The Engineer
Michael chewed his gum. He walked down a long alleyway between two sections of the same building, the Luna Archives. A museum of artefacts recovered from Earth before it was destroyed by human weapons. The gum had long since lost its flavour but he chewed it anyway, it helped him focus.
Night on Luna was perilously dark. Street lights blasted light in small cones and slivers up and down the streets of the capital with little impact. Michael reached the end of the alleyway, a dead end. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to find his handheld to check the location was right.
‘Having received,’ a voice boomed from the darkness.
Michael looked up and flashed the torch on his handheld into the corner. A wide, muscled man filled the space in all black clothing. ‘The Mandate from Heaven,’ Michael added.
‘may the Emperor,’ a third voice whispered from overhead. A scurrying sound and the scrape of metal on stone preluded a woman dropping to the ground. Short and wearing a combat vest littered with dozens of gadgets, grenades, and ammo clips.
A heavy clunk sounded behind the muscle man, a soldier Michael was sure or he would give up his cut from the job. Stone grated on stone and a voice rang out, ‘lead a long and prosperous life.’ A Khazeni man winked from the shadowed interior, his eyes catching the feint flecks of light around them.
The four gathered inside a store room of the Luna Archives. ‘Why is there a door there?’ Michael asked.
The Khazeni shrugged, ‘Didn’t ask my source. Good of you all to join me. I am aware this is uncouth to meet on the job and not before but my,’ he stopped himself and cleared his throat. ‘Our client was precise, we could not risk being found out beforehand.’
‘So the client would rather risk all our lives for whatever we’re here for. What are we here for?’ The short woman asked tying her in a ponytail.
‘You will know it when you see it. For now here is the plan,’ the Khazeni brought out a sheet of folded paper. He crouched and laid it flat on the floor. Blueprints. ‘We are here,’ he pointed to a store room on the ground floor. There was no door to the alleyway outside on the blueprints. ‘We need to be here,’ he pointed to the middle of the main room, a massive circular domed building dwarfed only by the Chambers next door. ‘Two floors up.’
‘This needs more planning. What are you up against?’ The woman asked her eyes flicking across the blueprint. ‘What’s with all the dotted lines?’ The old fashioned rocket ship shaped building jutted out from the Chambers, the parliament of the Empire. On one side the wall curved around the Chambers and on the other was a semi-circle section that faced the main streets. Between was the domed circular room that housed the team’s target.
‘Shh and I can tell you all that and more,’ the Khazeni said. ‘The dotted lines breaking the building into zones are the security zones. Each contains cameras, sensors, pressure pads, and so on. There are guards, less than usual. Some… unfortunate illnesses struck a few,’ he laughed. ‘Short notice. No cover.’
The muscled man chuckled. He remained standing while the others crouched with his arms folded and his ear turned to the door into the building.
‘Okay, what system are they on… what’s your name?’ Michael asked.
‘No names. Call me Coordinator, he is Contingency, she’s Disrupter, and you’re Engineer.’
‘Naff,’ the Disrupter said.
The Coordinator exhaled through his nose, ‘OneSec. Straight forward system I’m led to believe. A smash and grab is the best way, my client knows enough high ups on this moon. Trust me.’
‘Who is the client?’ The Disrupter asked.
The Coordinator ignored her and continued, ‘We start here. We move through this corridor on the ground floor and the first three zones. We climb the stairs go along this corridor, two floors up, and enter the central display room here. Once there we grab the target and get out the way we came. Got it?’
‘Sounds easy,’ the Disrupter laughed.
‘For you,’ Michael the Engineer said. ‘Five zones. Likely a sixth on the target itself. You and Contingency get to slack off.’
‘There will be guards. Dogs maybe,’ the Disrupter frowned and fondled a grenade hanging from her breast.
Michael shuffled away and noticed everyone else had a pistol strapped to their thigh. The Contingency had a rifle slung over his shoulder. Once again the only one without a weapon, I need to take colder jobs. ‘Is that everything?’
