Chapter 1

The first thing Kat did, on reaching her cabin aboard the CSF Outbound, a Callabrian registered inter-system passenger liner, was flop face-down on her bunk. As much as she enjoyed giving a big send off to scumbags like her last target, the long days of planning, tracking and finally taking the shot had taken a toll on her. She felt as if she could sleep for days!

Groaning loudly, she rolled over on to her back and propped her head on her arms. One more, she thought. One more and I am taking a vacation. Someplace warm, with nice beaches, maybe.

Rising again, she slung her pack onto the bunk and began rummaging. Taking out a small communicator, she flipped it over to the back and removed the battery cover. Sliding the battery pack aside, she deftly disconnected the power lead and reattached it to a secondary port that was nestled in among the wiring loom, almost undetectable unless you were specifically looking. Turning it over again and powering the unit on, she punched in a 15 digit code and watched as the display lit with a faint glow. Turning a full 360degrees, she held the communicator out at arm's length. A muted beep told her the unit was ready and she studied the display again.

This little piece of kit had cost her the entire fee for three targets last year, but it was worth every penny. It looked like a mid-to-high-end personal communicator like those used on almost every civilized planet in this arm of the galaxy. In fact, it did function as a communicator, though it had more power than a unit this size usually boasted.

It also had several other, less common functions. When power was applied to the right circuit, it could both detect, and jam, almost every know form of communication within a twenty-five meter radius. It was very useful for detecting surveillance devices or for blacking out communications when she didn't want to be disturbed. It jammed almost all over-the-air frequencies and could transmit a sustained and targeted white noise pulse at up to a dozen targets simultaneously. A third circuit would put those same pulse transmitters to work as a very effective echolocation device, able to scan through most non-metallic materials and provide a clean, if monochrome, view of what was on the other side.

Using it to see into an adjoining room, or to examine the contents of a package, were very useful functions in her line of work. The echolocation feature also allowed navigation in total darkness. The almost inaudible tones, pitched too high for human hearing, bounced off of surfaces around the unit and returned. The computer in the communicator received those pulses and used them to display an almost perfect picture of its surroundings. The range was limited, but it was intended for sneaking, not sprinting.

Her scan showed three monitoring devices in her cabin. The first two were the ships computer-linked scanners. They allowed the ship to provide a dumbed-down version of a home's artificial intelligence to her passengers. The AI controlled temperature and humidity, lights, sound, video and communications, all triggered by voice command. While it was possible for the ship's crew to listen in on individual cabins, it was unlikely unless she drew their attention in the first place. Since she really was just traveling from point A to point B and had no plans to commit any crimes aboard, it was an unlikely scenario.

The third was a bit more worrisome. There were several Union agencies who knew of her existence and two, in particular, who would be very interested in both seeing what she was up to, and bringing her in for questioning on a whole series of unsolved murders. The more bothersome of the two, but not the most dangerous, was InterSys. A descendent of old Earth's European-based Interpol, they provided a law enforcement arm that could travel freely from system to system, tracking and apprehending criminals. They were non-political and had a reputation for sensitivity to local concerns so they were accepted, if not loved, by almost every system in the Union.

The second, and more worrying agency, was the PTE. The Proscribed Tech Enforcement branch of the central Union government. They were specifically charged with interdicting the shipment, transfer or sale of, and preventing the spread of, proscribed technology. This included, but was not limited to, Military enhancements, Nanotec injectables, all implantable weaponry and, of course, wetware brain implants. Abuse of these kinds of tech had been responsible, at various times, for some of the most heinous crimes in modern history. The PTE folks were zealous in their enforcement of the law. Some would say they were over-zealous. Since Kat had some highly illegal pieces of tech installed in her person, she was doing her best to stay off of their radar.

Using the scanner to pinpoint the signal, she was able to find the bug in just a few seconds. A quick examination allowed her to identify the device as being of local manufacture. Since Barda, the planet she was leaving, was of the emerging tech variety, they didn't have legal access to more advanced technology. They were clever and were learning quickly, but they had light years to go before they had the goods to equal the Union old-timers. Emerging tech worlds were closely watched to prevent the import, or smuggling, of items beyond their ability to manufacture. The idea was to allow the emerging world to develop naturally, without being corrupted by outside technology. It was asinine, of course. What cave man, on learning of the rifle and pistol, would be satisfied with a rock?

