Dark Arrow Ch. 07

He sucked in a breath despite his best effort to avoid showing any reaction. Bloody hell! He'd been deep covered by the best agency out there. How did a piss ant little girl from a world that was, at least in his opinion, barely past being a backwater colony slum find that information. So far as he knew only upper Advocacy management and his handler knew about the circumstances of his retirement. Only a few others knew or even suspected he was an advocacy agent.

He glared at the smug look that settled over Erillia's face, but couldn't help but wonder where the scrawny weeping girl he'd always associated her with had gone and just who this woman who was staring him down was.

"I told you Rattler, I know exactly who and what you are, but you don't have a clue about me. The man they have you hunting for. His name is Renald, He was a member of the 38th force recon unit 110th battalion of the Imperial marines. You should know that unit well, given that it was my father's unit and you were sent to spy on him." He glowered for a second that she knew about his mission and tried to speculate on just what all she might know. She didn't even pause though.

"I was trained by Edward Laroch," She continued. "Distinguished Special Forces operator, marine, and survival specialist. My husband and his friends taught me to fight against odds and overcome the impossible. My father and Ren taught me honor and discipline. They taught me to live off the land and survive on my own wits and skills. Dad taught me how and where to aim to kill. He taught me how to hunt without emotions. Ren honed that edge and gave me the tools and abilities to go up against hardened combat troops. The Advocacy has given me a target and a purpose."

"Do you know who I am now McNeal?" She hissed menacingly as she seemed to grow in stature before his eyes. "I am the Reaper! My Name is Erillia Laroch. Daughter of a legend, and lover to another. Death has been and will always be my constant companion. I'm not here for you this time Jonathan, but don't think for a second I won't gut you like a fish if you get in my way. I know more about what's going on than you could guess and if you make me kill you it won't be just you that dies. You've made friends here, and you have family. I don't like killing those who aren't involved, but in your case I'll make an exception."

He swallowed the lump that rose in his throat. She was serious, and what's more he believed she could do what she was threatening to do. He knew who her father was and what he'd done, though he would have sworn until this moment that she didn't have the first clue about him. When she had learned this and just what she was capable of had just become a huge unknown, and if there was one thing Jonathan McNeal hated it was unknowns. Unknowns got you killed.

"Alright, you said you needed explosives, what do you need them for and how much do you need," he growled trying to unsettle her with the barely veiled anger he let slip into his voice. She was probably right that he didn't want her to lose it and attack him, but he also didn't want her feeling confident and comfortable. She wasn't the type he could lull into a false sense of security, so his best bet was to keep her slightly off guard and wait for a crack in her behavior he could use to topple her.

He scowled as he thought about all the wasted time and effort the advocacy was spending here trying to run people down. They'd taken in someone already but they had orders out to every operative to track down every contact and associate he'd had in the city. It was a waste of time and money. Money they would then be short when it came time to pay their operatives, which of course meant that if the operatives didn't find something they would be the first ones not getting paid. He couldn't help asking himself why. What had this Renald done that was worth this kind of expenditure of men and money to track down?

Jonathan narrowed his eyes as he noticed Erillia frown. So... she was starting to crack just a bit. Good, that meant he'd be able to figure out what she was up to and hopefully figure out a way out of this shit storm he'd managed to land in. It angered him to no end that the situation had come to this. Years of careful work. Constantly maneuvering behind the scenes to keep things under wraps. And here one hitch that he couldn't foresee and suddenly everything was in jeopardy. He was about to go into a very dark place with his thoughts when he heard Erillia clear he throat.

"I'm sorry I guess I'm just a little surprised that you'd use them for that." He said, bluffing to buy time. He saw her brows draw together and cursed inwardly, realizing he'd made a miscalculation.

