Sara woke up suddenly, a flash of cold air galvanizing her, though her quick reaction did nothing to save her from a spine of pain that slammed through her from her stomach. Gasping for air, Sara slowly climbed to her feet, one arm wrapped around her midsection as if the pressure could minimize the pain. A few whispered words later, and Sara’s armour enfolded her, allowing her to get home through rooftop hopping. Sara carved a jagged path over the rooftops of the city, moving erratically as the pain from her injuries intensified every time she landed on another rooftop.

Just as Sara reached a small church, her blurred vision picked up something following her. Keeping her right arm hidden, Sara pulled the still-loaded magnum out of its holster, flicking the safety off as she planted her feet on the slanted rooftop of the church. Just as she was about to raise the gun and fire, Sara’s eyesight sharpened, and she recognised the floppy black fedora of her friend. Sighing to herself, Sara began to re-holster her gun, and then heard the deep, rumbling growl of a huge cat behind her.

Looking up, Sara stared into the yellow eyes of the biggest black panther she had seen in a long time, and it was growling at her. Sara slowly finished holstering her gun, and then, with both hands free, she dropped down so her fingertips were touching the shingled roof of the church. The panther seemed to create a coughing roar right before it sprang, but it slammed into the spot where Sara had once been. At the same time as the panther sprang, Sara had slammed her hands downwards, using the wooden roof of the church as a springboard to do a single reverse flip in midair, landing neatly where she wanted to, astride a vent shaft for the tenement that was next to the church.

Sara grimaced as the panther roared at her, leaping over to the flat roof of the tenement without any visible effort. Out of the corner of her eye, Sara noticed CyberSix drop into a fighting stance, and knew that the case of unknown identity might just put her into the fight for her life. Sara, moving slowly, pulled out her two surviving throwing knives, and stood straight, virtually inviting the panther to attack her. The panther did so, charging towards her, and ready to leap, but stopped when a faint swish was followed by a pair of thunks. Looking down, The panther noticed that two knives had planted themselves in its right foreleg, just above and below the elbow.

"Data Seven!" Sara turned towards CyberSix, who had shouted, and cursed a second later as the massive panther took that chance to spring, body slamming Sara off of her perch, and right into the rooftop.

"Get off of me you damn, stinking, CAT!" Sara wasn’t feeling very gracious, and so she took the time to plant one arm cross the cat’s throat, preventing the slavering jaws from getting any closer to her. Looking up at the dark skies above her, and mentally cursing every deity she knew of, Sara pulled her tow throwing knives out of the cat’s leg, causing it to yelp in pain, and then she slammed the flat of her hand against the big cat’s breastbone, knocking it away by a good ten feet.

Sara stood up, noticing that the rents in the front of her armour caused by the cat’s sabre-like claws were already sealing. Thanking her good luck that none of the slashes had managed to break through to her skin, Sara hunched over as she felt the weakened artery give way again, pouring more of her blood into places where it was not supposed to go. Coughing, Sara gagged on a mouthful of blood, nearly choking as she spat it out, splattering the rooftop with the silver-tinged material.

CyberSix hung back, letting Data Seven go at the unknown being, but when she saw the person collapse, coughing and spitting blood, Six shook her head, telling Data Seven to stop his attack. The look on his face, though difficult to translate effectively, basically said "Are you out of your frickin’ mind?"

"Data Seven, trust me. I don’t think one of Von Reichter’s creations could survive the mauling you just gave out, and that person’s not in any shape to attack me anyhow."

Sara, finished with her coughing spree, grimaced as she slowly stood up, hunching over to keep more pressure on the ruptured artery. "Well, we have a common enemy. Now, if you can make sure that the pussy over there will not attack me, I’d like to talk to you."

CyberSix, surprised by the rough and tired voice, looked at Sara, seeing the blood that had dripped out of Sara’s mouth, but didn’t define any details in the dim light. "Who are you?"