Emerging tech or not, she had gotten a kick out of using a rail-gun on this hit. They were effective, but they were also slow to fire, hugely expensive to make and hard to maintain. Most governments toyed with rail guns in portable form, but quickly moved on to more efficient, and less expensive, means of destruction. Getting to use one was a real treat for someone who had a taste for exotic weaponry.

Kat tapped the communicator against her chin, her mind sorting, and discarding, various scenarios. It was possible that her contact on this planet had been compromised. If so, they still hadn't been able to stop the hit. Revenge was always something to think about in this line of work. It could also be someone completely unrelated, attempting to track her back to her client and using local tech to throw her off the trail.

In any case, there was no reason to make the job easier for them. She rummaged in her pack again and brought out an innocuous looking depilatory device, designed to safely and painlessly rid the user of unwanted body hair. A must have for any star-hopping lady after all. It would simply not do to be seen in public with bushy eyebrows.

She grinned as she twisted the selector to the highest output level and aimed it at the bug. A couple of sparks, a thin wisp of smoke and it was a smoldering hunk of slag. This particular device, when opened to the most powerful setting, engaged a second power cell and emptied the entire charge of both cells in a less than a second. The resulting beam was strong enough to melt through a padlock hasp, though of appallingly short duration. The unit would take a couple of hours to recharge, but she doubted she would need it again soon.

Her scans complete, she stored her gear away and headed for the fresher. It would be good to wash the stink of this world off her skin before she headed to the dining room for dinner.

Kat, Kathleen Andrea Mackey, was a petite woman. She was not what one thought of when you hear the word assassin. The holo stars who were cast in roles as the dashing spy in movies were invariable tall, willowy women with large breasts and pouty lips. The men were tall, dashing figures with athletic bodies, a quick wit and a dazzling smile.

Kat was short, with the lean, muscular figure of a gymnast and her strawberry blonde hair was cut in what would have been called, in the military jargon of a hundred years ago, a "high & tight". It was practically shaved on the sides and back, with just enough on top to comb over. She found this the most efficient way to wear her hair since it was easy to hide under a wig and it took almost no time to maintain. She didn't have pouty lips, her breasts were barely a B-cup and she rarely wore makeup. She was able, in the right light, to pass as someone much younger than her 30 years.

Her exercise regimen kept her body tight and fit. The martial arts training she had sought after leaving her home world had hardened an already strong body and stripped away the last of the body fat left from her youth. She continued to train and to pit herself against other disciplines at every opportunity. Though she may have looked like a harmless young lady, she was as deadly with her fists and feet as she was with a sniper rifle.

In the fresher, she set the water to cycle every minute between 45c and 10c. The hot cycle relaxed her tensed up muscles while the cold cycle invigorated her. When she stepped from the fresher during the cold cycle, the pre-warmed towel felt almost sinful against her goose-pimpled skin.

She padded bare back in to her cabin, enjoying the cool flow of air across her skin, and retrieved the money belt she habitually wore under her clothes when on-planet. Selecting a credit wafer from her stash of unregistered currency, she sat herself in front of the console at the small desk unit along one wall. Making sure the vision circuit was turned off, just in case, she accessed the ship's stores, input her measurements and flicked through a sample of the latest fashions on the ships home world, Calabria.

Modern systems were designed for voice access, but she had always felt odd about talking to inanimate objects and still liked to use the optional keyboard for most tasks. Selecting a deep red, off the shoulder dress and matching, low-heeled shoes, she slid the credit wafer into the reader slot and made her purchase.

Credit wafers were funny things. One could obtain unregistered wafers just about anywhere, if they knew where to shop. Most credit was transferred from owner to owner electronically. With each transfer there was a corresponding electronic trail that logged each party. That trail made it much easier to properly tax the populace and to maintain a strong grip on the amount of free credit in the system at any given time.

The so-called "Unregistered" credit wafers were, in fact, identical in most respects to the standard wafers. The one critical difference was that the credit originated on an emerging or declining world whose tech base was insufficient to maintain FLT communications with the Union banking systems. FTL communications were expensive to set up, energy hungry and expensive to maintain. A world that did not have the tech base to maintain an FTL communications infrastructure would be forced to issue and track credit expenditures for extended periods of time. These records would be forwarded to the central Union worlds, under diplomatic seal, in each available transport that made a stop in their system. This necessarily meant a much looser control and long delays between the transfer of credit and the logging of that transfer with headquarters. This delay created an opportunity, for those with the know-how, to float credit wafers that could not easily be traced back to the person using them.