“So you just came here to fucking deck me?”
“I want a refund.”
“Seriously?” Arn said with a surprised voice. “No refunds.”
“Customer is always right,” Destiny said as her other hand clasped around Arn’s neck. “I want a refund…Now!” Her last action triggered four sets of steps that she heard behind her. There wasn’t a drop of fear in her, however. None of these thugs had a real combat training unlike the police, Radiance, and UNE forces she’d been fighting for the last few years.
“Get fucked, you stupid fucking cunt!” In attempt to break free, Arn wrapped his hands around the hands that she was using to choke him. His grip was weak, compared to Destiny’s; her hands didn’t move. She let out a slight grin as he turned his head to the side to address the four men closing in behind her. “Have at her, boys; I ain’t paying you by the hour!”
Let’s dance. The hand choking Arn pushed him back to the ground, while her other hand quickly pulled her art tube to her front. Her instincts led her to leap and take cover behind the checkout table. Perfect timing, as magnetically accelerated bullets ripped through the air. Destiny’s quickly moving fingers opened up the tube, and out came a katana and an arm-mounted Hashmedaian guardian shield. She arose to her feet, this time with a rectangular-shaped blue energy force field protecting her from the second barrage of bullets.
Her feet guided her to the four men, who did not attempt to move from their position, while her hands guided her katana to either stab or dismember their bodies. Each hit released jets of blood across the air, raining down on her like the rain outside not long ago. Her left arm, which had the guardian shield device strapped to it, periodically rose to block weapons’ fire from the last remaining bodyguard, whose severed head hit the ground shortly afterward.
Arn remained on the floor, trembling in fear as Destiny’s blood-soaked body graciously stepped toward him. Her blue jeans were now purple; her leather jacket was dripping red. She hovered over his body and the placed the tip of her blade between his eyes. “Now,” said Destiny, “where’s my fucking money?”
FLIGHT 4219, PERTH TO VANCOUVER, EARTH, SOL SYSTEM
White clouds hovered over the eternal blue of the Pacific Ocean. A sight that would be changing soon, as this flight from Perth, Australia, to Vancouver, Canada, was coming to an end. Ken Smith sat back and relaxed in his first-class seat aboard an Earth-to-Earth (ETE) transport. He preferred the first-class seats from the Earth-to-Space (ETS) transports that he frequently flew to Mars, as they were equipped with holo vids. ETE transports didn’t take long to reach their destination with their high speeds, as they traveled exclusively on Earth. ETS transports, however, made trips to locations throughout the solar system. Even traveling at a fraction of the speed of light, it could take a flight several hours to reach the moons of Uranus.
An announcement played over the transport’s intercom to all the passengers aboard, stating that they’d be in Vancouver within ten minutes, making this a forty-five-minute trip. He sometimes missed the old-world plane trips, in which a flight from Perth to Vancouver would take nearly a whole day and require at least one stop along the way. The message on the intercom replayed again, this time in Chinese, then a third time in Radiance, which caused him to chuckle.
There were no Radiance races aboard this transport that he could see, though with Linl it was damn near impossible to tell just by looking. Carbon-copy humans, he liked to call them. Most flights had a few Radiance races aboard. Since the uplifting of humanity, Radiance continued to have a few ships from Alpha Centauri trickle in, dropping off nonmilitary personnel to live on Earth. Most of them were just laborers and construction workers to help rebuild cities razed by the demonic Hashmedai. A few others were scientists and engineers, though many of them stayed on their ships, setting foot on Earth, Mars, or the moons of the gas giants only to work with human scientists and engineers. Recently, merchants and missionaries started to show up and live among humans, proving to be a double-edged sword of sorts.
The increased presence of civilian Radiance races was no doubt helping humanity’s economy, advancement, and recovery from the war. However, the longer Radiance continued to remain on Earth, the more violence people were forced to witness thanks to the Hashmedai Liberation Front (HLF). After the war, as a way to repent, groups of Hashmedai offered themselves as slave labor to human communities hit hard. After all, they lost the war, and the ships that weren’t nuked, fled or crash-landed, leaving behind thousands of soldiers and ship crew members. As time went on, those communities took in these Hashmedai, allowed them to have a place to live and eat, and eventually settled down and started families.
Those at Radiance weren’t too happy to learn that their people would be living and working on a planet that hosted small Hashmedaian communities that were breeding. Pressure was put on the UNE to step up and deal with the problem, especially after a dozen Radiance civilians ended up murdered or assaulted by angry Hashmedai. A few humans got in the crossfire too, as they were mistaken for Linl. Thus, the HLF was born; humans who formed an emotional attachment and sympathy to some of the Hashmedai took up arms and launched a series of terrorist attacks against Radiance, anti-Hashmedai groups, and UNE forces deployed to deal with large and active Hashmedai communities.
No one knew exactly where their base of operation was, but Vancouver had been a hot spot for HLF activity, as Canada featured one of the largest Hashmedai communities on Earth. It’s no surprise to many that the Vancouver region was dubbed the “Radiance Graveyard,” though the UNE preferred to label it a “red zone.” There were eight red zones worldwide.
“Prepare for landing,” the pilot of the transport announced over the intercom.
Ken’s thoughts returned to the present, and he gazed out the window to watch the transport descend from the thick mist of clouds that soaked the craft in rain. The sight of Vancouver in the distance emerged, resting at the foot of the mountains, virtually untouched by the war with the exception of a few extra postwar skyscrapers. The city grew larger as it came into view. Ken was the reminded of a feature of old-world traveling that he missed—the rush of an aircraft, slowly landing to the runway. Transports were all based off Radiance tech, and so they were capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). Gone were the days of needing a runway to land or fly to the skies, the transport simply landed next to the transport hub, formerly known as an airport.
A network of hallways led Ken to the baggage claim area; his hands stroked his blond hair in a frustrated manner. All these advances and we’re still using this system to claim our baggage? What’s going to stop someone from walking up and taking your stuff? After fifteen minutes of paranoid waiting, he obtained his travel baggage after it came into view from the rotating treadmill and proceeded to the Earth Rapid Transit Train platform. This used to be part of the skytrain system; he had fond memories of traveling on the skytrain network when he was a kid during the prewar days. Once Radiance showed up, they offered to upgrade and network Earth and later Mars with a rapid transit system that was commonplace on Radiance planets. As Ken recalled, the people who helped design the newer trains in Unity City, came here to Earth to undertake this project. And it showed; the interior of the train was identical to the train network used all across Australia, which apparently is the same design as the ones in Unity City on Lejorania Sanctum.
At last, Ken thought as he arrived at his intended destination, an upscale condo in the Yaletown district of Vancouver. Little did the people in the outside world know, his suite was a safe house for Earth Intelligence and Security Service (EISS) agents such as Ken. As far as his wife, Yvonne, and others were concerned, Ken was there on business, overseeing the launch of a new retail outlet.