Consortium of Planets: Alien Test (13 page)

He looked at Svetlana and asked, “Would you like to meet the others?”

Svetlana didn’t care about collateral damage, but she did want to meet and kill the others he spoke of, so she said, “Let’s party.”

Moving quickly and preoccupied with killing Svetlana, Zul failed to notice the police officers paused at the foot of the stairs to the bridge. The first officer stepped out of Zul’s way at the last second and grabbed Zul’s arm to keep him from knocking down his partner.

The senior officer asked, “Where are you off to in such a hurry? Have you been drinking?”

Svetlana saw what was happening and didn’t want the police to haul Zul away. She opened her coat, unbuttoned a couple of buttons at the top of her blouse and began to giggle. She stayed a couple of steps above the officers and bent forward so that they were no longer interested in anything Zul had to say.

Svetlana began her performance. “It’s all my fault gentlemen!” she said in a breathy America accent. “We were just having some fun. I asked him to run for me because watching men run makes me tingly. Can you believe that?” She continued with a pout. “I’m sorry if I interrupted your rounds.” She descended the stairs one step at a time and dropped her voice to a whisper to keep their attention. “You know, men in uniform are a turn-on, too. I would love to watch both of you run.”

Zul didn’t want to be detained. With her fake giggling ringing in his ears, he melted into the background and disappeared.

By the time she could get away from the police officers, they had completely forgotten about Zul – but Svetlana knew exactly where to find him. Twenty-four hours earlier, she had followed him from Vienna and watched him check into a five-star hotel on Rulstrasse. Zul had been the Network’s top agent in Eastern Europe for about two years and was very good at killing the previous Interpol agents who were assigned to watch him.

It was completely dark and it had gotten much colder. Svetlana stopped under the street light’s amber glow outside Zul’s hotel. She noticed that the back street was deserted as she looked up at the lights shining through each hotel window. There were multiple shadows moving casually across the flimsy curtains covering Zul’s window. It was difficult to determine how many people were in the room. She stepped back into a shadowy doorway for privacy and pulled out a tiny monitoring device.

She pointed it at the window and heard Zul in mid-sentence.

“It’s the same woman who killed our guys and blew up the barn!”

One of the shadows asked, “How can that be? This woman has been completely checked out.”

Zul responded, “They have made a grave mistake. We’d better be ready for her, or she’ll kill us, too.”

None of the shadows replied. Svetlana realized that they were too worried about her to reveal any other agents in their conversation. There was nothing left to gain from them. It was time to call them out.

She entered the opulent hotel lobby, walked up to the gleaming front desk, and gave the clerk a seductive smile. “I’m supposed to meet Zul here, but he only gave me his room number. Would you please ring him and let him know his ‘package’ is here?”

The clerk thought she was a hooker and that was exactly what she wanted him to think. No one remembers the hooker. With a polite smile and nod, he replied. “Of course, madam.”

His voice was already fading into background noise as she began to consider how the lobby would do as a battleground.
Would they enter from the elevator or the stairs?
Considering who she was dealing with, she deduced that they would probably try to attack from every possible direction, including the front door. They would want to act quickly and try to surprise her.

The elevator bell rang. The doors were preparing to open and cut Svetlana’s thought process short. She grabbed a newspaper from a large marble end table and sat down in an oversized easy chair. The alien invasion was the headline and she began reading. At almost exactly the same moment, two men stepped out of the elevator. A third man stepped through the front entrance and a fourth came out of the stairwell. But there was no Zul.

She watched with amusement as the men circled and carefully looked for her. Holding the paper up to disguise herself, she checked her blonde wig and blue contact lenses in a small compact mirror.
How did he knew it was me?

One of the men had stopped another and was pointing in her direction. All four began to cautiously surround her.
Still no Zul
, she thought to herself as the chaos fell into rhythm. With the melody strong now, she reached under her dress and retrieved the rope dart that had been strapped to her shapely thigh.

Svetlana leaped onto the coffee table in front of her chair and kicked its glass flower vase into the face of the closest attacker. Glass shattered, the force of the blow sending his stunned body backwards into a second attacker. They both fell in a pile on the polished marble floor.

The remaining two men looked up at Svetlana who was now gracefully spinning the rope dart methodically around her body. She gazed down from her perch with a cold smile that made them feel like they were the main course. With the index finger of her free hand, she pointed at them and motioned for them to come to her. The two men looked at their partners sprawled on the floor, her impressive display with the rope dart, and then at each other.

Their indecision let Svetlana do what she did best – take the initiative and dictate the fight. While they stood frozen, she suddenly shifted her weight and made the end of the table flip up. She used the momentum to somersault feet-first into the chest of an attacker, while at the same time flicking the lethal dart deep into the chest of the fourth man.

Shaken, the third attacker and one of the two knocked down initially were pulling themselves to their feet. Svetlana stopped one with a roundhouse kick to the head so hard that it broke his neck. As she brought the dart up to deliver an overhead hammer blow to the last man standing, she heard Zul’s voice from behind.

“I am impressed. You have managed to kill or maim some of the Network’s best agents. Now I am afraid that you must put down your toy, or I will blow a hole in your pretty head.”

Svetlana maintained the dart’s spin above her head and began a slow turn toward the voice that tried to order her. The man who had been her target a few seconds before moved to what he thought was a safe distance. She completed the turn and faced the man from the bridge.

Zul pointed the 9mm weapon at Svetlana from across the room. With a distance of eight meters he thought was a safe and with a little more authority in his voice, he commanded, “Drop your weapon or die!”

The melody was now so loud now that she fought the urge to finish Zul at that moment with a forward release of her dart. “Zul, do you think you are safe over there?”