‘Should be,’ the Coordinator stashed the blueprints in a small bag held tight to his body. ‘I have the guard patrols memorised. Wait for a half-past before we start,’ he checked his watch. A rare object in itself. The Coordinator’s ticked and had actual moving arms.
Michael chewed while he waited and made small bubbles.
‘Stop that,’ the Disrupter elbowed him in the ribs.
Michael flinched.
‘Shut up,’ the Coordinator hissed checking his watch again. ‘We can go.’ He reached for the door handle and hovered over it.
‘What are you waiting for?’
The Coordinator’s eyes darted from Disrupter to Engineer. ‘Nothing,’ he pressed down on the handle and his shoulder’s slumped.
‘That could have been trapped,’ Michael said.
‘Shh. No talking now,’ the Coordinator said staying low as he entered the corridor. ‘You got three minutes to find the panel and disable this zone.’
‘Three,’ Michael found his handheld and brought up his not-so-legal software to interface with OneSec systems. A bootleg operator application that provided him with a few extra ‘features’. He hurried up one side of the corridor. The lights were dim and the exhibition pieces along the walls covered in a dull grey cloth that hid what was the greatest art collection in the galaxy. The last precious pieces of Earth art, all under the protection of the Emperor and freely viewed by thousands everyday. His handheld lit up at the closeness of a terminal. Michael ran his hand along the wall beside him and found a slim rectangle cut out beneath the information sticker for the J.M.W. Turner painting, The Fighting Temeraire, its beauty hidden behind a pale grey screen. Michael pressed the wall and a screen folded out. Michael set to work using stolen IDs to access the Archive system and bypass most warnings and alarms. A message would be sent to someone high up, the curator possibly, about a new access but Michael the Engineer hoped the curator was asleep at such an unsociable hour.
The screen flashed thrice and cycled through a login screen, a popup warning, and then showed the security zone. There were dozens of cameras, pressure plates underneath the centre walkway, and sensors along the wall at shoulder height. Michael almost swallowed his gum to see how close he had come to setting off every alarm in the Archives. He cycled through options and paused all functions for five minutes. He opened the video feed, cut a section for ten minutes before, and set it looping. He waved to the Coordinator it was time to move.
The other three followed until they reached a locked door. The end of one zone and beginning of another. ‘Hear anything?’ The Coordinator looked to the Contingency.
‘A door opened somewhere above us. Not far,’ his voice gruff and callous.
Michael huffed and found the next terminal. Doors. He hated doors. Loud, obnoxious, barriers that always locked at the worst times. He cycled through options and settled on a slow, partial open that would allow the team to slide through to the other side. The doors would close behind them and the next zone would be disabled for three minutes. Michael inputted the commands and set a timer, ‘Go.’
The Coordinator set off first, the Disrupter next, and the Contingency motioned for Michael the Engineer to go third. Hallways and rooms spun off from the corridor, all sealed behind doors with their own security zones. The Disrupters military boots squeaked against the parquet flooring. Lighting flickered behind them as Michael’s efforts ceased. The low level lighting was tucked into the corners of the ceiling and floor, a gentle orange glow that made it hard for people to see but easy for the cameras.
‘Doors locked,’ the Disrupter said at the stairwell.
‘Blast door,’ the Contingency added.
‘Alright, Disrupter move away. Keep an eye for guards. Contingency, prep that,’ the Engineer said approaching the blast door. Two solid feet of steel with a further three inches either side. Three doors in total all crammed into one.
‘I give the orders,’ the Coordinator said.
‘Sure you do Coordinator. What do I do?’ Michael asked.
‘Unlock the door, smart arse.’
‘And risk an alarm. No, no, blast doors a little more complicated. There are sensors to stop them closing on people, locks from one set to another so you can’t open one by one, and metal worked to repel drills and other tools.’
‘Oh shut up and get on with it,’ the Coordinator said.
The Disrupter smirked at Michael all the while fondling a stun grenade in her hand. She clasped the pin between her teeth and waited to pull.
‘A guard should be patrolling along here soon,’ the Coordinator nestled down against the wall and stared at his watch. He ragged his fingers through knotted hair.
