GAIA: Rogue State (A Girl Power Novella)

  GAIA: Rogue State

  (A Girl Power Novella)

  By P.T. Dilloway

  Chapter 1

  In the movies spies always have a bunch of high-tech equipment light years ahead of anything ordinary people have. All Diane Giordano has is a prepaid cell phone with lousy reception. And the experience of more than twenty years as a world-class assassin.

  This experience has allowed her to survive three weeks in the Outback, where a normal young woman would have died or become a blithering idiot. She ran out of rations a week ago, so for the last week she’s survived on lizards and other small game near her hiding spot overlooking the cave.

  Of course it’s not really a cave. The opening is just a front for some kind of hidden lair. As usual with Melanie’s mission briefings there are a lot of holes that Diane has to fill in as she goes. About all Melanie knows is convoys have been sighted going into and coming out of this cave. Whether there’s a terrorist cell hiding out here or just one of those Doomsday groups that have popped up all over after the invasion no one knows.

  In the old days it would have been simple enough. The Pentagon would have called up the Super Squad. Apex Girl, Velocity Girl, and Midnight Spectre could have barged in to find out what was happening. But now the Super Squad no longer works for the military and things are so fucked up that the real superheroes are needed elsewhere.

  Thus the job falls to GAIA, which inevitably means it falls to Diane. At present she’s the only field agent on the GAIA roster. Unless Melanie manages to twist some arms at the UN for more funding, Diane will probably be the only field agent for some time.

  Which is why she’d like to wrap up this stupid assignment as soon as possible. The only problem is no one has come in or out of the cave in three weeks. And while she might have twenty years of experience as an assassin, that doesn’t qualify her to storm into a cave that might be inhabited by hundreds of gun-toting thugs. So she waits.

  Even if her cell phone had great reception, she has to use it wisely. There’s nowhere to plug it in to recharge here. When she gets back she needs to ask Tonya about a solar-powered charger; that shouldn’t be too hard considering she has a whole farm of solar panels a couple hundred kilometers from here.

  She’s tempted to turn on the phone for just a minute or two to see if Tonya’s sent her any messages, but then she feels the ground rumble. Finally, some action. Diane slips the cell phone into one of her many pockets and then slithers towards the edge of the pass on which she’s camped. She puts her binoculars to her eyes, but there’s not much to see besides a cloud of dust approaching. Must be a convoy to bring supplies. About bloody time, she grumbles to herself.

  She pulls the binoculars back so the glare from the lenses won’t give her away. She has to put her head down too as the trucks rumble through to keep from choking on the dirt they kick up. That dirt serves a useful purpose too as it allows her to skitter down the wall, into the pass without being seen.

  The trucks are slow enough that it’s not difficult for her to catch up to the last one. After weeks of eating nothing but rations and lizards, her body isn’t as strong as it usually is. Still Diane manages to grab the tailgate of the truck and then swing herself up. She just hopes it’s not into a bunch of hired goons armed with machine guns.

  As she hoped, there are only crates in the back of the truck. The labels indicate they’re full of food, water, and other supplies. From the number of crates, she estimates there must be about fifty people in the cave, if not more. Just bloody perfect, she grumbles to herself as she takes cover in the back.

  Now she has to hope they don’t search the trucks too thoroughly as they enter the cave. If they have some of those fancy biometric scanners or something, she’ll be a sitting duck. She has a pistol and two TEC-9 semi-automatics, but those won’t help her much against a few dozen bad guys. She can’t call for backup either, not until she has some decent intel.

  For the millionth time she tells herself assassinations were so much simpler than intelligence. All she—he back then—had to do was wait for a decent shot to present itself, pull the trigger, and then collect the money. Of course it didn’t always require a gun, but the gist was always to kill the target and then get paid. She didn’t have to sit around for weeks to take a few bloody pictures. This intelligence stuff is just plain barmy.

  The truck’s brakes squeal as it comes to a stop. Diane ducks even farther behind the crates. She waits for someone to climb into the back of the truck to find her. Then she’ll have to shoot her way out and try to escape through hundreds of kilometers of wasteland. Not the ideal situation for sure.

  She braces herself as she hears voices. From the accent they must be from this continent, though probably one of the coasts. She imagines an even worse scenario: if this is an official government facility then she could wind up in prison for the next twenty years. They might even send her back to Guontonimo to be reunited with the likes of Rad Geiger and Clownface. By comparison death out here would be preferable to what they’d do to her in there for changing sides.

  “What you got in there?” one voice asks.

  “Food and the like.”

  “More of that canned shit?”

  “Sorry, mate, all out of filet mignon.”

  “Sooner we get done here, the better.”

  Diane holds her breath, trying not to make a sound. She waits for those guards to stomp in here, but they don’t. “Come on, let’s get her moving before I get heatstroke,” one says. Someone slaps the side of the truck just inches from where she’s hidden. Then the truck starts moving again. She lets out the breath she’s been holding.

  Phase one is complete: she’s into the belly of the beast.