"Right," Erilla said slowly "So since you clearly are distracted let's try this again. I need all of them. Every explosive, rocket, every bit or ordnance that you have. You can ask all you want, but I'm not inclined to tell you what they're for and you should know better than to tip your hand so blatantly. If you're hoping that you can buy time for them to arrive you don't know me very well. No alarms were triggered and your backup isn't due to check in for almost an hour. By the time they realize he's not checking in we'll be done here and you'll either have a payday or you'll be dead."

"You're supremely confident in your abilities aren't you," he said, feeling a flare of anger as he realized he didn't really doubt she was as good as she implied anymore. He'd seen her work as an assassin. He knew her father's legend and that it was well earned. If she'd been trained by two men from the 38th she had every reason to think she was good enough to pull of what she said she'd done.

"No. I'm quite sure I'm in over my head," she said softly. His head jerked up at that. He'd expected bluster and a snappy comeback. He'd have bet anything that she thought she was unbeatable, but to have her admit she was out of her depth was staggering. More than that it was extremely worrying. A person who thought they were invincible would make mistakes. They wouldn't be careful.

A person who knew they were up against long odds and probably were not equal to the challenge facing them though was the most dangerous person to face. He swallowed hard as his throat constricted. That was what he hadn't been able to place about her demeanor. She had accepted that this was a suicide mission, and she was at peace with that. She knew her odds of coming out of this alive were next to none, but she was planning on doing as much damage as she could on the way out. He shuddered inwardly as he glanced over her again.

She was lethal enough when she was just business as usual, but she'd always been careful. She'd always made her plans to prevent excessive damage and to give herself an exit route. This time she didn't need to worry about what they'd do to her if they caught her. She knew where this was going and she was planning for that outcome. This time her friends and family wouldn't be a concern because there wouldn't be any reason to look for or try and catch her. Collateral damage wasn't going to be a concern anymore.

Erillia Laroch was scary in her own right. The woman who stood before him though bore no resemblance to that girl. The woman before him had the eyes of someone who's seen one too many battlefields. Someone who was tired of the kid gloves and pretending that she didn't know who was behind what was going on and that they didn't know who she was. A woman who was tired of losing friends and tired of hiding, and a warrior who had finally been pushed far enough that they were ready to burn the world to the ground. Whoever this was it was not the Erillia that Jonathan had watched grow up, nor the woman he'd been tasked to watch and now to find.

With a start he realized he recognized who he was looking at. This was the Reaper. No longer was that a code name or a persona, though it had started that way. The persona had morphed into a fully realized person capable of ridiculous amounts of destruction and prepared to do whatever she thought she needed to do to achieve her objective. The humanity nearly gone from her eyes and hate crowding in around the edges. This woman was vengeance and fire like no one he'd met before. She thawed the ice in his veins and for the first time in years his hands shook a bit and he felt sweat bead on his forehead.

What had been started that night when Cortofski and his band of imbeciles raped a young naive girl was about to spill out onto the streets in a major way. She'd been mistreated once before and everyone who wronged her had ended up paying the price. Now everyone else in Terra were lined up to pay part of that price as well. He swallowed again, managing to clear his throat and meet her eyes.

"You're asking for enough explosives to wipe this entire city off the map. My entire stock. That's obscenely expensive not to mention a huge amount of product. Just how do you plan on transporting that, and I'll ask this again, what do you plan on doing with it." He held up a hand as she started to retort. "I don't give a good god damn who you kill. You know a good deal about me, but you don't know everything." She glared at him and he chuckled.

"Like I said I don't care what you intend to use them for I just need to know if I need to avoid a certain area or if I need to get the hell out of the city before they go boom. The amount of ordnance you're talking about costs enough that you have just jumped to the top of my loyalties list. You're going to make me a very rich man and the Advocacy can rant and rave all they like, but they never said I couldn't sell ordinance to people. By the time my report gets seen you'll already have done whatever it is that you're going to do."

"You know what will happen if you try and stop me don't you," she said harshly, pinning his eyes with her gaze. He nodded and noticed a shift in her attitude as she relaxed slightly. He fought the urge to heave a sigh of relief and wipe the sweat from his brow. Dear lord this girl was lethal. He stared at her in awe for a moment before snapping into business mode. He'd watched her and her parents for years, but when the hell had she changed from the nervous barely capable hunter into this person that chilled him to his core.