Sara ignored the warning growl from the big cat, examining the two daggers she had thrown at Data Seven. Both daggers were split down the middle, rendering them totally useless. "A friend. By the way, I don’t appreciate being ambushed by a cat just because I was standing on the roof of a church. You’d better keep it on a leash, or the next time it’ll have more to worry about than some nicks."

CyberSix looked skeptical, but conceded that Data Seven had attacked without provocation. "Well, okay. What should I call you? I can’t just go out saying ‘hey you’ every time we meet in the middle of the night."

Sara smiled, noticing CyberSix’s wince as her teeth were revealed to be as much a bloody mess as the rest of her. "Call me Knife. Simple, to the point, and you won’t forget it either. By the way, If that cat’s as enhanced as you are, it’d have probably smelled the innards of four technos on my armour. Maybe that’s why it decided to turn me into a chewtoy."

CyberSix nodded, looking at Data Seven, who seemed to blush furiously, turning away from Sara. "And, may I ask why you smell like that?"

Sara chuckled, the sound rattling around in her throat like a dry bone. "Because I just killed almost thirty of the big, green and ugly, as well as another twelve of the little guys. By the way, a plot by the funny little guy in glasses was just put through the meat grinder. Right about now, he should be attending to a boot-shaped bruise across his ass, so he’ll leave you alone for a while.

CyberSix grinned, revelling in the mental image of José having a dark blue boot print on his backside, and most likely cursing up a blue streak. "Okay, you win. I’ll consider you a friend. By the way, what was his plan?"

"To use bounty hunter to try and kill you. When negotiations fell through, he tried to kill them, and I was in the thick of it. It was some pretty good fun too."

With that, Sara straightened up, took three steps backwards, and virtually fell off of the edge of the building. Six rushed to the edge of the building, looking down just in time to see the flickering of the cape as Sara turned the corner, moving quickly. Two minutes later, Sara arrived at her house, which she entered by climbing through her bedroom window.

Her armour deactivated, and all of her gear except her sword tossed into the safe, Sara grabbed a towel, mopping at her face to try and get as much as possible off. Pulling the towel away, Sara looked at the imprint of blood dust and grime that made a fairly good impression of her face, then grimaced. Sighing, she walked back into her room, removing her bloody clothes as she gently probed at the swollen part of her face from where she had been slugged by the teen she had shot.

Grimacing, Sara sighed, flopping backwards onto her bed, where she fell asleep almost instantly.

Sara woke up at almost Seven-Thirty, remembering that it was a Monday, and so she grabbed the phone next to her bed, dialling the number she had memorized less than a week ago. "Hello? Yes, it’s Miss D’Arnise. I’m sorry, but I managed to injure myself, and need to take a day off. I know that sir, but I can’t teach anyone if I’m too ill to stand, much less stay conscious. I’m sorry to hear that sir, but I’ll try to make it in tomorrow. By the way, thank you for your understanding."

Sara hung up, sighing in relief, then fell back onto her bed, muttering under her breath. *I don’t know what’s happening to me! A fight like that, two years ago, and I wouldn’t have broken a sweat! Now, I can barely walk. Why am I suffering like this?* The questions continued to move around inside Sara’s head until she finally fell asleep again.

Adrian and Lucas were walking through the yard, heading towards the open-air café that they usually terrorized during lunch, and they were talking very animatedly about something. Lucas’s voice, loud already, carried out over the yard, distracting some of the younger students. "Look, I don’t care where she is, or even that Tilman said that she had managed to hurt herself! When I knew her, she was about as accident prone as Doctor Zack is, and to my knowledge, he hasn’t had any sort of accident at all, since someone put crazy glue in his coat pockets."

Adrian smiled, shaking his head. "Look Lucas. I think she’d be here if she could, and if not, she’ll have a lot of explaining to do. Tilman’s giving her the benefit of the doubt, so if she’s gypping him, she’ll be in a pile up to her neck. Besides, look at the bright side. You’re not getting tormented by having your car turned into a potato cannon, or suffering from a shaving cream pie from Hazel. Besides, by all rights, I should be the one who’s angry. Tilman snagged me to sub for the bio class, and with Sara being only halfway through her notes on the revisions, I really didn’t have anything for the students to do."

