The mercenary pirate Kiva Andur sat in the negotiations room, really the living room of a high penthouse on one of the many high-rise towers of the planet Texas. She had been hired to extract some coordinates from a Ki’lail thug who made residence here on Texas. She didn’t exactly know what they were, but the Captain was going to get well paid for it. By some rich debutante from Ki’lai, she overheard.
She had brought here her own Ki’lail companion to sense deception and for backup, just incase the deal went sour. Just as she was finishing that thought, the door across the room opened and two figures walked out.
The contact, code-named Sirius White, was a male Ki’lail, his three eyes framed by a dark emerald hair. The other figure, a Smuell of indeterminate gender had a deep lavender skin and was wearing what appeared to be armor of some sort, underneath a flowing black robe with an insignia on the chest plate.
“Welcome Ms…” He began.
“Andur,” Kiva replied.
“Ah yes the famous Kiva Andur; feared assassin, most notorious for the incident on Tol’Gil’fa. How many people died that day?”
“It looks like you do your homework,” Kiva remarked dryly.
Suddenly, Tem Path, Kiva’s lie detector sprang to her feet and screamed “It’s a trap!”
”What?—“ Kiva asked.
The walls behind Sirius White abruptly came alive as six hidden panels slid away to reveal armed sentries. Sirius White took the first shot of some sort of strange energy weapon and collapsed to the floor. From Tem’s third eye shot a blinding stream of orange light, which blew the wall to pieces, killing at least five of the dozen or more guards. The remaining guards hoisted their weapons and pink fire lanced out and burned Kiva into ashes. Her ashes appeared to sweep over the whole area and darkness consumed all until Kiva’s eyes abruptly snapped open.
Ridiculous nightmare. That wasn’t how it really happened obviously. It had, in reality gone fairly smoothly, as smooth as things Kiva Andur was involved in, at least. Her companion had been zapped by Sirius White himself, with some sort of strange psionic virus that had caused Tam to suffer for a week before she was eventually destroyed by her own mind. Of course, at that first display of treachery, Kiva had shot him. Thankfully they had gotten away, and Kiva had found a safe place to lie low while White’s lackeys were still searching.
While Tem was at the hospital, she had relayed the info she was able to attain when she had read White’s mind. It seamed to horrify her, and Kiva soon understood why. The coordinates that she was meant to extract were supposedly the location of the legendary starless planet that could destroy civilizations. It was presumed a myth, but if the Captain’s contacts were willing to pay so much for the coordinates….
Kiva had sent several transmissions to her only confidant aboard the Iien Blian, a half-vurkan named Ishori. She was serving as the science officer, but she was a skilled fighter, and probably Kiva’s only real friend. She saved back up copies on hard disks and hid those in the secret blit, a device designed to store matter as energy and convert it back again, surgically implanted in her left thy.
She predicted that her transmissions wouldn’t ever reach the Iien Blian. Captain Cortez didn’t want his location given away to the daucht police.
Kiva suddenly felt a blast of heat and the wall near her gave way. She had only seconds to react. She drilled multiple bullets from her favorite pistol Itchy into her target before she examined it to see what it was. A glance told her it was a humanoid grunt in some sort of power suit, and with her Seiin sensory powers, she could feel more. The wall was suddenly riddled with holes from machine gun fire, and Kiva took the only available escape: the window.
Bad decision! Kiva used her Seiin strength to leap to the building across the street from her apartment. The distinctive hum of an air speeder fishtailing behind her caused Kiva to leap a second time before looking back. When she did look, she discovered a black Corvette with tented windows and narrow cylinders protruding from the grill. Suddenly the cylinders came alive with machine gun fire. It was just before dawn, reflected sunlight lit most of Laredo City.
Kiva took off. She suddenly hated herself much more than ever before for never learning how to fly.
She started through town, jumping off roofs, running along the sides of buildings, skimming narrow ledges and performing all sorts of ki assisted acrobatics. Unfortunately, the speeder stayed behind her, pouring machinegun fire into her general direction, and before long, and another car had joined it in pursuit, and she was beginning to feel fatigued. She leapt over some morning traffic, boosted around the corner, braced for impact. The window that she had slammed into shattered, and Kiva sent an explosion of ki around her to clear the shards of glass that surrounded her. She sprinted across the building, shot out the opposite window and leapt out to continue her flight. In mid-air, she saw one of the cars, the Corvette, round the corner created by the building she just exited. Bringing her guns around, Kiva dialed her guns to maximum power and took careful aim. She squeazed of three rounds from each gun, and the Corvette erupted into a ball of fire. Unfortunately, the remaining speeders were on her again by the time she rounded the next city block.
Kiva heard the single gun on the second speeder charge and fire, and she suddenly felt as if every nerve ending in her body was on fire. She lost concentration and began to fall.
She had managed to slow her descent. At least that is the last thought she had before she landed, and the first when she awoke. The second was "Who am I?" And the third was Daucht Bledit. Then she remembered. The chase.. the fall…
There were several pedestrians now gathered around her, and she heard the slamming of a nearby car door. She tried to set up and it hurt to move. She eventually got to her feet, and found an intact Senarium hypo in a blit attached to her belt. She injected the healing solution into her neck and the puncture was healed by the time she discarded the injection. Senarium was a remarkable healer, although quite fatal to most humanoids in all but the smallest doses. She felt considerably better now, but was still rather week from the fall.
A group of what appeared to be armed hit men appeared amongst the crowing crowd of pedestrians. She assumed attack position. The first hit man fired, and she rolled right and felt an excruciating pain in that shoulder. The pedestrians fled, and Kiva leapt to her feet. Leg sweep. Ki punch. She dogged a second stun bolt. Why stun? Her fist made contact with an enemy face and she felt bone crunch inward, as his skull tore his brain apart. In a minute 12 attackers were reduced to three.
One of the remaining hitmen got a hole drilled through him with a blast of fire from Kiva’s palm. The next was killed instantly when a powerful kick drove him into a nearby forticrete wall and broke his spine in many, many places.
Then she saw a Smuell in body-armor standing on the opposite street corner raise a stun blaster and she dogged with a soaring back flip over the third hitman. In the air, she prepared her favorite attack. The Delayed Fusion Cutter. Two atoms wide, it basically caused all the atoms in its path to fuse with the nearest atom also touched by its energy. Most never saw it coming. The final hitman was like most. The problem was the delay. The Smuell with the stunner aimed again and fired ferociously at the exhausted mercenary, and she went down.
By the time she opened her eyes and saw him, several Ki’lail in tuxedos and two-eye sunglasses were als