Suicide Run

by TS Hottle

  She found Mank sitting in the back, a bagel on a plate next to a mug of something steaming and an empty shot glass at his elbow.

  "Mank Sarpong," she said as she approached. "JT Austin, my copilot and disowned heir to the Dasarius fortune."

  "Disowned?" said Mank, looking up. "What are you? Stupid, kid?"

  JT shrugged as he sat down. "Thought I'd look for a steady job."

  Suicide took her seat as well. The café had no servers, only order pads and servbots. She punched in a bagel and a light coffee. Pop-up screens insisted on showing her drink specials, but she had consumed enough alcohol in the past two days. She turned the pad for JT to order and watched him flinch at the prices.

  "Um…"

  "It's on the provisional government," said Suicide, "assuming they take Metisian scrip in this place." To Mank, she said, "All right. Why the cloak and dagger?"

  "I'm hungover," he said. "Or I'd have hiked over to your ship."

  Of course, you are, thought Suicide. Get yourself some help, buddy. None of this will bring back Mulan. "The question still stands."

  Mank lifted his mug, letting Suicide catch the hint of whiskey in the coffee. "How much you trust that Navy guy?"

  She gave a sideways glance at JT. "He's one of the Children of Amargosa. I mean the Children. The five who went after the Ban Ki-moon with me."

  Mank turned his attention to JT. "You're one of them, too, aren't you? In fact, you're the one who escaped Amargosa with this one." He pointed at Suicide.

  "Me and our friend on Goldeneye." JT blew out his breath. "And I hate that phrase. 'Children.' We stopped being children the night the incursion capsules fell."

  Mank fingered his wrist chip and held out his left hand. A holograph grew out of his palm. It showed a robed man cosmetically aged for obvious effect. He wore a white robe and, to Suicide's disgust, nothing underneath.

  Behind him, flanked by two black-robed Marilynist acolytes, walked a thin woman who looked barely beyond adolescence. Suicide knew better. Her face was hard, but Suicide noticed the eyes, wider than they should have been for someone trying to be stoic. The woman feared the two men surrounding her. "Jayne Best?"

  Mank nodded. "Spotted her yesterday right after we talked. The man in the lead is Governor McLaren, aka 'The Grand Dimaj of the Marilynist Temple.'"

  JT made a gagging motion. "My dad met him. Horny bastard."

  "Rumor has it," said Mank, "he has his rejuvenists amp up his libido with every treatment. Face of a wise man in his sixties, body of a twenty-five-year-old, naughty bits of a teenaged boy looking at skin holos under his blankets when his parents think he's asleep."

  "Where were they going?" asked Suicide.

  Mank closed his hand to get rid of the holo. "They were leaving the Temple Proper, near the spaceport, actually. The Grand Dimaj likes to be near important visitors, or he'd have put it at the center of town. He was marching her out to the tarmac. To one of those surplus Falcons everyone and her sister is flying these days and calling themselves a pilot."

  "Don't knock it 'til you tried it," said JT. "Was she bound? Did the two black robes carry anything like stun rods or pistols?"

  "Not that I could see."

  Suicide accepted her tea as it was brought. She noted JT looked like he'd just had bourbon on the rocks when the server handed him his coffee. "Is this Falcon the one we saw this morning on the tarmac?"

  Mank shook his head. "No, it left not long after yesterday. Registered to the Temple, so… Pretty much a state secret on this rock."

  She turned to JT. "Well, young one, time we expanded your spiritual horizons."

  "Long as we don't blow up something like the Cubists."

  415 IE

  Shandug, Tian

  Nausea interrupted her sleep that morning. Yun was at a loss to understand why she suddenly needed to throw up just before sunrise. She'd been sick before. But it always hit her during the day, sleep the only reprieve from it. On those rare occasions when she drank to excess, she could sleep off the ill effects of a hangover.

  No, this morning, at 0530, her stomach boldly announced with a rumble that would not be denied, that she needed to proceed to the nearest toilet or sink to expel whatever remained in it. So, she went, dashing for the newly built half bath Akrad put together as an anniversary present. She'd barely made it to her knees when she began hurling.

