New Arizona: TF Sector 1 – March 3, 2501
Larna sprang to her feet like a jack-in-a-box. She rushed across the room the moment she saw her pregnant half sister trying to walk through from her bedroom. Lauren rested against the back of the sofa, the tiny walk from the bedroom to the living room, had completely tried her out. Larna looked at her half sister with a look of—what did I tell you about getting up—on her face. Lauren was a tall woman, standing six feet tall. She had a far complexion, which only added to the emphasis of her flame red hair, hanging around in permed curls down around her shoulders. She was nearly at the end of her pregnancy term. She was wearing a baggy night-dress, because for the past few days she had been confined to bed, with orders from the doctors not to do anything stressful or to do much walking around. That was the main reason Larna was in this apartment—to stop her sister from doing anything stupid. The other reason was of course that she was extremely concerned about her younger sister’s health. Lauren was eighteen Erayears old. Since the nuclear holocaust in the year 2000, the metabolic rate of humans has slowed down—they now age only one year every eighty-four orbital months. This new ageing know as Erayears—Chronoyears was the name for the original ageing process. Lauren bent forward over the back of the sofa, her hair falling down over her face. She was finding it hard to catch her breath after that exertion. She was a very stunning looking young woman, even in her current state. Larna had first met her sister in her tenth adventure, when Lauren tried to kill Larna’s grandmother on her mother’s side of the family. When A Devil Worshipper held Lauren prisoner later, Larna saved her. Since then they have become increasingly closer to each other. Lauren is married to Commander Tom Aspel—Larna’s boss from the police force. He was the man who first caught Larna outside the hideout of the street gang who had killed her husband. Larna was just as stunning as her younger sister was. Aged twenty-one Erayears, one hundred and forty-eight Chronoyears, Larna stood five feet eleven inches tall, weighed nine stone and had crystal blue eyes. Her hair was auburn coloured, just like a fox, with a white streak, about one centimetre wide, running down the middle. With measurements of 36B-24-35 she had the body of a top model of the nineties. She also had the looks, ones closely resembling the actress Hudson Leick, to match her body. On the right side of her neck she had a tattoo of the Chinese for Eternal Devotion, in memory and honour of her late husband. On her right bicep she had got a tattoo of a Fox. On her left buttock was a tattoo of a black rose wrapped around a dagger, signifying her assassin background.
Larna did have a caring side to her character—especially when it came to her sister. She placed her hand gently on her sister’s right arm.
“What is the matter with you Lauren?” she asked coldly, “Do you want to lose this baby?”
Larna finally asked in a—I wish you would do as you are told—tone of voice.
“I needed a drink.” Lauren replied in-between the deep breaths of air.
“You should have called for me. That’s what I’m here for.” Larna replied immediately before rushing off into the kitchen area of the apartment.
This apartment was like every other apartment in New Arizona. New Arizona was designed like a tiny map of the United States of America, with whole cities recreated in a tiny area under a protection forcefield—which keeps out the chilling cold of the ice deserts. Apartments were basic and as small as they could be. Each one had a living room, with entertainment system, computer terminal and chairs to sit on. A kitchen, with the basic food replicator’s to supply any kind of culinary item that was required. And finally a bedroom, with a bed and a wardrobe machine that reproduced any outfit programmed into its memory on to a person’s body when they walked through the arch. Larna returned to the living room moments later. Carrying a glass of clear water in her right hand. She handed the glass to Lauren, who had managed to slide her way around the back of the sofa on to the seats. Lauren took the glass eagerly. The water went down in one swift gulp.
“I needed that.” Lauren said when she was finished.
“Next time call me and I will get you a drink.” Larna stated firmly as she moved to sit next to her younger sister.
“Aren’t you fed up staying here all the time?” Lauren asked out of thin air.
It sounded to Larna like her sister was getting a little tired of all the attention she was getting from her older sister. Larna turned in the seat to face Lauren, who seemed to have a deep frown on her face. Larna had to be careful how she answered this question.
“Tom was concerned about leaving you on your own,” she replied, hoping to pass the blame on to Aspel.
“Then why doesn’t he stay home and look after me?” Lauren snapped back, “I mean, he is the Commander of the Police Force for Christ sake, surely he can take a week off work to look after his own wife.”
Larna now sensed a little hostility in her sister’s voice—it was if she had had an argument with her husband about something.
“What’s happened?” Larna asked, without even having to be told that there was something wrong.
“Nothing. I’m just being silly. Tom could not love me more. It’s just I’m getting a little fed up just lying in that bed twenty four hours a day.” Lauren replied, her tone a lot smoother than before.
