Mercury had done some checking on their Johnson shortly after they had accepted the mission and discovered quite a bit about her. She was currently a presiding member of a local Witch coven. Before that, she had been a shadowrunner, and before even that, she had been a “professional, personal entertainer,” as Mercury had phrased it. The look on his face had told Rachael more than the words: Mister Johnson had slept her way into the shadows. Rachael was not quite sure how that worked out, but she was glad she had not done that.

As the crew drove into Seattle, the early lights of dawn were creeping in between the cracks of the skyscraping spires. Rachael was comforted by the familiar sight, but she was also eager to be rid of the loot and be done with this mission. She had no particular qualms about going into space, but she did not like stealing a shuttle to do it. She feared that that might come back to her, especially since she suspected the amulet was magical and linked to someone. And that someone would be a very powerful someone to have a focus in space!

Jackson pulled his van into a parking garage a couple of blocks from the meeting place. They then walked the rest of the way to the location: a still-busy strip club with a name that Rachael could not read. After a moment, Jackson told her via text message that it meant “Chaos” in Sperethiel, the Elven language. Rachael might have blushed heading in if she had not been to the establishment before on business, but she was careful to keep her eyes averted from the scantly clad Elven women on the poles. She and her companions wound their way past the floor to the back rooms where they could get into a private booth with Mister Johnson.

Lumi, AKA Mister Johnson, was a Satyr, and she sat rather regally in the booth waiting for them. As they entered, their employer made it a point to smile, which showed perfectly white teeth even in the dim light. Jackson and Mercury seated themselves while Rachael handed over the bag containing the amulet. With a soft sigh of relief, Rachael sat down as well.

Lumi closed her eyes for several heart beats, then opened them with unfocused pupils before looking into the bag to verify its contents. With a satisfied nod and a couple of blinks to refocus her eyes, she said, “Thank you very much. You have done well.” The woman raised a tanned hand to tuck a loose strand of auburn hair behind the six-centimeter-long horn protruding from her forehead.

A text message from Jackson appeared on Rachael’s HUD, “Damn she’s hot. Shame she’s a J now.” Rachael blinked a couple of times, then another text message came up, “Oops, sorry. Meant that for just Mercury. Hahaha.” Rachael turned her attention back to the satyr and analyzed the figure a little more. Try as she might, Rachael could not grasp the woman being pretty, but she wrote it off as unnecessary. She would not have done anything with the satyr even if she were pretty.

“As we discussed,” Lumi said and pulled out a set of three credsticks. After laying them on the small table in front of each of the team, she said, “Your payment in full.”

The team picked up the credsticks, and they were about to leave when the satyr said, “How would you like a followup job?” The team gave her the benefit of the doubt and stayed to listen. Rachael gave a long glance at the door before deciding to stay. She had a feeling in her gut that she would regret that decision.

Lumi said, “Now that we have the amulet, I need to make sure that it makes it to the appropriate contact. Obviously, I cannot do this transportation myself. There’s another two grand each waiting for a password to unlock it on those sticks.” A lightning-fast conversation took place in text messages between the team, and they agreed. Rachael did so reluctantly, but despite years of trusting her instincts, she told them to hush. She needed the extra cash, despite the big pay-off from the shuttle run.

Re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere proved to be much easier than escaping the gravitational pull, at least according to Rachael’s stomach. The shuttle shook considerably more, but she could take that in stride by imagining herself on a windy, curvy road while riding her hog. Her thoughts of her bike calmed her more than comfort food.

“Ok,” Jackson said through Rachael’s comm. “Folks, it’s ’bout time to bail outta this clunker. Once I’s got it leveled out a bit, jump, rip, and watch the fireworks.” A count-down appeared on her HUD, indicating 30 seconds to level then 20 seconds to vacate the shuttle before it nose dived into Mount Saint Helens. Rachael smirked at using a volcano to cover up evidence.

Rachael and one of the two other passengers exchanged a look while waiting. She had analyzed the ork on many occasions, but she always found he was difficult to read. Mercury was some kind of magic user she was told, but not the fireball-throwing, cloak-wearing, Merlin-wannabe kind. The best she could figure was that he was some kind of ninja kung-fu master, but his role in this mission had been to bypass the electronic security. She thought it odd that a mojo-monk to be so in touch with technology, but she kept that thought to herself. She had looked up info on his name and found that Mercury was the Roman name for the Greek god Hermes, who was also the god of thieves.

Jackson was the driver, and he stirred from his techno-trance as the shuttle became as level and steady as if it were on the ground. Elves had a reputation for being pretty-boy celebrities, but Jackson was a wiz with machines, especially driving and piloting. Rachael could not recall a time she had thought him attractive, but she could also not recall an image of him that lacked oil on some part of his body either. She also knew that he did his craft with only his mind. She found it unsettling, but as long as he was on her side, she was fine with it.

Jackson grumbled for a moment, struggling with the safety harness then said loudly, “Let’s get off this scrap heap!” Rachael moved swiftly to get a parachute. The other two had been wearing theirs since they took off. Rachael had needed some mobility. The twenty-second window was just enough time for the ork and elf to leap from the shuttle door, and the shuttle lurched just as Rachael’s first foot cleared the threshold. Instincts and reflexes aided her as she pushed up and away from the shuttle, watching it turn downward sharply.

She could see her companions below, and she fell with them for about twenty-more seconds. The shuttle grew smaller as it sped away from them, and they finally pulled their rip cords to float gently toward the ground a good distance from Seattle near Interstate 5. Shortly after landing and bundling up the parachutes, Jackson did some more of his techno-juju to call in the trio of ATVs that he had stashed off the highway for just this purpose. They drove the ATVs to a garage that Jackson had rented from the local gangers to keep it safe, and they loaded up the ATVs and settled in for the ride back to Seattle.

Along the way, Mercury did some work electronic legwork to notify their boss that the job was done. Mister Johnson was pleased to hear it, and for the third or fourth time, Rachael rolled her eyes at the idea of calling their employer Mister Johnson, when their boss was clearly female.

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.