Seatac International Airport, Seatac, Washington.
Two people, a man and a woman, walked out of the office in a private hangar, loaded with luggage. They called for a cart and headed to the charter terminal.
“Hi, welcome to Seattle Helicopter Charter, where would you like to fly today?”
Siobhan gave the woman at the desk a brilliant smile. “We’re just headed home from our honeymoon,” she said, taking Timothy’s arm. “So we’re headed to Oly, got anything headed our way today?”
“Certainly, Mrs...?” the receptionist said, her manicured fingers resting on the keyboard waiting for Siobhan to give their information.
“Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Roberts,” Siobhan glanced at the receptionist’s name tag and continued, “Dana.” She smiled again and, though she was absolutely straight, Dana felt her heart skip a beat and her face heat up a little bit.
Nyxian honeypots were irresistible to everyone, and the receptionist was no exception.
“Certainly, Mrs. Roberts,” Dana said, then lightly coughed to bring herself back under control. She tapped away at her keyboard for a moment, then said, “We’ve got a scheduled commuter hop today headed to Oly in an hour that has room for two. I can set you up with tickets if you want?”
“Really?” Siobhan bounced up and down a little. “That’d be great, Dana! I was worried we’d have to charter a flight ourselves and, well, after the honeymoon and all....” She blushed and gave Dana a knowing nod and wink.
“Certainly, Mrs. Roberts. Happy to help!”
“Call me Siobhan, and this is my hubby, Tim.”
Siobhan and Dana chattered for a while, leaving Tim standing in the lurch completely flabbergasted at his “wife’s” ability to extract information from people. He would have to keep that in mind if he wanted any semblance of privacy during, or even after, their mission was complete.
An hour later, they boarded a Beechcraft Super King Air and had a relatively uneventful flight to Olympia.
Meanwhile, without anyone noticing, a stealth shuttle taxied out of the hangar it had delivered the two operatives to and silently took off, headed toward Hartstene Pointe.
......
Olympia Regional Airport, Olympia, Washington.
Timothy and Siobhan deplaned and took their luggage to the long-term parking structure, where an older truck was waiting for them. Tossing their bags in the back, they hopped in and headed out for the short drive to Harstine Island.
“Did you see the look on that poor man’s face?” Siobhan laughed.
“Honey, you really shouldn’t be teasing other men like that.... Especially not in front of your husband!” Tim pursed his lips and batted his eyelashes at Siobhan in an exaggerated imitation of the flirtatious looks she had cast toward another passenger on the commuter flight.
“Oh Tim, don’t you know us girls like to window shop? As long as I don’t buy anything and bring it home, it’s fine, isn’t it?” she coaxed.
Tim sighed and shrugged, turning his attention back to the road so they didn’t miss the turn to the island. “I guess, Vonnie, it’s just... we’re supposed to be in the honeymoon phase and you’re already flirting around.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll pretend I’m a librarian,” she promised.
Tim, having already seen a number of “educational videos” featuring librarians, wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
The drive quickly passed and they soon arrived at their base of operations, a prefab three bedroom two-and-a-half bathroom home in the middle of a two-acre lot in Hartstene Pointe. They unloaded their luggage and carried it in the house, then began their covert remodeling. Tim lost the rock-paper-scissors game to Siobhan and, despite being much, much bigger than her, cut a hatch in the floor beneath their bed and unleashed the atomic printer nanite colony in the crawlspace beneath the house, interfacing with its controls and uploading the design of an underground facility that came standard for nyxian agents in the field.
The printer got to work, and Tim crawled back into the house and went for a shower.
Siobhan hadn’t been idle during that process, either. She had spent her time creating slicks in the house and tucking away most of their gear. When she was finished with that, she updated her holographic clothing projection to a pair of durable jeans, hiking boots, and a hoodie, then went for a walk around their property, installing hidden and optically camouflaged surveillance cameras in the trees, ensuring full coverage of anything that entered their property.
(Ed note: A “slick” is a hiding place, usually related to weapons, but in intelligence agencies it can hide anything. For instance, removing a door from its frame and cutting a thin slot in the frame behind the hinges to hide documents, key cards, or anything else small enough to fit in the slick. Other popular slicks include light fixtures, cutouts in books, false bottoms in drawers and chests, and so on.)
The Wi-Eye Surveillance System was a product of the black labs in Lab City, designed for use by nyxians on extended operations in the field. Each WESS was powered by ultra high frequency microwave wireless power transmitters and had backup batteries that would last for a week in case of an atmospheric disturbance that knocked the wireless connection out of commission. They had a dedicated VI swarm installed, ensuring perfect coverage with no distractions, and a smart filter that would filter out anything that the user didn’t need disturbing them, thus filtering out almost all false alarms caused by wildlife, insects, and the like.
Siobhan’s job done, she dusted the imaginary dust from her hands and headed back to the house, humming a jaunty tune under her breath and considering different ways to tease the straightlaced reaper she was partnered with. Though he was mostly a stick in the mud, like most reapers, whose training focused on achieving goals and fostering a mission-first mentality, that kind of person was always the most fun to play with; at least for her, anyway, the opinions among nyxians were varied on their preferred targets.
Finally settling on going with the tried and true shock method, she went into the bedroom, stripped, and walked into their ensuite master bathroom, where she snuck into the shower with Tim and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Hubby~” she whispered in his ear, a purr obvious in her voice. “Fuck me. Ride me hard and put me away wet....”
That day, Tim took a long time in the shower.