Lucas chuckled, then turned around and watched as Hazel and Erin finished taping a picture of the school yard at night over the principal’s window. "Erin! What are you doing?"

Erin grinned and waved, brandishing a burlap sack that seemed to be trying to move of its own accord. "Ya really wanna know Lucas? I’m not telling though." Erin grinned, then took Hazel along with her, bot of the teens picking up another five sacks, all of which seemed to be moving to some degree or another.

As Lucas turned and began to see what the two girls were up to, Adrain smiled and shook his head. "Leave them be Lucas. They won’t blow up the tech wing, or even get close to the damage you do to the chem room on a daily basis. They’ll probably put a ferret or two in Tilman’s car, just to shred the seats. Come on, let’s get some lunch."

Dr. Zack was sitting in an open-air Café near the school, studying a vial of silvery-red fluid that he had placed on the table in front of him. As he focussed on the odd substance, he flipped to a sketch of what appeared to be a miniature bathyscape and started to draw another, slightly different version underneath the original. Soon he had finished, and, putting the sketch pad away, he massaged the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a few moments. Sighing to himself as he felt a pounding headache begin to manifest between his temples, Dr. Zack took enough time to take a sip of the sugary drink in front of him.

"Hello Tony. How are you today?" Dr. Zack looked up at Adrian, who was pulling a seat out so he could sit across from him. Dr. Zack smiled and stopped massaging his nose, knowing that his headache was not going to go away for a little while.

"Not too badly, considering. You?" Adrian smiled, shaking his head.

"Pretty good, all things considered." Adrian leaned in closer to Dr. Zack after sitting down, and started speaking in a low voice.

"Last night, I had an interesting run-in with... something. The being was definitely a woman, but the voice was extremely rough, probably from injuries, and her body was covered with what looked like metallic scales."

Dr. Zack, his interest piqued by the mention of another unique being wandering the city, looked at Adrian, who shrugged."Wait a second. The person’s body was covered by scales? What did they look like?"

"It wasn’t exactly a brief glimpse, but considering that she and Data Seven were working each other over fairly well wasn’t exactly conductive of good observation."

Dr. Zack chuckled, as he could well imagine the types of furballs the big panther had gotten into, mainly due to the fact that he had been a not-very willing participant in one such fight. Adrian continued after Dr. Zack stopped chuckling, smiling ruefully. "Anyhow, the scales seemed to be more of a bodysuit than anything, but they acted more like a living being than anything inorganic. I even saw them seal several rents that had been opened up by Data. Maybe it’s a symbiotic lifeform?"

Dr. Zack thought for a moment, and then discarded that idea. "No. An engineered symbiotic form would require technology a few thousand years in advance of our current level. I think it’s probably a hyper-advanced program controlling some form of defensive measure, but who could have ever created something like that is out of my experience or knowledge.

Adrian nodded, thinking for a few seconds. "Well, one thing that confused me is that person’s statements after she fought Data to a standstill. She said that she’s a friend, which I doubt, but she also said that not only did she break up a plot by Jose to use bounty hunters against me, but she said that she was right in the thick of it."

Dr. Zack nodded, thinking again. "Well, either she’s one of Von Reichter’s creations, which I personally doubt, as his knowledge of biotechnology might not be able to create something like what you described. However, she might be a bounty hunter. Did she give you a name?"

Adrian opened up his carton of milk, nodding. "Yes. She said to call her Knife. I don’t know if that helps you, but you’d be a better judge of that."

Dr. Zack nodded, pulling out the sketch pad and scribbling down the information. "I’ll take a look through some of the internet contacts for any information, but, right now, I’d be more concerned about our absentee teacher. These sketches were made approximately two days apart, and they show a definite change in the physical structure in the nanomachines."

Dr. Zack showed the two sketches to Adrian, who raised an eyebrow in confusion. "I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I have minimal knowledge about higher technology, and am currently drawing a blank with this information. So, what’s the difference mean?"