Michael connected to the terminal and found not only where the blast doors sealed by the museum curator himself but an anti-fire trigger was active meaning opening them could cause all fire foam canisters to activate across every floor. He attempted to deactivate the fire safety but was blocked by a prompt asking for a pin code. Twelve numbers long. Michael reached for his tools on his belt, stashed his handheld in his pocket, and yanked the terminal out of the wall. The screen came away easily, the plastic casing breaking in his hands to reveal a tangle of black, red, and white wires. He was looking for green.
‘The hell you doing?’ The Coordinator hissed.
‘Doing it the old fashioned way, now shush Coordinator or I’ll cut the wrong one,’ Michael said. He turned to the Disrupter who happened to be looking over her shoulder at him. ‘You were right. These names are naff,’ he exhaled through his nose and began counting wires with a set of razor sharp pliers.
The Contingency lifted his rifle, placing the butt against his shoulder. It was a huge military issue weapon with rounds the size of a finger, a scope, and a tripod stand at the front to steady the barrel. Contingency held it in the air without the barrel swaying an inch.
The Disrupter pulled the pin. A high pitched metal scrape. She rolled the stun grenade along the floor. The canister rolled down the hall hit the skirting board and spun out of sight. ‘Cover your eyes,’ she whispered back.
Michael brought his arm over his left side and searched for what should have been a green wire. The blast flashed across his vision, causing his hearing to ring. Bright light blinded his right eye. His ears popped and the ringing faded to a dull tinnitus. He made out sounds of a struggle down the hallway. Choking, coughing, and finally a thud.
‘Sorted for now,’ the Disrupter returned swabbing her lip with the back of her hand.
‘We have minutes, maybe seconds, Engineer,’ the Coordinator hissed down Michael’s ear.
Buried beneath a wad of black cables was a green one. Michael shoved the pliers into the bundle and snipped it. A heavy click echoed from the blast door. He checked his handheld and pressed ‘Open’. The three part doors slid open with a mechanical whirr and no alarms. ‘Quick like. I’m closing them behind us,’ Michael said as he shoved the terminal parts back into the wall and placed the over back on as best he could.
The team climbed the stairs and by the first floor the blast doors hissed closed. Emergency lighting flashed blue along each concrete step. This was an emergency stairwell Michael realised and wondered if there were cameras. He checked the corners but the lenses could be so small it was almost pointless trying.
‘What about the next door?’ The Disrupter asked.
‘All blast doors should be linked to open and close in sequence. When we get there it should be open. Don’t ask why, it’s a OneSec thing,’ Michael tried to avoid any hint of a jingle enter his voice. He failed.
‘You sound like an advert.’
‘Stop flirting,’ the Coordinator said as he climbed the steps two at a time. The lines around his eyes looked deeper than before.
The team reached the second floor to find the blast door closing. Michael sprinted to the top and shoved his hand between the metal teeth. The door shuddered to a halt inches from crushing his arm. The three part doors receded at a glacial pace. ‘Woah,’ Michael blocked the way. ‘Panels over there,’ he pointed to the opposite side of the final corridor.
‘Then access it,’ the Coordinator said.
‘Two guards approaching from the left,’ the Contingency said in a low grumble.
‘I need to be next to it and the floor is pressurised in the middle. Too far to jump.’
‘So we’re stuck?’ The Disrupter said.
‘No Disrupter, we aren’t stuck.’
‘Stop calling me that, the names Anastasia,’ she crossed her arms.
‘Michael, nice to meet you.’
‘No. Now you’re compromised,’ the Coordinator said.
‘Yu Jin,’ the Contingency said raising one hand.
The three turned to the last unnamed member.
He rolled his eyes, ‘Fine. Kizvan, nice to meet you all. Can we not be imprisoned and tortured by the Emperor please.’
‘The Emperor doesn’t torture. She is the embodiment of all that is good within humanity,’ Anastasia said.
Kizvan huffed at that.
‘Why can the guards walk safely through this place with triggering anything?’ Michael said.
‘You’re the Engineer Michael,’ Kizvan said.
