Chapter 3

Kat's training at the Citadel was part of her employment contract with the Agency, an extra-governmental watch dog group that worked outside the law to police the law enforcement establishment and the politicians. She had been making a pretty lucrative living as a free-lance assassin when she had been captured by Minerva, the Sector Commanding Officer and head of the Agency's training academy, the Citadel.

Minerva had made a convincing argument for Kat switching sides and coming to work for the Agency. She had managed to sucker Kat into position while one of her Agents slipped her a mickey, then stuck her in Cryo sleep while she was transferred to a courier ship for the trip to the Citadel. When Kat had been freed from Cryo, Minerva had been sitting, as calm as you please, at Kat's bedside and had offered her a deal she could not refuse. Join us or go back to sleep, never to wake up again.

To be fair, Minerva had made some very valid points, and she had pushed all the right buttons in Kat's psyche. She knew about Kat's past, that she had plotted, planned and carried out the execution of the people who had killed her father, all at the age of fifteen. She knew that Kat chose her assassination targets, only accepting contracts on people who really deserved to get deead in the first place. Changing from someone who was constantly dodging the law to someone who was officially sanctioned was as natural as stepping from the shadows into the light.

Kat's first assignment, thrust on her when she was only half-way through her training, was a rescue missing. Pan, an Agent who was both her friend and her mentor at the Citadel, had been sent to investigate a lead on some pirates that were working in the Delta sector. He had disappeared without a trace and there had been no trained agents in position to help. Kat's reputation as an assassin had given the Agency the perfect cover for her travel to the area, purportedly to accept a contract in a planetary system on the same ship route.

Everything had gone to hell in a hurry. Kat had been trailed from the spaceport, which meant that there was someone on the inside, here at the Agency, who was supplying information to an outside source. They still didn't know who had set the tail on her, or why. Her investigation, initially into the pirate activity, had turned up a shadowy plot involving several mega-corps, huge sector-spanning corporations with more assets than most planetary governments.

Needing help, but with no Agency assets in place, she had contacted one of her trainers at the Citadel, off the records. That contact had given her the name of a retired Union Marine and allowed her to hire mercenaries to help her sneak on to a mining planet in the LeMare system, and into more trouble than she knew.

One of the mercenaries had been a plant, reporting, through intermediaries, to an unknown boss in the mega-corp, and setting up the team she had put together. Kat and Bob had been able to escape and stumbled on an outpost of pirates. They had watched, and waited, until the pirates left and captured the sentries left behind. They had never heard of Pan.

The ship that had brought Kat to Aste had been hiding in orbit, snugged up in the shadow of a sensor satellite, had been monitoring communications and waiting to be called in for pickup. That ship had been in position to observe a ship, a retired Union Navy cruiser, sneak out of orbit, shortly after Kat arrived. The sensor readings had been compared to known ships and Agency assets had been able to identify and track the ship. When Kat, along with a team of Marines from the UNS Liberator had boarded the ship, Pan, despite the injuries that had cost him a leg, had already managed to escape and rig the ship's engines to blow.

Returning to the Citadel felt, strangely enough, like a homecoming for Kat. Since leaving Ovid at seventeen, Kat had rarely spent more than a few days in any one place. Even when she was first starting out, trying to eke out a living before, eventually, turning her hard-won planning skills to the field of assassination, she had rarely stayed in one place long. She was a young girl in an increasingly hostile universe, alone and, most of the time, afraid.

The Citadel had offered her something she had lacked. Stability and a sense of belonging. Though she hadn't grown close to many people, her classmates accepted her without question and her instructors treated her like any other, expecting nothing more than the same diligence they asked of every student. Her rooms were not large or opulent, but she had started to decorate, to make them her own. It was more a home than any place she had been since the state had placed her in a crèche after the death of her parents when she was eight.

Kat was sitting in one of the overstuffed armchairs in her sitting area, feet slung over the arm of the chair, her back against the other, and staring at the wall. Not at the wall, really, but at a framed picture she had hung there a couple days after her return. The frame held a slightly creased but incredibly detained sketch of her face, done by the ex-Marine turned mercenary turned friend. She had hung on to it, not really sure why, throughout her adventure in the LeMare system. Other than a few color choices and a selection of music, it was the first real personal decoration to her apartment.

To Kat, it was a milestone. It was a beginning and, if she was being honest with herself, it felt good.

In the three months since her return, Kat's relationship with Pan had continued to grow. They spent most evenings together, dinner, a movie or a show. Pan had taught her to dance and she had been shocked to realize she really enjoyed the stylized movements so like and yet so unlike her Path training. Some evenings they would stay in, just talking or listening to music, enjoying each other's company. Yet Kat had not let it grow to the next logical step, shying away from any physical relationship, any real intimacy, though she wasn't really sure why.

Her life had been difficult. She had a past that she was not proud of and that she had not shared with anyone, even Pan. She was afraid of his response, of seeing the disgust on his face that mirrored the disgust she felt in her own heart.