Red Queen/"Red Queen" by Gabriel's Fury
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. ”Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” ”How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. ”You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” -Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“This is insane.” Samantha muttered as she watched the sun rise from the top of the Pan-America building. Glancing below, she saw the crowds and the police tape and the pulsing flash of police lights that cut through the morning air in brilliant colorful contrast to the steel gray and pale glass of the Steel Canyon corporate epicenter. Her eye lingered on Drama King, the hero in bright blue and white who was signing autographs and waving to the crowd while the clock ticked away and the Malta prepared to escape.
“Jackass.” She grumbled, glaring at the arrogant superhero standing on the street below as she pulled her gloves on tight. “How are we coming, Alice?” she voiced while sighing. The thin backpack over her costume vibrated almost imperceptibly. To anyone else, it wouldn’t even be noticed; it made a cell phone’s vibration feel like an earthquake in comparison. To Red Queen’s almost perfect body awareness, however, it contained nuances, thoughts, information, and even a touch of emotion. The AI had finished working, was communicating the information to Red’s neural network computer, and also thought this whole plan was insane.
Red Queen had a dozen ways to talk to her personal AI. The fact was, however, most of them took too long. Conversations with people usually did. Where a humans or less sophisticated machines had to speak in sequence, telling one idea or concept at a time, the vibratory communication scheme let Alice tell her everything at once: The speed, frequency, and harmonics of the vibration communicated hundreds of thoughts to her in a single pulse. And for what they were planning, every microsecond was going to count.
Red looked again at the rising sun, and a quick vibration from her backpack told her it was time to go. Her distance to the edge of the building was exactly 2.3942 meters. Her speed, acceleration, and mass rushed into a series of equations flickering through the cybernetic network overlaying her brain as her muscular legs pumped forward in a short run to build speed. Leaping silently, she tucked into a somersault, flipped one and a half times, and dove downwards head first off the edge of the skyscraper.
Cool air hissed against her mask, lashing her ponytail behind her like a whip as she fell story after story. The morning air, suddenly warmed by the rising sun, swept upwards creating a breeze. Her internal computer measured the rising airspeed and translated the data into algorithms, which in turn were turned instantly into precise muscular action. Leaning sharply to the left and extending her hand out to her side to guide the rushing wind, Red Queen shifted the plane of her body, taking advantage of the sunrise exactly as planned to violently change direction in mid-air and smash through the glass of the fifty third floor window.
Samantha exploded into the building in a shower of glass, her feet touching the top of the staircase between floors before she pitched forward into a tight roll that carried her down the steps and between two of the Malta operatives standing guard at the bottom.
<snap> <snap>
Her eyes shifted left and right for the split second as she stood between them as CONI (Cortical Optical Network Interface) recorded perfect images of the soldiers she faced. Alice vibrated, having already produced identifications and capability assessments of both men.
“Hey guys.” She said smiling.
Gregroy and Stephan were well trained. Greg tapped his personal alarm while Stephan swung around a squat machine pistol and fired a burst of shells at the now standing heroine.
With a blur, Red turned sideways, her eyes locked on the muzzle of the firing weapon. Alice had already done the math: Stephen’s hand was moving too quickly and there was space between the oncoming bullets. Her blurred movement placed her narrow waist into the gap between shells, and while she winced as one bullet grazed her on both her stomach and back, she was otherwise untouched.
Leaping into the air, Red flipped in a tight roll before shooting her leg out to slam a foot into the Stephen’s face, his nose exploding in a shower of blood as the impact lifted him off the ground and threw him backwards into the wall. His body shook as it hit, bouncing back forward in time for Red to catch hold of the back of his hair on her way down, and throw him into his friend. The two collapsed into a heap against the opposite wall as Red landed in a crouch. The Stepan was unconscious, but Greg tried to stand. Still low to the ground, Red planted her hands on the floor and whipped her body around, extending a leg to catch the backs of Greg’s calves, kicking his legs out hard enough to flip him almost all the way around. With a sickening crack, his head hit the floor, and a moment later, Red was standing at the foot of the stairs in silence.
“Surrender now, and you will be spared!’ she heard Drama King shout as he attacked the front of the building. As much as she hated the pompous ass heroes who seemed more absorbed with appearances than results, she had to admire role in all this: He was a perfect distraction; Not that he knew he was being used as one. She grinned as she thought of the ‘lady in distress’ call she had made to his PDA. Blasts of gunfire and the sound of breaking furniture signaled he had started his assault with all the tact and subtlety she had expected.
Time to move.
Opening the door she walked into the laboratory through the fire door, disabling the exit alarm with a thought. The lab was filled with electronic equipment, a series of centrifuges, and walls covered with white boards containing the scrawlings of the one of the world’s most prominent portal physicists. This was the prize. This was what the Malta were here to get. Two men were carefully copying down the writings while a sapper, a operations commander a tactical operative and a gunslinger stood guard.
