I mean they were like the biggest losers I ever met. There was this party once and Yuri was doing a wallflower act, sitting in the back, plugged into that computer of hers. We all thought she was doing her homework or something. Later we found out anyone who gave her a hard time suddenly had a criminal record for morals violations. No, I can't prove that she was responsible, but do I really need to?
Kei was just as bad but in a different way. She was fine until some one ticked her off and then someone was stumbling away with a black eye or a broken nose.
I still don't know how they got into the clique and why no one ever kicked them out. They must have had something on somebody.
Buffy Vanderbrass, as quoted in:
-Phalasia Drast's Guns, Bad Karma, and Babes (Unauthorized, unreleased, and under litigation Biography of the Lovely Angels.)
"What do you think?" Kei asked as she pulled her hair over her shoulder to tie it off with a black ribbon.
"Clothes or case?" Yuri asked from where she lay on the bed, looking at Kei's back.
"Either, both."
"You look fabulous, that tailor really knows her stuff. I'll probably be fine, you might have some trouble, stay on your toes."
"I don't need a tailor to look good," Kei remarked as she spun on the heel of one of her black pumps to face Yuri. She was wearing a black cocktail dress that left her shoulders bare and clung to her tightly down to her waist where it flared out into a skirt that ended just below her knees. An embroidered seam ran down the back of her black stockings and the pumps had a dull shine on them.
Yuri had to admit, with a tinge of jealousy, that it did things for Kei that were just amazing. It looked like it had been made for her, which was possible considering Tamikia's resources.
"So what do you want in the way of weapons?" Yuri asked.
"I don't know. The smallest pistol I have won't fit into this purse." Kei held the small handbag up. "Yuri be a dear, give me one of those cute little pistols you collect."
"Cute little pistols?" Yuri said slowly. "You are so kind." She slid partway off her bed and reached under it. She came up with a briefcase that she placed on her bed and opened. Inside the case were several pistols, packed neatly in the foam lining. Yuri ran her hands over the guns and then pulled out two.
"Energy or ballistic?" Yuri asked.
"Better go with ballistic. You've never had much luck with energy weapons."
Yuri shrugged her shoulders and put one of the pistols back in the case. She handed the other to Kei.
"Tan Mai. Good choice," Kei said as she took the pistol. She took a magazine from Yuri and slid it into the weapon. She put the pistol, and two more magazines--that Yuri also handed her--into her purse. "Now all I need is something for back up."
"I have a few hold out pistols," Yuri told her.
"No, I have a better idea." Kei smiled.
She walked to the wardrobe where all her clothes were packed and searched through the small chest of drawers.
"Here it is," Kei said, holding up a knife. "Hold this." She tossed the knife to Yuri while keeping the sheath.
Yuri could not help but panic a little as the thorn of steel spun towards her. Her first grab slapped the handle and sent it off on a different tangent. Her next grab caught it but at the expense nick on her thumb.
"That was stupid," Yuri said putting her cut thumb to her mouth.
"Sorry, thought you were more coordinated. Maybe your reflex boosters need a check?"
Yuri stared and the knife in her hand and then at Kei. Very tempting, she thought. She took her thumb from her mouth and saw the bleeding had already stopped; it was a small cut.
Kei took a seat on her bed and pulled the skirt of her dress up around her waist. She unclipped the garter clasps on her left stocking and pushed it down. After strapping the sheath to the inside of her thigh she pulled the stocking over it, being careful not to put a run in it, then snapped the clasps back on. The opening of the sheath was just above the stocking top.
"Here." Yuri handed Kei the knife, hilt first.
"Thanks." Kei took the knife and slid it into the sheath. She stood and let the skirt fall back into place.
"How does it feel?" Yuri asked.
"Fine. Does it show?"
"Turn around." Kei did so and Yuri looked her over. "No, you're good."
"Good. I'm ready then." She picked up her handbag from where it lay on the bed.
"Don't get into too much trouble Kei," Yuri warned.
"We'll see." Kei smiled.
