmental system would be keeping the room at a very cool ten degrees Celsius.  Having lived on Blaze her entire life and rarely leaving Inferno, Hanna pulled her thin jacket tighter around herself.  She knew without looking up that Valerie would not be feeling the cold and even if she was, she wouldn’t show it.

“OK, here we go.”  Hanna said as the Quartz notified her it was ready.  “Hmm, it looks like they didn’t use the usual idiots to set up the security here.”  She continued to talk as it wouldn’t do any harm and it kept her mind off the cold.  She didn’t expect any replies from Valerie and she didn’t get any.

“I’ll start with the default version of my worm rather than the evolved one.  There’s no point using that as it’s adapted to a different persons work.  There it goes, it’s in the system.”  She paused as she saw what the worm reported back.  “Oh, I see what she‘s done.  Let’s see, if I plant my Deco virus and Sneakers Chomper malware that will keep the security program busy, while the worm works its way in.

“There we go, come on little one,” Hanna said, talking to the screen in front of her.  “Here come the anti-viruses and Chomper is living up to its name.  That’s a really beautiful bit of code by Sneaker.  Chomper is making short work of the systems defences and Deco is doing its job.  There, that’s it, the worm is in and there’s the password.”

Leaning back Hanna admired her work as the system administrator screen came up.  “OK, let’s start with the coms.”  Hanna tapped away at her system before activating her com.  “Sneaker.  We’re in.”

His voice came back instantly.  “Excellent work, Hanna.  Any problems?”

Hanna glanced up at Valerie before answering.  “Erm.  No.  Nothing Valerie couldn’t handle.”  The woman didn’t even twitch at that.  She stood watching the door without moving.  With a sigh, Hanna turned back to her screen.  “Rush can start heading this way.  I should have everything ready for when they arrive.”

“Excellent.”  Sneaker said and Hanna could hear the joy in his voice.  “Troll?  Did you hear that?”

“Of course I did.”  The woman replied a little tersely.  “We might be bored, but we’re not asleep.  Rush has already started the truck and we are on our way.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rush added.

Hanna didn’t stop working and continued to tap away on her virtual keyboard.  “OK, their control room is now isolated and I’m turning everything over to you, Sneaker.”

“Understood,” he said.  Hanna rerouted any com calls in the building that would normally go to their control room, which was three doors down from them, to Sneaker.  She then cut all outside communication and locked the room.  The three guards inside were now effectively blind, deaf and dumb.  “I’ll be listening but I’ll keep myself muted on our net while I deal with Safelife.”  Sneakers com went dead.

Muting her own com for the moment, Hanna carried on entering her commands.  “Alright let’s put Rush’s truck into the loading schedule so the guards downstairs are expecting it.  There it is, all set for a pickup in ten minutes.  That will surprise them, but, as Sneaker found out, it’s not that unusual.  Rush, Troll and Barney’s cover ID’s.  I bet Troll won’t like hers.”  Hanna said with a chuckle. 

When the guards ran her fingerprints it would show Troll as being a man in the process of a sex change.  The guards wouldn’t care, though they might take a bit of a double take.  Troll was a very attractive woman.  She was also as heterosexual as they came and chased men very aggressively.  No one had any problems with transgenders, Troll just wouldn’t want that rumour spreading.  It would chase off the straight guys and attract those she wasn’t interested in.

“That’s all set.”  Hanna muttered.  “Now we need the loading ticket for the warehouse.  What have they got in there?  Yep, there’s the iridium we were looking for, we’ll have all of that.  Hmm, that’s a nice stack of tungsten.  I’ll send that down to the loading bay.  Hang on.”  Hanna unmuted her com.

“Sneaker they have ten tonnes of samarium.  Do you want it?  It’s not on the list.”

There was no answer at first and Hanna wasn’t worried.  He would be coordinating the Safelifes personnel and wouldn’t be able to talk.  A typed message appeared on her datapad.

Go for it.  I have just the buyer.

With his OK, Hanna uploaded a work order to the automated warehouse and it picked the samarium pallets.  They followed the iridium and the tungsten down to the loading bay Rush was on his way to.

“All done here, Sneaker.”  Hanna reported.  “I’m setting up the system crash.”  She considered Sneaker’s plan to be brilliant.  Once Rush loaded up and left, Hanna would initiate a catastrophic system failure.  Sneaker, in his role as the central control room, would report a virus Hacking the system.  He would play out a scenario of a valiant defence of the system, ending with the control room locking down and coms going down all over the building.

The guards would be isolated and assume the attack just started.  They hopefully wouldn’t realise it had already happened, until long after the Crew were gone.  This was the hardest bit of Hacking so far for Hanna.  She may have access to the system mainframe, but there were multiple redundant safety measures and programs in place, to guard against just what Hanna was trying to do.

The program she now uploaded was a true work of art.  One she and Sneaker crafted, sweated and agonised over for a month.  They massaged its code to a level of perfection far beyond anything Hanna had ever heard of before.  They named it Hydra.