  Coughing, she spat out the stringy remains of the episode. Pushing back to sit with her hips on her heels, she did some deep breathing to calm herself. Did she and Akrad get some bad seafood the night before? Maybe she was allergic to seafood native to Tian. It was not unheard of, and her mother did not become allergic until well into her thirties.

  "I'm twenty-eight," she muttered. "I'm too young for this shit."

  She stood and waited a moment. When her stomach no longer protested, she rinsed out her mouth. Fingering her palm, she brought up the medical app embedded in every human's wrist chip. It controlled a swarm of nanites that monitored one's bodily functions, biochemistry, and vitals, bringing up any issues on demand. Some people went to Accident & Emergency when the swarm reported to an overly paranoid building security system that a heart attack or stroke was imminent.

  To her disappointment, hers reported nothing out of the ordinary. She ordered it to run a full diagnostic before heading to the kitchen. Her stomach had rebelled, and tea would settle it nicely. Not capsule tea. That stuff tasted like spent atmo jet fuel. No, tea needed to be made from leaves, whether steeped or in a bag, with boiling water. This was Tian, dammit, the cultural capital of the Compact. There were at least eight traditions of tea-making that demanded respect, nine if you counted use of a special electric kettle and pouches for the leaves. She had a duty to make her tea right.

  A tingling in her palm interrupted her silent rant. She looked down and saw the results of her nanite swarm's diagnostic. Hormone levels, fatigue, and changes in sleep all revealed something she never expected. The tea could wait. She marched into the bedroom, slid out of her nightgown, and proceeded to wake Akrad by making love to him. When they finished, he said, "Well, good morning. What brought this on?"

  Yun felt herself beam at her husband. "Guess who's going to be a daddy."

  8

  Suicide returned with JT to the ship, now called the Tachi, to find Duffy squatting next to one of its two hyperdrones. "What are you doing?"

  "Changing the transponder code," said Duffy. "When I catch a ride back to the Marineris, I'm going to mount this on the shuttle's belly. We hit orbit, I'll send it through hypergate to Jefivah."

  "Why Jefivah?" asked JT.

  "Are you looking for the former High Normaj of Earth and Consort of the Prophet of Marilyn?" Duffy gave the circuit card a hard yank. "Governor Best is Jefivan. His late wife's in-laws still live there." He took out a small probe and poked at the transponder with it. "So, Goldeneye, by order of the provisional government, is going to Jefivah to look for Jayne Best and her daughters." He looked up. "It's a felony to forge Governor-General Jovann's signature on the order, isn't it?"

  JT grinned. "It is if she complains about it." He turned to Suicide. "Think the Metisians will back us up?"

  "Anything that says 'Fuck you' to Jez Salamacis they will back." She walked over and watched Duffy work. "What happens when Jefivah's traffic control realizes it's not a Zaran transport craft?"

  The kid shrugged. "Who cares? I set this thing to fry its own electronic brains and go dark after it checks in with Jefivah Control. By the time they realize it's a message drone, it'll be tumbling out of control and be so much orbital debris falling to the surface. Probably break up before it hits their troposphere."

  Duffy finished with his fiddling and reseated the card. Then he sealed the drone's nosecone panel. "There. Probably will mess with her head when it heads for the gate." He brushed his hands together. "I also had a couple of toys sent down." Reaching into his pocket, he produced a couple of wrist bands. "Put this on your right wrist. Unless you're one of t
hose weird people with a palm tatt on their right hands."

  "I believe they call those people 'lefties,' you insensitive jerk," said JT.

  Suicide strapped hers on. Immediately, her palm tingled. She looked at it to see an installation window on it. It completed and changed to a form with the instructions, please key in alias, alternate date of birth, and relevant biographical information. She decided she was Liz Akrad, using the given names of JT's late wife and her own late husband. Given names in lieu of surnames, she figured, would be less conspicuous. Plus, by reversing the order, it would be harder for security scans to flag. Her father, proud of his Han heritage (and never mind her mother descended from Tibetans), would be horrified.

  "So, now I'm Kai Devold of Bonaparte," said JT.

  "Really?" said Suicide. "Two Gelt names. Could you be a little more obvious?"