He blinked nervously. “How do you know my name?” Not waiting for an answer, he went on. “I saw the video at the barn. You must be close to kill with that thing. It’s over now. Put it down.”

Svetlana sneered. “Of course I will.”

Instead of doing what Zul expected, she increased the dart’s spin and released it straight into his chest. The force of the blow sent him flying backwards through the hotel’s front window. His lifeless hand still held the gun when he crashed onto the hood of a parked car.

With the car’s security alarm blaring through the smashed window, she looked at the last man standing. “I don’t think your boss likes to play catch.” Then with false innocence in her voice, she challenged him. “I have no weapon. Don’t you want to hurt me?” The man was too afraid to move.

When she got no response, Svetlana snarled coolly at him. “Today is your lucky day. I will let you live. Tell your boss he’s no longer welcome in Europe, and I’m coming for him in the United States. If I ever see you again, you will have a very unlucky day. Now get out of here before I kill you and deliver the message myself.”

With no more indecision, the man ran through the front doors.

Consortia:

Just before Alont sneezed and gave away his hiding place under all the debris that had fallen on him from the roof, he heard an older Consortian ask the security guard what was happening. Then he demanded to speak to whoever was in charge of such a mess. The guard immediately started to stammer something about a Warrior breaking security and running for an exit. He cut the guard off in mid-sentence and demanded to speak to his superior. The guard was clearly on the defensive and started to say something about maintaining a perimeter. Again, he was cut off by an authoritative “Now!”

Alont heard the guard hurry away. Just when the guard’s footsteps trailed off, the weight resting on Alont’s back was suddenly lifted.
They knew exactly where I was! But why did they send the guard away?
He was quickly revealed by two large Consortians who subsequently pulled him up painfully by his injured arm. They stood him on his bleeding right leg.

The distinguished older Consortian looked at Alont with disgust and growled, “If this is Aydr’n’s most reliable Warrior, we’re in deep trouble.” He looked at the others with him and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

As they hustled out of the damaged inter-dimensional spaceport, Alont realized these weren’t the Warriors that he expected and began asking questions. “Who are you? How did you know where I was?”

Before he could get out another question, the older Consortian hit him across the face. “Shut up, Warrior. The only thing I want from you is the micro pouch.”

Slightly dazed from the blow, Alont blinked hard and asked, “How do I know I can trust you?”

The old Consortian paused for a moment and then responded with resignation. “Fine, I’ll answer your questions. We’re the contacts that Captain Aydr’n told you to meet. We knew you were here because he put a homer in the pouch that gave us a brief message that you had arrived. We’ve been tracking you ever since you came out of the Travel Dimension. Your progress was so slow, I decided to come over here and get you. Because of all the commotion you caused back there, I’ll be sure and let your captain know the homer wasn’t necessary.”

Alont felt the sarcasm was unnecessary and couldn’t resist the urge to defend himself. “It wasn’t my fault. I tried to …”

The older Consortian glared at him and Alont flinched, expecting another blow. Instead of hitting him, he began scolding Alont. “What you did was put everything at risk. If they had gotten a hold of what you are carrying, many powerful Consortians would have been ruined, or worse. What you did was stupid. We can’t fight the University without a coordinated effort.” The older Consortian was quickly losing interest in talking to Alont. “I’ve had enough of this – now give me the pouch and go back to your assignment.”

Alont had hoped that talking with Aydr’n’s contacts would make him feel justified about what he was doing, but the feeling that he was aiding anarchy seemed to be making more and more sense. That wasn’t why he became a Warrior. He had pledged allegiance to the Consortium Code and changing out the current order with violence wasn’t part of the Code. Alont knew now that his captain’s orders concerning delivery of the pouch were illegal, but what could he do?

Alont realized that he would have to play along until he could figure some way out of the situation. “Right, of course, you want the pouch.” His mind raced for a plan as he looked back and forth at each of the men.

Suddenly, he realized two things. First – and most importantly – was that they weren’t tracking the pouch’s homer anymore. If they were, they wouldn’t be asking where the pouch was, they would be taking it from him. It must have gotten damaged when the roof fell. Second, that put him in control because he could tell them anything he wanted. The gods had smiled on him and the terrorists’ luck had just run out. Yes, they
were
terrorists, and he had been trained to deal with terrorists.

Just as the oldest began to speak, Alont cut in with fake concern. “I must have dropped it by accident in the shuttle when we traversed the Dimension. ‘Jumping the gap’ can really get rough, you know?”

Without questioning Alont further, all three terrorists turned and headed for the exit leading to the shuttle. Alont knew he didn’t have much time. As they walked away, he overheard them say that once they found the pouch, they wouldn’t need him anymore. When they discovered that he lied about the pouch, Alont knew they would certainly kill him. He looked at their backs and then at the nearest exit. They had forgotten about him momentarily, but if he ran, there would be no one to stop them from hurting millions. He kept close and continued to look for a way to get rid of them first.

When they reached the shuttle and couldn’t open the hatch, Alont saw his opportunity. They obviously didn’t know much about the shuttle and that was how he would beat them. He walked up to the external hatch release and punched in the universal override code – the one the manufacturer programmed into all of their space vehicles. It was a safeguard that prevented someone from getting locked out and stranded on an alien world.

Alont smiled at the terrorists. “I guess you still need me after all.”

“Just get the pouch” was all he heard.

Trying to remain calm, Alont stepped back into the shuttle and pointed toward the rear. “I locked it in the security bin back there.” Moving casually into the cockpit, he continued. “I’ll just punch in the key code to release it.” Alont quickly punched in dimension shift coordinates to a famous black hole and set a twenty-second timer before the shuttle would automatically launch to that location.