Warrior's Woman

The demonstration against boskrat killing had been going on for three days, with ecology students marching in front of the Fanya Science Lab, their projector banners Bashing on and off in neon colors, protesting the need for the extinction of another species in the name of science. The anticipated riot had come to pass and was now in full swing, joined by bored and frustrated Fanya citizens on the lookout for a little excitement and tension release. If it were only the ecology people involved, who had protesting down to an art form, there wouldn't hive been any trouble. But die local Stress Clinic had been closed last week for remodeling and extension, and the unattached citizens of Fanya, those not having filed for double occupancy, were more aggressive than usual.

"If they don't get their sex once a day in the clinics, they think their world's coming to an end," Fanya's Chief of Science had complained to Gary Ce Bemn, present Director of Kystran. "These young people don't remember what it was like before we had Stress Clinics in every city." "Neither do we," the Director had replied dryly, but he'd sent a Sec 1 as requested to pacify the man. Tedra De Arr was the lucky volunteer ordered.

Fanya to take charge of the local Security division and she'd known after her first hour there that if the

growing crowds got out of hand, there wouldn't be much she could do about it without some serious damage to life and limb involved. The Fanya Security Division was nothing but a bunch of young graduates who didn't know their phazor units from their communicators, the reason that they werenever given combo-units. And if the cits decided to get destructive while rescuing the ugly little boskrats, she

see much hope in stopping them with the kind of backup available in this small town.

With only forty Sec men on hand and at least a  hundred citizens already breaking down the doors, Tedra thought about leaving quietly by the rear entrance. That was what those frightened scientist had done, and she didn't give a farden damn the scaly little creatures they'd left behind for her to defend. Defend, hell. She couldn't stand the things herself Why would she want to defend them? With unkind thoughts for the man who had volunteered her for this temporary duty, Tedra lifted the computer link from her belt which gave her a direct line to Martha, her personal Mock II computer. "Yob know the stats, Martha, and they're bring the dock: down now. What are the odds on their grabbing the boskrats and running?"

"About sixty to one, Martha's very feminine voice came through the small, hand-sized link unit loud and clear. "If it weren't for the Stress Clinic being closed-" Tedra cut her off with a snarl, literally, returning

the compact unit to her belt. "Farden sex," she cursed to herself. "When did it get to be a be-all; cure-all, got-to-have-it-or-I'll-fall-to-pieces-or get violent?"

"Did you say something, Sec 1" Tedra turned around to the kid behind her, and he was just a kid. Couldn't be more than eighteen years. Of course, when she was eighteen, she'd been at the top of her class, had been actively working for a year even though she continued her training, and was already unmatched in her field. That was five years ago. Four years ago she had earned her present rank, security 1, the highest rating for an expert in weapons and hand-to-hand combat. The young man who had spoken wasn't likely even a Sec 5, the lowest rating, though he would have to be to be assigned to her. They shouldn't turn them out for active duty until they are ready, but you couldn't tell Administration that, not when there was such a shortage of Security available. Too many of the new crop of students elected to train for more fulfilling and less dangerous life careers, especially on a planet not at war and in a league of planets devoted to peace and profitable trade.

"No, I didn't say anything to you, Sec 5, but I'll say it now. We're going to let the cits have what they want, because I don't believe a building and a bunch of smelly, ugly boskrats are worth anyone dying for. Stay out of the way and hope they settle for the boskrats. But if they come at you, shoot to stun. If that doesn't turn the tide, run like hell. Pass the word; stun only. If a single cit ends up dead when this is over, you Secs will answer to me. " She didn't have to add they'd wish they were the ones who'd died if it came to that. A Sec 1 was no one to cross. Using you as a rag to wipe the floor with was the least of what one could do to you, and the Sec knew it.  When the crowd came through the last door into the large, vaulted lab, there were unfortunately few of the ecology students among them. These were the unattached cits who had been denied their daily ration of sex therapy, for a week, poor things, and they had no interest in the farden boskrats other than as an excuse to relieve stress and tension in the old fashioned way, with a heady dose of violence. They went right for the equipment and the Secs, breaking and attacking what they could. Stunning didn't help much beyond the first horde.