  He shrugged. "I'll say it's short for 'Kyle.' Common enough Earth name."

  "If your great-grandfather's an Earthman. Isn't yours Etruscan?"

  "Or Demetrian. Dad's from Demeter."

  "Guys," said Suicide. "We have to meet Mitsuko before we head out."

  "Where are you going?" asked Duffy.

  Suicide smiled. "To visit the Grand Dimaj."

  "Do I want to be here for that visit?"

  "No," said Suicide in unison with JT.

  Mortenson had no shortage of initiate clothing. The simple hooded robes could be had at dozens of local ships practically for free. A few second-hand shops did offer them for free. Suicide wondered how second-hand shops had sprung up so quickly, given that the entire colony was less than five years old. She and JT picked up a couple, inspected them for cleanliness, and took them back to the Tachi. There, they changed into tight workout clothes and strapped flat smart guns to their side. These were the new KR-11s, designed to be invisible to even the Compact's own weapons detection systems.

  "You ready?" she asked as JT emerged from his cramped cabin. He looked embarrassed wearing the robe and the pair of sandals that came with it.

  "I feel like I should be begging on the streets," said JT. "Looks better on you."

  "You're biased. And a bit of a pig."

  "I'm not a pig."

  "I like pigs. Let's get moving."

  The robes did little to protect them from Marilyn's brutal sun. Someone, rumor had it a part-time imam serving in Jefivah's legislature, had proposed Hell for the sun's name. It stuck, despite loud objections from almost every reputable astronomer in the Compact. In the thin robes, it certainly felt like Hell.

  They marched across the tarmac to the spaceport's entrance, then up the road to the Marilynist Temple. The bulbous onion domes took their cues from Muslim mosques. Suicide had never seen a mosque with a dozen statues of a blonde woman enjoying the unseen breeze blowing her skirt up around her hips. It did not surprise Suicide to see that even the Blessed Mother's panties faithfully reproduced. Or faked. She had heard legends that the actual Marilyn wore nothing beneath her dress in the original image.

  What idiot built a cult around a pop culture icon from centuries ago? she wondered for the hundredth time. She did not expect an answer. The Temple had gone from an ongoing prank from Jefivah's early days as an Earth colony to a rather powerful cult to almost, but not quite, mainstream long before she was born. Now they would become an ethnic group, with all the baggage that would entail. All because the Grand Dimaj had bluffed his way into the governorship of Jefivah's first colony.

  She walked in the front door with her head bowed, strolling up the aisle of the main sanctuary. Other initiates, real ones, walked up to the altar, where a ten-meter-high statue of the Blessed Mother stood, sheltering the altar with her skirt as it flared out. The initiates knelt before the idol, mumbled something, then stood and walked away to one of the side entrances.

  Suicide and JT did the same. As she knelt, she mumbled a Catholic prayer she'd heard one of her schoolmates recite as a teenager. To her right, she could hear JT mumble something entirely different. They rose and moved toward the right-hand entrance.

  "'Riding Your Curves'?" she whispered. It was the title of a song popular before the Amargosan invasion.

  "That," JT whispered back, "or the Etruscan Planetary Anthem. But I never learned the Neo-Latin version."

  She rolled her eyes as they pushed their way toward the residential wing of the Temple. In the outer chamber of the Grand Dimaj's apartments, two black-robed acolytes stood guard. Suicide melted into the shadows. JT tried to do the same, and she figured it would be enough to fool the acolytes long enough. She gave the signal. They stepped out into the open.

  They both grabbed an acolyte and folded their arms around their necks in sleeper holds. Each one passed out quickly.

  "Clothes?" said JT.

  "It'll get us inside more easily," said Suicide.

  They dragged the unconscious guards to a nearby closet and stripped them of their robes. Suicide did not care to learn they wore nothing beneath the robes. They switched to the stolen clothes, JT keeping his initiate's robe tucked under his arm. Pulling the hoods over their eyes, they bowed their heads and stepped into the inner residence.

  "You were supposed to hold her!" The thin woman with the frosted blonde hair looked like she wanted to gut the old man in the robe. "Do you not understand who you are dealing with?"