“It will soon be over, sis. You only have a few weeks left, then you’ll be spending your days and nights looking after a little baby.” Larna stated, thinking that Lauren will be lucky to get a few hours in bed soon, so she should be grateful for the rest now.
Lauren managed to haul herself back to her feet, then trudged solemnly back to the bedroom. The short break from lying down, the only rest-bite she had from the monotony of staying in there all the time. Larna waited until her sister had gone back into the bedroom, before moving across to the vid-phone on the table next to the computer terminal. The phone looked almost like a tiny laptop computer. She flipped the top up, punched in a number for Tom’s office. Tom’s face came up on to the screen a few seconds later.
Tom looked just like he always did. A middle aged man with greying brown hair. He was at least two and half times his young wife’s age. His thin build seemed to be even thinner than normal, given that he was worrying about his wife a little. His face seemed to be drawn—he gave the impression of a man fighting a losing battle against tiredness. When he saw Larna, his eyes opened wide, almost in a reflex to trouble coming in the next second.
“There’s nothing wrong?” he asked, rather nervous about the reply he would get.
Whenever Larna was involved, there was normally trouble involved some place. That was why he had been a little reluctant in the start to let Larna take care of her sister. He did not want trouble following Larna and getting his pregnant wife into trouble. Larna started shaking her head, which seemed to calm the expectant father down immediately.
“I was just calling to tell you that I think you should come home and spend a few quality hours with your wife. Forget the job. Detach yourself from the world for at least a day. Lauren needs you.” Larna insisted, trying to make her tone of voice as forceful as she could, without making it sound like she was giving him an order to do this.
“Is that an order Fox?” Tom asked sharply.
“Lauren damn well needs you. If I have to come down there and drag you out of that place myself, than that’s what I will do. Do not make me do that. Listen, I’ll sit in your office and act as your secretary if you like. I want you to spend some time with my sister.” Larna replied sharply, in her tone of voice that told Tom that he would not be able to talk her out of this mind set.
“That is something I would love to see. You as my secretary.” Tom said, then paused to think about what Larna had suggested for a moment, “If you insist that I have some time with my wife, I have to insist that I see you in this office in two minutes,” he finished with a cheesy grin on his face.Larna slapped the top of the vid-phone down, whisked her leather motorbiker’s jacket up from the sofa then swung it around on to her shoulders as she moved into the middle of the room. After shouting goodbye to her sister, she activated the Thala’s operations function. The Thala, or the Time History And Location Analyser, was her time travelling aid. It was surgically attached to her left wrist. The computer accessed information from the Factual Historical Information (FHI) Implants that had been surgically attached to the inside of her skull. These Implants give Larna every single piece of data concerning people, places and events going right back to 1980. Thought processes operated the Thala and the responses were given to Larna in her subconscious thanks to a modified FHI Implant. The only sign that Larna was using her aid, was when it appeared on her wrist. It appeared when Larna activated the operations function. When it was activated the Thala loses the power to keep the invisibility shield in operation, as it was at all other times, so no one can see the futuristic technology on her arm. Larna entered a STC (Space Time Co-Ordinate) number into the transportation programme of the computer then activated the transportation sequence. She disappeared from the apartment’s living room in the blink of an eye.
Larna reappeared almost instantaneously inside the main detective’s offices of the New Arizona police force. The detective’s paid little attention to the young woman walking down in-between them. They knew not to mess with Larna, because she had a rather low opinion of men, but especially of cops. With Larna being the master of six Martial Arts, the last thing any one them wanted to do was challenge her. Savate was an old French form of martial arts. It was based on hand and foot fighting and was recognised by its flamboyant kicking techniques. Pencak Silat was the National fighting art of the old Indonesia. Moves were based on the evasion and warding off of attacks. The offensive moves were all geared to getting the opponent off balance. Taijutsu was an unarmed form of combat, the forerunner to the old Judo technique. Ninjitsu, the art of invisibility, was the techniques of the ninja. They involved the use of dirks, darts, daggers, throwing stars, smoke bombs and various poisons. Capoeria was an old Brazilian form of combat in which the foot was considered the strongest weapon and the head the weakest point. This art aimed to bring these two into contact by using various kicks, somersaults and handsprings. Her gymnastic training as a younger woman had been moulded into a tool to help with this art. Kenpo, also known as Fist used Linear and circular movements combined into major and minor moves with flow constantly. This was a very flexible form of martial arts. All six of these arts were combined to give Larna good defence, but not a perfect one. It did mean that none of the police officers would be able to stand up to her. She breezed inside Tom’s office without even knocking.