There was no surprise at her arrival.
There was no delay.
There was no talk.
They were all professionals.
In silence, the room exploded into combat.
The sapper’s backpack gave off a high whine as the energy weapon powered up and the ops commander barked a quick command. The tactical operative flicked his wrist, sending a throwing knife hissing through the air as the gunslinger drew and fired. Red back stepped, her hand whipping up to strike the flat of the knife as it whistled towards her face. The bullets tore into the wall in front of her, and with a loud spang, she swatted the knife into the Gunsligher’s shoulder who grunted in pain, his armor absorbing most of the impact.
Red Queen took two steps forward, planted her hands on the counter and vaulted over it towards the Ops Commander. Turning her head in mid flight, she made a digital connection with the sapper’s complex targeting system and made a few adjustments. When the brilliant blue flash exploded from the triangular nozzle of the weapon a moment later, the blast went off point blank, enveloping the gunslinger and the sapper who both shouted profanities as the powerful energy draining device disabled their equipment.
Red landed mid room on a workbench in front of the commander and swept her eyes from side to side.
<snap><snap><snap><snap><snap><snap><snap><snap> CONI took stock of the room, and placing the flat of her hand against her backpack, she vibrated her palm to give Alice the information. A microsecond later, Alice vibrated back and Red knew she had what she needed.
“Thanks guys.” She said, dropping to the floor. Eyes blazing, her fists and feet became a blur of precision strikes and kicks, her body snapping around in a roundhouse followed by pistoning kicks to his shins, thighs and torso. The commander we extremely well trained, and dropped his own pistol to strike back, flat palming her incoming kicks and deflecting her punches with rapid sweeps of his forearms. But what started as practiced confidence for him turned immediately into confusion. He had been trained to fight against almost every martial arts style in the world – But Red wasn’t using any of them.
Red Queen had never been formally trained. She was simply impossibly precise. Blow after blow landed against the commander as CONI scanned his movements and Alice calculated predictions. In moments, her digital art had reverse engineered his style and created a routine to get around it. Like a virus invading a system, what looked at first like a good fight simply became a beating, his body jerking and thudding as her blows to his face, throat and body that landed home over and over, punctuated by the crunch of bone and spray of blood onto the nearby white boards.
Finally, he staggered, and collapsed to his knees, coughing once before pitching forward.
The other soldiers were moving in. Time to end it. Opening her hand, Red revealed a powerful Crey-built concussion grenade. All three soldiers, now wary of the impossibly fast heroine, paused.
Red Queen winked. She had chosen this model because she had anticipated they would know it when they saw it. She pressed the detonator switch, bringing a gasp from all of them.
With a hissing whump, the gunslinger teleported out at the same time the sapper activated his flight pack and shot through the door closely followed by the tactical operative and the two record keepers. The Red Queen set the grenade down and took one step back and to the side.
<KRAKOOM!>
Alice had run fifty thousand simulations on this explosive in this room under these conditions in the last few seconds. According to her, Red should be safe from the concussive force of the grenade if she stood exactly here. The room exploded blasting all four walls out in a flurry of dust and debris, a huge chunk of machinery whistling within an inch of Red’s face. Or maybe closer. She thought, as she felt the blood trickle from a cut on her cheek. The dust cleared and Red, mostly untouched, surveyed the damage around her.
“Good job.” She muttered verbally to Alice.
Alice vibrated her response, quite pleased with herself.
Moving swiftly under the cover of Drama King’s attack and the dust of the explosion, Red headed for the elevator shaft and slipped away.
--
Samantha read while sipping coffee as she sat at The Grind café and waiting for her contact. Drama King was working hard to explain to the press how his attack against the Malta wasn’t the direct cause of the detonation that destroyed all that sensitive research: Research the government didn’t want Portal corp to have anyway.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t want it.” Rick smiled as he wandered up, hands in the pockets of his baggy suit.
“Get out of my head, Rick.” She growled.
“Sorry…” the telepath answered. “…But we can’t be too careful.”
She barely acknowledged him, sliding a microdisc across the table. “I took mental snapshots of the room, the boards, the equipment, and everything else. You should have everything you need.”
Rick smiled at her, pocketing the disc. “Always a pleasure.” He said warmly.
“***** off.” She said sweetly, making her disdain for him perfectly clear. “I don’t work for you. I work for them.” She said absently indicating the people around them.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.” His cold smile never wavered. “But it’s us that are keeping Crey away from you, not them.”
Red Queen scowled. “For now.” She spat.
“Yes, indeed, for now.” He stood and took in a deep breath. “I’ll be back with your next assignment.”
Red glared at him as he sauntered off.
“For now.” She repeated to herself.
