The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1)

by David Bowles

  “Giving you a target, chore. Ain’t you gonna do nothing?”

  Kyosu feinted with the blade. Mademan’s hand came up, gat popping into his palm as if on cue. Firing. Kyosu, having anticipated this, began to crumple to the floor under the blast, simultaneously driving the trucha through mademan’s bodysuit and into the fleshy part of his thigh. Landing face-up, the squadman rolled onto his shoulders, throwing his back, pelvis and legs into the air on a collision course with mademan’s gun arm. The gat was ripped from the lieutenant’s grasp, and Kyosu, hand-standing for better reach, scissored his legs around the gun arm and snapped it like a broom handle.

  “Pinche puto!” exclaimed the mademan, drawing back in a crouch. Kyosu trundled toward him in a side roll, sitting up just in time to avoid a face stamping. To his surprise, the mafioso reached out with his left hand and tapped a peculiar rhythm out on a spot at the base of his neck. The squadman’s casque decompressed and slipped into the collar of his suit.

  “What the...!”

  The tattooed hand smashed into his nose, breaking it and sending drops of blood splattering across the steel floor plates.

  “Vas a velo, hosupin,” muttered Kyosu in Kaló as everything in the universe save mademan went a frosty blue. His gloved hand shot out and grabbed the mafioso’s balls, which he squeezed with cold fury as he hoisted the sorry bastard into the air.

  “Name, arsehole. Tu nomme, pero ya!”

  Gurgling, face purple: “Felipe, Felipe Beserra.” He lifted his good arm, fist clenched for a blow. Kyosu tossed him aside and then suddenly leapt into the air above the sprawling yak, whose eyes went wide. The impact broke several of his ribs. Kyosu grinned through blood as he straddled him.

  Beserra. Like the kasike. Ah, fuck it.

  “Listen close, you piece of shite. Talk. I want names: your contacts on Jitsu, the captains smuggling yall in. I want coordinates of in-system ships, surface weapons depots and HQ’s.”

  “Chinga tu maje.”

  “La tuya, kulero. And last," Brando leaned in really close, blood from his smashed nose dripping onto the cap's forehead, "I want to know who killed Arojin Santo’s niece eight years ago.”

  A slight smile at that.

  “Again, fuck your moms. Ain’t givin' you shite. You really don’t know who you fucking with, ain’t it? Sides, you’re a squadman. A cop. What you gonna do, kill me?”

  In answer, Kyosu began pounding his armored fist against the guy’s head. After a couple of seconds, he heard a blood-gargling attempt at speech.

  “Got something to say?”

  “Mi ermano te vachingar.”

  “Ooh, your brother. Your pops planning on paying me a visit, too? What about grandma? Little sis? Talk or you die.”

  Felipe’s left hand curled into his syndicate’s sign beside his heart. Kyosu activated his trucha.

  “Brando! Hold it right there, squadman!”

  Ben clambered down a ladder into the pit. After him followed Endo and Wong.

  “What’ve we got, Kyosu?”

  “Yak lieutenant doesn’t want to spill. My rhetorical abilities didn’t impress him much, so I thought I’d do a little selective surgery. Now that Endo’s here, I’lltry the box.”

  Ben looked at Shusaku and nodded. "It's his prisoner. He gets to interrogate."

  Endo unpacked the kewbox. It was equipped with an internal power supply, but he hooked it up to a nearby console to conserve energy.

  “The fuck yall gonna do?”

  Ben turned a doleful look on the mobster. “It's like a conference room, just that we control your sensory input, not you. We can pretty much make you tell us what we need to know.”

  “That's torture. Yall can't do that. Yall are cops.”

  Endo smiled. “You're not on Mars or some fancy platform, dumb-arse. You sure as shite aren’t on Earth, where yall yaks have more rights than yall’s victims. This is Jitsu: most arse-backward planet there is. Neogs pretty much let us do what we want, long’s we're protecting them from yall scum. Ready, Brando.”

  He tapped in a command, and a dazzling pink light, made up of thousands of individual beams, began dancing across Felipe's blood-smeared forehead, making thousands of neurons in his neocortex fire in specific sequences.