“Did I make it in time?” she asked confidently.
“If there are any messages for me secretary, you know where to find me then.” Tom said craftily, looking up and down Larna’s usual outfit.
Larna was wearing a pair of black fishnet stockings, with a very close tight pattern, which made her legs look even sexier than they were without them. On top of them going around her waist was a small, tight figure hugging black leather mini-skirt which, at about eight inches long, just covered her buttocks. On the top she had a black leather shirt over a black lace bra. This shirt was tucked into the mini-skirt. Her jacket was a black leather motorbike jacket with matching black leather motorbike boots on her feet. The boots had got a number of buckles on the side and came right up to about half way up her shinbone. Her hair was tied into a tight ponytail, which hung down to the small of her back. Around her neck she had a gold chain with a cross on the end. The cross hung down to lie just in-between her breasts. It was her mothers’ necklace and Larna was never without it. On her right wrist she had the wrist part of a pair of handcuffs that they use in the present day. Her father gave it to her when she was young. She used to keep it in a box until she killed her foster father, now she wore it constantly to keep reminding herself that the police wanted her. Her face had just the right amount of make-up. Her eyes were surrounded by a dark eyeshade and her lips were a bright red with a black surround. Larna moved right around to the other side of the desk.
“Get out of here before I punch you,” she said sharply.
Tom laughed as he rushed out of the door. Larna flopped down into the chair, swung her legs around and slammed her boots down hard on to the top of the desk. She lent back in the chair and tried to get as comfortable as she could, given that she was right in the heart of the police station, the last place that she would normally have wanted to be.
The two security guards, on duty outside the main buildings to the SAT Laboratories, were as bored as they always were. Their job had very little excitement. No one really came here that often. The pair of them just sat inside the same office, staring out at the same view of the ice plains just outside the invisible protection forcefield that was right behind the transportation platform. The SAT Laboratory was the main research centre for investigating avenues of travel as time travel and space travel. The heart of the laboratory was underground, so it could take up more room than the protection force field would permit. The two men looked quite similar dressed in the standard, all-in-one, blue rubber bodysuit. This bodysuit was the same that every single New Arizonian wore. The pair were watching a television programme that had been created with the help of computer generated holograms. All was just as it always was, peaceful and quiet.
“That is the one thing I hate about this job—” the taller, thinner man of the pair said from the back of the room, “—there is never anything to get excited about,” he finished with a deep sigh.
“Thank god,” the other man replied immediately, “The last thing that we want is for something to go wrong when we’re on duty. Can you image if we let someone break into this place, they would have our—”
The sudden ringing of alarm bells cut him off in mid-sentence. Red lights started flashing. The two men looked at each other with panic written all over their faces—the red lights were the proximity alarms. There was someone trying to break in to the perimeter of the complex. They both rushed out of their office, their laser guns out and ready to fire at whomever it was trying to break inside. They did not see anything at first. As they slowly advanced towards the transportation platform, they saw a body lying on its side just off the platform. The pair of them stopped dead in their tracks. The body was naked. As they were stood there like statues, unable to take their eyes off the naked body in front of them, Professor Steinbeck came rushing out from the main entrance to the laboratory. Steinbeck was the man in charge of this whole complex. He was sixty-five Erayears old with balding grey hair. He ad a white coloured moustache and circular glasses halfway down his nose. He came storming across to the two security men with a determination to find out what had happened, his white lab coat wafting back due to the speed of his walk. He peered in-between them to see the body on the ground.
“Who was it?” he asked, thinking that the security officers had done this.
“We don’t know sir,” one stammered, the words getting stuck in his throat.
“That is exactly as we found them sir,” the other replied, also finding it hard to get the words out.
Steinbeck walked around the two guards then up to the body. He went right around so that he could take a close look at the face. He went down on one knee to get a closer look. He saw a strange device on the side of this young woman’s left temple. It was unlike anything he had seen before. After a few minutes of checking her out, he lifted his eyes to stare at the two security guards.
“I think that you had better contact the police. Commander Aspel must see this before we do anything else,” he ordered as he slipped out of his long white lab coat then placed that coat over the naked body.
The smaller of the two security guards immediately ran back to his office, to carry out the orders he had just been given. The other man could not take his eyes off the woman—he wondered how she had managed to get there, like that, and what had happened to her to leave her in this unconscious state.
A young officer charged right into Commander Aspel’s office without even knocking. He was too eager to please his Commanding officer. Without looking towards the desk, he started to go off at one hundred miles an hour as to why he was here.
