Jack looked over Rally Vincent's sheet and frowned.
Shoulder, elbow, wrist and knees.
Every shot was placed precisely in place to hit major points of the nervous system or musculature in such a way that the target would lose the practical use of the struck area. The target would then be out of the fight and alive.
It was a mark of supreme mastery that a shooter would be able to place a shot so precisely, especially with a weapon that was admittedly not their preferred style. Firearms often lacked the precision of such melee weapons as swords and knives, but in the hands of this woman, that limit was circumvented.
However, the fact that she aimed not to kill bothered the man. He'd heard Vincent reputation as a masterful assassin, and yet now it seemed that all of that was a lie. He'd been considering recruiting the woman to the cause, she would have been useful, despite her aberrant tastes in lovers, but now he didn't think she'd be able to go through with what would need to be done.
Just proof that people like her had to be weeded out. And there was no telling what she was doing with her foster daughters.
Well, it was just minor disappointment. Everything else was going right as rain. Too bad the chief had to get in the way like that, he hadn't liked being forced to betray the man, but that's what it took to purge the old softness and forge a hard new Alliance that wouldn't bow down to any alien scum.
****
"I told you not to get involved in stuff too big for you, Garibaldi."
"That's what the big guy said," Vivi noted. "And then that Jack person shot the guy I think is Garibaldi in the back."
"You said there was more than one murder?" Rally said.
"Yeah, he killed the big guy and the other two later," Vivi said. "Called it self-defense."
"So we've got a corrupt cop," Rally said, frowning. "I'm going out for a bit, I need to talk to your Aunt Becky."
"Should we stay here?" Shanti asked.
Rally paused and considered things, she couldn't keep them with her all the time, and she couldn't reasonably insist that they don't leave the apartment unless she was with her. It had been a few days since they had arrived. They should know the spots to avoid now, and it wasn't like this Jack person would be coming after them.
"Where're you thinking of heading?" she asked.
"There's NASCAR at Doug's Dugout," Vivian said without missing a beat.
"There is?" Rally said, sounding a bit put out. "Hmm, I'll meet you there then. Shanti?"
"I'm going to the arcade again," Shanti noted, kicking her feet.
"I'll check on you on my way to the sports bar," Rally said. "I shouldn't be long, send me a message if plans change."
"Right, Rally," Vivi said, waving at her as she walked carefully into the tunnel after opening the bookshelf.
The maintenance tunnels were dark and poorly lit, but also almost completely unpopulated. Rally and the girls had been through their escape path a couple of times already, and she knew the path well enough. Soon she was picking her way through debris and detritus, avoiding the sight of lurkers and coming to a dusty comm port.
Cautiously, looking over her shoulder, she thought back into her mind and then bent down to hack the port off the Stellar Comm standard channel so that she could uplink to Becky's current secure lines.
It wasn't long before she found Becky's face staring back at her, blinking tiredly.
"Rally, do you have any idea what time it is?" she asked.
"Sorry, Becky," Rally said. "I need you to do some digging."
"And it couldn't wait?" Becky asked.
"Vivian found a murder weapon," Rally said.
"And you need my help for that? You've done this before" Becky sniped wearily. "You're an investigator. Investigate and talk to the security staff when you've got the evidence."
"The suspect is acting chief of security," Rally whispered, checking over her shoulder. "The normal chief is in a coma in medlab, shot in the back."
Becky was instantly awake and alert.
"My advice is to stay away from politics and corrupt cops," she said. "You're not in a position to be rocking the boat."
"And that's why I need help," Rally said irritably. "I can't go to the station security and say, you've got a murderer in your boss's chair. And I can't investigate, because everything I'd need to investigate is in security or in restricted files."
"Rally, I've read some of your old operations reports," Becky said dryly.
"Okay," Rally said. "I could investigate, but I could hardly do that without attracting attention. And I already have more of that than I need."
"I know," Becky said. "Babylon 5 Command requested your file. They got your public records because of a computer glitch."
Rally looked at Becky's smile and arched an eyebrow.
"You're toying with EarthForce records?" she asked. "Isn't that a bit too dangerous?"
"I'm not digging in anything classified," Becky said. "You'd be amazed how lax the security is on basic personnel records. I can pretty easily alter a request for records to make sure they only get the public records. The system leans that way anyway. Now the second request, that I can only slow down, they were a bit more specific in what they wanted this time."
Rally arched an eyebrow and closed her gaping mouth as she stared at her old friend's image.
"Right," Rally said. "Anyway, I can't really do much on this end. And a crooked cop is too much of a risk for us. I was wondering if you could arrange a message to get to Babylon 5 Command."
"Anything, specific you want me to include in this message?" Becky asked.
"Coming," Rally said as she started to relay what Vivian had told her.
"Rally, did you say this crooked cop killed the people he was working for?" Becky asked. "Could he have been covering his tracks?"
"I think more likely that he was the go between for someone else," Rally said.
"You haven't been there barely more than a week," Becky said in frustration. "All right, all right, we're getting a bit too long winded here, better drop the feed. I'll get your message out."
"Thanks, Becky," Rally said, watching her old friend yawn before the comm port blinked off.
Rally took a moment to undo her hack so that the next person to use the comm, if anyone, would find it just a normal stellar comm port.
The former bounty hunter walked carefully away from the Stellar Comm, eyes watching the area carefully as she returned to the maintenance shaft, no sense being seen coming out of this area.
Hopefully, there was still a race going on when she caught up with Vivian.
*****
Ivanova was about to head to bead and leave the CnC with the night crew when the anonymous communique came in. She leaned forward to read the information, yawning and turned more awake with each passing word she read.
"Where'd that last communique come from?" she asked the comm officer.
"Unknown," he said after a moment's checking. "There aren't any colonies on that line right now."
"That would mean either a ship or a comm-burst satellite," Ivanova said as she applied command-only restrictions to the incoming message. "Locate the captain for me."
"The captain is in medlab," one of the other night crew said.
"Then that's where I'm heading," she said.
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(Posted Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:16)
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