Dr. Zack frowned, and took another sip of his drink before retrieving the sketchbook from his friend. "That means, simply, that our friend’s ‘enhancements’ are not only being upgraded, but they are quite capable of changing to almost anything right now. Remember when I showed you my production line? And I explained why I did not create diamonds in favour of rubies?"

Adrian nodded, grimacing. Dr. Zack tapped the images and nodded. "That’s right. If someone somehow hacked into the programs for those things, much of this side of the world could become a single giant diamond. That’s how bad it is right now."

Adrian grimaced, and finished off his lunch. "Well, I think we’d better keep some tabs on Sara, otherwise this will escalate into something that could change the world more than Hiroshima did."

Dr. Zack nodded, stood up after finishing his drink, and put the vial of blood into his coat pocket, wondering if he should destroy it.

Sara woke up in time to see the moon slowly reveal its face from behind some clouds, though laying flat on her back wasn’t very conductive to her observing much of anything as she tried and failed to sit upright. Gently probing the areas where she had been hit in the massive melee she had participated in, Sara was unsurprised to find that the bruises on her arms, legs and upper torso were gone, having healed while she had slept.

However as soon as she touched her abdomen, Sara felt the hot spine of pain lance through her, and gasped. Ignoring the sudden and debilitating agony, Sara carefully probed the discoloured area running along one rib, noting where the artery had ruptured by the uncomfortable softness of one part of the rib. Sighing to herself, and muttering an impressive array of swear words, most of which could have been directly derived from bodily functions, she managed to somehow attain an upright position. Wobbling slightly, Sara walked downstairs, nearly falling a few times, but she made it to the kitchen without mishap.

There, instead of eating anything, Sara decided on a drink to try and rehydrate herself, mainly in order to alleviate the nausea and strain of having lost nearly half a pint of blood. The drink didn’t help too much, as Sara was parched, eventually taking half an hour to drink nearly a litre of water, much of which was laced with her supply of protein supplements. Disgusted by the taste, Sara grimaced and decided to make a few calls.

The first call was simple, as it was a scheduling call to see if she could get an appointment with the hospital’s hematologist. The second call was a bit more complicated, as Sara called up Dr. Zack. It took almost ten rings for the call to go through, but it did, which was a good point in Sara’s book.

"Hello?"

Sara smiled to herself as she recognised Dr. Zack’s voice, even through the distortion in the phone line. "Is this Dr. Zack?"

A slight pause, then a response. "Yes. What can I do for you?"

Sara smiled grimly, knowing the inevitable verbal flack she would have to endure if any of her friends found out about her nocturnal habits."It’s Sara here. I needed someone to bounce an idea off of, and you’re as good a candidate as any. Care to listen for a minute or three?"

Dr. Zack chuckled, the sound carrying easily through the phone. "Ah, the impertinence of youth. I have some time free, so why don’t you visit? You might at least get some fruit tea out of the conversation."

Sara was about to agree when her stomach reminded her of its condition with a sharp stab. "Well, I’m sorry, but I have to decline your invitation, at least for a day or two. I fell yesterday, and managed to hurt myself badly enough that I’ve pretty much been in the equivalent of a healing coma all day."

Dr. Zack paused, obviously thinking about what Sara had just said. "Well, that explains why you were not at the school today. By the way, you might want to patch things up with Adrian the next time you see him. Tilman had decided to use him as the bio class sub, and he wasn’t too pleased with the antics of some of the students."

Sara chuckled to herself, just imagining the look on Adrian’s face when he found out just how rowdy some of the students actually were. "Yeah, I think I should. However, I really don’t think that I can go anywhere until at least tomorrow, so can we postpone our conversation for at little while? Say, tomorrow, around this time?"

"Hmm. Well, If you think you’re up to snuff, I doubt that I could stop you. So, tomorrow, about eight. I’ll meet you here then."

"Thank you Dr. Zack. I’ll be there."

"You’re welcome Sara. See you soon."