  “He's in.”

  As Brando prepared a chair to sit in for the interrogation, he felt Ben's hand on his arm.

  “Listen, it's obvious you're extra pissed today. That stupid plaz thing back there, which is gonna get you written up, and the way you took these guys on, you alone... don't take this interrogation too far, Brando. I mean it. You just apply the right pressure, and no more. You already messed him up bad here, more than you needed to.”

  “I know what I'm doing, Ben.”

  “Damnit, lad, pay attention to what I'm saying. This is fire. I shouldn't even let you be the one asking the kews, but we had a deal, I know. Just... if he doesn't know about Tenshi, don't freak. This guy has to be in one piece for the Major.”

  “You’re trying to say you know who he is?”

  The captain glanced away guiltily and then turned an icy gaze on D'Angelo.

  “I'm just warning you.”

  “Ben, what in shite is going on here? He's one of them, the bad guys. What, you're telling me I should be nice to him? What do you want me to do, ask him pretty please to give me the information? Give him some sweet biscuits, too?”

  “Bastard, just tell me you're gonna use your best judgment and not freak.”

  “Of course, Ben. I'm a professional.”

  He gestured impatiently at Endo as he sat down and leaned his head back. Pink light burned away the encroaching blue.

  Ben watched his eyes close, the false REM begin.

  “Yeah, a professional. But this shouldn't be your line of work.”

  The interrogation room was dark, except for a single light that shone from nowhere directly into the suspect's face. Typical: it had worked for centuries, so why try to improve on perfection? Felipe was seated on an uncomfortable laminate folding chair with a slight forward incline that kept him from leaning back, unless he wanted to end up on the floor. He was forced to lean forward into the light, toward the wooden table behind which the squadman's doppelganger sat. The tabletop was partially a console as well, and Felipe could only begin to guess at what so many lighted displays implied for him.

  “It's simple, Felipe. I won’t play any games with you, make you think you might get off easy. You're for certain going south, subterranean clean-up, lowest level, no machines, pure pickaxe, a true nightmare. But first you're going to talk to me, tell me all the things I want to know. Remember, your body's bleeding on the deck of your command center; nobody's doing anything to help you. We get done here, you get help. You take too long, make me drag stuff out of you... well let's just say others die while inside: you wouldn't be the first.”

  A lie. Boxes had fail-safes that kept such incidents from occurring.

  “Tell me, whatever your fuckin’ name is, how you can call yourself a cop and do this shite.”

  “First of all, call me Kyosu. Second, you're a damn criminal. You'd do this shite to innocent people, but I'm doing it to a worthless social parasite. I love the way yaks moan about yall’s rights and how they’re being violated. Boo-fucking-hoo. The minute you choose to prey on civilians, you execrable bastard, you give up all your rights, far’s I'm concerned. The government of Jitsu agrees with me, so stop whining.”

  Brando tapped the tabletop. Felipe's eyes began to water, and his face went white.

  “Slow nausea. No way to throw up, relieve the sick. Now, I can stop this, but you’ve got to talk. Know that this is just the beginning. From here, everything's downhill.”

  Felipe bent his arm at the elbow and extended his middle finger. Brando shook his head slowly, incredulously. It was going to be a long session.

  On the observation deck, Endo Shusaku watched as Jing Wong bent over the New Beijing yak’s body and yanked Brando’s trucha from his chest. For the
briefest of moments, the rookie’s face clouded over as if with sadness, but Wong quickly busied himself with checking the body for traps, standard operating procedure in these circumstances. Endo had just turned his head when out of the corner of his eye he caught a metallic flash followed by violent thrashing. The yak had begun to twitch and clutch his chest.

  “Guy’s alive!” shouted Wong.

  Ben clambered down a ladder into the observation pit. “Okay, mates, we got us another prisoner. Jing, take his wretched carcass down to the transports, let the docbots give him the once over. Check on the clean-up progress while you’re at it and come report to me in fifteen.”

  Wong nodded silently and slid one of the three repulsion litters he’d brought with him under the Beijinger, pulling the floating mass after him into the lift located at the back of the pit.

