But the elevators were around a bend in the corridor, and she flowed down the hall like a spirit, riding the tick's exaltation. The ability to ride the tick was one of the main drop commando requirements. So was a high resistance to all forms of addiction, but no one could avoid the tick's sense of godlike omnipotence-nor the violent, tearing nausea when she finally came down again. Indeed, Alicia suspected the medics deliberately enhanced that side effect to help discourage the commandos from over-indulging.
She stepped around the bend, and the guard looked up. She smiled, and he smiled back slowly, so slowly. But then his smile changed as he recognized the precise, gliding movement that turned simply walking into an exquisitely choreographed dance.
His hand started for his stunner, and Alicia wanted to laugh in pure exultation. He was too far away to reach before the stunner cleared its holster, but Old Speedy wasn't racing through his veins. Though he got the stunner up before she reached him, he didn't have time to reset its power.
The green beam struck her dead on-with absolutely no result. The neural shields built into drop commando augmentation could resist even nerve disrupter fire, to a point, and a stunner blast which would have downed an elephant or a direcat had no effect at all on her.
He really was young, she thought tolerantly as her hands started forward. Perhaps he'd been confused by the fact that he knew her augmentation-including the shields-had been disabled. On the other hand, he'd obviously recognized tick mode when he saw it, which indicated her augmentation had been reactivated. Except, of course, that he hadn't had time to think. If he had, he would have gone for her hand-to-hand from the start. He probably couldn't stop her that way, either, she reflected as her first lightning-fast blow drifted towards him, but he might have lasted long enough to sound the alarm.
They'd never know about that now. Her floating hand smacked precisely behind his ear, and she spun him like a limp, toffee-stuffed mannequin. Her fingers sought the pressure points with scientific skill, and he went down in a boneless heap before his own augmentation could spin up to stop it. Best of all, he'd recognized her; he knew she wasn't going to try to capture or interrogate him, which in turn, made his automatic protocols a dead letter.
Alicia tugged him into the elevator and closed the doors, wondering where they were supposed to go now.
"Down," a clear voice said. "There is a vehicle in the parking garage. I reserved it for you this morning."
"I hope you know what we're doing, Lady."
"Oh, I do, indeed," Tisiphone purred, and Alicia punched the button for the sub-basement garage. The trip seemed to take forever to her tick-enhanced time sense, and she wondered what she would do if they were stopped along the way by another passenger. They weren't-no doubt because it was well after local midnight-and the doors slid open at last. Alicia looked thoughtfully down at the unconscious guard and removed the stunner from his nerveless fingers. She reset it and gave him a careful shot that would keep him under for hours, then hit the emergency stop button, locking the car in place.
"All right, where's this vehicle?"
"Stall one-seven-four. To your right, Little One."
Alicia nodded and jogged briskly down the lines of stalls. Most were empty, and the vehicles she saw were mainly civilian, with only an occasional military or governmental ground car or skimmer-until she reached the appointed slot and blinked at the lean, lethal-looking recon skimmer in it.
"Very impressive," she thought, glancing at the fuselage markings of a rear admiral as she popped the hatch, "but where are we going?"
"Jefferson Field, Pad Alpha Six."
"A shuttle pad? Just what are we up to here?"
"We are leaving Soissons, Little One." Again there was a mental chuckle-almost a giggle, if the grim and purposeful Fury could have produced such a thing-and Alicia sighed with resignation. Tisiphone seemed to know what she was doing, though it would have been nice if she'd bothered with a mission brief. They were going to have to have a little discussion about this sort of thing, she reflected as she brought the skimmer's counter-gravity to life, lifted it twenty centimeters from the garage floor, and sent it up the ramp at a sedate speed, but even through the exhilaration of the tick she felt a deeper, sharper stab of pleasure as the star-strewn sky of Soissons gleamed clear and clean above her. Out. Free. Something of Tisiphone's eagerness touched her, like the joy of the hawk in the moment it tucked its wings to stoop upon its prey, and she took the skimmer into the night.
The Fleet skimmer's com panel whispered with routine messages as Alicia slid through the darkness towards the brightly illuminated perimeter of Jefferson Field, and she felt herself relaxing within the cocoon of the tick. She knew relaxation was dangerous, particularly since she still had no idea what Tisiphone intended, but she was on a sort of auto-pilot.
It was disturbingly unlike her. A strange fatalism had replaced her normal, sharp thoughts at such times, and she disliked it, yet it was oddly seductive. She tried to resist it, but her steel had turned to something that bent and flexed, and a part of her wondered how Tisiphone had done it. For one thing was crystal clear: the Fury was in the pilot's seat. The long, boring weeks of inactivity and comfortable mental chats had blinded Alicia to what she truly was. Those chats hadn't been subterfuge, nor had the gently malicious teasing, but they were only one side of Tisiphone, and not the strongest one. There was an elemental ruthlessness to the Fury when the moment for action came. She hadn't discussed her plan with Alicia because it hadn't occurred to her that there was any reason she should, and now her unwavering determination had made Alicia a prisoner within her own body.
Yet it was even more complex than that, Alicia reflected as her obedient hands guided the skimmer along the Jefferson Field approach route and their admiral's markings and transponder took them through the unmanned, outer checkpoints. Even while a tiny part of her fluttered like a panicked bird against Tisiphone's control, another part was perfectly content. It was the part which always heaved a sigh of relief once the briefings were over and the mission began. They were moving, they were committed, and the predator within her purred with the elation of the hunt. Her brain hummed and wavered with conflicting impetuses, yet her thoughts and actions came crisp and clear and cold, and she had never felt anything quite like it in her life.
"Now what?" she asked as they approached the inner security gate.
"Drive through," Tisiphone responded, and her own will stirred sleepily. "That's not a very good idea. You may have snabbled up an admiral's skimmer, but I don't have the papers to match it."
"It does not matter."
"You're crazy! This gate's got real, live sentries, Lady!"
"But they will see nothing. Have you forgotten the nurse?"
"Damn it, they don't rely on just their eyes, and this thing is armed! Their sensors are going to go crazy!"
"Let them. We need only a few moments of confusion."
"No way." Alicia began to slow the skimmer. "We're out of the hospital. Let's pull back and rethink this before we get in so deep we-"
Her thought shattered in white-hot anguish, and she grunted as her eyes went blind. The pain and blindness vanished as quickly as they had come, and her brain writhed in useless revolt as her body obeyed the Fury's will. She felt the skimmer surge forward under maximum power, blazing through the security gate, and the alert sentries saw nothing at all. She caught a glimpse of them in the aft display, spinning towards their com links in total confusion as lights flashed and sirens whooped, but her hands were on the controls, whipping the skimmer higher and wheeling for the shuttle pads.