Sara hung up and stretched her arms behind her back, relaxing her tense muscles, but stopped quickly when she felt a ligament loosen from its mooring in her right shoulder. *Dammit! I’ve always had the ligament problem, but it seems to be getting worse.* Sighing, Sara slowly flexed her shoulder around the range of motion, feeling the loose ligament’s reactions to each as it began to tighten up again. Still tired and sore, Sara went back upstairs and fell asleep as soon as she hit the pillow.

Dr. Zack hung up the telephone after his conversation with Sara, and mulled over the possible meanings of her call. "Now, why would she want to bounce and idea off of me? She has more knowledge about biology and organ system interactions, but I might know more about her nanotech upgrades. Maybe she was hurt through that, but how?"

Dr. Zack lit his pipe and puffed away for a few minutes, thinking on how that could work, and then remembered something he had seen on the latest sketch of the nanomachines from the blood sample he had. "That’s it! The current models didn’t have any EM shielding! If Sara was near any powerful source of electromagnetic radiation, many of the robots would have their programs wiped, rendering them useless. But how could that happen? Sara’s bones are non-magnetic, and they wouldn’t support a magnetic charge wave powerful enough to create an EM pulse in the first place."

Dr. Zack sighed to himself, scribbling notes as he thought about all possible variations on how the effect could work, and eventually filling two pages of notes. Muttering to himself, he then decided to check out the information Adrian had given him on the newest player in town. He put out his pipe, tapping the ashes out into the ashtray next to his favourite chair, and then went into his basement laboratory.

After checking on his production facility, which was currently producing about thirty metres of spider webbing per hour, not to mention the synthetic ruby production line had another three the size of his thumb, ready to be sold for the usual profit from the jeweller’s syndicate he had so graciously helped expand with the above-mentioned rubies.

Dr. Zack then walked over to the computer he was currently using for research, as the dozen other ones were all running separate and often disparate research programs about things that have interested him, with a good-sized server farm running a discreet and thorough molecular study of sustenance. Checking the status of the molecular study, which was working slowly, but constantly, he then logged onto the internet. Dr. Zack then activated several clandestine search engines that had built-in hacking systems, most of which were direct thanks from Erin for letting her empty his pantry of everything even remotely sweet. He then searched for ‘Knife’ under the criteria of news, rumours, and bounty hunters.

The responses were in the thousands, and instead of searching through each one by hand, he activated a sniffer program called, bluntly enough, ‘bloodhound’, which sniffed out all the sites that had specific mention of the name, bounty hunting, and dangerous locations. Eventually, the bloodhound program found an online newspaper that had archived old articles, including a three-part story on a series of grisly murders, all of which had been connected to a bounty hunter called the ‘Knife’

Apparently, the hunter had entered all of the victim’s homes without alerting anyone, and invariably there was no sign of forced entry. However, the insides of the houses were invariably bloodbaths, as whomever had entered the building left no survivors, most of whom were hacked open and desiccated, as if the victims had been exposed to a desert sandstorm for several months. The one odd thing is that there was never any blood on the walls, ceiling or floor, as if the corpses had been completely drained of all their vital fluids.

Dr. Zack dismissed the claims as sensationalism, but noticed and downloaded a grainy photo, devoting two of his computers to cleaning and refining the image. He then jumped to another site, this one being the International Bounty Hunter’s Society, which was reputed to have more than one million registered bounty hunters. There, he searched for the name, and found several matches. Three were C rank, the lowest rank on the site, two more were B rank, three after that were A rank, and only one name was S ranked, being considered the best of the best.

Opening a new window and doing a direct search on all the S ranked hunters in the world, Dr. Zack found out that there were possibly twenty-five hunters with that rank. He then looked at the criteria to meeting S rank, and smiled. The official statement was "The same as achieving A rank, S rank is just one step further. In order to qualify, a hunter must have a 95% success rate, and a weapons rating of at least 87%. Only the best of the best have ever managed to qualify, and then only one out of every ten actually makes it through the testing grounds to claim the ranking. Our current top-ranked S-class hunter is not only the only hunter to have achieved a perfect success rate, but is also the only S-class hunter who has no military training."