  Ben watched the lift jolt into movement and head downward. Turning to Endo, he indicated the box with his hand.

  “How long's it been?”

  “Nearly twenty minutes. Incredible. They most times break after five.”

  His abdomen cramping with the unpleasant possibilities if something went wrong, his every thought evoking Nestor Bos, or rather his doppelganger, glaring stonily at him across the light years, Ben crumpled cross-legged on the plating beside the kewbox.

  “I'm going in.”

  “Kyosu's gonna be pissed.”

  “Don't give a shite, Endo. Just do it.”

  A door to the left of the interrogation table opened; Brando's head swiveled angrily. Ben's doppelganger walked inside, regarding the bloody, spittle-covered and sweat-drenched face of Felipe Beserra.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Mothergod, Ben!” He tapped on the console. “Okay, the bastard can't sense us now. I got the location of their present base in Station City, several weapons depots and the ship that it's supplying them.”

  “Good. Then let's get the fuck out.”

  “Wait, please. He knows something about it.”

  “Oh, by Domina's...”

  “Damnit, Ben. You owe me this.”

  “I don't owe you shite, Brando.” Brando noticed the slight wince that always accompanied Ben’s lies. “You owe me. I’ve got more on the line than you know, mate. Can’t afford for you to screw this up.”

  “Come on, Ben. He says someone high up in the government, some arojin, is involved in all this. Thirteen years of investigation, and you never heard anything like that?”

  “Nah, you got him so fried he's trying to tell you whatever you want to hear. Disconnect, Brando. You're wasting time with this crap, and it looks to me like you’re about to damage the psyche of a potential witness.”

  “You don't think it's worth following up, Ben? And right now? The guy says he's Konrau's brother. If it's true... what? What’s that look for? Wait a minute—you knew who he was already, right? Outside, all that warning stuff... what’re you trying to hide?”

  Ben turned to the door, his voice muffled by the program buffers as he opened it.

  “Disconnect now, or I tell Endo to pull you by force, no matter how much shock it causes you.”

  Brando kicked at the table angrily, shut off the baffle so Felipe could hear and see him, and cranked everything past threshold. The underboss began to spasm wildly, falling from his chair.

  “You tell me, mothergod, who killed Tenshi Koroma? Who gave the order? Why her? It wasn't random, right? ANSWER ME YOU BASTARD!”

  Foam flying frenetically from his cracked lips, Felipe groaned, "Came direct from Konrau. Request of his Neog partner. Kill her; kid too. But not you, though. Mistake.” He struggled for breath and then spat. “Brando.”

  “Was it you? Damnit, DID YOU DO IT?”

  Somehow, Felipe managed a grin.

  “Fuck you. Yeah. Personal treatment, you fucking egghead. Should’ve known. Couldn't protect yours. No bales berga i lo sabes. You should a heard that little kid of yours whimper as the blood drained outta her.”

  Brando leapt over the table and began stamping Felipe's doppelganger in the face, screaming like a madman. He hadn't shut off the juice; it would cancel automatically if there were any danger. Suddenly, his foot in mid-beat, he was yanked.

  The room swirled into black. The pink lights scintillated strangely, going blinding orange, the color of mad and malicious Sakra, whose grim voice glitched at the edges of Brando’s soul.

  CHAPTER 32

  Santo let the CPCC ambassador wait in the vestibule. Since being named Minister of Immigration in January by the new Dominian-controlled Chamber of Deputies, he’d been hassled nearly every day by Leyla Soral or some other CPCC representative. It was unfortunate from a logistical standpoint that he’d been forced to wait seven years to get this quarantine underway, but Tenshi’s death hadn’t quashed reformer sentiment as well as hoped. Reformers had retained tenuous control of the government until the most recent elections six months ago.

  Luckily, their majority had been too slim to push through the inclusion of a deputy from Station City, and the Archon hadn’t reacted enthusiastically to the idea of a lower chamber. However, the political impasse they represented had delayed Santo’s plans until the public’s fear of Brotherhood attacks made them reevaluate their loyalties.