He shook his head. Barely capable was a bit harsh. She'd been trained by her father after all and as a game hunter she'd been more than adequate for years and was without a doubt one of the best on Terra now if not indeed the best. Her assassin career though had been halting and unsure. She might think she was a hot shot new kid, but she'd been ignored partially because a lot of people had doubted she had the fortitude to continue doing the work for long. Then that job with Bicormish had come along, and everything had changed. Turns out she wasn't hesitant at all, and not only was she brazen as hell but she had the skills to back it up. Overnight she was the hottest commodity on the black market.

Everyone suddenly wanted to know who she worked with, and who'd trained her. He'd had to keep his mouth shut and play politics once they started trying to figure out where she got her gear from. Now he was in even deeper, and he had a feeling he wasn't done sinking yet. She didn't know this, but his fortunes were bound up in what was about to happen to her far more than she could ever realize.

"Alright so you need explosives and ordinance. You're looking for large quantities and I can definitely provide that, but I don't think you realize just how much product I have." She arched an eyebrow at him at this statement and he chuckled. "May I," he said indicating the table top display. She frowned for a second but finally her shoulders relaxed just a bit and she backed off a couple steps. He noticed that although her stance relaxed she had also kept weapons to hand and in a position to easily shift back in to attack him.

"Slowly," she said keeping her eyes locked on his every motion, "and make sure I can see both your hands at all times." He cursed inwardly but nodded and smiled as he laid his hands on the table slowly and smoothly bringing up a holo display of the city. A few taps later and the view shifted highlighting several warehouses.

"These are all mine," he said quietly. "Each one is for a different type of weaponry." A few more taps and he brought up designations over the warehouses and zoomed in on the one labeled explosives. "I've got nearly 50,000 metric tons of explosive ordinance Erillia. While I don't doubt that you need a hefty amount of high quality product, I seriously doubt you need everything I have." He smirked as he stepped back from the table and crossed his arms.

Erillia was startled by the amount of product. She'd known he had three warehouses but she assumed each one was a potential site and he rotated product around to reduce the odds of getting his supply raided should the cops come snooping. Stepping forward to the table she glanced between the display and him for a second. Sheathing her knife she kept the pistol she'd taken from him trained on his chest as she tapped in a few commands of her own.

The image shifted and shimmered for a second before refocusing.

She indicated the table and stepped back. His breath caught in his throat as he looked at the image. He didn't need to get closer to recognize that particular structure but still he approached the table. He frowned for a second as he noticed a super imposed circle around the buildings on the screen. Glancing up he gave her a quizzical look and gestured to the map.

"Ok, explain." He said quietly.

"You asked what I wanted explosives for." She said with that soft deadly tone that told him she was balanced on the razors edge of simply attacking him, and that what she was showing him was without a doubt her intended target. He almost choked as he glanced back at the image and the now daunting circle.

"A two block radius," he whispered in awe looking at the area and calculating the number of buildings and people in the area.

"It will be nothing but a smoking crater when I'm done with it," she said quietly. He glanced up in shock. She knew she was out of her depth and that there was far better odds of her getting killed doing whatever it was she was trying to get done. Still despite knowing that this was a suicide mission she was supremely confident that she would level that area before she died. He swallowed hard and glanced over the display again.

Fucking hell she knew the Advocacy tower superstructure was a hard target to hit, but she was planning this in such a way he could see it working. The amount of explosives he had could more than do the job and she was planning on in fact with the quality of explosives he had available she could get by with under a ton of explosives. The hard part was placing the explosives. What was worse was the two block radius. He stared at that as dread filtered in and froze his blood again.

She knew enough about the Advocacy to know that the tower had a network of escape tunnels that led out but only a handful of those let out beyond a two block perimeter and the ones that did ran so close to other tunnels that an explosion big enough to bring down the buildings above ground would all but guarantee that the tunnels all collapsed. If she brought the tower down too everyone in there would die.

