The Tau Ceti Agenda

Kira quickly assessed her attackers and used the 'snowball' rule. She would start with the easiest opponent first and then snowball her way through them one by one, progressively, to the hardest.

Hopefully by then she would figure out a better means of escape and wouldn't have to face the toughest opponent.

She chose the smallest one and attacked her first. It quickly became clear to Kira that the guard wasn't an amateur and was flexible as hell. The woman managed to hook-kick Kira in the back of the head, forcing her to loosen her grip and bite her tongue. The smaller woman pulled free and jumped out of the way so that the other two could step in with more clear lines of attack.

Kira swallowed the salty blood from her tongue and forced the attack, trying to keep the security detail from picking up one of the handguns on the floor. The man and woman in front of her began testing her with front-kicks and punches that Kira either sidestepped or countered with blocks and punches of her own.

Somehow, and she wasn't quite sure how, she had managed to get herself between the two, while letting the smaller woman whom she had first attacked work around behind her. The tactic was probably part of the security team's training—flank and attack from behind when there were superior numbers. Trained tactic or not, it wasn't a situation that she liked being in.

She's getting the drop on you, Kira! Watch your flanks!

I know!

Then do something about it, damnit!

Okay!

Kira had trained most of her life, from adolescence on, in combat encounters. She had nearly two decades of intense hand-to-hand training and years in actual covert ops and combat, and her reflexes were honed like the edge of a Damascus steel blade. But she barely managed to drop her right forearm in time to weaken the blow from a roundhouse kick to the gut. Kira heaved out and backpedaled, while at the same time she took a punch to the side of the head from the man on her right. The room blurred slightly, and Kira saw stars briefly.

Green light, Kira! The guns are open access! Allison exclaimed.

About time.

Kira shook the stars out of her eyes and counterattacked. She dropped her center of gravity, lunging with all her strength backward into the smaller woman behind her. The force of the lunge slammed the woman into the ship's bulkhead, cracking her head against it with a thwack. Kira reached both hands over her right shoulder, grabbing the woman by the neck, ears, and hair, tossing her over her shoulder as she dropped onto her right knee. This put the stunned woman between her and the other two that were pressing the attack and gave her time to scramble across the floor to one of the handguns.

There was a moment where the smaller woman that Kira had just thrown to the floor cleared her mind long enough to see what Kira was doing. And the two of them struggled for control of the weapon briefly. With a knee to the woman's sternum, Kira pulled the gun free.

Unlike the security detail, Kira wasn't concerned with friendly fire at all. She rolled over onto her back, gripped the weapon with both hands, and put a round into each of the guards still standing. Her first shot was dead-on the forehead of the man to her right, blowing out the back of his head and spreading bloody gray matter against the bulkhead. The second shot caught the woman on her left in the neck, stunning her and spraying blood profusely from the wound. Kira put another round in her chest and one each into the other guards on the floor before she turned back to the storage room to finish off the two incapacitated men in there.

No witnesses, she thought.

Too bad for them.

The younger guard in the storage clerk's office was beginning to come around but still couldn't move. Kira looked into his eyes as she raised the weapon and dispatched him. The other man was still out cold, and now he would never wake up.

No witnesses, she thought again.

Kira slinked back to the doorway to check for more soldiers. They would be coming soon, but they weren't yet. The storage clerk's office was pretty deep inside the belly of the battle cruiser, and the hangar was two decks down and more than a hundred meters out from there. That was a long way to go on a military ship without running into soldiers, especially soldiers that were going to be looking for you.

We'd better get out of here, Allison warned.

You think?

Chapter 2

October 31, 2388 AD

Sol System, Earth

Orlando, Florida

Satuday, 5:25 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

'Kudaf, what have you got out there?' Thomas Washington subvocalized over the Secret Service wide-area quantum membrane transmission tactical network. The day was just any other day at the park—literally at the park since the Secret Service had managed to convince Disney World to let the president and the First Family visit the Magic Kingdom hours before it opened to the public. The Secret Service didn't like the idea at all, but President Alexander Moore had been absolutely insistent that he was taking his daughter, Deanna, to see Mickey Mouse while she was still a child, and there wasn't anybody, and that included the Secret Service, who was going to keep him from doing so. Finally, the director of the Department of Homeland Security had put pressure on the amusement park to cooperate with the Secret Service on the issue. Thomas Washington had direct charge of the First Family's security at all times, and from that point of view, the day would be no different than any other day. It truly was a walk in the park, but Thomas had been trained to believe that there was no such thing.

He had been on Mars for many 'typical days,' and that one day when the Separatists decided to perform an all- out attack on Mons City, he just happened to be on the aforementioned planet. That day was, for an armored environment-suit marine, just any other day. So, Thomas had learned from the school of hard knocks that there was