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As the battle raged over her head, Lucia stalked the corridors of the Grand Gateway Hotel and Casino. The security around the Chairman’s suite was far too heavy for her to penetrate, but then again, she did not have to. She simply walked up to the security detail, flashed a smile and showed her ID. Having spent the whole trip over on the private yacht and working with Roland more or less granted her as much access as she wanted to the Chairman’s suite.
The squad of goons at the door waved her through, and only in passing did she realize that it was a different squad than last time. The cadres of hired muscle were so ubiquitous on Enterprise as to be interchangeable. She swept through the ornate door to the penthouse. Real wood, she noted as she passed, nice touch.
Lucia had grown up wealthy and had done very well for herself on her own, but she did not understand avarice on the level that produced men like Pops Winter. It wasn’t just the money, because there was only so much a person could buy. It was about power, she knew, and the ability to wield people like game pieces. Pops was polite and pleasant enough, but his stock in trade was human misery and she didn’t trust him any more than a corporate CEO. Which was very little, all told.
The suite, as lavish and ostentatious as the doors had implied it would be, stretched through a total of eight rooms. She found Laura in the sitting room, hunched over her DataPad with a face locked into a rictus of gloomy intensity.
“How goes the mission?” Lucia asked innocently.
Laura looked up and scowled at her, “I don’t know. There are no signals from the ship and the team is off comms right now,” the frown intensified, and Lucia thought she detected a touch of extra hostility in Laura’s tone, “Can I help you with something?”
You can stop being an insufferable super-bitch, for starters. Lucia let the snarky thought go unvocalized. Instead, she played her part in the greater dance, “Yes, I have a lead on a potential player hiding on-station. Right now, the guy is inside ‘Lights Out.’ Obviously, I can’t get in there.”
“But I can,” Laura finished, “Can’t you just stake it out and wait for him?” the brunette sounded testier than usual, which was interesting.
“Yes, Laura. I very much want to stake out a highly exclusive underworld watering hole without any backup. Nothing would make me happier than risking my life and potentially spooking about a hundred trigger-happy goons in what might be a waste of time, when someone right here with a vested interest in the case sits on her narrow ass looking bitchy and pretending to have a clue what the fuck is going on.”
Lucia decided to channel a little of that 'Roland Tankowicz' style that seemed so effective back home. She slammed her hand down on the screen and forced the terminal closed, “I don’t give a fuck if you wash the old man’s balls with your tongue every night, Laura. It’s time to get off the bench and into the fucking game. There is a goddamn pirate ship full of gun-toting assholes who want to kill your boss overhead, and they won’t mind dropping you with him.”
Laura’s eyes burned into Lucia’s and for moment nothing happened. Then Laura snapped her right fist directly at Lucia’s nose. Lucia wasn’t sure why Laura thought this was a good idea. The Chairman’s assistant had always seemed to be very up to date on everyone and everything, and Lucia could not fathom why Laura thought taking a swing at her would end well.
The blow was fast, crisp, and carried enough shoulder roll and hip drive to tell Lucia that Laura had burned a few hours in the ring or the dojo. Lucia slapped the blow aside lazily and stung the assistant with a lightning backhand across the cheek. She kept her fist open and did not drive from the shoulder out of deference to the woman’s lack of augmentations. Still, it turned Laura’s head to the side in a swirl of brown hair.
Laura surged up from her chair and threw another punch at Lucia. A vicious overhand left that was intended to decapitate if the snarl from Laura was any indicator. Lucia, with her augmented perceptions, saw the punch coming with time to spare. She parried with the heel of her left hand and was surprised to feel a sting numb her palm and climb all the way to her elbow. It felt like she had just blocked a baseball bat.
Prosthesis! Lucia realized, almost too late. As the fist passed her chin, Laura’s hand opened and a long blade grew from her palm to slice the area where Lucia’s face would have been.
The fucking bitch is trying to kill me! Lucia didn’t know how or why the fight had suddenly gotten so out of hand, but she kicked her intensity up a notch to deal with it. She fired punches like a machine gun, scoring hits to Laura’s face, gut and ribs. The snarling assistant fell in a heap, but met Lucia’s charge with an up-kick from her back. It missed, but it stopped Lucia’s forward momentum and Laura was able to leap back to her feet and send the palm blade toward Lucia in a series of snapping strikes.
It was obvious to Lucia that Laura did not know about the tiny machines that lived in her body. While the assistant’s bionic arm was fast and strong, it was still attached to a regular human skeleton. Lucia’s reactions were more than five times as fast as Laura’s, and she was as strong as a healthy man twice her size. First, a Thai round kick folded Laura in half with a guttural blast of exhaled air. Next, Lucia eliminated the threat from the bionic arm by snapping Laura’s collarbone with a ruthless hammer fist. Laura screamed and fell in a heap.
But Lucia did not get to enjoy her victory. The commotion had brought the security detail into the suite and she had only a second’s warning before the six mercenaries opened fire.
Of course, a second’s warning to Lucia was the equivalent of five second’s warning to everyone else. While not fast enough to dodge gunfire, she was three strides into her evasive manoeuvres before the first guard had squeezed off a shot.
The distance between the streaking woman and the squad of guards shrank to nothing. As the guns roared, Lucia was already among them, hands darting like twin vipers to sting her opponents in places designed to make gunplay difficult. Three of the six mercenaries dropped their guns, clutching broken fingers while the other three spun to try to cover her with their muzzles.