‘Cameras can be ignored but pressure plates, sensors, they wouldn’t know unless.’
‘Unless the guards carried something with them,’ Anastasia said smiling at him.
Michael nodded and smiled to Anastasia.
‘I said stop flirting.’
‘How far is the guard?’
‘Not far. Silence is best,’ Yu Jin said and crouched in the way of the blast door.
The team waited. Anastasia rolled a stun grenade in her hand, a short truncheon in the other.
‘Don’t kill. I suspect it is under the skin and monitoring vitals,’ Michael typed out on his handheld and showed it to Anastasia. She nodded. The walls were shrouded in more of the same grey fabric to protect the artwork on display. Wood panelled ceiling added a weight of grandeur to the corridors along with the parquet flooring, dark and aged like a chateau or country home from Earth. All long lost to destruction and recreated here as a reminder of what was lost to war. Michael thought of what he would do with his considerable pay, enough to buy a replica of one of Earth’s old aristocratic homes. Not on Luna but somewhere else in the Empire. Back home on Rabesh, maybe? He imagined him and Anastasia there. He smiled.
Anastasia’s face hardened as she pulled the pin from the stun grenade. She rolled it along the skirting board, avoiding the pressure plates like before, and shielded her eyes and ears. Michael did the same, properly this time. There was a pop and a hiss followed by two men cursing colourfully. Anastasia leapt up and thwacked both across the back of the head. The men slumped unconscious on the floor. She zip tied their wrists together, all the while standing on what should been pressure plates. Michael stared in awe as Anastasia worked. Small, short, and not well built but that didn’t prevent her finding her own methods.
‘Your turn,’ Kizvan shoved Michael.
Michael stumbled out into the corridor. Popped open the terminal and connected. The cameras would be running and it was only a matter of time before the guard in the office saw them. It all hinged on how observant he was, how good at his job. Michael looped the camera feed first, muted the audio, and then set to work on everything else. If he wanted he could take the nearest painting off the wall, smash a cabinet, and steal it without anyone knowing. He searched for an information sticker. The nearest was for a painting called Tableau 1 by Piet Mondrian. He lifted the cloth to see and shook his head, not for me.
‘You aren’t here for the culture,’ Kizvan hissed behind him.
Michael rolled his eyes, ‘You are the worst person I have ever worked with.’
‘One of the best though otherwise we wouldn’t be on this job.’
‘Remains to be seen,’ Michael tapped his anger away.
‘Blueprints. A way in. Patrol routes. Location of target. Sick guards, you think those are all miracles?’ Kizvan said.
One of the guards moaned and began to move. Anastasia whacked him in the back of the head and he fell back unconscious. She tied their ankles together to make sure. ‘Someone will have heard us,’ she said.
‘Done,’ Michael said hiding the terminal back into the wall.
The team marched down the corridor to the main exhibit room, a sign hanging from the ceiling read, ‘The Emperor’s Collection.’ Michael’s heart began to beat faster. ‘No way,’ his mouth went dry.
Kizvan grinned revealing perfect white teeth, ‘You better believe it.’
‘What?’ Anastasia frowned as they rounded a corner to the last door.
Yu Jin nodded, ‘I will tell my grandchildren about this.’
‘It’s the Imperial Seal,’ Michael breathed.
‘The Heirloom Seal of the Realm,’ Kizvan said happily. ‘We get to steal the oldest artefact in here, one thought lost for over a thousand years on Earth. Found and miraculously survived the planet’s destruction.’
‘The Emperor will send her own soldiers after you. I bet Her Majesty will hunt you herself for this,’ Anastasia said pressing her nose to the window of the final door.
‘She won’t find me,’ Kizvan said.
‘Ahh, of course. You will hide in your Arks sailing the stars. Millions crammed into a fleet wandering from planet to planet. Like finding a size one bolt in a docking bay,’ Michael said.
‘Don’t know why you’re smiling,’ Anastasia poked Yu Jin in the arm. ‘Your Archon wants this thing so bad to legitimise himself. After this he will never see it again. It will go in some crime lord’s private collection being shown off to guests to demonstrate his power and reach. He’ll wank over his own reflection in the polished jade.’
