On 12/08/2004 01:21 PM, DB Sommer said:
Officially, that was why they had wanted a private pool, to afford
them some measure of modesty for lounging about topless. In reality,
Kei had insisted (and Yuri agreed) that some distance between
Killgore's men and them was a good idea.
If I recall, Iria is off with Killgore. I'm sure she would agree with
Kei in this.
At least there wasn't any risk of the mercenaries being armed.
Weapons were strictly prohibited on Xyphos 13. Extensive searches of
every single item leaving a ship were performed by a number of people
using some of the most expensive detection equipment in the galaxy.
Anyone protesting the treatment to any degree had to leave the planet
immediately. The search was so thorough, Yuri even had to leave her
bloody card behind.
If they're that careful, I'm surprised they allow the Di^H^H Lovely
Angels in the same system.
Kei turned around long enough to make sure Yuri saw her stick her
tongue out before opening the door from their private area and
beginning the trek to the bar next to the pool. As she entered the
pool area, she noticed a couple of Killgore's mercenaries lounging
about. Kei didn't know the name of the shorter, stockier of the pair,
but Cross had {readily : become} painfully familiar as a near
permanent attachment to Killgore. He was dressed in a pair of
skintight trunks that showed he had nothing to be ashamed of in the
equipment department. He was a touch lean, but all muscle, not
surprising given his profession. There was a healing patch taped to
his side, helping with the deep wound he had sustained in their last
battle with Zeiram and the chaos at Holcomb. He wore a pair of
sunglasses, which hid his eyes completely. That made Kei wary, as she
was certain that despite his face being pointed away from her, that
he was watching her intently.
She should have put on her top before leaving the private pool area.
Since he's gay, maybe she just has some drool on her, ah, chin.
Kei pushed the concern from her mind. There was no way she could go
hunting for him. While the single tourist area of the verdant
pleasure moon was entirely {located : contained} in a two-hundred
kilometer radius, there were small outposts spread all over the moon
where he might have traveled {to :}. Kei was here to relax, trying to
unwind before everything hit the fan, which would be soon, if her
instincts were accurate. Iria was going to turn up something, she
just knew it. It was only a matter of time.
With Kei and Yuri on the scene, it is inevitible.
The slicer turned to see the speaker was a man that was just as tall
as him, with an odd patch taped to his side. His head was {titled :
tilted} so that he could peer at Mikael from above his glasses. It
was fairly obvious from his body posture and the tone of the
statement what the guy was interested in. Mikael used a similar one
when picking up women.
Unless there's something stenciled there.
While the Tormend Confederation were the ones that had bought out
Tedan Tippedai and subsequently acquired the cell samples of Zeiram
that had been kept in cold storage, the cells had gone missing within
days of acquiring them. YSC knew this because they were the ones who
had stolen the samples with the intention of controlling Zeiram and
selling off duplicates as a powerful strategic weapon. Yuri had to
admit, one Zeiram was bad enough, a small army of them would be
impossible to stop with anything but large scale conventional
weapons.
I'm not sure any conventional weapons would work. The only ones the
Mycian military had that could leave a mark were easy to overrun.
But the idea never caught on in the military sectors, the weapon
being too imprecise and {low percentage :} to be regarded as useful.
An alternative use for the mass drivers was discovered in that they
were ideal for moving large objects in a zero gravity environment
long distances with a minimum of energy. Their most common
application was shooting mineral rich asteroids toward spaceborne
mineral processors, or into a planet's orbit instead of using the
more expensive option of towing all of them to a specific area.
While YSC was so vast it had businesses in just about every field
imaginable, from their earliest days to the present their primary
product, which accounted for nearly a quarter of the company's
profits, was in communication satellites. In every one of YSC's
satellites there was eavesdropping software that allowed them to
monitor every single bit of information that was sent through them.
It was a magnificent piece of work, one that could only have been
assembled by a collection of the most brilliant minds in the fields
of communication and programming. No one had discovered the equipment
yet because it was broken up into four different parts spread
throughout the satellite. Individually none of the software or
hardware appeared to be anything other than redundant {materials :
systems} to ensure the satellite functioned properly, and they did
serve those purposes. Combined, there was nothing sent into the
satellite that couldn't be duplicated and forwarded to one of the
many secret relay points YSC had throughout the galaxy. Likewise the
control over the information was so absolute they could prevent any
messages from being forwarded to its proper source, or {altered :
alter them} so that what was sent out was not the same things that
were received.
Even the agents themselves had no idea how many there were, or who
they really reported to. They were trained in squads of about a dozen
members, and were led to believe {there were : that} only a handful
of agents outside of themselves {that :} existed. They were never
even told who received their information, only that they were paid
well for it. YSC was so meticulous that the training personnel were
never contracted to instruct more than a hundred people before they
were informed that that was all the agents that needed training, and
they were sent on their way. Less than two dozen people, including
Slapatcha Scorphious and Springer, knew the full extent of their
espionage resources.
"See you later," Yuri said, acting casual while feeling the exact
opposite. Once they made it back to the Lovely Angel, and didn't have
to worry about people spying on them, they were going to have to
figure a way to get Iria and {: themselves} back to 3WA headquarters
to report to them in person about YSC's sinister plot. This was way
bigger than Zeiram. Possibly bigger than any case Yuri had been
involved in. If only Iria hadn't already left, they could have cooked
up some excuse to split up with Killgore and then gone on their own
way. As it was, Yuri wasn't sure what they could do to rendezvous
with Iria while giving Killgore and company the slip.
Cross felt the blade effortlessly slide into the left side of his
neck, and knew he was dead. His arms slipped from her neck and tried
to staunch the flow, knowing he would fail. Despite the pain and the
knowledge, there was no panic. One of the last tests in order to
become a Samisdat involved purging fear of death from the psyche.
However, it did nothing with anger, and Cross cursed his luck, both
in Yuri striking him in his wound above the water, and managing to
stab him fatally with the first attempt. Had she missed even once, he
would have been aware of her acquiring the weapon and could have
positioned his head below her back and suffered only several light
wounds in non-vital areas. As his vision turned red, both due to the
blood in the water and his brain starting to shut down, he thought of
the ignominy of it all. The other Samisdat would have made fun of him
for being killed by his own weapon.
I could smell that one coming.
Foillet mentally sighed. Markham was far too eager to use the
Destiny's heavy weaponry. Were it up to Foillet, he would have had
the man removed from the job, if not the unit altogether. But it
wasn't up to him, and Markham knew what he was doing {it :}. "Target
the Lovely Angel first and destroy it. Even shot up, it still has far
more weapons than the Creeper. After you destroy the Creeper, arm the
2F Neutron warheads and target the inhabited area of the moon." He
turned back to the communication's man. "Send a message to Killgore,
updating him on the situation."