Coordinate 16Q Beta 23
Miranda
Labrea System, Irece Prefecture
Draconis Combine
Fourth Quarter, 3067

With a plastic crack, the butt of the needler pistol smashed into the young woman's skull. She dropped to the floor like a ton of bricks, her blond hair spreading out across the tiles. Tonight would probably be her last day of work as a security guard.

Sawaka Runesson smiled. Though she usually hated the dirty work that came with her job, there were some guilty little pleasures. In this case it was no doubt her silencing of one of the numerous lackeys working under Nick Tahn. Tahn was a corporate elitist, popularly known for his exclusive hiring of young attractive women. This kind of recruitment system had brought him much fame, but also its own Achilles heel. 'Looks over experience' had never been touted an advantage when it came to theft deterrent.

Tonight's break-in was Sawaka's second step in her work to discredit the mighty Tahn Industries corporation. While believed to be a front for drug trafficking, Sawaka's superiors at ROM had discovered otherwise. The company was also a smuggler of other products, including silencers for automatic weapons. ROM had come to the conclusion that merely a single shipment of such merchandise might prove disastrous in Irece's second largest city. The sprawling metropolis had banned all firearm use by civilians as an attempt to sabotage any Word of Blake militia actions on-planet. With the Jihad's spreading had come rumors of nightly slayings, only a portion of a silent terrorist plot to disrupt or destroy the local governments.

Quickly triggering the buildings silent alarm system, Sawaka fled the area in the direction of her real target, the import and export department of Tahn Industries. The research and development's high security priority would likely distract other guards to give her time in which she could accomplish her main tasks. Any momentary shortage of guards from the shipping warehouses would likely prove fruitful.

Sawaka sprinted across the quiet yard, taking full advantage of the blanket of darkness its small glen of trees provided. The full moon out tonight was nature working against her, but she'd promised herself it would cause little delay in her strategy's execution. She couldn't help but smile though and was even struggling to keep herself from laughing. The thought of Tahn's security dilemma was something she'd have to push from her mind for now, regardless of how much humor she found in it.

Though the company had armed its guards to the teeth, all of the women working tonight appeared to be untrained in the use of their weaponry. The theft and vandalism caused in only the next few minutes would prove a second major embarrassment to Tahn's beloved company.