"Good hunting, Nancy, DeathRay." Dee waved to them. Then the pad lit up and they were gone to Mars for a fraction of a second, then through the Oort Cloud facility to the big one at Tau Ceti.
A fraction of a second later they were in the northern mountainous region of the Tharsis continent of Ares, inside a hallway with hardwood floors and lavish interior décor. There were paintings on the walls that Nancy knew were priceless, and there were sculptures, suits of armor, and other artifacts aligned down the hall that were each artifacts of antiquity from human history.
"Look at all this shit." Jack whistled softly.
"Elise is a collector. If it is expensive, she wants two of them. You should see her antique cars." Nancy scanned each direction to get her bearings. "This way."
The two of them slipped through the halls until they came past several suites and then an elevator. The elevator had a stairwell to the right of it. Nancy eased the door to the stairwell open and poked her HVAR around the doorjamb.
"Clear. Come on. They'll be two floors down, in her shipping operations room."
"If you knew that, why didn't we go there?"
"I couldn't be sure I had the coordinates right. We didn't want to teleport into a wall or something. I had measured where we came in before because I was going to fly a bomb in there if I ever got the opportunity. I never got it. But what I did get is her SIF encryption sequence. Even though she changed it, she follows the same algorithm. Allison just cycled through the algorithm until she hit the right key code. Ergo, we're in."
"I see." Jack widened his eyes and tried not to grin. "What is this place, anyway?"
"Bunker, hideout, ski resort, spa, whatever she wants it to be. She has more money and power than God. The only person she answers to is Elle Ahmi herself. They are tight, apparently. I didn't find that out until six years ago, and it nearly got me killed then."
They quickly dropped down the stairs to the door into the operations room. There were no guards standing around that far inside the compound, because nobody could get through the layered defenses and security to that point—unless they had QMT teleport technology and the geospatial coordinate information to circumvent those layers.
Nancy motioned DeathRay forward until they came to the operations room entrance. Inside, they could hear people talking and rushing around. This would be the nerve center for the logistics tail of the Separatist army. Taking out this room and its occupants would stall the Seppies' ability to run their defense. The might of the U.S. fleet had been in-system for more than an hour and was pounding away at the mix of Seppy civilian-turned-military vessels, plus the seven Seppy supercarriers that had returned from Ross 128. The battle up top had become a stalemate. Nancy and Jack were about to change that.
Nancy, I've got a fix on Elise, Allison told her.
Where is she?
You're not going to believe this, but she is on the ski slope.
Skiing?
She's moving up the mountain at about two kilometers per hour.
Ski lift.
Probably, her AIC agreed.
Okay, calculate the jump to get us there as soon as we blow the operations room.
Done.
Wait for my order.
You got it.
"Now, Jack." Nancy motioned to him.
They burst into the room, letting loose nonstop railgun fire until nothing else moved in the room. Then Nancy pulled out an HE pack and armed it.
"Be ready, Jack."
"Like I'm not now," he said.
Now, Allison. Nancy pulled the pin on the HE and dropped it at her feet. They flashed out, and the room exploded. They reappeared atop a snowpeaked mountain behind a ski-lift shack.
"Goddamn, Nancy, you couldn't have found a colder place to go?" Jack laughed.
"Shh. Our target is getting off that lift in about sixty seconds." They hid behind the shack. There was nobody else on the peak or the slopes as far as they could see.
"You're telling me that this lady is going snow skiing while her planet is under attack?"
"She lives in a different world, Jack."
"She must."
"I've got this." Nancy leaned around the corner to see the lift seats coming up the hill. She raised her HVAR and opened the sight link in her DTM view. The targeting X appeared in her vision. She zoomed the scope and put the X right on Elise Tangiers's forehead. She breathed out softly and squeezed the trigger. She could see the back of the woman's head blow out, and then her body slumped forward.
"You got her," Jack said, looking through his sight. "Let's move on."
"Right."
Allison, Mississippi.
Done.
"Dee, you hold the fort down for now," Alexander told his daughter as he, Sehera, Thomas, Jack, and Nancy stepped onto the pad. From the QMT usage that Nancy's AIC had managed to download on their trip to Ares, she had figured out that there had been a QMT to the outer-planet moon pad that they had detected earlier. It had to be Ahmi.
"Okay, Daddy. I don't know why I can't go now, though."
"Because, dear," Sehera told her, "I don't want you around her ever again."
"Don't worry. We'll be back soon, Dee," Alexander reassured his daughter as they flashed out.
They popped into realspace on a small personnel transport QMT pad in the middle of a larger cylindrical-shaped room with a domed roof. The room was mostly transparent and looked right out into space. There was a blue-green Uranus-sized gas giant filling the horizon. There was a red, white, and blue ski mask lying next to a photograph of President Sienna Madira being sworn in on a desk nearby.
"What the hell!" Sehera said at the odd view. Elle Ahmi was sitting in a chair, staring blankly as if in a trance. She wasn't moving at all. "Ahmi! Elle Ahmi!" She poked at her with her railgun rifle.
"Ah, hello, dear," Ahmi's face gained color, and her eyes no longer looked vacant. "I figured this wasn't over with yet."
"It is now." Alexander stepped beside his wife and put the gun to Ahmi's head. "Sweep the place." He motioned to the rest of the team. They spread out and started searching the room.
"It looks clear, sir," Thomas said.
"There's a door over here, but it's locked from the inside," Jack added.
"Oh, Alexander, don't bother. I'm the only one here," Ahmi said. "So, you gonna pull that trigger or what, son?"
"We need to know the leaders of the cells, Elle," Sehera said. Tears started to form in her eyes.
"So, this is it, then. I tell you what you need to know just like that, and then you take me out?"
"Yes, something like that," Alexander told her.