"I might as well see you off. I'm sure that Tamikia will have a few things to tell me." Yuri stood up.
"Look on the bright side." Kei turned to make a final check in the mirror. "This gives you a chance to use those oft neglected maternal instincts of yours." Kei headed towards the door.
"The only thing I have maternal instincts for are fast, sporty vehicles that have outrageous price tags," Yuri said dejectedly as she followed Kei out of the room
Very interesting, Yuri thought as she slipped deeper into the police computer system. She had decided to see what the authorities had uncovered concerning the attempts made on Tamikia and her family. Yuri did not expect much. She was certain the information Tamikia had provided was more in-depth than what the police might have.
Still breaking into the system was good practice.
She had discovered a promising looking back door. She knew that any unguarded path that looked so inviting could not have gone unnoticed by the police computer techs. She had suspected a trap and she had found one.
It was a nasty piece of work. A brain fryer if she ever saw one. A little heavy handed for a police system. It was the sort of thing that could cause all sort of complications were it to kill some stupid kid. Well, not really her problem. She began to circumvent the program.
She was almost through when someone shook her knee. Normally such an occurrence would not have really been a problem. Jacked into the system as she was, physical sensations, unless particularly violent, did not effect her performance. Unfortunately she had not been giving the intrusion her complete attention and had grown a little complacent. Therefore the distraction, as minor as it was, came at the worst time.
The dormant attack program she had been patiently, if inattentively, skirting was suddenly active. She put all her defences on automatic, tossed out enough decoys to keep a hundred programs busy and got ready to punch out. The program, curse its programmer, was not deceived, and made straight for her.
Yuri reacted quickly. She downloaded a heavy spike, made alterations to it on the fly, and plunged it straight into the attacker. Ice pick lobotomy, not very clever nor pretty, but highly effective. The program faltered, only for a few nano-seconds, but Yuri used them well.
She laid down false trails, sleazed her own trail, and then punched out.
Yuri looked down, back in the real world once again. She found Susanne, Tamikia's five-year-old daughter, looking up at her. Yuri looked at her deck; several LEDs were blinking, and the small screen was reporting that eight of her ten defensive shields were corrupted beyond repair.
That had had the potential to be a bad one.
"You wanted something?" Yuri asked Susanne. She was careful to keep her tone even, though a part of her wanted to snap at the girl.
"Are you a pirate?" The five year old asked. She was, Yuri decided, very cute; blonde hair in a ponytail, green eyes with intelligence and curiosity in them. She wore a green dress that matched her eyes; a blue sash around her waist matched the ribbon in her hair.
"No I'm not a pirate, well at least not professionally."
"Why do you wear an eye patch then?"
That confused Yuri for a second until she remembered childhood stories of old Earth's water pirates. These days when she thought of pirates she thought of slick corporate raiders, hackers, and the occasional mercenary unit that dealt in piracy. None of them would wear an eye patch any longer then it took them to get an eye replaced.
"I'm wearing this patch because I did a very stupid thing."
"Huh?" Susanne looked confused.
"Let's just say I did something that seemed like a good idea at the time and it turned out not to be."
"Did it hurt?" Inquisitiveness and empathy warred for dominance in the child's eyes. Yuri could not help but smile.
"Only for a little while." Yuri told her.
Catherine, who had left the entertainment room for drink, came back at that moment. She noticed the flashing lights on Yuri's deck.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Nothing much." Yuri leaned back into the couch.
"Susanne, didn't mom tell you not to be a nuisance?" Catherine asked her little sister.
"I wasn't bothering her," the young girl stated but she sounded if she might start crying.
"She wasn't bothering me," Yuri told Catherine. The last thing she wanted was a bawling five year old to deal with.
"Told you," Susanne said, sounding vindicated.
"But your deck..." Catherine pointed at the deck.
"Nothing that can't easily be put right," Yuri lied. "And I do have some things I have to do." Yuri put the deck on the coffee table and pulled the link cable from her data jack. She reached over and pulled an electronics kit towards her.
