We hadn't even made it to the car. As we turned the corner of the building, something caught Mitchell's eye. She had one of her agent's sitting in a nondescript gray hover car parked between some others along the street. When he saw us, he started the car.What Mitchell saw was a man at the café next to it, looking over at the car when it started and then looking around like he expected to see something.
“s**t," Mitchell said. “Change of plans." She made a hard left and directed us down an alley that led behind the same cafe. “Dan," she said as she touched the back of her cheek to activate her comm implant. “We've been made. Head toward the office and see if anyone follows. If you do pick up a tail, call for backup." She told us to stay put, then entered the cafe and grabbed an apron and serving tray. The place was so busy, no one gave her a second look. “Don't worry about me. Have Grady meet me at the fallback location," she ordered Dan and then clicked the comm off. The man she spotted out front of the place watched the gray hover car drive off. Mitchell watched as the man took a picture of her partner's car with his palm computer and then sent a message. He then started to walk the other way.
“Excuse me, Sir, I think you dropped this!" Mitchell called out. The man turned, and she ran up to him with the serving tray in front of her. What he couldn't see was her gun in her other hand under the tray.
“You're mistaken, miss. I didn't lose anything."
She ran right up to him with a big smile on her face like a waitress expecting a big tip. “Yes Sir, you did." The serving tray covered the entire distance between them, and she jammed the muzzle of her laser pistol into his gut. Then in a low voice said. “You so much as flinch I'll pop you right here. Walk down the alley."
She followed him, her gun just inches from his back until they got to Kayla and me and she grabbed him by the collar to direct him to stop walking. Kayla and I had been keeping out of sight behind a shipping crate. When we stepped out from behind it, the man's eyes looked to us and then away, but he had given the acknowledgment that Mitchell was looking for. He knew who we were. She didn't ask him any questions or even look around to make sure there were no witnesses. She just discharged her weapon, and the man went down.
“Oh my God, you killed him!" Kayla exclaimed.
“No, he's just stunned. He'll be out for about twenty minutes. Killing him would have been too much paperwork."
Mitchell's humor was a little dry for Kayla, but I let out a little chuckle at the joke. “Now what?" I asked knowing that our ride was no longer around.
“We have a fallback position a few blocks over where Sgt. Zackle will meet us."
“A few blocks over?" Kayla asked. “Wouldn't it be better for your people to come and get us rather than running out in the open?"
“Corporal Fields who was driving the car should be an effective decoy until we get to the new pick up spot. Zackle will make sure he's not followed before he meets with us. Let's go."
Kayla looked at me with a mix of panic and frustration. I had been letting Captain Mitchell take the lead, and Kayla told me with her eyes that she wanted me to take over. I didn't of course as I was as much out of my element as Kayla was, but I did hold my ground for a moment.
“Captain," I said. “Loop us in. What's the plan?"
She didn't care to stand still and explain herself, but she also couldn't force the both of us, so she complied. “Our fall back is at Kilian Park near the Amusement Complex. There will be a lot of people milling around, and it will be easy to blend in."
“And a lot harder to spot someone who might be following us. I'm not sure I care for this plan," I said. “I think Kayla has a point. We should find a place to lay low and have your people come to us."
“We don't know what they are using to find you two, but staying in one place is a bad idea. The syndicate is more likely to find us before my team can. We move."
Mitchell was more of a soldier than a spy, and her tactics reflected that. She had a point, but it was more of an attempt to maintain control over the situation than put her trust in her team to move quickly enough to save her. My perspective was different. Serving on a starship forced me to rely on everyone to do their jobs to keep us all alive. I considered arguing with her, but again, I was not accustomed to being hunted down like a wild fox. So I nodded and said, “Take the lead, Captain."
The three of us walked quickly out of the alley and down the walkway towards the city center. Being a Saturday, many were out to take advantage of the restaurants and various entertainment venues. I felt a little better as the crowds got thicker the further we went, like a crippled zebra taking cover in the herd. I still felt like the predator was out there, but not as close. The park was a four-acre square made up of grass, trees, walkways and a large fountain in the middle. On the far side was an amusement park full of old world charms like a wooden rollercoaster and flight simulators. We were about to cross the street to move through the park to the rendezvous site on the other side when I saw something.
“Didn't you say we were being picked up by someone other than the first guy?" I asked Mitchell.
“Yes, Corporal Field was ordered to head back to the office and see if he got followed. Sgt. Zackle is meeting us."
“So he wouldn't be driving the same car," I said.
“What?"
“Over there, three o'clock. That's the same gray car with the small scratch on the rear fender, and the landing braces are off on the right side."
Mitchell looked around and activated her comm implant. “Zackle, ETA?" There was no reply. “Zackle do you copy?"
“The sergeant's vehicle broke down, Captain," Dan's voice said over the comm. “He ordered me to circle back around and pick you up."
Mitchell looked like she was going to be sick. She turned off the communicator and said to me, “We're not supposed to change a plan like that. The protocol is to abort and wait for instructions." She turned on the communicator and said, “We might have picked up a tail, I'm not certain, but to be safe we've ducked into the amusement park to shake them. Meet us at the water log ride."