“Sir they have found a body out at the SAT Laboratory, Professor Steinbeck is wanting you to go out to investigate what has—” he stopped dead in his dead when his eyes fixed on to Larna, with her feet up on the desk.
His eyes began to scan the office, hoping to find his Commander some where inside. Of course he did not. Larna swung her feet off the desk slowly, taking her time to make this young man sweat a little more. As this officer was new, he did not now about Larna Fox and her relationship with the police and especially with the Commander of the police. The officer placed his hand on the gun at his right hand side.
“Who are you? What are you doing inside Commander Aspel’s office?”
“Calm down Private, I’m just standing in for Tom while he goes home to take care of his wife. Now, you were starting to explain about a body found at the SAT Laboratory,” Larna explained, without success.
“I don’t think I should tell you anything. I’m going to talk to the second in command,” the young officer said, before retreating out of the office quickly.
Larna shrugged her shoulders in a—go ahead, see if I care—expression, before returning to her previous position. The body at the SAT Laboratory could wait for a moment—she wanted to see what the second in command was going to do about her being in Tom’s office.
The young police officer came rushing back inside the office, pointing and waving his hand in Larna’s general direction.
“That’s her sir. An unauthorised person in a Commander’s office. Do you want me to arrest her?”
The second in command was a man by the name of Carl Lewis. He was a coloured man, just a few years younger than Tom. He was wearing an all-grey bodysuit, underneath a very smart looking grey suit jacket. Larna had not dealt with Carl very often. Larna only really knew him in passing. Carl had, of course, been briefed fully by Tom as to who Larna was and what she did for the Police Force. When Larna had been kidnapped by Shadow, an evil black witch from the future, in her third adventure, Carl had been the man to lead the charge on Shadow’s apartments. He had been the one to kill Anderson—something that Larna wanted to do after Anderson, Shadow’s mindless slave, had raped her. Carl took one look at Larna, with her feet p on the desk, then broke out into a smile.
“Larna Fox, I should have known that it was you being talked abbout. What happened to Tom? Is something wrong with Lauren?” he asked, changing tones of voice every single second of the statement—going from realisation, to confusion, to concern in the same breath.
“Lauren is fine, apart from the fact that she is not getting to see her husband much, being stuck in a bed twenty four hours a day.” Larna replied as she swung her feet off the desk and rose to an upright stance.
“So Tom has left you in charge of the Police Force has he?” Carl asked jokingly.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” the young police officer exclaimed, finding it hard t believe that this woman was even employed by the police, let alone be in charge of it in the Commander’s absence.
“No. I’m just acting as his secretary. To make sure tat he isn’t disturbed.” Larna finished, aiming the growl in her voice towards the young police officer.
The growl sent a chill right down the young man’s spine. He was not used to being threatened in the police station. Carl stepped in-between Larna and the young officer.
“Stop teasing the boy Larna. He did the right thing coming to me when he saw what he thought was a stranger in Tom’s office. Now, he told me about a body being found out at the SAT Laboratory—do you want to go out and investigate? Or should I send a proper police officer?”
“If you want me to go, just ask me.” Larna said cheekily.
“Are you going to let her get away with speaking to you like that sir?” the young officer snapped angrily, not liking the way Larna was back-chatting his superior officer.
“If you want to try and tell the street’s best assassin what she can and can’t do, then be my guess son. But I warn you, do not under-estimate what she can do, just because she is a stunningly sexy young woman.” Carl warned.
“Damn right, because this—” Larna paused to turned and glare at Carl, “—stunningly sexy young woman,” she continued rather sheepishly, “Could knock you right into the middle of next week?” Larna finished confidently.
“I would like to see you try.” The young officer said with a laugh.
With movements quicker than the eye could see, Larna pulled Carl out of the way, then lifted her right boot right up so that it stopped right in front of the young man’s face. She then held it there, rock steady and unmoving, within an inch of his face. The young man gulped deeply as he stared at the sole of Larna’s boot. Carl gently placed his hand on Larna’s shoulder. Larna lowered her foot down to the floor before blowing the young officer a cheeky kiss, then walking out of the office towards the transportation platform at the far end of the detective’s building. Carl moved forward to whisper into the young officer’s ear.
“Never push her that far kid. That was a very close thing.”
“Too close—I think I need to go and change,” the young officer stated nervously.
The mysterious appearance of a nude woman from the late twentieth century in the grounds of the SAT Laboratory introduces a shape shifting Alien Bounty Hunter to New Arizona.