"Come on Susanne, let's watch a Vid." Catherine led her sister to the large, flat, vid screen.
Yuri opened the kit and took out several trays. Looking at the contents she wondered what kind of jewellery Tamikia might wear. Diamond studs, she thought after a moment; Tamikia had been wearing diamond studs when she had picked them up and when she had left with Kei. Yuri found a pair and placed them down.
"Mughi," Yuri said to the big cat sitting on the other side of the couch. "I want you to set these for our com frequency." She touched the small box containing the earrings.
Mughi twisted around, one of the tentacles on the side of his head picking up the box, the other scooping up a small electronic tool kit. He jumped off the couch onto the floor where he would be able to work.
The problem with the earrings were that they could only produce a signal for a short time. Yuri had all ready inserted a program into the house computer that would turn every com into a signal relay and booster but that would only work if Tamikia was in the house or on the mansion grounds. Larger earrings would of course solve that problem, but Tamikia did not usually wear larger earrings, and Yuri suspected that she did not, then larger earrings would be commented upon.
That would not do.
Yuri rummaged through the kit until she found what she needed. An old lipstick tube and a signal booster.
Mughi laid the completed earrings on the table and Yuri gave him the booster. With his knowledge of electronic systems, the surprisingly nimble tentacles and his ability to affect electric fields Mughi could do in minutes what would take Yuri an hour.
Yuri considered what other things Tamikia might wear that she could put a panic button in. She could not think of any thing else that would be innocuous and had to hope the earrings would be enough.
She would have liked to rig something up for Susanne but decided the girl might not appreciate the seriousness of it. Catherine was another matter entirely.
"Catherine, come here for a minute," Yuri called to her; pitching her voice to carry over the loud music the girls had playing.
"What?" Catherine asked as she approached Yuri.
"That ring you're wearing, how long have you had it?" Yuri asked her.
"This one." She looked down at the jade set ring. "Only about two weeks, but I've been wearing similar ones for almost eight years."
"Perfect." Yuri smiled. She looked through the kit and took out several rings that were close matches. "Try these on, see if any of them are a good size."
"What are they for?" Catherine asked as she took off her own ring and began trying on the others.
"Panic button. If anything happens you activate it and it gives Kei and myself warning."
"It can't have that much range," Catherine said as she found one that was almost a perfect fit.
Yuri nodded, a little surprised at the girl's astuteness. "That's true, but I have set up relay points. That ring has a range of almost ten kilometres and can broadcast its signal for almost twenty minutes."
"Do those ear rings have the same set up?" Catherine indicated the studs sitting on the table.
"Unfortunately no. Once you go under a certain size the drop off in effectiveness is exponential. It's too bad your mother doesn't go for bigger jewellery. Here let me see the ring."
Catherine took the ring off and dropped it into Yuri's palm.
"To activate this you twist the setting, either way, until you feel a click, then press down on the stone. Mughi," she said to the cat as it approached the table with the tuned booster. "Set this one up." She placed the ring on the table.
Catherine was still not comfortable with the ferocious looking cat and backed away a few steps.
"I guess that's it." Yuri began to pack away the kit. She slid the booster into the lipstick case and placed it beside the earrings.
"Can I ask you something?" Catherine said.
"Sure." Yuri finished putting away her equipment.
"You went to a normal school didn't you?"
"Now that's an interesting question, what exactly do you meant by normal?"
"Well a regular school, the sort most people go to."
"I went to Meizuira University, I suppose you could call it a regular school, in the loosest sort of definition of regular."
"I've gone to a few very exclusive private schools, but mostly I've had private tutors all my life. Shortly before the kidnapping attempts started I told my mother I wanted to go to a regular school."
"To see how the other half lives?" Yuri asked her.
"No. Because I want to have fun."
Yuri laughed. "Well I did have a lot of fun. Probably because of Kei but let's not let her know that."
"So when you were my age what sort of things did you do?" Catherine took a seat on the couch beside Yuri.