  ***

  The next phase of the operation is to get out of the truck without getting shot or alerting the whole base to her presence. She has to make sure to get out of the truck before they start unloading it. First she has to wait for it to stop, something that seems to take hours. How far into the earth are they going? It’s probably her imagination that the rear of the truck is getting warmer.

  She reminds herself she’s been in tighter spots than this. She was at the epicenter of an alien invasion and survived; this should be a piece of crumpet by comparison. But back then she had Garlak to back her up; this time she doesn’t have the luxury of a seven-foot-tall Neanderthal who could just about lift one of these trucks over her head if she so desired. She’s completely alone until she can get a message back to Atomic City.

  The truck finally comes to a stop. Diane lifts the canvas covering the rear of the truck enough that she can see where they’ve ended up. It looks like an ordinary enough warehouse with a bunch of forklifts and workers in coveralls. This could get tricky.

  A distraction would be nice, but without backup there’s not much she can do to draw their attention elsewhere. She checks her phone to make sure there’s no reception down here, not that she could call for an air strike or anything. Now she really is on her own.

  She decides to employ the simplest solution: she tucks her hair into her helmet, settles her goggles over her eyes, and then jumps down from the truck. A good way to get into a secure building is to act like you know what you’re doing, so Diane keeps her head up and back straight as she walks along the warehouse.

  The gambit works. None of the workers bother to ask who she is or what she’s doing here. They’re busy taking care of the supplies and must figure she came along to protect the trucks. Diane makes her way over to a stack of crates so she can change out of the camouflage gear she’s been wearing for three weeks.

  In the movies a female spy always wears a black catsuit, preferably wi
th the zipper halfway down to show off most of her cleavage. This has to be accompanied by boots with six-inch stiletto heels that would make running from trouble extremely difficult. Under her camouflaged jacket Diane wears a black T-shirt; she has to keep the camouflaged pants on since underneath all she’s got are her panties. She keeps her hiking boots on too; she doesn’t even wear stiletto heels to the pub, let alone on a job.

  The part of her wardrobe she’ll miss the most is the TEC-9s. They’re venerable old guns and can really put the hurt on bad guys. But she can’t walk around with those under her arms or someone might wonder why she has so much firepower. Her Desert Eagle isn’t exactly inconspicuous, but if she keeps her shirt loose it shouldn’t be too noticeable in the small of her back.

  With that done she makes her way to the nearest door. At least there’s no security lock here requiring a card. She’ll have to hope that’s the case through the rest of the place or else she’ll have to appropriate one. That could make it difficult to keep her presence a secret.

  The corridors are as narrow as a submarine’s and almost as dark. What Diane notices is everyone she sees wears a white lab coat. It’s a safe bet someone’s doing research down here, probably research they don’t want anyone to know about. What sort of research that might be she needs to find out before she can get out of here.

  A bald man a few inches shorter than her stops his bustling down the corridor to look up at her. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the warehouse?”

  “Looking for the loo,” she says, hoping she sounds enough like an Aussie.

  “You can hold it until you’re back outside. Then you’ve got this whole godforsaken country to piss on.” From his words and his accent she takes him for European, German or maybe Scandinavian. This makes it less likely that it’s a government-sanctioned project going on down here.

  “Thanks for the directions, mate,” she says. She checks to make sure no one is coming and then with one deft move slams him face-first into the wall. Before he can scream for help, she wraps an arm around his throat. Then she drags him into the nearest room that’s unlocked. From the beakers and such she figures it must be a lab.

  The smart thing to do would be to strangle this wanker so he can’t wake up to tattle on her. In the old days she wouldn’t hesitate to do such a thing, but since going legit she’s tried to avoid casualties whenever possible. So she waits until the man has passed out and then strips him of his lab coat and pass. The name on the pass gives his name as Werner Klinsmann. German most likely. Bloody Krauts always have been into that mad scientist stuff.

  Her camouflage pants don’t quite go with the lab coat, but she hopes no one will notice. She pulls her brown hair back into a ponytail to look a little more like a nerdy scientist. Of course if the scientists here are like Tonya they’ll have their hair dyed all sorts of funny colors and have a half-dozen piercings in each ear. She’ll have to hope they’re a bit more professional.

  The badge doesn’t give the name of this place, but it does let her open the doors. She takes turns at random, hoping to come to an office or somewhere that can give her some useful information. She swipes her badge at another door to enter what looks like mission control for NASA with all the computers.

  There are a half-dozen people in the room, all of them dressed in lab coats too. None of them turn to face her. From the concentration on their faces she’s arrived in the middle of something important. Diane slinks over to an empty terminal and sits down to watch.

  “Cameras ready,” a man says. Are they making a movie? She’d never live down the embarrassment if she spent three weeks spying on a film crew.

  “Ready for Test Three-Two Beta.”

  On a big monitor appears a man in a silver biohazard suit. He carries a long black stick with both hands far from his body, as if he’s afraid it might explode. He takes a few cautious steps across an empty room.

  Except it’s not completely empty. There’s a young black girl in the room. She wears a baggy gray T-shirt and shorts. Did they kidnap her from one of the Aborigine tribes around here so they could use her as a test subject? What the hell is that stick then?