  The Grand Dimaj looked old, like all his rejuves had come undone in a single moment. On second glance, Suicide realized he looked artificially young, like most people over the age of sixty. It only showed more because of the sheer terror on his face. "Madam Salamacis..."

  "Chief Salamacis."

  Really? thought Suicide. No chief of staff demands a title.

  "...I sent her someplace safe," the cleric said, shaking beneath his robes. "And the governor asked me to keep it secret."

  "You are the governor."

  "Governor Best..."

  Jez Salamacis stood over the Grand Dimaj, leaning over the man. "Governor Best is in no condition to request anything. You probably got a message from that bitch from Metis."

  "The Governor-General has stepped in to act for the governor."

  "The President does not recognize her authority. Therefore, I do not recognize..." She looked up and spotted Suicide and JT, who had folded his arms in the sleeves of his acolyte's garment. They both kept their heads down, with the hoods obscuring their faces. "Who are they?"

  "We have initiate sisters wishing to commune with the Blessed Mother, Your Holiness." Amazingly, JT effected a convincing Jefivan twang. Suicide hoped she would not have to speak. She could never quite purge the Pacific Rim origins of her accent when trying to sound like someone else.

  The Grand Dimaj jumped to his feet. "Chief, I understand your concerns. But the Temple is sacrosanct. Madam Best is the Consort of our Prophet. She is still a High Normaj, and I am obligated to maintain the sanctity of this Temple."

  Suicide put her hand inside her robe, reaching for the gun. JT did the same. She noticed Salamacis take a step back. Against a timid man who clearly depended on his charm to get out of unpleasant situations, she was brave. Then again, so was the Grand Dimaj now that two of his bodyguards had arrived unbidden.

  "You realize you are defying a lawful order from the President," said Salamacis.

  "You're not the President," said the Grand Dimaj. "And I am not only the highest cleric in this faith, I am also governor of this colony. And my authority comes from our parent world, Jefivah. Or is it the administration's policy to interfere in the affairs of Compact members now?"

  "It is when Compact security is at stake." She straightened and leveled a threatening look at Suicide and JT. Suicide kept her face lowered, hoping the hood still obscured them.

  Salamacis's hand twitched. She brought up her palm to see whatever image had formed there. "What is it?"

  "Anna Khirovsky actual, Chief," said a male voice. "A ship calling itself the Goldeneye just went through the gate. Traffic control gave Jefivah as its destination."

 
"Send a drone to Border Guard Command for Jefivah and ask them to intercept. Alert any Navy vessels we have there."

  "Understood. Khirovsky out."

  Salamacis returned her attention to the Grand Dimaj. "How long are the days on this rock?"

  "Twenty-two hours. But we follow Compact time..."

  "You have forty-four hours to give me what I want. And you'd better pray to your overdosed actress that Jayne Best is not on that ship that just left."

  "I swear to you I didn't know anything about such a ship."

  She tried to make eye contact with Suicide and JT. Suicide kept her eyes down, hoping JT did the same.

  "And when I return," the chief of staff said, her tone icy, "I will bring my own bodyguards. Only mine are Marines, with a few Compact Marshals thrown in for good measure." She turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

  The Grand Dimaj breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to Suicide and JT. Studying Suicide, he said, "Ah, good, you're female." He let his robe slide off, revealing a well-rejuved, but rather thin, body beneath. "Would you be so kind as to bathe me? Perhaps we could commune as well." His eyes flicked to the right. "Your friend could join us."

  They both pulled off their hoods and brought out their K-11 pistols.

  "Actually, Your Holiness," said JT, "we need you to put this on and pull the hood down over your head." He tossed the initiate's robe to the naked cleric.

  "And a word of advice," said Suicide. "You need better bodyguards."

  "You can't do this to me," the Grand Dimaj screamed. "I'm a holy man."

  "Oh, shut up, Larry." Suicide leaned on a sword, still in its scabbard. It gave her great pleasure to see the Grand Dimaj's eyes focused on the weapon. She would not have to draw it to use it. "Jayne Best came to you for help. We thank you for not caving in under pressure from Jez Salamacis, but we work for the governor of Amargosa, Lady Jayne's husband."