Tedra De Arr spent the next half hour doing some breaking herself, on bones and faces. The local meditechs would be busy for the rest of the afternoon, but at least no one was seriously injured. But she was still angry as hell. She didn't like to break bones and hear men scream while she was doing it, not for no farden boskrats anyway. At least the women in the crowd had stuck to damaging only the furniture and equipment, because she liked hearing women scream even less, and sin didn't need anything to put her in a worse foul mood. But it was still a fiasco and a waste of her talent, and she was still angry about it when she later returned to the temporary quarters assigned to her. That kid, the one she'd just known had had no business being there, had shot his own foot with his phazor unit. What she  wouldn't give to get hold of his instructor for five minutes. He wouldn't be releasing students before they were ready after that.

Marching to her door, she slapped her hand against the identilock without slowing her pace, and slammed right into the unmoving obstacle. She cursed a blue streak before calming enough to put her hand again to the lock for the required two seconds for identification The door quietly slid open then under her fierce glower, but she wasn't pacified, not in the least. The next time Gary Ce Bernn got the idea that she'd appreciate the extra exchange tokens an outside assignment could earn, she'd tell him what he could do with them himself, and she didn't care if he was the head honcho of the whole planet. She was a Sec 1, and the job of a Sec 1 was to protect and defend the leaders on the planet, not to be loaned out to any farden department. Her own job was the highest-paying in her field, assigned to Goverance Building and the Director himself. But to give him his due, he'd known she'd just bought a house in the suburbs outside the city, and likely thought she needed help paying for it. He thought he'd been doing her a favor. After she calmed down she'd see it that way, and probably even thank him when she got back to Gallion City, but she had to calm down first.

Picking up her pace again, she went straight to the Sanitary wall in the corner of the one-room quarters, pressed the wall activator, and started stripping as the walls slid out to enclose her in a five-foot-square area. The lights came on automatically as the newly created room within a room closed with a soft click around her. Out came the toilet if she should need it, a hairand-eye changer, and a drawer full of lotions and perfumes and a few male colognes left over by the last occupant. All she was interested in, however, was the bath. She stepped out of her one-piece uniform, made of all-weather solarcloth in the standard silver-gray that denoted her rank. The body revealed in the mirrored wall to her left was long-legged, tightly muscled, in prime condition. Strength was there. without the bulge of muscle, leaving lines femininely curved and deeptive. It was a body that had undergone fifteen  of intensive exercise and training, turning it into.' fighting machine. She still regretted the three that had been wasted as a student of World Discovery, her second choice in careers, before her height finally  became apparent and she was allowed to switch to  her first choice.

She paused when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall and noticed the frown still marring her fine-boned countenance. She needed a tension relaxer but knew the bath wouldn't do it. What  she needed was her massager, but as the machines were rare and used only by a few residents on 'Kystran, they weren't standard in temporary quarters. The apartment had most of the other amenities she would find at home, but a massager wasn't one of them. She knew what Martha would tell her to do about it, and was glad that Fanya's Stress Clinic wasn't operational, because for the first time she was actually tempted to visit one. The benefits would be the same, just accomplished with a different kind of body pounding, the kind she had yet to experience, though not for lack of offers. Men were attracted to her despite her size, and it was only her Sec 1 rating that kept them from becoming nuisances about it in pursuit of her. She often wondered how bad it would be if she weren't as tall as she was. But she was above average in height, about an inch above the male average of five feet nine inches. Six feet was tops for men on Kystran, but rare, and all of those six-footers were in Security, which would have been nice if she was interested, only she wasn't.