"I'm not sure that you want to use my experiences as a measuring stick," Yuri told her, remembering some of the stupid, if not downright illegal, things that she and Kei did.
"Please."
"For the most part just the regular stuff. Skipped classes to do some fun things, all very spontaneous. Hung out with the 'right' people, which meant I spent a lot of time with people did not really like. Hopeless crushes, was on both sides of those, dates, as many memories of some idiot fumbling with my bra as romantic ones." Yuri sighed. "For some reason that seems like a long time ago."
"But it was fun?"
"It was fun. Make some friends, but stay away from the red heads. They're nothing but trouble"
Mughi placed the ring he had tuned on Yuri's knee. Yuri handed it to Catherine.
Kei sneezed.
"Are you alright," the man in front of her asked.
"Just some dust in the air," Kei said, rubbing her nose as she looked about.
She decided she should have let Yuri come instead. God she was bored. The string quartet would have been fine for a funeral but Kei was far from dead. She was not sure she could say the same for the majority of others in the large hall however.
The hall had a high ceiling, white pillars stretched from floor to ceiling along the walls. There were many alcoves, like the one Kei was in, that offered people places to sit. A buffet lined one of the walls. Waiters bearing trays of drinks moved though the crowd. Kei didn't feel like eating and alcohol was off limits. She was so bored.
When she had first arrived she had stayed with Tamikia, who had introduced her as business partner to several groups of people. Kei scanned the crowd discretely for what must have been the hundredth time and picked out Tamikia talking to several older gentlemen.
An hour ago things had gone from excruciatingly boring to incredibly painful. A very annoying man, the very man who had just asked to her well being, who had introduced himself as Thomas Valwrom the third, had decided he was going to make her night. He looked older than her, but he acted younger.
She had tried to loose him several times but had not had much luck. If she did not have to watch Tamikia she would have hidden in the ladies rest room.
He prattled on endlessly about how he was going to inherit his father's fabulously, successful electronics firm in only a few years, and how it would make him very rich. Only if his father was a complete idiot Kei thought disgustedly. Thomas was a fool who would not know a boardroom from his elbow.
She leaned back in her seat and swirled her drink, soda water and lime, lazily. She felt a yawn coming and let it show, hoping the idiot in front of her might take the hint. He did not and was obviously thick as a brick.
Kei looked around the room again, looking for trouble. She saw three new guests enter through the main doors. She watched them, as she had tried to watch every new arrival, just in case. The three new ones seemed to belong, and she might have passed them by if not for one of the men.
He twitched, almost constantly. It might be drugs, or a neurological disease, but it could be the effects of a bad reflex boost that had been pushed to far. Kei had seen it before. When one had their reflexes jazzed too high without the proper controls they tended to react to everything without realizing what they were doing. A constant twitching was the one of the effects.
Kei slid her hand into her purse, wrapping her fingers around the pistol's grip. She watched the two men and the woman as they moved into the room. She had a relatively clear shot at them, and would for about five seconds more she guessed, noting the group of people slowly moving into her field of fire. She began to move. Thomas moved with her, keeping up his senseless prattle. Kei was actually glad for it. It made good camouflage.
The group of three, two men and a woman, moved smoothly, each covering the other's flank. Almost as one they seemed to lock on Tamikia and began moving towards her.
The twitcher reached into his coat. Kei drew her pistol, using Thomas to cover the action, and let him pull his pistol out fully, just to be sure. Then she fired on him.
She put three shots into his head. A tougher shot, but she did not have to worry about armour that way.
The woman had an SMG out--how she had hidden it was a trick Kei would have liked to know. Not having time for aiming, Kei simply fired at centre of mass. If the woman had been wearing armour it did not seem to do her much good.
The last one had his pistol out and was looking around for the source of the attack, momentarily forgetting what had been his primary target. Most unprofessional Kei thought. If he had tried to take Tamikia out there and then he might have succeeded.
Kei fired, putting two shots through his wrist. The pistol fell to the floor. Before it hit she fired twice more, one shot to each knee. Disarmed and alive for questioning. Yuri would be so jealous.
