Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya Read Online Free

the sound barrier as she exited the upper atmosphere. On ordinary missions she would often have to lay low on the planet where the hit occurred , sometimes for long periods, because anyone departing directly after an important assassination would naturally fall under immediate suspicion. She had killed many an important politician and seen space ports closed for days, but business had to go on and they were always reopened before long.
    She checked the designated bank account via the Ultra Net. She possessed many such bank accounts, under many names, on many worlds, and saw that the transfer was already there. It wasn't for her to care who her targets were. In fact she had no idea who she worked for. Her handler was her liaison and her life was  . . . easy and uncomplicated . She disconnected from the Ultra Net and jumped for warp-space, her mind entirely somewhere else.
 
    Chapter 5

Tanya crept from one shadow to the next, wholly concealed and as much a part of the night as any nocturnal predator, while she observed the group of thugs in front of the nearly derelict building she had chosen as her next target. It took several hours to get here, having come the entire twelve blocks underground through the warrens, the only really safe place Tanya still had and the only way she now traveled.
    She knew the pimp would be out looking for her and it complicated matters that were already much too difficult. Existence had become hand to mouth and now she had to sneak everywhere she needed to go. Hungry children could not be told there was no food because it was too dangerous to go out. Tanya would not be able to do any of her regular scavenging n ow either, not with the pimp looking for her, and the pickings had become nearly non-existent with the larger numbers of people who were out scavenging. Most of them were children, and though there was always much hunger here, there had always been something to find. And even though this place was poor beyond poor there was still charity. Those who were able put things out occasionally, but now Tanya couldn't even check for those.
    It wasn't only a matter of watching out for the pimp, but of not knowing if anyone passing by might be looking to collect a small reward for her capture or outright murder. In her case they would wish to capture her if they could accomplish it and then a life of drug addiction and forced prostitution until she died. This much Tanya understood as well as she understood what would happen to her own group of children if she couldn’t continue to bring them food. The outcome would be the same.
    The group she watched in front of her now, the security detail at the front entrance of the whore/drug house, was like any you might find anywhere and ev erywhere throughout the tax-free zone. Drug dealers and pimps for the most part, slinging their unending supply of drugs to the infinite stream of tax-payers who came here for those purposes. Within the building an unending party of drugs, booze and sex roared uninterrupted forever. Only the cars parked out front and the faces of the security details changed. Nothing else did. It was a place of death and horror for the girls caught within its deadly web. It was a place of death and horror for most everyone caught in its web.
    Tanya was too young and too uneducated to understand politics or society's need to have places like this. Without them to cater to the surprisingly large percentage of the population who needed one or another or even all of the vices offered within, they wouldn’t be able to have their civilized places either.
    Mankind’s civilization, his bright and shining cities, his majestic fleets of ships, and all else, were really little more than a façade to dupe the foolish. All that was necessary to see the real truth was to barely scratch the surface of that faça de, because just beneath the majority festered and rotted in its own filth and excesses. The civilized places survived because those who were