Yu Jin’s expression soured and his cold eyes descended on Anastasia. ‘Then I will find it for my Archon and slaughter those that get in my way.’
Anastasia nodded and backed away, ‘Okay. I would love that sort of loyalty in a man.’
‘Michael, get the door open would you. I would like to get paid,’ Kizvan said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he opened the terminal and was greeted by a red login screen. ‘Blast.’
‘What?’
‘They know we’re here. This might take awhile.’
‘Old fashioned way?’ Kizvan said.
Michael tapped the glass of the door, one foot thick, ‘This is state of the art. It would be much slower with pliers than a handheld.’
‘Multiple people approach. Hurrying,’ Yu Jin flicked the safety off his rifle and pressed a button on his wrist. Heavy armour plating unravelled from his back and coated him in a glossy black bullet proof suit.
‘I need to get one of those,’ Anastasia stared wide eyed at Yu Jin.
‘Maybe after you get paid you can afford one,’ Kizvan said shuffling on his feet and checking the clip in his pistol.
Anastasia licked her lips, ‘Something like that.’ She unholstered her pistol, a cute cat charm dangled from the grip.
Michael typed as fast as he could, issuing commands to the door in swift succession. All rebounded. The same error ‘Invalid Login.’ But I’m in. Logged in. He deactivated hallway lights to check. The floor level lighting dimmed and returned. See. His gum had became a hard wad of tack. With each chew it stuck to his teeth and he had to brush it off with his tongue. His jaw ached.
‘Any luck?’
‘Shh,’ Michael routed a command through a different login, a OneSec admin. The password would change in an hour now he had used it but there was no option. The cost was worth the prize. With a quick flurry of commands the terminal switched from red to green. He entered the command to disable movement sensors on the other side of the door and to open it. The door hissed and gears began to whirr in the wall.
‘Oh good,’ Kizvan breathed a sigh of relief.
The doors slammed shut. The terminal flashed red and Michael’s handheld froze.
‘What happened?’
‘No idea. Lost connection?’ Michael tapped on the screen but there was no response.
‘You are the Engineer. You are meant to have the ideas!’
‘Shut up!’ Michael shoved Kizvan in the chest. The Khazeni stood to his full height and grimaced.
‘Children!’ Anastasia yelled. ‘We have company.’ The first bullets lodged themselves in the wall. She threw three grenades in quick succession. Fog filled the corridor and she vanished into the thick of it. A thunder crack ripped through the hallway as Yu Jin stumbled back, smoke raising from the barrel of his rifle. A barbaric laugh escaped him from deep in his chest, his eyes lit up.
Michael pocketed the handheld and tore the plastic casing off the terminal. Cables ran around the screen and down its spine into the wall and behind concrete. All black. He found his screener. A small camera and screen which could see through most cable insulation to the copper and optic fibre inside. He hoped seeing the innards of the multitude of black cables would give a hint to their purpose. The screener display was flecked with distortion and errors as Michael hovered it over the bulk of the cables at the rear.
‘Why do they have so many cables?’ Kizvan stood shoulder to shoulder with Michael.
‘To confuse people like me. Not that many are real but cut the wrong one and the alarm goes. Old style complexity,’ Michael said. He looked to Kizvan who smile his too white smile. ‘Do you mind.’
Kizvan stepped back one, ‘Man’s gotta work.’ A bullet whizzed by and sent a chunk of wood and plaster tumbling to the floor where Kizvan had stood.
Anastasia stumbled back into the short corridor leading to the final door clutching her side, ‘Last of this lot are down. Yu Jin painted the walls with their brains. Destroyed more wealth than any of us has ever seen in cash put together.’
‘I’d rather burn a few paintings than die here,’ Kizvan said.
Anastasia shrugged and pulled blood soaked plaster from her hair. ‘So how are we actually getting out of here, Kizvan?’
‘Glad you asked. I will show you once Michael here opens the door.’
Footsteps thudded down the hallway. What sounded like ten people at least.
