The Man between my crosshairs (girl X assassin)

Chapter 10/More Tea Mother?

"Harry Styles" said Mother began putting her hand back on a the table. She then flicking the encrypted information over to the circle which represented the secure projector. The face of Harry Styles emerged.

"Who?" Said Zoe.

Zoe looked at Mother slightly and shook her head. Technically you were only an assassin if you killed a celebrity. Like all assassins, Zoe had an ego. The more important the person you struck down the more you could brag about it to your assassin friends. Humanity occupied 120 plus light years of space that humanity and a population of 200 billion people spread all over it. So you could be a house hold word on one planet and for the rest of humanity it was like 'who?'.

"Harry Styles" said Mother. "I thought you would be pleased".

Here was a pause "Killing a guy who I have to look up on wikipedia?" Zoe said her voice slightly disappointedly.

"You don't know who Harry Styles is ?" Said Mother.

Zoe shrugged.

"He's like four thousand on the list of immortal people in known space." Mother began.

Zoe still looked blank.

Humanity had figured out how to undo ageing a while back. Immortality was possible but at a price which would make Warren Buffett's eyes water. The cost of developing the complex treatment was high but the tax most governments put on was higher, making Immortality something for the super rich. Actually the super rich couldn't afford it. It was the super-super rich who could afford it. The people so rich that rich people would look at them and go 'you don't have any spare change do you?'. The immortality treatment was so expensive that each tablet was covered in gold leaf hence the slang name of 'gold'. The only good news about gold was it brought in so much money to some governments didn't' have to tax anything else except cashew nuts for some reason.

"He lives on the planet Zarmina in the Kanbus region. For the past few hundred years he has been a property developer of sorts. A super rich wheeler dealer and looks to be mostly legitimate. One of his buildings malfunctioned and killed about a thousand occupants while back, so I guess it looks like someone wants revenge."

"Are you saying the target actually deserves it? OMG" Said Zoe her eyes widening. She didn't care but somehow it made a hit simpler.

"There is a catch before you accept it - this is a Napoleon contract" Mother said seriously.

A Napoleon contract was one where the assassin was committed to the kill. If they failed to kill the target they would be killed for their failure. A Napoleon contract was a strange condition, normally used when you wanted to be sure an assassin didn't give up. It was the equivalent of kill him but if you fail or give up you will die for your failure. Normally this might be for a kill which might be dangerous to do.

"Is he a hard target?" Asked Zoe.

Mother pushed some of the preliminary research she had done onto the table top.

"As far as I could tell no. He doesn't seem to have any routine so it will be a close kill. That aside from that he hasn't got any reason to think your coming. It feels like someone can't pull the trigger them self. You know what it's like they navigate the website put the assassination into the basket, fill in the details and just before checkout then get rather over whelmed with all the optional extras. You know do you want a last message? Should it look like an accident or natural causes? The website is really badly designed. Perhaps they thought someone might had problems killing someone who lived before the robot apocalypse."

Zoe snorted. "As if"

" OR."

"OR" Zoe looked hard at Mother.

Mother looked into Zoe's eyes "Or it's some kind of trap. I can't think what. As soon as you kill this guy the job is over the contract is complete. This is the most simple hit you've ever done. No jumping out of buildings with out a parachute, no time deleting backups of his consciousness not even using a banana for a weapon. You can do a nice clean simple hit for once. With it you, will be the first woman on the high council in it's history. The first woman to make high assassin. "

Zoe bit her lip. Mother had never made it to the high table. Like most assassins she had gone down the dog assassin route. Keeping a higher percentage of the money which made her rich but never getting to choose from the available contracts. The high council would pick her jobs for her. It was known they would keep the simple, safe or well paid jobs for them selves. The dog assassins would pick up the leftovers the boring, dull, challenging or dangerous jobs. If a dog assassin turned an impossible job down regularly it meant a longer wait for the next job. When Mother had come out as transgendered the jobs had strangely dried up, Mother had been forced to move into the mentoring business. Which had been good for Zoe but there was always that feeling that Mother was haunted by the ghosts of regret.

"You can kill an immortal right?" Said Zoe "if they get a bullet to the head they still die?"

"Sure, they don't age but everything else is regular other wise they would just become cyborgs or transhumans**" said Mother.

Zoe paused and drank her coffee. "You were always keen to get me on the council but where never that interested your self. I never get that"

Mother sipped her tea. "A long time ago back before I figured out who I really was. I was sent on a cold mission to kill a man in Hamburg. It was a simple job. It had been well researched. The mark was where he was supposed to be. I met him in person to be sure he was who he said he was. It was a cold night, so crisp you could. He guessed who I was. Turned out he was an assassin. He Pleaded for his life. Before I killed him he told me that the Dark Orbits had a secret. A secret known only to the council. If he agreed to spare his life and hide him he would tell me."

"What did you do?"

"I killed him naturally. Being a Hunter I thought was a huge privilege. That was my job. I was relentlessly behind the Dark Orbits then. It was only later I got wondering. People beg for their lives, offer you double the money, promise all kinds of things, no one thinks keeping a secret will stop you. So I tried to make the council, then when I was became Lesley and the jobs began to dry up. They said I was getting to old. The hormones were effecting my aim, but I couldn't help wonder. Did they suspect I knew to much? The question has been festering like a rotting carcass in a summer sun.

Zoe got up "Well why not stay the night. We will go over the data. If I can't spot any obvious things I'll accept."

"Don't just do it for me. What if it is a trap?" Said Mother.

"Well, you once said 'rule number one best way to deal with a trap is to set it off'. More tea mother?"

****

* Guppy. Informal Assassin speak for a target.

*Transhuman: Human consciousness uploaded to computer. Highly regulated or very illegal. 

***

Looks like a certain assassinet has her work cut out for her. Next chapter we are in deep space. Don't forget your toothbrush and your space suit. Reb.