Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya by Ronald Wintrick Page B

was on guard, though it wasn't always immediately obvious. Tanya had come to the conclusion that they would like to catch her alive, and not because they wanted to addict her to drugs and prostitute her. That wouldn’t be good enough anymore. It was speculated that an example would be made of her. That meant torture and death. The screams of the tortured could often be heard i n the various places she had been frequenting, and in one case Tanya knew for a fact that the torture was the result of Tanya herself, for allowing a robbery. His torture hadn't lasted long, but whatever it was they had done to him must have been terrible beyond belief, because the screams had been bloodcurdling and horrible beyond the ability of words to describe.
    Those would be her screams if she were caught. She couldn't imagine what it would take to make a hardened enforcer scream like that, but she had little doubt that if they caught her, she would be screaming just as horribly, or worse, and probably for a far longer time. Tanya did not want to scream for eternity, and she was sure it would seem like eternity however long it took her to d ie. Still, this was what she decided to do, and here she was, as if functioning outside of her own volition.
    Tanya smiled at the teller as she moved up to take her turn at the window. She was no longer Tanya, no longer blond, no longer blue eyed and her identification chip impeccable. It was not an identity she had gotten from Handler and she’d not used it since the last time she was here. It had been kept safe all this time, along with a private-account bank chip, in a long-term safety storage.
    Now that long ago planning was paying dividends. Tanya had not visited this bank in over forty years. Still, that didn't guarantee that Handler wouldn't know about it. It was a risk she was not at all happy about having to take, but it was a risk that simply could not be avoided. She needed those funds. More than the funds, she needed the legitimacy that this old account would add to her presence here, just as every other permanent resident would have; a financial history that did not have to be hacked into the system.
    They wouldn't suspect a quasi-resident of forty years as much as they would be looking for a non-resident, and with the amount of traffic coming and going from this prosperous world the authorities would have their work cut out for them in the first place. All Tanya could hope was that she slipped through the cracks. Again, the risk was considerable, but to remain here was an even greater risk; she had to get out now while any chance of success at all still remained.
    Tanya's next stop was the spaceport for a ticket off-planet. Unless Handler had informed on her, they wouldn't give her a second look. Her completely innocuous appearance was one of her greatest assets. If Handler had been the one who had informed on her, and knowing how very capable his Organization was, there was no doubt in Tanya's mind that he would have found out about her identity and bank account. It wasn't the risk that going to the ship would have been though. There was no way to fight a hidden bomb, or the missiles of scrambled fighter craft if they were alerted to her and ready for her when she lifted off, or even a F ederation destroyer just sitting up in orbit waiting for her to do something that absolute ly stupid. The ways a careless O perative could die were endless.
    She relinquished her weapons to Security as everyone else was doing, at least those weapons which could be detected. They would be returned to her, and everyone else, once they were aboard the Luxury Liner. There is no law against carrying weapons, in fact it was practically a law that you had to carry weapons, if you were a person who liked your life, but the passengers weren't allowed to carry them in the small shuttle-craft w hich would take them up to the Luxury L iner above. A weapons discharge aboard the small shuttle-craft would kill everyone within.