Dr. Zack half-expected the spiel to go on, but all he found was a link to a hunter’s bio, which he checked out. As the screen loaded, Dr. Zack found himself uttering "Jackpot."

On the screen, he was looking at a very good picture of a woman, covered in a dark purple bodysuit which looked like a full-body suit of scale mail. Her face was obscured by more of the armour, revealing only her cerulean eyes and her dark red hair, which cascaded down past the woman’s shoulders in a series of complex braids. Though the person was wearing a cape, covering her arms and shoulders, Dr. Zack noticed a pair of guns holstered low on her hips, a small, black pouch, resting on her right hip, and a knife that seemed to be protruding from the person’s right boot. Over her left shoulder was the hilt of a sword, and the gem in the pommel seemed to be almost eye-like as it reflected the light.

Dr. Zack looked at the bio information underneath the picture, and his eyes widened as he looked through the long list. "Mein Gott! This list is huge! And all of these are missions? Amazing!" He perused the list, finding almost two hundred names, and the type of mission next to the location of the mission. Pausing and rereading the list, Dr. Zack smiled as he realized something that could make his life a lot easier.

"Huh. Over two hundred missions, and only three of them were assassinations. Looks like the rest were escort missions or search and rescue, which puts this person right in the middle of the possible ally list. That’s odd. Disclaimer here says that she doesn’t take jobs in North America. I wonder why?" Going back to the top page in the series, Dr. Zack set a bookmark on the page, planning on perusing the entire database when he had the time.

José swore liberally, picking at the bandages covering his face, arms, and chest, but he really started swearing when he swivelled his chair around too quickly, making one edge of the chair slam into his heavy desk, sending a vibration through the chair and into his extremely sore ass. The source of his pain was not that he had been sent, face-first, through a plate-glass window, but the almost perfectly resolved bootprint that had taken up residence upon his left buttock.

The medical technos, during the treatment of his other injuries, had taken one look at the print on his posterior, and decided to plaster it so they could send the resulting cast to forensics for examination. José would have approved at the time, but the technos, either out of negligence, haste, or simple malicious glee, forgot to give him a local anaesthetic before they plastered his posterior, and so when they pulled off the set plaster, it felt to him that all the skin on his backside was being pulled off with it.

As he cursed, one person walked into the room, escorted by Tiny, who had managed to crush a few hunters that had managed to get outside. As a result, Tiny’s sneakers were pretty rank, and getting worse the longer he wore them. However, his attention was on the techno, who had taken charge of the situation during his flight, and had personally tallied three other hunters. Jess, aka. Techno 2274, was still showing the effects of the fight though. Her hair, once long and bright blonde, was now much shorter, and darkened, having shrivelled from the heat of a chemical explosion that she had been too close to. Jess’ left arm had been broken when the stack of crates had fallen on her, and her gimped leg was still in a brace, though it had held up better than the previous time she had been shot at.

Jess saluted with her right arm, but remained standing instead of obeying José’s official directive to have everyone talking to him sit on the floor. "Why are you not sitting? You know that it is an official directive."

Jess smiled, revealing that her teeth were still even, although her face was still slightly reddened from the flash burn she had been subjected to. "Well, it might have failed to cross your mind that I cannot sit on the floor, just as it is nearly impossible for you to sit down right now. By the way, all of us at the weapons research division chipped in and bought you something that might help you."

"What? A new gun, perhaps?" José was positively drooling as Jess walked towards his desk, pulling something out from behind her back. The look on José’s face dropped like a rock when Jess presented him with a donut-shaped inflatable pillow.

"You sit on it. Just plant the sore spot in the hole, and it’ll hurt less." Jess grinned, and then prudently got out of the way of the hurled ashtray, which smashed a small hole in the far wall.

"Very fucking funny. Keep your prank gifts to yourself, or I’ll get you to remain on perimeter duty for a good year. By the way, what were the losses we took from that damn hellbitch that kicked me?"

