Her sensors found no threat besides the rock, so she leveled the gun at it. She fought back the mental impulse to fire, due to the proximity to the docks. The military patrols nearby would surely respond to gun fire in a warehouse, and she was not certain her friends had silencers. After 12.582 seconds, she released the breath she did not realize she had been holding and holstered the firearm.

A noise set off alerts on her HUD, and it sounded like, “Thank you.”

Rachael blinked twice, attempting to find the speaker. Her audio sensors indicated that the source was the rock. Her hand went back to the handle.

The monolithic boulder shifted. Rachael’s visual sensors registered a brown glow around the miniature meteor, and then it stood up. Golem seemed an impossibly insulting term for the creature. It stood at a full three meters tall in the center of the warehouse, and she judged it to be more than a meter across at the waist in a mostly humanoid shape. It stretched four arms and with a deep, gravelly voice said, “You have brought me the amulet?”

Alfred pieced together information for her while she stood staring at the quad-armed animated statue. Her computer companion displayed the read out with AR overlay arrows, “Target: 3.012 meters tall, 1.467 meters wide, weight approximately 1,200 kilograms, possible weapons: 12, 4 fists, 2 elbows, 2 feets, 2 knees, 1 head, 1 mouth. Species: 92% chance of earth elemental, 3% chance vessel, 2% chance inanimate object, 3% chance unknown.”

The elemental’s head turned slowly to scan each of the three metahumans in the warehouse then fixed its gaze on Mercury. It extended its lower right hand to the ork. Mercury shiver visibly run up his spine according to Rachael’s AR, and she made a point to give him a little riff about it later. The ork took three steps closer to the spirit while raising the bag with the amulet up for the elemental to take it.

The rocky hand was six centimeters from the bag when the hairs on the back of Rachael’s neck stood on end. Two centimeters later, all hell broke loose.

There is a runner proverb that goes something like, “Watch your back, conserve ammo, and never ever cut a deal with a Dragon.” Rachael considered trying to get it ammended to include “Never take follow-ups.”

Not that this follow-up sounded incredibly difficult, but her stomach kept twisting into knots and untying itself. The sensation did not stop even after they got the details of the next stage of the mission. Nor did it subside once they were back in the van. She watched the sun rising as she was able between the buildings and thought darkly that this could be the last sun rise she would see. She voiced her concern to the others, and they scoffed at her and offered to let her out. She smirked and said, “When we get to the I-told-you-so’s, I’ll bail you out before I gloat.” The laughter lightened the mood a little, but did nothing to alleviate the churning stomach.

The drop point was a warehouse near the docks, not uncommon or conspicuous. Rachael was relieved by that, but after parking and entering the warehouse, her nerves were on edge. In that state, she subconciously activated the hardware in her body that seemed to slow time to a crawl. This effect was wasted when she found the warehouse was empty and void of thermal signatures according to her electronic eyeballs. She frowned and relayed the information to the others in text. While the others were responding, she loaded Alfred and set him to scanning the area.

Alfred found nothing of interest, though apparently this was a high traffic wireless area, so he could not determine what was or was not necessarily something she should be concerned with based on the parameters she had provided. She thought that was computer speak for garbage-in, garbage-out.

Jackson and Mercury apparently sensed her uneasiness, as they put their backs to the nearest wall and watched her for directions. Combat situations always fell to the cybered commando to lead. Some people referred to those commandos as street samurai or sammies. Rachael had always felt the term would never apply to her, because she was not some Japanese fan girl wishing she could wear a kimono every day. She did not even care that Japanese was the language of business.

She moved to the center of the expansive single room and waited.

She turned on the audio systems in her ears, opening the sensors to high and low frequency sounds, amplified the volume, and filtered out the dock and crowd outside. Nothing out of the ordinary triggered alarms. She could hear Jackson and Mercury breathing, possibly a little more heavily than necessary due to adrenaline. She waited, smirking at the soft, accelerated thumps of their hearts.

They waited for the better part of three minutes before a boulder fell out of the ceiling onto the floor at Rachael’s feet. Her reflexes kicked into overdrive, and she leaped away while drawing her pistol. Her stomach began churning in a fashion that she was quite certain said, “I told you so!”