“Copy that," Dan said. We then watched Dan get out of the gray car and head to the front gate of the park. Five men, in various attire who were scattered along the park, ran up to him and joined him. He was clearly giving them instructions, and I saw one of them holding a laser pistol.
“f*****g traitor," Mitchell said under her breath.
Kayla who was standing slightly behind me pulled on my sleeve and asked, “If her guy was the one who was sent after us, then who was the guy she shot at the café?"
“Good question," I said. “Maybe from the other syndicate."
“Probably another agency," Mitchell said as she guided us down another alley, so we could discuss our options.
“What other agency?" I asked.
“Agencies," she said, “Between the organized crime division of the local police, the judicial investigation of the local government, the G.I.A. and the Alliance Bureau of Investigations, not to mention independent investigators hired by various entities and victims with money to spend, there are more people watching the syndicates that can fill a star cruiser.Heaven forbid any of us work together." Her frustration was evident in her voice and her face. She looked tired and somewhat frazzled. “We don't know who to trust here. We need to get off the surface and into a military installation. You've been down here for a month. You have any ideas?"
“Hold on," Kayla said. “The guy who double-crossed you. Wasn't he a soldier? You called him Corporal."
“This is an ongoing investigation. The JAG asked me to take a desk at the local office to head up the efforts here. Dan is an Alliance soldier, but he is local to this world and apparently able to be bought off."
“What's to investigate here?" I asked. “Gerald and his crew never visited this world. The only connection to your investigation is us. Were you using us as bait?"
“Not exactly," Mitchell replied.
“Not Exactly!" Kayla nearly yelled, and I gave her a look pleading for her to keep her voice down.
I looked around to make sure we were still alone and lowered my own voice. “That, you are going to have to explain."
Mitchell thought for a moment, choosing her words. “I had a gut feeling that there was something more than just what your girlfriend witnessed. I couldn't place my finger on it but was able to convince my superiors that I would have a better chance finding out what it was if I stuck around and kept an eye on you two. Considering whatever trouble you two were in, it was going to find you regardless if I was around or not, and I was right."
“Fair enough," I said. “Now how to get a ride off this rock. How are you on credits?"
“I can't use my account now that we know they have an inside man in the office I was working out of. They are probably already trying to track me through my accounts and my… Oh shit."
“Your comm implant," I said having the same thought.
“I'm so stupid," she said reaching down to her shoe and pulling a small knife out of it. She brought it up to her face to try and cut out her implant when I stopped her.
“You don't have to do that," I said as I took the knife and pulled out my palm computer. I used the blade to pop open the back of the device exposing the circuitry. Using the edge of the blade, I forced a connection between the alert function and the speaker. A high-pitched whine came out of it, and I held it up to her face. Suddenly she winced in pain as the implant filled her ears with feedback and then stopped. 'Do you hear any popping or static?" I asked.
“Yes," she said.
I changed the frequency of the sonic pitch. “Tell me when the noise is completely gone and you can't feel any more tingling in your jaw."
She held her hand to her face as it got hot and she could feel her cheek vibrating. After a few moments, she put her hand down and said, “Now it stopped. How did you know how to do that?"
“When I first joined the service, I passed an aptitude test for covert operations. I went to the training school for about six weeks but washed out. So I ended up in maintenance training and assigned to the engineering track. I still remember some of the tricks."
“Why did you wash out?" Kayla asked.
“Let's just say I couldn't pass the midterm," I said. Mitchell looked at me, and I could see that she had heard about the special ops training. The 'mid-term' was a psych test where they put you in a drug-induced hallucination and created a scenario where you have to kill a man. If you can't pull the trigger, you don't pass.
“We've got to move," she said and led us out of the alley and back the way we came. Backtracking would make it harder to track us with DNA-biosensors as we wouldn't be leaving a new trail.After a block, we ducked into a transit station.
“What are we doing?" Kayla asked. “We can't afford a shuttle ticket."
“That's not what I had in mind. I took us towards the employee area and waited for someone who worked there to show up. It didn't take long, and I fed the young man a tale about it being my second day, and I forgot my badge in my locker. He let me in, and when he was out of sight, I opened the door for the girls. From there we went to the locker room and fished out uniform coveralls from the dirty laundry and put them on over our clothes. That took care of what we looked like, but the brown leather purse and my military issue pack stuck out like flashing lights. We had to ditch them. Kayla was not happy about that but grudgingly agreed. Once we blended into the background, I led us to the lower level where the waste and recycling tunnels were. Having worked for the city sanitation department for the past three weeks, I knew my way around the 'slug-catacombs' as the workers called them. Most of the dirty work was done by bots, but when they got stuck or shorted out, techs like me would have to track them down and pull them out. We got around on small one-man capsules that ran through tubes that paralleled the trash and sewage pipes. The network of tubes ran all through the city like a spider web making every building more accessible than driving the streets in a hovercar. There was a maintenance mover available, but it was going to be a tight squeeze. I made sure there wasn't anyone around, and the three of us climbed in, and I set the course for the more affluent part of town."
“What's your idea?" Mitchell asked as she watched me plug in the destination.
“Blending in is good, but we need to be completely ignored."