Psy – Spy 2 (Deleted stories)

To all who saw the Epsilon Blitz leaning out of her hotel window, holding her rifle that was neatly disguised as a holographic home movie camera, pressing her eye up to her Clairvoyant™ chrono-scopic gunsight and clicking in place a magazine filled with time-piercing ammunition, she looked just like any ordinary spiky-haired, Nordic tourist trying to capture some happy holiday memories of sunny Lazure. And the street below her window was the kind you’d normally see in any popular holiday destination , full of the usual crooked alien street merchants haggling with fat tourists in brightly coloured shirts; four armed alien pickpockets and three breasted alien street-walkers but, in two days time, it would be the route taken by the floating, presidential motorcade and the scene of a bloody political assassination. Her paymasters wanted President Muscovik and his deputy minister, Soranti dead. Lazure was a rich source of petroleum; gold; uranium ore; coffee and various alien narcotics useful to the pharmaceutical industries and had long been a minor jewel in the imperial crown of the big 6, that interplanetary league of oligarchs that was Blitz Corps largest client , but then Muscovic and his Blue Revolutionary Force had seized power away from their puppet regime in the name of the peoples of Lazure and, with it, control of all the planets natural resources. As with other revolutionary governments the Big 6 had tried to bribe Muscovic but unfortunately he seemed to be an honest, stubborn sort of creature and refused to be bought. Killing an honest person to serve the interests of the corrupt didn’t phase the gen-gineered assassin one bit though. She wasn’t programmed to have scruples, only to obey orders. Peering two days into the future, she adjusted the focus on her chronoscopic sight and a large round, blue blur in her crosshairs became the smiling face of a revolutionary leader. But, just then, something moved in front of the target, blocking the shot. Refocusing, she saw that the offending object was a face; a human face and, what’s more, a face that she recognized from her training and briefing sessions. “Brozny”, she said, “That Psy-Spy who works for Earth Intelligence. What is he doing there?”. But then a voice, echoing deep within her cranium, answered her question. “Actually, I’m not there at all. It’s just an optical hallucination created by your own mind. However sophisticated a clone you are, your brain still has the same flaws and weaknesses as all human brains”, said the voice of Herbert Brozny, the EIA’s top psy-operative. The Blitz unit wasn’t rattled by the psychic spy’s tricks, however, and, digging into her black leather travel bag, that was also a kind of assassin’s tool-box, with her left hand, she pulled out an anti-psychic headset that, clicking it on and watching its psy-meter readout light up, she slipped round her forehead and over her temples. But brain-hacking and creating illusions wasn’t the limit of Brozny’s abilities and, seizing telekinetic control of her rifle, he turned its lense like barrel round to face her. “That gun only shoots through time, I’m afraid”, said the Epsilon, smirking, “And I won’t be standing here two days from now”. But Brozny had had no intention of shooting the Blitz unit and, instead, the rifle suddenly lurched forward, striking her hard and fast in the jaw with a powerful telekinetic blow. Unfortunately for Brozny, it would take more than that to knock out a genetically perfect clone assassin and Brozny also had another big problem which the Epsilon knew all too well. “You know, of course, that if an Epsilon fails to kill their target then they have to activate their self-destruct mechanism, a micro-bomb equivalent to 50 tonnes of nitro-glycerin, detonated at a thought by nerve impulses sent along their spine. What our programmers call a ‘death-wish’. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience would you? Think of all the people there are in this hotel and they will all die if I fail to kill Muscovic”, said the assassin, confidently. The Psy-Spy was silent but then the Blitz unit heard the klaxon sound that usually signalled the end of a surprise tactical, virtual simulation and, ripping off the anti-psy headset, she saw the hotel room begin to slowly dissolve like a watercolour picture in a rain-storm, disappearing from round about her and then she was sure that it was just a virtual test; one of the surprise tests that all clones had to undertake regularly during their training to become supreme assassins. The door of the simulation room slid open and in walked her training officer, Marshal Henning. “First rate work, Epsilon 5”, he said, beaming happily and shaking her hand firmly, “Before long, we’ll be able to start sending you out on real missions”. “I only want to serve the company well, sir”, said the Blitz unit, standing to attention, saluting and smiling proudly like a daughter who had just brought home a good school report. Reaching into the holster that was strapped, diagonally across the front of his uniform, Marshal Henning then pulled out a Lugar pistol and shot the clone clean through her throat, larynx and esophagus, shattering her spinal column before she could mentally detonate the self-destruct mechanism within her. The illusion of the virtual simulation room started to fade and the cold hearted clone, lying on her side, paralyzed from the neck down, upon the floor, turned her piercing blue eyes upwards and saw, in her peripheral vision, Brozny, the Psy-Spy standing over her. The Blitz unit couldn’t talk because she’d been shot through the voice box and even found it impossible to breathe but she knew, from her training, that the Psy-Spy could read her thoughts. “I should have guessed from the weakness of your handshake. Marshal Henning is a real man”, she thought, “But one thing puzzles me. How did you override my anti-psy headset? It was supposed to block out illusions”. The Blitz unit turned her eyes sideways, looking over at the headset that was lying on the floor beside her. Then she saw the headset fade and disappear and realized that it too was an illusion. “The real one; the one I know you packed this morning, is still in your travel bag”, said Brozny, telepathically. Her vision was starting to blur, her head growing cloudy as she started to lose consciousness but she still had enough life left to think, despairingly, “What can one do when one cannot even trust one’s own mind?”. “If you have one”, replied Brozny, “Then you trust your heart”.