He glanced at her and saw her standing poised, watching him and waiting for his actions to determine what she did next. He sighed. She didn't know, through no fault of her own, that there was more than just the Advocacy in play here. She didn't know that anyone but her on this rock was willing to challenge the Advocacy in any way, let alone the blatant assault she was planning. He'd been straddling the line between two groups for so long now, but it seemed that the time was upon him when he might just have to choose a side.

"Let's talk quantity," he said quietly. Professional business he could handle. It was simple and he didn't have to think about the ramifications of it just yet. "I'm assuming you're planning to place explosives outside the tower first." He glanced at her and received a nod in return. "And I assume you're planning on no survivors so you want more than enough to do the job but not so much that it becomes completely impossible to move them or to escape the explosion should you survive whatever you're planning." She grudgingly acknowledged the accuracy of his guess. He smiled.

"Luckily for you I have something in stock that should do the trick." Crossing from behind the counter with his hands up so she could watch him he walked across the store front and pressed a button. The usual display of knives slide apart and a wall recess whispered open displaying an array of blocks of explosive compound. He reached out and deftly plucked a small stick about the length and diameter of a standard pencil off the stand before turning and holding it out to her.

"XE357. Stabilized Azidoazide azide one of the most explosive compounds on this or any other planet we know of. Explosive force equal to sixty pounds of C4 plastic explosive in that stick. I've got almost a ton of it in storage. Based on the area you're looking to cover I'd estimate you need around a hundred and fifty pounds of this, two hundred if you want to be on the safe side."

She nodded looking over the explosive. Turning it in her hands and feeling its texture, trying to guess how hard it would be to make shape charges of this stuff.

"Detonation method?" She asked glancing at him as she rolled the stick between her fingers.

"Take your pick. Time, proximity, remote via multiple types of transmission, ignition, and hell you can even rig it to explode on impact or when shot." He motioned to the side of the explosives display. Blasting caps are a popular method since they are easy to wire up." She nodded her head and pursed her lips thinking for a moment. Finally she nodded on more time and handed him back the stick.

"I need 500 pounds. 300 caps, 50 foot of fuse, and throw in a few impact caps as well." She paused to see his eyes widen but he merely nodded. "I also need some other explosives. A couple shoulder fire rockets or RPGs, 100 M35 frag grenades, 30 M81 thermite and phosphorous compound grenades, and if you have any breaching charges I need a couple dozen of those as well." He blinked, stunned at the quantity and exact specifications of explosives she was asking for. That much ordinance would have been more than a whole squad carried in the military.

He was well aware though that she had a pretty good idea of what he had in stock and he couldn't deny he had what she requested. He merely nodded trying to conceive of how she intended to utilize this amount of explosive in a coordinated attack.

"I also need regular weaponry. Specifically I need two mark 8 plasma rifles with about two hundred extra batteries each. Two RK 99 SMGs with a hundred of the standard thirty round clips and the three thousand rounds of ammo for those clips. One Freninham 57 .45 pistol with ten mags and the one hundred fifty rounds to fill them. One B series plasma pistol with ten extra batteries. And finally if you have it I'll take a RM Magnum series plasma scattergun and ten of extra batteries for it as well."

He couldn't stop his mouth from hanging open this time. He just stared at her for a few seconds before composing himself and nodding.

"I see, and I suppose you want a full set of body armor to go with that." He said dryly trying to come to terms with the fact that had he been going to assault a position like the Advocacy tower he would have requested very similar gear to what she was requesting. Although he would have wanted two or three men with him to even consider such an attack.

Then again it wasn't like she had been given a choice. For whatever reason she felt the need to go after them. He assumed it was over this Ren character and in her position he wouldn't feel like he could trust anyone else to help him or that he should involve them in this kind of thing. A grudging respect rose where before he'd considered her less than an equal.