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Alkina arranged the bunk linens hastily around the drugged soldier, hoping they looked natural. She would have very much liked to believe Muzik was on her side after one fling, but she couldn’t depend on it. She knew loyalties were skittish things when they intersected with emotions.
Slipping the tranquilizer gun into her pocket, she retrieved her PW5, checking her watch. Repeth always took a shower at this time, like clockwork. She sneered within. These stupid grunts know nothing about tradecraft. Always vary your routine.
In the head designated for the two females, she approached the steaming shower stall. She slid open the curtain just as Repeth was soaping up her hair with shampoo, her eyes tightly shut against the suds. The trank gun hissed. The Marine made a mewling sound, then slid slowly down the wet wall until she rested naked on the floor. Alkina turned off the water, threw a towel onto the unconscious woman, pulled the curtain and left.
Slipping ghostlike through the corridors, she listened and watched, taking a roundabout way to the largest space on board, the gym-sized missile room. There she found the three technicians finishing up their labors.
Tucking the weapon into the small of her back, she approached open-handed. “Almost done?” She put on her best smile, friendly, harmless.
“All done except putting the access panels back on,” Doc said absentmindedly while the others worked. “The decryption modules cracked the warhead codes just like they said they would. Took quite a while. The targeting coordinates and detonation timing were easy compared to that. There, see? All done.”
“Excellent.” She pulled out the firearm and shot all three in their abdomens with Needleshock before they could react, then tranked them to keep them under. Taking some spare cabling she hogtied them as well, dragging them one by one into the far corner of the room, behind the missile tubes.
She thought she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye. Taking cover, she moved slowly and silently behind the tall metal cylinders until she could slip out the hatch at the other end. It may have been nothing.
Five down, two to go.
In the missile room the shadow glided up to the auxiliary control firing station to insert a specially configured memory module into the panel. One touch of the screen and the program inside executed, rewriting the targeting coordinates and the nuclear detonation parameters through the pathways prepared by the technicians. The figure paused by the bound technicians just long enough to drive a thin carbon fiber blade up under each one’s chin and into his brain. A quick wiggle and twist of the knife made certain they were completely, irrecoverably dead.
Alkina was far forward in the boat up on the first deck, heading for the control room, when a burst of gunfire cut her down. She jerked as the Needleshock rounds caused her muscles to lock, then turned and fired back spasmodically as she fell. Needles spattered down the passageway in both directions; the ones aimed at the Australian struck her again and again until she lay still, hammered into unconsciousness by electric shocks.
Jill Repeth, still drenched, soapy and wearing nothing but her uniform trousers, stepped out of the cabin where she had waited in ambush, staggering over to stare down at Alkina. Her PW10 wavered over the fallen woman. Damn, it took a lot to put her down. Never shot a Plague carrier with these before. Not very effective.
“Nice look, lass. Never thought I’d see such a lovely sight.” Bitzer leered from the door to the control room down the passageway.
She snarled at him, swaying on her feet with the aftereffects of the drug. “Get a trank for her. She drugged me in the shower.”
“Oh, aye, now there’s a vision, you two in the shower...all right, I’m going.”
“And find the colonel!”
“The colonel is here, Gunny. What happened? She assaulted you?” Nguyen stepped up quietly from behind her.
“She tranked me in the shower. What the hell is going on, sir?”
Nguyen’s lips compressed. “Why don’t you get into uniform. Your nudity is pleasant but distracting. We will find out.” He pulled out a trank of his own and injected Alkina in the neck.
“Right. Meet you in the control room in two, sir.” Repeth bolted off to get on her uniform and gear. Two minutes later she arrived in full combat rig at the command center.