‘Michael!’ Kizvan hissed.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ the Engineer wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to stop his hand from trembling. He lingered over two cables, both with a similar size interior according to the screener. The display was unclear. Michael felt them between his fingers.
‘A grenade?’ Kizvan asked Anastasia.
She rolled her eyes and chose a stun grenade, her last one, and tossed it down the hallway. A shout went up from the guards and the bang resounded through the corridor. The fog twisted and swam from the sudden burst of energy. ‘You’ve got seconds,’ she kissed the barrel of her pistol.
Michael hovered his pliers of one of the wires. A bead of sweat fell from his hair and glistened on the black cables. He swallowed suddenly wishing he was repairing freighter engines in the dockyards. Dull but safe. What his mother would have wanted. He exhaled through his mouth in a slow hiss.
‘Michael,’ Kizvan said in a long drawn out note.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Michael and held his breath. He pressed down and cut through a cable. The terminal screen went black, the door clicked and slid open.
‘I love you,’ Kizvan shouted and ran inside. He repeated himself again and again.
‘Don’t go too close!’ Michael shouted as he dove inside. Yu Jin was the last to enter. With a few taps on the terminal on the other side of the door Michael shut and locked the door he had painstakingly opened.
‘Why? My. I mean. Our prize is right there,’ Kizvan gestured up to the glass orb floating above a plinth in the centre of the room. A single light shined down. An oddly small block of green jade hung suspended in the glass. A roaring dragon coiled on top and an intricate carving of ancient Chinese characters coated in red ink on the underside.
‘There will security measures,’ Michael said. His gut twisted.
‘I heard of no such things from my sources.’
‘Watch,’ Michael took the gum form his mouth and threw it at the display case. Electricity crackled over the spherical surface turning the gum into a blackened husk. He felt nauseous.
‘Oh,’ Kizvan said wincing.
‘Just wait. It will take the guards some time to get through the door,’ Michael approached the plinth. A simple marble column with little adornment save for a long sticker of information about the once mythical Heirloom Seal of the Realm, commonly known as The Imperial Seal. The symbol of authority in Ancient Chinese dynasties and now one of a select few for the Emperor of Humanity. Michael tapped a plain side of the plinth. A panel opened to reveal a terminal screen.
‘You must hurry,’ Yu Jin said in monotone. He turned to face the door. Shouting and sounds a machinery echoed beyond. Guards, dressed more like soldiers pounded on the slim windows at the top of the door.
‘So how are we getting out?’ Anastasia asked again, prodding Kizvan with her pistol.
He pointed up.
Michael and Anastasia followed his gesture to see a dome roof of windows. Both sighed.
Kizvan hefted a large gun from inside his coat and shot it at a window. A thick cable tipped with a grapple flew through the air and smashed the window. Alarms blared. The grapple trapped itself on the edge of the window and Kizvan yanked opening it. ‘We climb.’
Red light bathed the room while a blaring alarm rang throughout the whole building. ‘You idiot. Guards we could handle but you just summoned the Constabulary.’
‘They’ll be ten minutes. Get to work,’ Kizvan said down his finger at Michael.
Michael reset his handheld and loaded up his bootleg software. He connected to the terminal but his OneSec admin failed to work, as did his usual login. He resorted to a lowly tech account with far less access.
The centre of the door began to glow with heat. Smoke and steam funnelled up to the open window and billowed out into the Luna night. ‘I would like to return home,’ Yu Jin said as a helmet slithered out from his armour and encased his head in the shape of a serpent.
‘I so need one of those,’ Anastasia said taking cover behind an intricate model replica of an Earth sea vessel, once a vital mode of transport.
‘Come on, Michael. I know you can do it,’ Kizvan said sitting with his back against the plinth.
‘Got any gum?’
‘Afraid not.’
Michael clenched and unclenched his hands once after the other. He wiped them on his shirt as he typed commands to the terminal. At every turn he was denied. The door hummed with heat. The air turned acrid with chemical smoke. Michael coughed and breathed through his mouth avoid the sting in his nostrils, instead it stung the air throat.
