She was storing it. Distilling it into the pure essence of hatred, reserving it against some future need, and Alicia was afraid. Drop commandos had few self-delusions— they couldn't afford them—and she knew about her own dark side. She'd demonstrated it, without a trace of regret, on Wadislaw Watts, and there had been times in the field when her killer self had threatened to break free, as well. It had never happened, but it had been a near thing more than once, and a woman stayed clearheaded in combat or she died—probably taking other people with her when she went.
Thoughts of what the sudden release of all that pent-up rage might do to her judgment terrified her, but Tisiphone refused even to discuss it despite requests which had come all too close to pleading before pride drove Alicia to drop them. She was helpless in the face of the Fury's refusal ... and Tisiphone had reminded her—not cruelly, but almost kindly—that she had agreed to pay "anything" for her vengeance. That was nothing less than the truth, and the fact that she'd thought she was mad had no bearing. She'd given her word, and like Uncle Arthur, that was the end of it.
And now a fresh disturbing element had been added, for Tisiphone was clearly up to something. There was a pleased note to her mental voice which made very little sense, given their total lack of achievement. Alicia was astonished that the fiery, driven Fury hadn't insisted on making their break long ago. To be sure, she'd gleaned a tremendous amount of information— including everything Colonel McIlheny and even Ben Belkassem knew about the pirates—but there had to be something else... .
"Indeed there is, Little One." The comment was so sudden she twitched in surprise, and Tisiphone chuckled silently. "In fact, the event for which I have waited has now occurred, and the time has come for us to depart."
"Are you serious?!" Alicia jerked upright, then gasped as Tisiphone answered without words. Her augmentation came spontaneously on line, her boosted senses spun up to full acuity for the first time in more than two months, and she twitched again as Tisiphone activated her pharmacope. The first ripple of tension ran through her as the tick reservoir administered its carefully measured dose to her bloodstream and the world began to slow. She bit her lip, confused by the speed with which the Fury was moving, and a faint, familiar haze hovered before her eyes. It cleared quickly, and her ears rang with the high, sweet song of the tick.
"We will go now," Tisiphone said calmly. "I have placed commands in their computers to reroute their sensors, deactivate the door security systems, and summon the floor nurse elsewhere, but I cannot control who we may meet along the way. Dealing with them will be your responsibility."
Alicia rose with the tick's floating grace. The drug increased her reaction speed only slightly but accelerated her mental processes enormously, and if her responses came little faster they were absolutely certain, for she had all the time in the world to think about each of them before she made it.
The door oozed open with syrupy slowness, and she floated through it. The corridor beyond was empty, the nurses' station unmanned as Tisiphone had promised, but there was a permanent guard on the elevators. She'd met the night guard, and though the earnest young man had been very careful never to say so, she knew why he was there, for he, too, was a drop commando.
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.