Chapter 11

Jo had her weapons training and full memory upgrade, so she was ready to join with Jase and Judy in their anti-drug campaign. They had a name and an address, so they planned a visit for that night to the building to see what they had to work with.

This was no penny-ante operation! This was a large building which looked like any other tenement, both outside and inside. With the invisibility armor in operation, they had no qualms about investigating the building. They found that the basement was so much like a bank vault that they were certain that the drugs were stored there. The first two floors were offices, and the top floor was a dormitory for the staff who preferred or needed to live on-site.

They went through the records in the filing cabinets and on the computer hard drives, looking for leads to additional drug rings in this and other cities. They also were trying to discover any information there might be on bulk suppliers and the methods of shipment. They found so much useful information that it would take them years to follow up on all of it. Right now, they just wanted to gather information, they would figure out later what to do with it. They put everything back just the way it had been and discussed their next move.

Judy suggested that they wait around for the boss, Jesus Alvarez, to show up. She thought that they might pick up some more leads by listening in on his operations for a while. If they were careful, they could spend the whole day in his office and he would never know it.

Alvarez turned out to be the world's worst jerk! He spent almost no time managing, instead, he spent his time tormenting female addicts. He would put a minute bag of whatever they were addicted to on his desk where it was painfully obvious. He would then tell his victim that she could have the bag at no charge if she pleased him with a striptease to bare skin and gave him a blow job. Occasionally, he would order a particularly good looking victim to lie down across his desk, and he would rape her before giving her the drug she was ready to die for.

After the third blow job and second rape, Jase said, <I can't take this any longer. His lieutenants must do all the real work. Let's snuff this guy and look in on the real workers.> Receiving no objections from either Judy or Jo, Jase waited until the most recent victim had left. As soon as she was out the door, Jase went up behind Alvarez and hit him in the back of the neck hard enough to shatter several vertebrae. This paralyzed Alvarez, but didn't kill him immediately. It took him about 10 minutes to die of suffocation.

Jase, Judy, and Jo separated and visited the other offices in the building. By the time they had finished, they had learned everything significant there was to know about the current operations of the drug ring. They left no living gang members behind them. Jase wondered if the soul-pool was getting crowded.

The three went to the basement to destroy the drugs in storage and found the vault still locked. Jase used his X-ray vision to find a weak place in the reinforced concrete wall. He hit this place as hard as he could with his balled fist; the third blow punched a hole in the wall. Jase beat on the edges of the hole for a few minutes and enlarged the hole enough that they could get through.

They crawled through the hole in the wall and turned on the lights. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of pounds of drugs were neatly stacked and sorted by type. Judy marveled, "My God! How are we going to destroy all of this?"

Jo answered, "The only way I know of is to burn it. Any other ideas, Jase?"

Jase looked around and whistled. "I think that we will have to use kerosene to get it started, but the stuff should burn by itself, once we get it going.

"Let's wait around and bump off any pushers who show up during the day. Tonight we can bring in a drum of kerosene and burn this shit to the ground."

That afternoon, while Judy and Jo stood guard, Jase broke some more holes in the walls and the ceiling of the basement to provide adequate ventilation. That evening, after dark, Jase visited a fuel oil dealer and "liberated" a drum of kerosene.

He returned to the basement and spread the kerosene around appropriately before lighting it. Once it was burning well, they got out of the building and watched the progress of the fire with their infra red vision from the roof of a building across the street. The interior of the building was completely gutted before somebody noticed and called the fire department. By then, all the fire department could do was make sure that the fire didn't spread.

When they got home, they hit the showers and the pool. They were having fun splashing each other and playing grab ass when Seven showed up. "I have a new assignment for you—it will take all three. It's a very unusual situation in that it is not on the Earth. You'll be meeting some ETs, can all of you handle that?"

Seven got three affirmative nods, so she continued, "It's on a planet with gravity a little higher than you are used to, but by only about 10%. Your augmented strength should have no trouble compensating. The catch is that you will be operating in a chlorine atmosphere, so you can't talk in your usual way. We will provide you with a special communicator for use with the natives. Also, you'll have to pick up some modified armor to block the chlorine atmosphere. Can you leave now? I'll brief you on the assignment after we get to headquarters."

There was the usual blurred vision, and they found themselves standing in the laboratory at GPD. M'rth walked up and said, "I am glad to see you, my friends. We have some new equipment for you. It's been specially treated to withstand the chlorine atmosphere and give you added protection while you are there.

"There is nothing basically different from what you are used to, except for the communicator. It closely resembles the 'throat microphone' used by your military forces. It picks up the muscle contractions of your throat, etc. and translates them into audible sound that other people can hear. You simply talk naturally, but you don't need any air to make the sound. You will hear through your ears as you usually do.

"Please put the armor on so that we can be sure that everything still works the way we expect it to. We'll adjust the microphone once you have it in position."

They were issued all new equipment, but they couldn't see or feel any difference, except for the microphone. This was very helpful, since it meant that they didn't need additional training in its use. Other than an on/off switch, they could ignore the microphone.

Once they were comfortable with their armor and other equipment, Seven took them to a classroom where they put on the metal helmets. This briefed them for their mission and gave them all the background information they would need, including training in the planetary languages.

Their assignment was to be a rescue operation. Two natives of the planet Yeros were being held for ransom by some local criminals. They were hiding in an extensive cave system in the arctic area of Yeros. Normally, the GPD would have paid the ransom to free the captives, then gone in with overwhelming force to kill the kidnappers. However, the ransom in this case was the head and hearts of the primary religious leader and ethical authority of Yeros, so there was no way the GPD was going to pay the ransom. The captives were the daughter and son of the leader in question.

The natives of Yeros were somewhat egg-shaped, with 4 legs at the large end and 4 arms/hands at the other end. They had a head which was remarkably similar in appearance to a grasshopper and mounted at the end of a 2-foot neck. The whole body was covered with green scales. When standing upright, the female was about 8 feet tall and the male was about 4 feet tall. Needless to say, this was a female dominated society.

There were 10-14 female criminals in the gang; the exact number was unknown. This was a politico-religious terrorist group which differed from the majority of the people on Yeros on some rather technical points of belief, but were willing, even eager, to kill for their point of view. They were fanatics who firmly believed that any one with even a slightly differing opinion was an infidel and not worthy of living. Another facet of their faith was that only females had any reasoning ability, and males were useful only for breeding, but a lot of the females on Yeros thought that way.