Vinx the Mercenary Minx: 1

The Selection

Welcome to a spinoff from my sci-fi novel, Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine — not sure if the Vinx will become a standalone novel or integrated into the evolving series, but she’s an itch that I can’t help but scratch…

The evolving serial is also on Royal Road: follow and read me there, too!

Vinx didn’t like it one bit. And when she didn’t like something, everyone had to find out, one way or another.

Her sisters stood in ranks around her, eyes locked, tails undulating, eager to be chosen. Rows in front. Rows behind. Columns to either side. Thousands of contenders. Thousands of top-grade killers. The gap between their lethal skills was almost invisible.

Almost.

Vinx was in a crowded playing field, but she would stand out. She would be the chosen one.

One way or another.

Cats have nine lives. The Minx of Maunox had at least 137 billion more, one for each sibling cloned from the LitterWorks of Maunopolis. The King and Queen, almost losing the throne to rebellion, rebuilt their population from their own blood, generating every possible son and daughter the line could produce.

Known throughout the Infiniverse as the Royal Family, most became citizens, some renegades. A select few became spies, assassins, and imposters for hire. They formed elite squads: Stalkers tracked, Renders killed, and Mimics replaced. They were the realm’s prized exports, coveted by governments, syndicates, and warlords.

Vinx belonged to the Clawtrine Cohort, the rarest and most talented unit. Each Trine carried the full stack: track, kill, replace. One operative, one mission. One hundred percent success rate to date. Any target within a million light years didn’t stand a chance. For everyone’s safety, the Cohort was always assigned in secret, never deployed in full.

Until now.

By executive decree, all ten thousand Trines had been summoned to the Citadel to fill a single coveted post: head of security and personal bodyguard to none other than Quartz Leibniz, Managing Director of the Agency.

“By your command,” bowed the Viceroy.

He stood beside Quartz and tried not to recoil from the executive’s fetid breath, oily scales, and saurian bulk.

Quartz’s small arms twitched against his bony chest. His long striped tail balanced him as he leaned forward, predator eyes bright with desire.

“Deliver my salvation,” he chirped. “Bring me my joy.”

Through the main display screen he watched with anticipation as the HyperTrooper Dropship entered their 3-space and docked with the rotating station. Feline candidates deployed by the thousands into the Citadel’s cavernous staging area.

A squad of HyperTroopers flickered in and out of the third dimension around and within the vessel, supervising the landing area, guarding the leadership, and scanning the Minx with the determined focus of soldiers who knew exactly what they were dealing with.

The Trines marched out in perfect time, one hundred rows of one hundred Maunoxians each, ten thousand exquisitely bred vipers aiming to tease. Their clowder commander strode ahead of them waving a zero-point prod, scintillating insignia and jeweled battle harness glittering across her chest.

She snapped an order in a piercing yowl.

Ten thousand hind paws struck the station floor in unison. The sound reverberated throughout the bay. Tails lashed in choreographed waves. Backs arched, ears flattened. Furry faces turned just enough to size up the multitude of competing sisters surrounding them, enemies within.

Only one would be selected.

None of them was as sure about the victor as our Vinx.

“Your Eminence,” the clowder leader saluted, standing before Quartz. “The Clawtrine Cohort awaits your decision.”

Vinx held still.

Selection meant power. Rejection meant return to the litter, just another manufactured weapon among vast multitudes, numbered, dispatched, then forgotten.

She had not made it this far to become inventory.

“Yessssss,” trilled Quartz.

He moved through the vixen ranks with a gait that was heavy and precise, a prowler’s body tempered by bureaucratic patience. His three taloned toes scratched against the neutron-ceramic tile. His feathered crest rose and fluttered as he inspected the sibling contenders with squinting eyes and sharpened beak.

“Such delightful predatorsss,” he rasped. “But which one of you will be mine?”

Vinx scrutinized his approach. She wanted to spring onto his razor back, drive her diamond-tipped claws into his scales, and make the decision obvious. But she held her ground, eager and arrogant, wondering whether Quartz deserved her.

She purred, awaiting her destiny.

Quartz passed within a dozen or so rows from her, several columns over, then stopped.

The Viceroy hurried beside him, reading data only he could see. “They appear identical, Your Eminence, but each designated operative hosts singular refinements.”

“They are all beautiful,” acknowledged Quartz. He lowered his narrow, tooth-lined beak toward the nearest row and sniffed them. “But only the most gorgeous and lethal vixen will join me.”