  The man presses the stick into the girl’s hands. He says something to her in a language Diane doesn’t understand. The girl nods solemnly as she takes the stick. The damned thing is nearly as tall as she is.

  The ends of the stick glow with purple light. This seems familiar to Diane, but she isn’t sure why, not until lightning sparks from one end of the stick. She’s seen this before, during that battle against Omega’s minions on Finger Island.

  It’s a Galactic Peacekeeper stick.

  ***

  Diane tells herself that’s impossible. The Galactic Peacekeepers are a group of aliens who had been assigned to police the galaxy by their masters, the Elders. There weren’t any human Peacekeepers and if they had started to recruit on Earth, she doubts they would start with children.

  Whatever is going on here, she needs to report it to Melanie. Diane slips her hand into one pocket for her camera. It’s tiny enough to fit in the palm of her hand. As discreetly as possible she holds the camera up to get pictures of the girl using the Peacekeeper staff.

  Diane is still taking pictures when the glow on the staff begins to get brighter. One of the scientists in the room states the obvious, “Power levels are increasing.”

  “We’re reaching critical levels.”

  “Suspend the test!”

  The man on the screen shouts something at the girl, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. He tries to grab the staff from her, but a burst of lightning hurls him back across the room. The girl starts to cry, but she can’t seem to turn off the staff. She tries to throw it away, but the thing’s stuck in her hands.

  A flash of purple light knocks out the lights in the room. While the scientists shout to each other, Diane decides it’s a perfect time to make her escape. She’s got more than enough to take back to Melanie now. She can come back with a strike team to mop up.

  That is if Diane can get back. That becomes doubtful when she sees that German scientist in the hallway, accompanied by a trio of guys armed with machine guns. “That’s her! She’s the one!”

  Diane wastes no time to dive into a doorway. She reaches to the small of her back to take out the Desert Eagle. She takes a couple of deep breaths to steady herself and then peeks out into the corridor. She nearly gets her fool head blown off for her trouble.

  Her look into the corridor at least gives her the targets. Deep underground at least she doesn’t have to worry about wind to spoil her shot. Diane counts to five and then leans out into the corridor again.

  The Desert Eagle’s .44 caliber bullets can stop most anything, but they won’t do more than bruise those guys with their flak jackets. She has to ignore her rule about not killing as she puts a bullet in the unprotected neck of each soldier.

  Werner Klinsmann is still standing in the corridor, too terrified to reach down for one of the fallen soldiers’ machine guns. While he’s still blubbering, Diane grabs him around the neck. “Looks like you’re my ticket out of here, Doc,” she hisses into his ear.

  ***

  She’s never liked using hostages. A lot of the supervillains at Guontonimo have tried that gambit to keep the Super Squad at bay. Of course the heroes always find some way around that; Midnight Spectre has a whole belt full of gadgets that can safely disable a hostage.

  The simple fact is hostages slow her down. She has to drag Klinsmann through the corridor and continually turn her body from one way to the other to make sure no one gets the drop on her. Alarms have started to sound all through the building, which means she’s likely to have company any moment.

  Klinsmann gets the nerve to say, “You won’t get away with this, you pig.”

  “We’ll see.” At the moment she can’t really disagree with him.

  They’ve prepared a reception for her at the warehouse door. There are a dozen soldiers all in full body armor, all with ma
chine guns. Even with her skills she can’t hope to shoot them all in the neck before one of them can pop her. The only reason they haven’t tried yet is she has Klinsmann in front of her.

  “Drop the gun and let Dr. Klinsmann go,” one of the soldiers says.

  “No chance, mate. You all back off and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Not happening, love. You just put the gun down and let the man go and we’ll go easy on you.”

  “Don’t ‘love’ me, you tosser. Let me introduce myself proper. My name’s Diane Giordano. You might be more familiar with my other name: Hitter.”

  A few of the soldiers visibly gulp. She feels a bit of pride that her reputation has gotten all the way to the Outback. “I think you know what that means, mate. I’d be more than happy to kill the good doctor here and the lot of you besides. So why don’t we make this easy and you let me pass?”

  “Can’t do that, love. We gots our orders. No unauthorized persons get out of here alive.”

  “Then you’ll just have to shoot this weasel then. If you want to be merciful, put one in his heart first.”

  “Don’t shoot, you fools!” the doctor shouts.

  The soldiers ignore this, hefting their rifles into proper shooting position. Diane braces herself for the shooting to begin in earnest. The leader of the soldiers stops, putting one hand to his helmet. “All right, boys, back off. We’re to let the girl and Dr. Klinsmann go.”

  Diane knows his calling her “the girl” is meant as an insult, but she ignores it. At the moment she has better things to worry about, like dragging Klinsmann through the hole the soldiers opened up. “Don’t leave me with her! She’ll kill me!”

  “You’re a lot safer with me at the moment, Doc.”

  She drags him into the warehouse, over to where she’d left her gear. She lets the doctor pick up the TEC-9s; he wouldn’t have any idea how to shoot those even if she lets him keep them. As it is he hands them over to her without a problem; she slips the harness on over her T-shirt. “Now let’s get going.”