Alistair shrugged half-heartedly.
Mitsuru shook her head. She wasn’t about to take the chance that this job would be reassigned to someone else.
Mitsuru had a number of talents. She was a skilled field tactician, a living node on the Etheric network, capable of making strategic decisions on the fly. She was a trained intelligence operative, skilled in counterintelligence and espionage, and a competent field medic. Also, when the mood struck her, she could make an acceptable curry.
But her strength, her heart, had always been here — in the field, with a combat team. She hadn’t felt this good in years, and she hadn’t even had a chance to kill anyone yet. She wasn’t just giving up on the operation, not when her chances at becoming an Auditor could well ride on a positive outcome.
Alistair chuckled and hurried her along, around another corner, in time to watch the target walk into a Thai takeout place across the street from the park. A quick check with the network confirmed that this restaurant was one that he normally frequented. She and Alistair paused to admire the dresses on display at a nearby boutique, discreetly altering their appearance again to avoid suspicion. In the shop window, Mitsuru and Alistair now appeared to be an elderly Asian couple, grey-haired and dressed like tourists.
Mitsuru still felt a bit edgy, but the adrenal rush of a combat operation about to execute had hit her, and washed away most of her nervousness. While they waited for the target to finish buying his lunch, Mitsuru activated her uplink to the network, and accessed the latest probability projections from Analytics, as well as the target’s dossier. She’d read it before the operation, of course, but a quick refresh before things got heavy couldn’t hurt.
His name was Luke Estelle, age unknown, naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from France. An orphan, he’d been activated at puberty and trained at the Academy in operations and intelligence, specializing in an energy manipulation protocol. He’d affiliated with the Hegemony before graduation, and had been recruited by the Terrie cartel as an Operator almost immediately after. He’d acted first as an enforcer, gradually working his way up the ranks to become the Chief Security Officer for the cartel, as well as becoming their top field agent. With his experience, Mitsuru knew it would be a mistake to underestimate him. Still, given that the kill team had three Operators and one Auditor, she didn’t see many probable outcomes that left him alive.
Wait, Mitsuru thought, the last part catching up with her. Not many outcomes?
There hadn’t been any, just hours ago, during operation prep. She accessed her uplink again, and took a good look at the analytical projections and the tangle of probabilities surrounding the event.
Alistair looked at her reflection in the window, obviously irritated by her pestering.
Alistair looked at her for a moment, and then his eyes went distant. Mitsuru knew that he was in telepathic contact with Central, demanding answers. While she was waiting, Mitsuru noticed the target leaving the restaurant, a plastic bag in one hand, headed for the park.
She felt the Isolation Protocol cut them off from the city around them, heavy and definitive, a chill running down her spine. She looked over at Alistair, but his face told her that he had not invoked the field. It was a powerful, suffocating in its intensity. Anyone outside the field suddenly found compelling reasons to walk around it, or to skip their business inside it. Those trapped inside the field simply fell into a sort of trance, eyes open but unseeing.
It was clear that the target hadn’t been expecting the Isolation Protocol, either — he was scanning the streets around him cautiously, his lunch thrown to the sidewalk, a puddle of chili sauce and rice noodles in the gutter next to him. One hand hovered near his coat pocket, which Mitsuru’s observation protocol advised her indicated a firearm, as if she didn’t know from experience that it was unlikely that he kept a bastard sword in his coat pocket.
Alistair was already moving, away from the target, back toward Market Street. He was excited, or nervous; his mental communication was shouted, and it startled her a bit. Alistair was usually unshakable during field ops. Something, Mitsuru knew, had gone very wrong.
Mitsuru quelled her impulse to ask why. She did not need to know. Nor did she bother to respond — Alistair knew she’d understood, or he wouldn’t have gone running off in the direction they came.
For a moment, she wondered what had happened to the rest of team, what was happening behind them that had Alistair so worried. And then, before she took her first step toward the target, she put it all out of her mind.
It took no effort. There was no difficulty. The world became smaller — there was only the environment around her, her target, and her own capabilities, outlined in the luminescent rose lettering of a ballistics protocol. Her hands drifted back of their own accord, and found what they were looking for, nestled in the small of her back.
She moved for the target, who appeared to not yet be able see her. She was running by the third step, trying to close the distance between them. She didn’t bother with two Sig 9mm pistols that were strapped to the small of her back. Her hands closed around the handle of the knife that was sheathed beside them instead.
She’d intended to shoot him originally, of course. But, now that he knew that something was wrong, that plan had gone out the window. Her uplink was active, and through it Analytics relayed information, warning her that subtle atmospheric distortions around the target indicated the presence of a barrier protocol, one more than capable of stopping her handgun rounds long enough for the target to escape.
Auditors did not take unnecessary chances. They eliminated the risks that they could, and then minimized the impact of the risks they deemed unavoidable. And, in this particular scenario, Mitsuru needed to be certain that she could finish the target before he struck, or he might well finish her, or worse, escape. That meant doing it close, close and ugly. The barrier had been designed to absorb the high-energy, low-mass impact of a bullet, so it would be useless against a physical assault.
The knife she clutched was as long as her forearm and broad, with a tapered point and a razor edge. The hasp was wrapped in worn leather, and it fit her hand like it belonged there. She’d been picky, rejecting a number of other knives before settling on this one, the product of a small smithy in rural Arkansas that had produced only a handful of knives before shutting down sometime in the Seventies. It wasn’t much to look at, having lost its sheen decades ago, but the weight and balance were perfect, and Mitsuru had fallen in love with it the first time she’d picked it up.
Mitsuru dispensed with caution, charging across the crowded street, relying on the concealment protocol to hide her from the target. Analytics guessed that she could close to within three meters before the target became aware of her. They were a little off. At five meters, the man started and turned in her direction, pulling a gun from inside his coat pocket.
At four meters, Mitsuru took a wrong step, and her ankle turned.
His pistol was a large, high-caliber chrome plated affair, probably loaded with hollow-point rounds, designed to inflict massive tissue damage. The barrier protocol Gaul had sheathed her in was tough, but it was not up to the task of blocking a bullet that large and fast at such close range. When he spun to face her and pointed it, the barrel of the silver pistol seemed enormous.
Mitsuru almost tumbled into the gutter in front of him, next to his discarded Thai food. For a moment it seemed certain that she would, the pain in her ankle sharp and dismaying, her balance badly skewed and her leg giving way beneath her. For Mitsuru, time slowed, almost froze, while her Etheric implants worked, querying the network’s servers, then processing the downloaded probability matrix, feeding her numbers, likelihoods, odds. She would be too slow, now, even if she didn’t fall. Her calculations were grim and infallible.
The gun discharged, and she could see the bloom of hot gases as they escaped the pistol, fire and vapor. The