Jess frowned, mentally ticking off numbers. "Fifteen technos, all from the weapons specialist section. Twenty-two Fixed Ideas, all armed. Ten injured technos, including one amputated arm. Three injured Ideas, including one without legs."

José snorted, then waved his hand. "Shoot the legless one. Recycle his sustenance into the generators. Now, as you were saying?"

Jess swallowed, and continued. "Finally, there are your own injuries, which, at the worst, are superficial, and M-17 is still in critical condition. Her injuries are virtually a shopping list for surgery. In order, from feet up, M-17 is suffering from three bones broken in her right foot, as well as a damaged tendon, several superficial bruises on her thighs, and two bullet wounds in the lower abdomen. The bullet wounds are pretty vicious, actually. The first bullet was a clean shot, in and out, but it shredded a ten-foot length of her small intestine and destroyed her right kidney."

"The second bullet was messier. It travelled at an upwards angle, missing the intestines, but punching a hole through part of the pancreas and puncturing the bottom lobe of the left lung. The exit of that bullet also broke two of her ribs, and sent her into catastrophic organ shock. If we were half an hour late, she’d be dead. M-17 also has a deep laceration running the length of her left forearm, and with the muscular damage, some of the medics are debating installing a cybernetic brace to allow her to retain complete mobility. Finally, she has a severe concussion, caused when she was thrown into that stack of crates with me."

José listened to the entire list of injuries, mentally using every swear word he possibly could to describe The Knife. "That bitch is going to die. You hear me? I don’t care how you do it, but kill her! I want to dine on platters made from her bones, and drink from a cup made out of her skull!" José’s voice changed slightly, becoming wheedling for a few seconds.

"Jess, you’re the one to do it. You know what she has, and now you have free reign to do what you wanted. Go out there and kill her. By the way, I’m assigning M-17 to you as soon as she recovers."

Jess bowed, mentally cursing at José. *Gee, thanks for the suicide mission. Now, if you gave me a gun capable of firing hypersonic armour-piercing slugs, then I’d thank you for it. I wonder what the master was thinking when he created you. You’re the failure of the family.*

"Sir?"

A click of a golf ball being hit by a solid gold putter echoed through the room first. "What? I’m busy right now, and I don’t like being disturbed."

"Yes, you do need a bit more practice on your golf game."

"Do you want me to show you how I get rid of pains in my ass? It involves a baseball bat and your skull. Smartass."

The response was faster than normal, but still intelligible. "Yes sir. The charge wave was confirmed, but we’ve had a setback."

Another click, and a rattle, followed by mild clapping from the open door. "Who got killed this time?"

"The executive officer of our spec-ops."

"WHAT!?!"

"He was practising with the new 2 millimetre gauss weapons when the capacitor in the rifle overloaded. The explosion took his head off, along with most of his right side. The medtechs looked at the mess less than an hour ago, and said that there’s no chance of nano-regeneration."

"Damn. Well, the only successful example of nanoregeneration is in Meridiana, and we need that information. How long will it take for the team to get down there?"

"The team will be in Meridiana in six months."

"That long? She may escape, and if she does, you’re going to have a third nostril."

"As far as we know, she doesn’t know about the satellite scans that picked her up, unless her skills at picking off traces are better than we thought. I doubt she thought that we’d have satellites searching for her and her alone."

"She’s the best, but she isn’t good enough to pick off satellites. Everything else on schedule?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. You’re going with the team to find and retrieve her."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You were her company liaison when she worked here, and she may still have that connection. That might keep her from putting a bullet in her head when she sees you. Just get your sidearms skills up to spec before you go. Now, get out. You ruined my putt, so if I see you again before she’s back, I’ll take this club to your head."

"Yes sir. I’ll see her placed in your hands before eight months have passed by."

A laugh echoed through the room. "You said that after she killed all the slavers that had contracted us for reconnaissance. It’s been almost five years. Remember, this information is top-secret. If it’s leaked to anyone, you know what will happen."

"Yes, I heard about the eunuch incident. By the way, did he ever find out where his right one went?"

A chuckle. "Yes he did. All over the far wall, by the light switch."

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