At that moment the people supposed to be providing security for the party seemed to realize what was happening. They didn't take any chances and sprayed the 'would be assassins' with auto fire, chopping up the bodies of the dead and killing the one Kei had hoped to talk to.
Kei noticed Tamikia slip something back into her purse. Hopefully no one had seen she was armed.
The red head put her own weapon back in her purse and took out her 3WA ID. She would be having a nice conversation with planetary police no doubt. She looked up and noticed Thomas staring at her, eyes wide with fear.
"Go away," she told him flatly.
Surprisingly enough he did.
"Should have tried shooting someone earlier," Kei said quietly to herself.
"So what do you think?" Tamikia asked Kei as they entered the mansion. She handed her coat to one of her maids and then quickened her pace to catch up with Kei.
"They were professionals," Kei told her. "Not the best, but good enough. If one of them was still breathing I could tell you more."
"What did the captain say to you?"
"Little of use. A bit of this, a lot of that, a few rather stupid things, and some poorly veiled threats. The normal crap I get from planetary police when they think I have no right being on their balls of rock. Oh, she also promised me that she'd send me all the information their investigations turn up."
"You don't expect much do you?"
"No. It will probably take weeks, if not years for any of the DNA prints to turn up a positive ID, and that's supposing their DNA is registered somewhere. By the time any useful information is found the trail will be cold and useless."
"So you just have to wait until the next attempt is made." Tamikia sighed. "And that's assuming you can get one alive and make them talk."
"If we get our hands on a live body we can make it talk," Kei stated flatly.
"I have a feeling that I'm going to be the bait," Tamikia said as they turned into the family wing. "Can't say that I like the idea."
"Who does? Ask Yuri how she lost her eye." Kei took her pistol from her purse, ejected the magazine and made it safe.
Tamikia stopped in front of the door to the entertainment room. There was noise coming from beyond it. She pushed it open softly and the music grew louder, but not much. She smiled.
"Cute, isn't it." Tamikia pushed the door open wider so Kei could see in.
"Adorable," Kei agreed as she winked at Mughi and put a finger to her lips. She took a camera from her purse. She put it to her eye and pressed the record button.
Catherine was sleeping in front of the vid screen, which had shut itself off. Yuri lay on the couch, looking rather innocent in sleep. Her skirt was tangled around her ankles and her blouse was bunched up below her breasts. Susanne had curled up between the couch back and Yuri and was also asleep.
Yuri was suddenly awake but she did not move. After a moment she relaxed and brushed the hair out of her eyes.
"I'm almost positive I told these kids to go to their rooms," Yuri said.
"Haven't dealt much with children have you." Tamikia gathered Susanne up in her arms. The five year old mumbled sleepily then was quiet again.
"How did you guess?" Yuri yawned.
Tamikia took Susanne out of the room.
"These pictures will look so cute, unlike most of the pictures of you, which are only fit for porn mags." Kei laughed softly as she held up the camera.
"If you don't want to die you'll give me the camera," Yuri told her.
"Don't be ridiculous. They will go straight to 3WA public relations. You know they've been dying to get some nice pictures of us, granted you're half naked but it has an innocent air to it." Kei smiled.
"I swear." Yuri said as she pulled her skirt up and pushed her blouse down.
Tamikia slipped back into the room and woke Catherine. "Good night girls," Tamikia said as she directed her daughter out of the room. "Don't stay up too late." Then she was gone.
"Anything of great interest happen?" Yuri stood and stretched.
"Attempted assassination," Kei told her.
"Body count?"
"Three out of three bad guys dead. I had an unwanted assist on the last one."
"Oh well. The police doing the standard check?"
"Yes."
"Don't expect much?"
"No." Kei walked across the room to the stereo and turned the music off.
"So we wait?" Yuri yawned again and dropped back onto the couch.
"Looks like it." Kei turned to face her.
"Party any fun?"
"Loads," Kei lied, smiling.
"Damn," Yuri said.