“They have been summoned to indulge you,” reminds the Viceroy.

“Indulge me she will, but only one, the special one,” squawked the Managing Director. “I will know her the instant I sense her…”

Vinx closed her eyes.

The darkness sharpened her other senses. Quartz’s claws scraping the floor. The nervous mumbling of the Viceroy. The slight breeze created by HyperTroopers entering and leaving the third dimension. The controlled breathing of ten thousand sisters who would leap to her assistance at any sign of threat to the litter, or murder her without hesitation should that prove expedient.

Vinx opened her eyes.

Quartz stood in front of her.

His face hovered millimeters from hers. His reptilian eyes glared at her with contemptuous indifference. Sharp scales glistened in the xenon light. His wheezing breath was harsh as a starship engine. His noisome funk hung like an opaque fog.

Her whiskers brushed his beak.

His hooked talon tapped her right nipple.

Neither of them flinched.

“Which one is she?” asked Quartz.

The Viceroy read from his internal data feed. “This Trine is number two to the thirty-first power, minus one.”

Quartz’s crest lifted, and his sharp-toothed mouth grinned.

“Does she have a name?”

“She is the litter’s Mersenne Prime,” said the Viceroy.

Vinx stared into Quartz’s eyes.

“I ssssee,” he said, staring back.

He scrutinized her for one more instant.

Then he sighed and turned, gesturing down the row.

“And this one?”

Two places to Vinx’s left her sister-competitor did not move, the only acknowledgement of her sudden good fortune a tiny upwelling of her thick, fleshy lips.

Vinx hated her with a passion Quartz could feel, further delighting him.

“That would be two to the thirty-first power, plus one,” said the Viceroy.

Quartz clicked his flicking tongue.

“Better to add than subtract,” he observed. “One more is certainly better than one less, yes?”

“Indeed, Your Eminence,” bowed the Viceroy.

Quartz grinned and strutted away.

“Bring the Plus-One to my flagship.”

The Viceroy saluted.

“By your command — ”

Before he finished, Vinx swiped a freshly sharpened claw and sliced his face in half. A fountain of blood erupted, splashing her surprised sisters and the scratched tile.

The wrong Minx had been chosen.

Vinx would fix that error.

The nearest bloodied Trines shifted into attack position, but they were a hundredth of a second behind her.

Vinx drove off her hind legs, extended all her claws, and struck the nearest sister at the base of her throat. Another swipe took both arms off before the rest of the body hit the floor. Her attackers recoiled and Vinx took full advantage, twisting into the next leap, raking upward, and feeling feline flesh rip apart beneath her paws as her siblings shrieked and flailed.

That gave the rest of the Cloister time to activate. A dozen sister-assassins calibrated and lunged at her from every angle.

Vinx savored every nanosecond of her rampage, and their attempt to wreak revenge.

She kicked the Viceroy’s collapsing body into a row of attackers, vaulted over the next group, leaped meters into the air, and coming out of a backflip sank her teeth deep into the clowder leader’s neck. Her commander’s blood was salty and metallic, rich and satisfying. As they thrashed together, Vinx ripped away the commander’s jeweled battle harness and hurled it spinning into another advancing cluster, its armored edges slicing through their necks and faces.

Severed Maunoxian heads bounced and rolled across the glistening tile.

Quartz watched the performance with glee, then ever so delicately nodded.

Enough was enough, even by Agency standards. A trio of HyperTroopers appeared out of nowhere in fractured cross sections. Their physical silhouettes entered the visible world at oblique angles with the whirr of unfathomable technology and a breeze of displaced air. One rushed the executive and his chosen sister to safety while another seized Vinx’s spine from the inside. The second locked her forelimbs in unseen restraints. The third struck nerves at the base of her skull, sending searing pain throughout her entire body.

Vinx hissed, scratched, and tore free of their multidimensional grip long enough to kill one more sister before a 4D trooper pinched her aorta and dropped her to the blood-splattered floor.

Surrounded by a protective phalanx of troopers, the chosen sister stood beside Quartz, pressed tightly against him.

Vinx fixed her slanted eyes on her and vowed to turn Plus-One into Zero, then take her Minus-One place at the all-powerful Managing Director’s side.

An armored fist appeared in thin air, punched her in the face, and the Citadel went pitch black.

Continued in Chapter 2: The Detention…

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