Rachael twisted around as she passed through the shattered dome, activated her magnetic boots, and came to a wobbly halt on the outside of the station. She laughed as reality sped up to her deactivated cybernetic acceleration. She knew that no one could hear the laugh, but she felt better after that given what she had to do now to get back to safety.

She risked a glance down into the station to see the baffled security team rigging ropes to come after her. She wanted to be long gone by the time they got out of the station. Alfred’s voice cut through the static of the jammers, and he said, “Miss Rachael, the team has come under turret attack. They managed to avoid any major damage, but they are afraid they will not be able to get close enough. Currently, they are on their way to the moon-side of the station, away from the security systems.”

She looked at the expanse of basically open metal terrain between her and the moon-side section of the station. If she went that way, the guards would easily get a few shots at her. Her combat instincts took over for her, and she tossed a live grenade down into the room she had just vacated. She waited for shrapnel to blast past her into open space before turning and sprinting across the top of the station. Along the way, she grabbed the handle of the grapple gun at the bottom of her pack and made sure the special space hook was ready to fire.

One-hundred and eighty seconds later, she neared the edge of the station. Sparks caught her eye as bullets began pelting the station in front of her. She did not even think before running around the end of the station. She risked a glance back and saw one guard that had apparently escaped the blast of the grenade. She thought that was a lucky break for him, and he should not waste it trying to catch her now. As she turned back, her ride came into view.

The shuttle they had stolen for this adventure was not state-of-the-art, but when dealing with space technology, even bottom rung was expensive and fancy. This shuttle was middle of the road, intended for maintenance of the station that it had just been used to break into. She liked the irony. Unfortunately, she also knew that bullets would tear up the shuttle enough to make re-entry a bit more of a pain. She did not have time to properly wait for the shuttle to open like she had done on the way onto the station. And that was why she had the grapple gun ready.

The shuttle turned to give her a bigger target on the top of it. She disengaged her boots, shot the magnetic plunger-shaped “hook” at the ship, and jumped toward it all in one fluid motion. The head of her life line made contact with the shuttle near the front windows. It began pulling her along, and she engaged the reel-in mechanism. Her feet hit the plates, and she reengaged her boots. She giggled and thought about how she looked like she was surfing on a dolphin she had just lassoed.

The shuttle bay opened slowly, and she walked around to the inside of it. She pulled her magnetic grapple hook along until she could pull it off the door. Once she was inside, Alfred piped out the all clear to the team. Once the bay was closed, she headed into the cockpit and strapped into her seat. They still had a long trip before they got home, and re-entry was only step one.

Rachael raced down the hall, magnetically sticking to the ceilings, while any loose objects floated freely about the corridor. The arrows on her HUD guided her unerringly to her destination: the sealed vault at the center of the station. As she came to a stop in front of the massive annoyed portal, she drew a special keycard out of a pouch on her leg. She had paid a hacker back on Earth to program this key to match a VIP, so she did not expect any problems when she swiped it.

The computer systems took several seconds authorizing the code, and she feared her anticipatory sweat might splatter across her HUD. She drew a breath and held it, but after several heartbeats, the red light blinked to green. The massive door receded into the room then rolled to the side like a large gear shifting places. She was then able to see the upside down habitat within the domed center of the station. She looked down to stare up through the dome to see Earth. That was doubly confusing to her stomach, so she stopped that and focused on her mission.

The ground in the room was soil and grass, so her boots would not help in the zero gravity environment. She flipped over to the wall opposite the entrance, positioned herself to be even with the center of a small pedestal in the middle. As she pushed off the wall, red arrows on her HUD indicated advancing enemies. Her flight was dead on, getting her to the target. She grabbed the small pillar-like stand and crab-walked her way around it to keep it between her and the entrance. She found the access panel and punched in a code. The top slid open, and she snatched the amulet from inside and deposited it in a separate pouch from the keycard.

Her HUD flashed red again, and she saw muzzle blasts from her only exit. She also felt the impact of several projectiles through the pedestal and frowned. She said through her commlink, “Alfred, please notify the shuttle team that Extraction Plan A will not be happening. We are shifting to Extraction Plan B.”

Alfred said back, “Done, Miss Rachael. Would you like me to initiate jamming procedures now?”

