LorAnna’s matt-black conformex covered her from head to boots, and gave her warmth and near-invisibility in the last hours of the Deep of the Dark, Llanu’s long and bitterly cold night.  Tonight, she had worked her way through three layers of security without detection because of the suit, and was no more than eighty meters from her target. Her ribs gave a twinge as she eased her weapon to her shoulder.  The pain was the ghost of a wound inflicted during one of her first missions.  A harsh lesson, that wound.

Hell’s breath, taking this single shot would be incredibly dangerous.  LorAnna knew from that painful early experience that her weapon’s muzzle flash would give away her position the instant she fired.  Tonight she had to be prepared to instantly fold up her body and roll at least ten meters, silently with her weapon, and with her eyes squeezed shut in order to preserve her night vision.  If she paused only just long enough to see if her target went down, she was dead. The guards on the roof above her target would kill her where she stood. After rolling beyond the range of the bright, withering spray of energy charges the guards would release toward her muzzle flash, LorAnna needed to get up on her feet and be running flat out for her bolt hole.  She had rehearsed this routine hundreds of times, often enough that her body could perform the motions without conscious command from her brain.  She hoped it was enough. She preferred to live to see the damage she would do this night to the cursed Outworlders and their vicious general, Vius Dar.

LorAnna took several deep breaths through her heat-vented mouth piece to give her body more oxygen and to center herself.  She brought her weapon’s scope to her eye, steadied her firing stance and slowly exhaled as her brain sent the command to her finger to squeeze—

“That would be a very bad mistake,” a low, deep voice cut through the silence.

The words exploded through her senses much like the shot she would have fired in the next moment would have exploded through the air, and she jerked before she could control herself.  LorAnna froze in position in spite of the adrenalin download, certain her death had come now, at this unexpected and unremarkable moment.

When no bolts pierced her flesh, when none of the other hideous weapons belonging to the High Rule Guard scorched her flesh or cut her down, she dared to draw a breath.  She struggled with whether to lower her weapon or to swing it onto the unknown man who had spoken to her out of the dark.  The fact that he might not be alone was the only thing that stayed her hand for that fraction of an interval.  It seemed he read her thoughts well enough, though, by his next words.

“Don’t—if you care to live through this night.  My blade will spill your lifeblood before you can put your aim on me.  So lay your weapon on the ground.  Slowly.  Remain facing outward.  Your work is finished tonight.  In fact, your work is finished, period.”

LorAnna gritted her teeth as she watched her original target move out of range, ignorant of his near death experience. She watched months of waiting and planning, the relentless training, and hundreds of pounds of hard-won currency get pissed away because of this lucky idiot.  She didn’t know how he had found her because she was certain she had not been followed.  He must have stumbled into her in the gods-forsaken dark, the lucky bastard.  But she obeyed her captor’s commands to lower her weapon, and thought furiously about how to get herself away, now that she wasn’t dead.  Rebellion Directive Number Two: failure isn’t failure if you live to fight another day.  She released her arm muscles and uncurled her fingers from the trigger.

“Slowly,” the voice came out of the darkness again, like velvet over steel.  “You wouldn’t want me to misperceive your intentions.”

“No,” she said softly.  “I wouldn’t want that.”