‘Two minutes,’ Yu Jin said. His armour altered his speech into a discordant terror. A chunk of the door fell away. Grenades flew through spinning with coloured smoke. Bullets followed.
‘Sod this,’ Anastasia shouted and ran toward the glass orb. She jumped.
‘No!’ Michael shouted and entered a shutdown command. There was a thrum of power and then darkness. Glass rained down over him. He could barely see as smoke span the almost pitch black room. Yu Jin was barely visible from the heat glowing off the door.
‘Let’s go!’ Anastasia shouted. The lights flickered back on, full power. Everyone balked and shielded their eyes from the sudden glare.
‘Grab on,’ Kizvan said looping his arm around the rope of his grapple. ‘It can take the weight. Trust me.’ The four of them hung on, Anastasia clinging onto the Imperial Seal. With a press of a button they were jerked upward. The door fell apart and bullets began carving through the thick smoke.
Michael scrambled onto the rooftop and helped Anastasia as she clung to the Imperial Seal, barely larger than her palm and five inches tall. ‘Where now?’ Michael said staring at the flashing lights on the horizon.
Kizvan stowed the grapple gun in his coat and looked around. ‘This way,’ he said running over the flat roofs and towards the Chambers. The massive mass of carved rock loomed ahead, Earth’s three part corpse hung in the black beyond. The Khazeni ran and jumped off the end of the building. Michael ran to the edge and stopped to see the outer wall was sloped, Kizvan was sliding down it laughing. Michael swung over the edge and slid down the wall. Yu Jin and Anastasia followed. The wall sloped outward and dropped suddenly. Michael flew over the edge and landed in a heap against the wall of the Chambers.
‘Now where?’ Michael said.
‘Right here,’ Kizvan opened up a grate that led underground.
‘You planned this?’ Anastasia said clutching the Seal to her chest.
‘I did,’ Kizvan grinned, proud of himself.
‘Bloody stupid,’ Anastasia ducked into the underground. Michael and Yu Jin went next.
Kizvan followed and sealed the entrance. ‘So ungrateful,’ he tutted.
Michael waited at the crossroads as the morning traffic marched around him all suited and booted for the days work. Anastasia and Yu Jin arrived together but neither talked. Kizvan was late. When he finally arrived he wore a fine suit and his hair had been trimmed and styled into a quiff. His teeth seemed even brighter.
‘Nice of you to join us,’ Michael said. ‘Only had four nasty looks for standing here for so long.’
‘Your fault for being early,’ Kizvan said holding his nose high. ‘Payment,’ he whipped out his handheld and began to ping across the pay in equal parts.
‘I hope never to work with you again,’ Anastasia said once she confirmed the amount on her own device.
‘What about me?’ Michael asked her.
Anastasia tipped her head to one side and ran her eyes over him, ‘I prefer to run alone.’
‘Oof, cold,’ Kizvan said shaking his head.
‘A pleasure,’ Yu Jin said turning and marching off into the busy Luna day.
‘Nothing left to do but leave,’ Kizvan said flashing his teeth again and scurrying off the way he came.
‘See you around,’ Anastasia said and began to slink off.
Michael watched her leave. She looked strange without her combat vest and dozen grenades dangling around her chest. Rather womanly, he thought. Shame. He turned to leave for the docks to find a freighter to repair.
‘Hey. Engineer. We could work something out, sixty-forty?’ Her voice carried through the crowded street.
Michael turned around and chewed his tongue, ‘Fifty five-forty five.’
‘Oh, generous!’
Michael pointed to himself, ‘Fifty five.’ He pointed to Anastasia, ‘Forty five.’
She swayed up to him, her dark hair waving in the breeze, ‘Fifty-fifty?’
Michael moved close enough to feel her breath on his neck, ‘I think I can manage that.’
Anastasia looped her arm into his, ‘Good to be working with you, Engineer.’ The pair disappeared into the bustling Luna streets.
Thanks for reading! If you would like to read more stories of mine don’t forget to subscribe. If you would like more of this type like and/or comment below!