Eventually would come along the man she couldn't make mincemeat out of, and then she would be glad that her body was sleek and nicely proportioned, her breasts an abundant handful, her waist narrower than most, and her hips marginally curved rather than bony or thrusting. The peach-gold skin tone, large almond shaped eyes, patrician nose, and soft coral mouth were nothing to ignore either. The stern brown hair and eye color were only for effect and not her own today, but they couldn't detract from features that went to ggatherjust right to from a very pretty package. TTendra didn't bemoan that package. She had just never had a reason to appreciate any of it except for her height which was one of the main requirements for a ccareerin Security. She left her uniform where it dropped on the floor knowing the robocleaner would zip out to pick ul after her as soon as the walls opened. No one could accuse Tedra of being tidy, but then robocleaners hay been around longer than she had and they tended to spoil a person awful, keeping everything sparkling and sanitary and in its proper place. The mmachinestood no higher than her hips, moved on silent roller so it never rmadea nuisance of itself; in fact, most cofthe time she barely noticed the thing as it wworkedaround her. Her home unit was even programmed ttotake her order and bring her meals to her in bed she felt too lazy or tired to get up and press the but tons on her Meal Provider herself. Hell, the farden thing would brush her teeth if shed let it.

The soloary bath was smaller than her home uunitby about a foot, the tubelike bath about a foot and half round, just barely adequate for someone her size The curved door slid quietly shut as soon as both feet were on the floor of the unit, and the tall cylind filled with a red light that bathed her in scarlet hue The beam of light turned off by itself after three seconds, the door opening automatically, a silent suggestion that she step out, which she did, sqsqueakyy clean now from head to toe, even the dull brown of her hair given a soft sheen in die cleaning. She didn't know how the thing v,workedbut the solaray bath had come into use more than fifty years ago during .what was now termed the Great Water Shortage, and stayed in use because of the time-saving efficiency of the thing. Her hone unit, a newer model; was designed to be compatible with the solarcloth of her uniforms, to clean them as well, and since the unifornn was thin and comfortable enough to sleep in, too, it saved her even mere time in not having to change clothes unless she was going somewhere other than on duty. Few citizens on the planet remembers what it was like to take baths any other way.  But her assignment was finished here now, and so

she dialed a two-piece outfit, which the closet promptly delivered, the pats and vestlike top being

the only other articles of clothing she had brought with her for her short stay in Fanya. The perfume she

favored had been applied only last week, so she didn't need to refresh it. And the little bit of eye makeup

she preferred, a thin application of black liner that matted her lashes, and the barest smudge of blusher

were permanent. She was done with the nondescript hair color now that die job was finished, and spared

the twenty seconds required for a new color, a vibrant lemon yellow that she couldn't wear well with any but

the brown eye by kept her long hair in the tie folded roll job, since it was unnecessary to loosen it for cleaning or coloring. A quick swipe with the styler over her shortened bangs to get them off her fold, and she was ready to depart, the whole process having taken less than five minutes.

The robocleaner was already heading toward her as soon as the walls opened and disappeared in their slots. "Pack me to go, fella," she told it, not having bothered to name a temporary unit, afraid her home model might get jealous if she did. Even though it wasn't a free-thinking machine like Martha, she didn't want to take any chances of upswing her smoothly run household. While she waited for her personal items to be collected and bagged, she headed for the audiovisual console to call her boss to tell him she had happily failed her mission. Every single boskrat had been whisked out of the lab when the ecology students had finally stumbled their way over the bodies on the floor to rescue their scaly friends. Actually, she hadn't really failed. The building was still standing, no one was dead, and there was only minor damage to the interior of the lab. No one had said she had to prevent the bookrats from leaving the premises.

Dropping into the adjustichair before the console, which immediately adjusted to her height and contours, she was just about to activate the long-distance channel for direct access to Gallion City, nine hundred miles away, when the three-by-three-foot screen flashed on in front of her, and a man she vaguely recognized filled die screen in vivid color. Her hand stilled in midair and she sat back, a little in shock that the screen was on without having had the voice command of "Answer," nor had the console chimed that there was a call awaiting her attention. People didn't appear on audiovisual consoles without permission, since die viewing was two-way and it would be. an invasion of privacy otherwise.