Tanis Richards: Shore Leave - A Hard, Military, Science Fiction Adventure (Aeon 14: Origins of Destiny) by M. D. Cooper

Author:M. D. Cooper [Cooper, M. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Wooden Pen Press
Published: 2018-09-16T18:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

Forty minutes later, Tanis arrived back at the Grand Éire. She’d taken a dockcar back to the resort, using it only after Darla had shut down the vehicle’s NSAI and piloted it manually.

All the while, she waited for some sort of alert on the station’s networks. Something either about the fight, or calling for her arrest.

Neither occurred. It was as though the altercation in the maintenance corridor had never happened.

Even so, Tanis wasn’t about to trust that no one was looking for her, and ditched the dockcar while still a twenty-minute walk away from the Grand Éire.

Instead of using the resort’s main entrance, Tanis took a lift two levels up, and worked her way through a warren of maintenance corridors to one of the employee entrances. It was slow work; Darla had to gain control of internal sensors, corridor by corridor, to mask Tanis’s progress, but eventually they had passed through the more densely monitored areas.

<This sneaky stuff is rather clever,> Darla commented. <I never think about things like back doors and skulking around. I’d do poorly in a mobile frame.>

Tanis shrugged. <Comes naturally to us humans. Liz should be arriving soon. Her shift starts in twenty minutes.>

<The porter from Venus? Did you hack the resort’s schedules without me knowing?> Darla asked.

Tanis sent her AI a conspiratorial wink. <I don’t tell you everything I do.>

Sure enough, as she turned into the narrow corridor with a door at the end bearing the words ‘Grand Éire Employees Only’, she caught sight of Liz punching her security code into a panel next to the entrance.

“Liz!” Tanis called out as she jogged down the passageway.

Liz turned and her eyes widened. “Commander Richards?”

“Please, just ‘Tanis’,” Tanis said as she approached.

“Ummm…sure. What are you doing here?” Liz asked.

Tanis gestured at her disheveled appearance. “Well, I got in an altercation out on the station, and I’m a bit mussed up. I don’t want to go through the front, so I was hoping someone could let me in the side door, here. Sure am glad I came across you.”

“Ummm…I’m not really supposed to…” Liz said, looking nervous.

“It would make me happy, and if it comes up, just tell whoever asks that I insisted.”

<Not that it will,> Darla said to Tanis. <I’ve got my hooks into the resort—I can wipe you from their feeds.>

<I thought you had ‘read-only’ access?>

Darla gave a conspiratorial chuckle. <I was just trying to make you feel better.>

<And your spiel about seven hundred forms?>

Now Darla groaned. <No, those were real. They just didn’t work.>

While she spoke with Darla, Tanis gave Liz a sweet smile, and hoped that the woman would be agreeable. Her next option was to make a scene, but that sort of thing wasn’t really in her nature, and she rather liked Liz.

“OK, Com—er, Tanis. I’ll take you through to the service lifts.”

“Thanks, Liz. I’ll be sure to leave you something special.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Liz said as she finished punching in her code and pushed the door open, holding it wide so Tanis could pass through.

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