“Count down ten seconds, then begin.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The countdown appeared on her HUD, slowly ticking down. With her cybernetics, she almost felt like each tenth of a second was a full second. She knew it was a sensory illusion though, so when the count down hit 8.7529248 seconds, she launched her part of the plan.

She initiated the load sequence of her program that would let her perform the necessary task. In the .792 seconds that it took to fully populate through the wires in her body, she brought out the kilo of C-4 plastic explosives. She spent 3.2731 seconds forming the explosive into a thick disc shape. Satisfied with the results, she planted a remote detonator in the bottom of it and pushed it up toward the center of the dome above her. The disc’s trip lasted 1.5723 seconds, but once it arrived, it stuck to the smooth surface of the dome. She allowed herself the .0923 seconds to smile.

More bullets pelted the pillar. Her smile disappeared and she drew her pistol to lay some suppressive fire at the door for 2.6872 seconds. The guards at the door ducked for cover, but she knew they thought they had her trapped. With her remaining .3360248 seconds to holster the pistol and spring off of the pillar for the wall across from the door.

She synced the detonator to trigger just before Alfred’s jamming. Less than a second later, the explosion shattered the dome, Alfred started the jammers embedded in Rachael’s suit, and Rachael flipped in the air to touch the back wall then leap toward the empty vaccuum of space. Along the way, she wondered dryly if this was the most intelligent course of egress she could have concocted.

The world around her came to a crawl as the cybernetically enhanced reflexes came online. An alert came up on her HUD, indicating that air pressurization in the station was to be disabled in three seconds. First second: she engaged the light magnetic soles of her space suit’s boots, solidifying her stance with a soft, metallic click. Next second: she started toward the end of the corridor that the guards would be coming down any second. Third second: she drew her silenced pistol and leaped forward, flattening like a board in the air with her hands forward.

Gravity disappeared, and her momentum carried her through the air. The first guard came around the corner. The connection between her gun, her HUD, and her implants quickly calculated trajectory, distance, and movement, and a mental command fired the first round into the guard’s face mask. The next round hit a nanosecond later in the same spot and shattered through mask and face alike.

She kicked out to the wall on her right, let the magnetic field of her boot connect with the metal, then spun around to continue her run across the ceiling. The second guard peeked out from the corner then ducked back out of sight. She knew he was screaming into his comm about an intruder with hostile intent. She continued her path to the opposite wall and expended the mental effort to issue the reboot command on Alfred’s program.

She stayed on the left wall and reached down to her belt with her free hand. She threw a small square grenade past the corner and dimmed her HUD. She kick flipped to the opposite wall to keep them guessing even as she knew the flash pack would blind them.

Her flare compensation engaged as the flashes of light began. She pushed off the wall, took to the ceiling, and found both guards staggering away from the pack. Two shots per guard put them out of commission. A green arrow appeared to guide her, and Alfred said, “Well done, Miss Rachael. Please pardon my brief absence.” She smiled and nodded, but she knew there was more trouble between her and her target.

Rachael closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped. She thought of missing the station and shivered, but she focused on her mission. She opened her eyes to look at her HUD which revealed a multitude of read-outs about her destination.

She issued mental commands to her implanted commlink, and Alfred said, “Good evening, Miss Rachael. Would you like for me to knock for you?” Alfred’s voice mimicked that of a butler from an old movie, complete with snooty British accent. She had always wanted a butler, but this was all she would get.

She gave Alfred mental acceptance of the offer. She was no hacker, but she knew her programs were now engaged in electronic warfare.

She got close enough to the air lock door that she could grab a convenient lip, then halted her movement with her feet against the door. She waited patiently for Alfred to finish his job, and after thirty-seconds of eternity looking out at the vast blackness, she heard a doorbell chimed in her ears. The air lock door slid open.

She flipped sideways into the air lock, and Alfred closed the door for her. A light above the door leading further into the station blinked from red to green, and the door opened.

Three seconds later, Alfred said, “I am sorry, Miss Rachael, but they have discovered my intrusion and. . . .” As his voice cut off, she heard people coming down the corridor. It was time to dance.

(By way of explanation, I wanted to make a really short story like one of the Chapter Openings in the new ShadowRun books. They have less than a page, which I figure is less than 250 words. This is 245. It was based off of the #FictionFriday Write Anything Prompt of “(Character) closed his/her eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped.” I hope you like it!)