Catwalk-Worthy
13 Sep 2022Lily Flemmon
Today, I was disarmed and pinned to a wall with a knife to my throat by a pirate with a price on her head upwards of 100k credits.It started when I took a mission contract to kill her, or bring her back alive. I was planning to do the latter, not because I needed the credits at all, but because I needed to clear my head. Galactic politics are not a good thing to worry about 24/7. I read my recent log entries, and I’ll be honest… I’ve been struggling. A lot. Little did I know this encounter would be exactly what I needed.
I looked at the contract, found where she was holed up, in a settlement under anarchy. Not too bad. Planet had pretty heavy gravity though, close to 1G. Guess a pirate like her gets to live in a bit of luxury, yeah?
A little snooping in an SRV and I'd gotten tags on every human signature in the settlement. Not too many for the size of the settlement, and only a handful of guards on patrol.
My friend Rory taught me a little trick, a way to hack a door without overloading it. Just gotta hack a terminal first, a little hardware MIM attack on its security processor, and then I have a code to walk into the command center like I own the place. An incomplete access profile- getting scanned by a human guard would get me caught for sure.
Next step was to walk into the command building like everything's fine, and then sneak up to the command center and stun the settlement leader with the right setting on my energylink tool. After that I pulled the same MIM attack on the authorization scanner control console, to give myself a phony Level 4 access, and set all the doors to require that Level 4 access and engage mechanical latches so that overloading the door systems would just make the door cease to function rather than slide open. Just not on anything in the hab buildings- that would have been inhumane at best.
Then off to the storage building where the signature for my target, Phoebe Langer, has just started moving again. Two other signatures in the building. One appeared to be checking stock, and one was patrolling. I grabbed a couple moderately large rocks and put them in my backpack before entering, armed with my TK Eclipse in case things got hairy, a Karma P-15 with improved accuracy for disarming and disabling shots, and of course, the two rocks. Phoebe's the warehouse admin or something I guess, because her suit doesn't have shields.
I crept into the warehouse and climbed up the storage racks, stalking the two workers like a cat. Once the stock auditor- Phil, apparently- approached where I had recklessly disorganized and rearranged a section, I quietly pulled the two rocks out of my bag. Of course he immediately started to curse under his breath about the interior guard patrol, Brenda (yeah, it matched the name on her suit signature) and I had to hold back a giggle a little. Especially when I dropped one of the rocks onto his head, letting it crumble on impact, knocking him out but drawing minimal blood, as I pulled out the second rock.
Brenda called out from a couple rows over. "Phil?" She came around the end of the rack, and saw him on the ground, covered in dirt and pebbles, and out cold. "Phil!" She rushed to his side, and checked for breathing a pulse. "Oh come on, what the hell happened to you? For someone as organized and neat as you, you sure are clumsy."
See, this is why I don't kill if I don't have to. Even bandits like these have their own little lives and friends who care about them.
Too bad I dropped the second rock on Brenda's head.
I climbed down the end of the rack, and I heard Phoebe yell from inside her office, "Ey, what's goin' on out there? Got shit to git done, ya couple o' nerds!"
I heard her office door open, and before I could hide, she saw me.
"Oi! Who the bloody hell are you and what are you doin in my warehouse? Huh? Nah, you ain't gonna run!" Her voice was smooth yet commanding, deep with just a slight hint of grit to it. Her hair was in a short undercut pixie, and she had a geometric tattoo around her left eye.
I tried to bolt for cover as she spoke, but she pulled a gun on me before I got far enough. And as the first rocket flew over my head and exploded against the far wall, I realized it wasn't a gun, it was an L-6, which is short for "oh fuck."
The second rocket hit the floor right behind me, sending me careening into a large container and knocking both my guns off their securements and well out of my reach as my shields kept the blast from filling me with shrapnel. My suit battery was hit though, meaning this was suddenly a very unlucky day, with no shields and minimal reserve power, just enough for life support. As the ringing in my ears faded, I could hear shouting and plasma cutting outside as the guards still on patrol tried to get in, and Phoebe Langer angrily approaching. She grabbed me by the arm and threw me out of the aisle before I was even able to stand straight- and as I did stand straight, I remembered this was a 0.9G world, meaning she definitely had to be packing some beef. I got a better look at her as I picked myself back up and she walked over to me- heavy thighs, wide hips, a densely packed waist, and a torso to make Artemis herself green with envy. And her arms, well, those arms were pinning mine against a wall next to the atmosphere controls.
"Alright girlie, thinkin' you're a hotshot commander and all, what am I s'posed to do with ya now, huh?"
I jerked one of my arms free but it seemed she let go of it deliberately, because only a second later I felt the cold metal blade of a knife just under my chin.
"Should I keep you alive? Or does a naughty girlie like you need to get her throat slit open?"
I felt my lips start to quiver and blood rush to my cheeks. "Not-"
"Not what? I can't hear you, commander."
I could faintly hear boots on the roof of the building and a plasma cutter slicing open the atmosphere processor, not that I noticed- this moment between the two of us was all I was worried about, and when I spoke, my voice was almost a whimper.
"Not- not on our first night together-"
I was cut off as the building's atmosphere suddenly vented and both our helmets whipped over our heads and slammed shut, mine pinching the blade of her knife tightly, unable to fully seal, and hers tinted dark and obscuring her face. I used the distraction to use my free arm to swing down hard on the elbow of her knife arm and twist free, the air getting ripped from my lungs, before kicking her away and pulling the knife out to let my helmet close. I reached over and hit the button to repressurize the building, and turned to see Phoebe coming back at me. I threw the knife at her point-blank, deliberately over her shoulder as a feint, and as she dodged to the side, I used her momentum to my advantage and choke-slammed her against the hard warehouse floor, holding her thighs down with one knee as breathable atmosphere started rushing back into the building.
As our visors lifted and our helmets retracted, I could see it was her turn to get red in the face and flustered, and I loosened my grip on her throat enough for her to breathe.
I looked straight down, right into her eyes, my confidence having fully returned. "You know, two can play at this game."
"My..." a weak grin started to spread across Phoebe's lips as her voice slipped out tensely and tightly. "My old man warned me about Commanders like you..."
I leaned down lower until I was right in her face, only a couple centimeters above, reapplying pressure to her throat. "And you’re lucky he was right, aren’t you?"
And this mission turned out to be exactly the mental health break that I needed.
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For the record, Phoebe Langer left that planet as a prisoner aboard my ship, not a passenger. The undefined delay on turning her in is due to more important tasks taking precedence, such as matters of galactic ethical inquiry. Thank you.