The Tau Ceti Agenda

Elle to bite him again and again in soft, slow, nibbles across his chest and up the side of his neck. She bit into him and lingered there, feeling his pulse rush through his carotid artery with her tongue before she continued up to his mouth. Elle tugged with his lower lip between her teeth and then playfully kissed him.

Finally, she wriggled like a cat on top of him and pushed him into her. Elle exhaled with each rhythmic thrust and rocked her hips forward then back. Her body and his bounced against the mattress of the old bed, producing a faint squeaking of the Martian oak posts against the floor. Then and there, that moment, the few rare moments like that that Elle and Scotty had managed over the past few decades, those moments were the most real to each of them and the moments where they felt truly alive. The two would-be, most-wanted terrorists in the known galaxy forgot all about plans to destroy America and revolutions and wars for a fleeting, frolicking moment. They weren't in love, but it was the closest thing either of them could manage under the circumstances.

Elle moaned softly as her breathing quickened and her back tensed. The faint squeaking of the bedposts against the floor grew louder and faster, and the strange lighting from the Jovian, now nearly half-risen, caused their motion to be overemphasized from shadows dancing hysterically across the room. She could sense that Scotty was getting close to climax as well.

'That's it, Scotty,' she sighed. And then she sighed again as her toes curled into the comforter of her bed and she gripped Scotty harder and bit down on his left earlobe.

Ma'am, I've got an urgent alert from the spaceport at Madira Valley Beach, her AIC interrupted just as Scotty let go. His body shook, and he exhaled forcefully three times. With each exhale, he dug his fingernails down Elle's back, leaving light pink scratches in her pale epidermis. Then he relaxed his neck muscles and let his head fall back onto the bed, followed by a final grunt of ecstasy. Elle's DTM virtual sphere kicked alive with alerts and other distracting data.

'Unhh,' she moaned and shivered a final time, and then as if someone had thrown a switch, immediately snapped out of the mood and into Elle Ahmi, Separatist Leader mode. It was as if someone had screamed 'Incoming!' and she had jerked to scrambling for cover and her weapon. Nobody'd better be fucking with my plans!

'Elle . . .'

'Goddamnit!' she cursed, startling Scotty out of the moment and completely destroying the mood for each of them. There was work to be done, but Elle didn't have to like it. Turn the damn lights on. Fuck.

'What the . . . Elle?' Scotty looked at her, bewildered and squinting from the light in his eyes.

'What kind of alert?' she said verbally.

There has been a security incident, and several soldiers and guards have been killed, the AIC reported.

What do you mean security incident?

Vital information to the battle plans has been downloaded: some background information on you, the Oort Cloud facility, and knowledge of the QMT-4 prototype, the AIC replied.

'Shit!' As if the encounter had never happened, Elle was in General Ahmi mode and was standing at her bedside, pulling her uniform out of a drawer near her bed and getting dressed. 'Who, and how, Copernicus? Go speakers for Scotty.'

'Yes, ma'am,' the AIC's voice filled the room. 'There may be more data that she copied, but nobody is certain of that yet. Also, there is no identification on her, but it appears to be a young red-haired woman of average build. My guess is that her physical appearance is under disguise if this is a professional attempt. Somehow the security cameras were overridden, and there is no image of her available. She managed to infiltrate a battle cruiser and hack into the secure network. All of this does suggest a pro. CIA perhaps?'

'Too early to guess. Damn. All right, find her. Alive! We need to know what she knows.' Elle looked at Scotty, who was still lying naked and spent on her bed with a tired and very angry expression. Her sleep cycle would have to wait. 'It's always something.

'We have to go, Scotty,' Elle said as she stormed to the edge of the penthouse toward the door and donned the forever-present red, white, and blue ski mask. She pulled her long black hair into a ponytail through the hole in the back of the mask and slapped the door open, never bothering to look back at her lover. 'Copernicus, have my Lorda troop lifter ready. Come on, Scotty.'

Chapter 6

October 31, 2388 AD

Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha (aka Ares)

Madira Valley Beach Spaceport

Saturday, 5:40 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

Saturday, 1:40 AM, Madira Valley Standard Time

Any luck, Allison? Kira thought to her AIC. After the altercation in the stockroom, she had been having a hard time avoiding interaction with the Seppy battle cruiser's security detachments. The entire ship knew that she was there now, and she had been lying low for the better part of half an hour, trying to come up with a new escape plan. She had heard several announcements over the ship's 1MC intercom for all hands to watch for the intruder. And that wasn't good.

No. The structural integrity fields of the ship's outer hull have all been activated, and I haven't been able to find a way through them yet. Kira knew that Allison was a smart AIC and had trained all her life—ever since her AI family had activated her—to hack codes. It was fun to her, which was part of why she had followed the path to becoming an AIC for an intelligence operative. It was just a matter of time before she would figure a way out of the ship's structural integrity fields (SIFs).

Well, the longer we stay, the less chance we have for getting the hell out of here, Kira urged her. Can we blow a SIF generator somewhere?

I've looked at that, Allison responded. The generators are really deep in the ship. And I'd suspect that is the one direction we should avoid since I'm certain the Seppies have thought of that approach too.