  But that had only been part of the problem. Kunti infidels had moved against the Consortium, strengthening expansionist resolve. With the selection of Jetsun Muntso as CPCC prime minister, the military was ensured steady enlargement. The AF had now occupied Sigma Draconis for four years, and a rising tide of popular sentiment throughout the Consortium suggested that, if terrorist attacks and theocracy continued on Jitsu, it would be the next target of CPCC imperialism.

  The conflict between the Kunti and the Consortium had also frustrated many of Konrau Beserra’s long-term plans, and the mafia boss had begun acting erratically. As the Oracle pointed out, it was only a matter of time before Beserra would betray Jitsu. Santo needed to act, now.

  Of course, he hadn’t been idle during the last seven years. Once he’d relinquished control of the squads to the Chamber of Deputies, he’d begun a campaign to bring together Dominians and Reformers in ‘a spirit of brotherhood,’ a slogan whose irony brought a smile to his lips every time he heard it.

  Santo’s public embracing of his former enemies had gone to the extreme of a well-received speech given at the dedication of a statue erected in his niece’s honor within Kinguyama’s central plaza. After the Chamber’s investigation had turned up absolutely no evidence of a connection between him and the mafia incursions, he’d rapidly become one of the more popular figures in the social sphere of Jitsu, earning the respect of even the most hardened Reformers for his bipartisanship. He was awarded a post as head of the Public Service Department, a non-political offshoot of the cabinet that oversaw the distribution of energy, food, water and other necessities to the population.

  Despite this image makeover, Santo continued behind the scenes to direct the flow of events on Jitsu so that they built toward the climax Samanei desire. Through a loyal Major Sosa, he continued to control the squads, sending them on fruitless missions against Nestor’s dummy crews, quickly assembled groups of rookies whom the Brotherhood deemed dispensable. Nestor himself, his obvious distaste for Santo notwithstanding, continued to trust Santo’s judgment, though the arojin had little doubt about Konrau’s true intentions.

  Of course, as the Oracle had never planned on keeping to their original plan either, such duplicity was to be expected. Besides, deceit was easily turned against the deceiver.

  Santo’s connections within the Chamber of Deputies also allowed him to continue to influence the parliamentary motions that reached the floor of the legislature, so that in spite of his feigned withdrawal from elected political life, he had been more involved in the running of Jitsu during the last seven years than ever before.

  Now head of the new Ministry of Immigration, Santo had his hands in nearly every crevice of power of Jitsu and had begun confining off-worlders to
Station City, much to the indignation of reformers and human-rights activists alike. His justification of the move was the incessant and unchecked infiltration of life on the planet by demimundo activity. As the squads had been unable to quell this invasion, he argued, more drastic measures needed to be taken. So, with considerable support from the Chamber and a surprising thumbs-up from Rawe, Santo had begun transporting off-worlders to government housing complexes within Station City, assuring them that they would be permitted to return to their homes, often in reformer prefectures, as soon as the syndicate threat had been contained.

  In the towns where there’d been the most criminal activity, conveniently the most liberal ones, martial law was established to root out Brotherhood operatives.

  Needless to say, the CPCC was not at all pleased with the situation. Santo’s assurances were dismissed at first, and then countered with ultimatums and posturing. Santo wasn’t worried.

  Let them stew, let them get angry. Jitsu is not Bima. There will be no occupational force here, the Oracle says. Soon the Brotherhood will be here in force, looking for a fight, looking for revenge.

  Santo felt no worry. The Oracle had arranged it all, on her own and through Santo, with the help of the strange Yen Bandera. Military versus syndicate, an all-out clash that would dwarf the insignificant CPCC-Kunti skirmishes.

  And his special pawn, D’Angelo, whom he’d so expertly maneuvered into position, would be at the heart of the storm. Santo would soon be free to expunge the infidels from his world, and his people’s path to enlightenment would be clear once again, a shining blue ribbon into ra-Yindawo.

  His desk com chimed.

  “Yes, Ana?”

  His secretary hesitated a second. “Ambassador Soral is asking if you’re going to see her soon.”

  Santo smiled. Desperate opponents were always the easiest. “Tell her to come in.”