Lucia was not wearing her PC-10’s, so she did not waste time trying to bring the hulking mercs down with blunt force alone. She snuck the knife from a guard’s belt sheath and stuck it in a meaty thigh, producing a scream of pain. Before the stabbed man reacted, she withdrew the blade and buried it into the hand of a man trying to pick up a dropped gun. It pinned the gnarled warrior’s mitt like a butterfly and Lucia retrieved his firearm for herself.
She rolled to her feet, ducked a shot meant to kill her, which allowed the bead to travel onward and through the shoulder of a guard trying to attack her from behind. Lucia groin-stomped the shooter, slapped the gun from his hand and then spun behind him. A boot to the back of his knee sent the guard staggering forward and Lucia wrapped an arm around his throat to lift his chin. With a smile, she pressed the barrel of her confiscated weapon to his head.
“We good, boys?” the words were saccharine sweet, but her eyes blazed with barely restrained ferocity and her grin could only be described as ‘predatory.’
The guards were at a loss. One was shot, another stabbed, and a third was grunting in quiet agony while trying to pry the knife out of the floor and free his hand. It wasn’t going well. Two others had sidearms drawn and pointed at her, but the small woman was easily covered by her bulky hostage.
“Seriously guys. I’m really good at this stuff. I’m trying hard not to kill anyone but if you push me, I may just slip up,” Lucia really was trying to behave, here. She did not know why Laura had reacted so aggressively, but her mind was running a lot of scenarios right now. Something was amiss with this whole interaction and she needed to figure it out soon.
Of course, the first priority was getting out of the suite alive. Surprise and speed had gotten her this far, but these guys were still in the fight and she didn’t know if she could handle all six without killing some of them or getting killed herself. For all her martial skill, Lucia was still very uncomfortable with the thought of taking a life. If the mercenaries were aware of how much of a bluff her current strategy was, they weren’t showing it at least.
“Enough,” Laura interjected with a voice husky from getting gut-checked, “Stand down you useless morons.”
Lucia released her captive only after the guards had all holstered their guns. She flashed a friendly smile to them as they collected their weapons and wounded and then tossed the pistol back to its owner.
“Thank you, ma'am,” the guard mumbled respectfully before shuffling out of the suite with head hung low.
Lucia turned back to Laura, “Round two, dear?”
Laura reached up and began fixing her bedraggled hair into a pony tail, “No. I don’t think so. I have what I need.”
“Oh, I see. Just wanted to know if you could take me?” It was as good a guess as any.
“No. I was reasonably certain I couldn’t beat you.” Laura had recovered her flat, vaguely annoyed demeanor, “But I was also reasonably certain you wouldn’t kill me either. I wanted to know exactly how fast you were and how strong. Now I do.”
This bothered Lucia more than she wanted it to. She couldn’t shake a gnawing suspicion that she had just been tricked somehow. “I’m sure you think so,” was all Lucia could come back with, “Maybe you should test me again.” Lucia was slightly ashamed that she wanted to hit the woman some more. She began to understand how people like Roland or Mack could become enamored of fighting. It just felt so good to hurt certain kinds of people.
“Don’t be so feral. It makes you predictable,” Laura was looking at the floor, trying to find her dropped DataPad. Her baseline frown deepened as she cast about for the missing device with swelling frustration.
Lucia snickered, “Don’t be such a smug bitch. It makes you predictable.” She held up the missing DataPad, waggling it in Laura’s face.
Laura, recognizing the game, refused to take the bait, “Is that so?”
“Yes. Pretending you aren’t pissed off is not the same as actually being calm, Laura. You’d be a better fighter if you learned that.”
“I don’t need to be a better fighter. May I have my DataPad back please?” There was frost on the word ‘please.’
“Saying things politely is not the same as being polite, either,” Lucia taunted.
Laura did not realize that Lucia was playing for time. A small black device stuck to the back of the pilfered DataPad was industriously cloning its contents, but it needed a few moments to get the job done. Lucia was just stalling until it finished.
“Are you serious?” Laura’s frustration was beginning to worm its way into her words, chopping them into clipped growls.
“Temper, temper, Laura.” Lucia was relieved to see that the bug had completed the insidious task. She palmed the widget and flipped the ‘Pad back to Laura, who caught it easily.
“Thank you.” The cold tone indicated that the brunette was still struggling with sincerity.
“I don’t know what has you so pissed off all the time, Laura. But if you want some advice...”
“I don’t,” Laura huffed, but Lucia was having too much fun to stop now.
“... you should try not to let whatever it is keep you from being happy. Don’t give your best years over to being a scowling ice queen. It’s not worth it.”
“Yes, well. I’m sure I’ll keep that in mind. At this point I’m willing to go down to ‘Lights Out’ and work your lead if there is any chance it will make you shut up and go away,” the stern woman affected her best smile, and it was surprisingly convincing if you didn’t know anything about the lady behind it. Lucia found it more terrifying than when Roland tried to smile. When Roland attempted to look happy, it just came off as a different kind of angry. Laura’s ability to play the chameleon was all the more disturbing for her obvious skill and practice.
“Yeah,” Lucia winced, “I don’t think I need your kind of help, actually. I need this guy worked, not worked over. I’ll find another way.” She turned to leave the suite, her objective being achieved in less time than she had anticipated, “See you later, Laura. It’s been fun.”
With that the grinning woman bounced out the door of the suite.
Mission accomplished, she congratulated herself.