Red Entaries

Five

Early morning in April while driving in Dahlgren Plaza Street as the Moon was still shining in the blue light and the sun had yet to break the clouds. Joanna scouted the front entrance to park and stake out the area near a stretch of silent residences.

A forty five minute wait only made things tense, Joanna Brown thought. Finding the front layout heavily guarded, she backtracked—wheeling around and drove through Ninety-second Street, where rocks were thrown at her vehicle by homeless citizens. They chipped her silver paint job and left a nasty hole in the back window. Joanne was angry as a bee.

Locating the Lunar Life Corp rear entrance, Brown came through one of the delivery roads back shadowing a sturdy flat bed truck. She could see a milieu of fortifications when entering the complex. Busy workshops received deliveries night and day from hover vehicles. Between two of the three large scale factories on the south-east complex, it was numerously protected with surveillance optics and guard patrols. Thrusting her car out of sight next to the off-road factory, she came right alongside it.

Pondering her thoughts and ambitions in the shadows where her visage was lit by a glowing dashboard, comprehending the difficulty of becoming a Black Viper, only the elite criminals of the Harbinger could obtain; Joanna desired to prove her worth. Any other member would say its suicide blackmailing this government collaborator, but she was a loner from the criminal base of Shanghai—the Mob, and an elite agent. The Shanghai Gangster Boss was enthralled when one of his Black Viper's, Mugg, convinced a chairman on the asteroid buying list to pay up on his blackmail. Brown thought and knew she was the one suited to get Lunar Life Corp to pay next.

Unveiling her com... "I'm here, at a Lunar Life Corp Factory." Letting her Mobster Boss know she's ready to infiltrate. "Joanna, it's me," she urged on.

"Let me check..." The suave gentleman cleared his throat. "Ah yes, here you are." Brown heard crumpling paper as she imagined him scrolling down it with a finger. "I have you listed as a lower level Street Slug, never met you in person since you were a little girl, but, I see I have a contract with you to infiltrate Lunar Life Corp and find any indiscriminating evidence to blackmail the chairman by account numbers or any valuable materials you may come across, anything that will make him pay, I repeat anything, including prostitution."

Joanna pulled down her blinder to shield herself from the glare of overhead factory lights. The dew was rising into a light fog. "Are you sure you can handle this one?" The gentleman started to get impatient. "I count twenty-six of my best agents have failed to sign on, in-fact none have, even I failed to find anything incriminating against Trevor Trahern for this job, my elite ego fell, and I almost died of...humiliation. We failed to find anything beforehand, now, you think you can? Please, don't make me laugh. We came so close, if only we could blackmail Trevor then the asteroid lot would be the Moon Lander Corp chairman's for the taking." He finished his speech with a cough while she became agitated like she had a trick up her sleeve.

"You know, I worked hard to obtain my White Viper rank." Joanna looked at her tattoo through the front mirror, un-concealing it from her shoulder side dark-night hair. "During a time after my parents and I were on a flight for the Taklamakan Desert of China ten years ago, which was more than a vacation and a gun run. We pulled over beside a road before the old bunker, Dirge Hold. It was an open country. Not a soul in sight...until a moment later a mirage, no...an angel of death, as my father would say. Pulled up alongside us with his police badge and everything in his honorable demeanor that my parents feared. She told me, my mother, as I remembered her with tears running down her cheek."

"This moment was like a com instilled in my mind playing over and over."

"Mother said: cover your head with a pillow. No doubt the one my dad had drooled on. And keep your head low! All I heard were several shots that ended in a thud and a crack."