Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya by Ronald Wintrick Page A

for his weapon. “You cheated!”
    Tanya's laser was in her hand before his hand even touched the grip of his weapon. She burned out his right eyeball, the ruby red beam spearing out the back of his head to briefly singe the wall behind him. The singe mark disappeared instantly, Tanya noted with detached interest. The trans-metal, she decided. James slowly toppled over and fell to the floor. The crowd in the bar had instantly become silent and attentive when James leapt to his feet, all hoping and praying for bloodshed, and now satisfied they went back to their business as if nothing unusual had occurred.
    No one gave Tanya a second glance as she helped herself to his rings, his watch and a few other valuables he would no longer be in need of, the Kievor blaster among them. She had also taken him for over four thousand Kievor Credits on the table, and that when Kievor Credits were the most valuable currency on the market. She had gotten everything he’d had in his account, and which was now all safely deposited in her own account through Kievor instant transfer throughout the game. Tanya had literally lost track of the number of times she had bluffed him. His impression of her simply would not allow him to believe he was being hustled, until finally there at the end, at least, when his account was empty and Tanya had declined his suggestion that she should loan him an ante.
    Her laugh at that point had not been a pretty sound, but a moment of dawning realization for her new friend. Tanya had time to wonder then, as she found places upon her person to stow her new belongings, what a person might do if they didn't have a ship of their own and lost all their money while on a Kievor Trade Station? She supposed they would just be ejected into space.
    Chapter 22

Tanya didn’t notice when the sma ll ship docked with the Kievor T rade S tation. That wasn’t surprising, because thousands of ships docked and undocked hourly , and Tanya had simply decided it would be impossible to try to watch for signs of pursuit in that manner. In any case, Tanya wasn’t the type to cower and hide from her enemies. She was making lots of new ones here in any case, so a policy of constant situational awareness was in effect. In a place where lizards would walk over you just to pass the time, ripping your guts out with a kick of their clawed foot as they passed as if swatting a fly, and probably with the same thoughtlessness, a human had to be constantly vigilant.
    In fact, it quite simplified matters for Tanya. She had already spent her entire life, the one she could remember, in constant vigilance, constant fear that one of her jobs would come back to haunt her, and this was easier. Here everyone was her enemy. At least in the environs she haunted; hustlers, scam artists, thieves, rapists, murderers and the list went on and on. Not one of whom Tanya would be willing to turn her back on for even a moment. If they wanted her, they were going to have to take her up front and formally. There would be no long-range sniper attack here on the Kievor Trade Station. She had killed thirteen times over the previous Standard month that she had been here, though none had been Organization Operatives.
    She didn't have to look for her prey nor feel guilty about liquidating them afterward. They looked for her, they found her and they tried to hustle her. If she presented herself in public, the job was almost finished, because they came out of the woodwork like cockroaches. They just couldn’t seem to resist her, as she was so obviously a mark.
    Tanya had been expanding her carousing because she was quickly making a name for herself, but the Kievor Trade Station was extensive, to say the least. She could never work her way entirely through it, and if she ever did she could start right back where she had begun in the beginning. So much time would have passed that nobody would remember her.
    Tanya could hardly stop thinking about the jewelry that many of the