Koko Takes a Holiday

by Kieran Shea

  The next thing she knows they are in a low-ceilinged tubular passage lined with horizontal sleeves of wire and a floor brightly illuminated from beneath and so heavily scuffed it resembles marble. Flynn races ahead to a door on the right and taps a keypad. The door unlocks with a small snap. As Flynn drags Koko inside by her wrist, she catches sight of shelves with jugs and plastic storage crates. As the door shuts behind them, they are swallowed in darkness.

  “Be quiet,” Flynn whispers.

  “What the hell is this place?”

  “A custodial closet.”

  “Oh, for the love of…”

  “Shhh,” Flynn scolds. “The alarm. If anybody noticed, the SOP is to send a security check in under eight minutes.” He drags her right and lifts the lid off a large plastic bin braced against the wall. “Here. Get in.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Koko curses herself for trusting this suicidal whacko. She should have just shot him in the head and taken her chances. Her itching hands fall, and she feels the plastic edge of the large bin in front of her. Insistent, Flynn’s hands press in on the back of her waist.

  “Just get inside,” he says. “I’ll climb in on top of you.”

  Koko wants to jab a pointed elbow into his ribs. Maybe a little higher up his chest and stop his heart cold. “This is stupid,” she argues. “We’ll be cornered in this stupid thing.”

  Koko turns her head and desperately tries to see Flynn’s face in the inky black, but she can’t. All she feels are his hands behind her right knee, urging and lifting.

  “If they suspect any kind of a breach, it’s over,” Flynn says. “I don’t care how good you think you are, you’ll never get off Alaungpaya. They’ll lock down every exit and might even depressurize the whole cargo area and surrounding flight decks just to be sure.”

  Koko groans with frustration and hoists herself over the edge and into the large plastic container. In a squat, she feels the stifling interior dimensions. The bin is empty, and the funk inside smells of burnt chemicals and putrid wet waste. Flynn climbs in next to her and lowers the lid on top of them. There is a buzz as the latch on the bin locks itself.

  Flynn shushes her. “Quiet now…”

  “Are we locked in here?”

  “Yes.”

  That’s it. Koko pulls her Sig from her belt as her other hand finds Flynn’s throat. She chokes him, and he starts to gag. Koko feels the edges of her nails break the skin and mark his neck as she buries a gun muzzle firmly against his cheekbone.

  “How are we going to get out of here, bright boy?”

  Flynn seems to be holding his breath. The slightest of moves on his part and her nails will make him gush out like a stuck pig.

  “If no one comes,” he squeaks, “we’ll… cut our way out.”

  Just for spite Koko considers ending Flynn right then and there, but she releases his neck.

  “Boy, you sure know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?”

  Flynn rubs his throat and coughs. “Thank me later.”

  Tucked inside the bin, they listen hard. Turns out, no one comes down the hallway to check on the alarm or the custodial closet. When they agree the coast is clear, Flynn instructs Koko to set her gun to the lowest pulse setting and squeeze off a reduced incendiary round to melt the lock. She does as he suggests, and the lid pops free. Koko throws back the lid and scrambles out of the bin as quickly as she can, but she trips and tumbles out onto the floor. Rolling over, she jumps up and finds her feet.

  * * *

  Flynn starts to hoist himself out of the bin, but he sees the dim red lights ornamenting the sides of her gun pointed directly at him.

  “Put that away,” he says.

  The gun indicators hold steady in the gloom.

  “You know,” Koko says, “maybe I should just take my chances and get rid of you right here. Hell, you’re in that stupid trash bin already, what do you care? It’ll make a fine coffin. I’ll be doing you a favor. I can find my way from here.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, but good luck with the rest of your little escapade trying to get off Alaungpaya.”

  “I don’t need you, lawman.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  The indicator lights on the gun move and settle again. “This is my finger applying pressure on a weapon I’m not so familiar with,” Koko says.

  “You know, you’re right. What do I care? Go ahead. Shoot me.”

  “You think I won’t?”

  “No,” Flynn answers, “I know you can. But you’re smarter than that. Tactically speaking, it makes no sense at all. Think about it. You know you can still use me for at least a little while longer.”

  Flynn finishes fishing his lanky body out of the bin and straightens. He draws up a hand and rubs the neat, tenderized cuts scored beneath the stubble of his neck.

  The red eyes on Koko’s gun abruptly swirl and disappear as Koko shoves her weapon back in her belt.

  “You are something else, you know that?”

  “I do have my moments,” Flynn says.

  In the darkness, they go over the next steps of their plan and then head out.

  TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS

  “Welcome to DwopSwedz, twhere convenience twis our motto, thwherever your twavels may lead. May I help you, fwiends?”

  The blonde, perky sales clerk working the DropSledz rental counter in Alaungpaya’s arrival and departure area adjusts the tilt of her skullcap as she addresses the two unamused women before her. The clerk’s tongue has recently been pierced with a waffle stud and gives the girl a heavily whistling lisp.

  Wire hips past Heinz and cocks an elbow breast-high on the counter. She drops a couple of strat-sled coupons they took off Juke Ramirez on the counter between them.

  “We have these strat-sled coupons…”

  With an inspecting lift of her chin, the clerk leans forward and picks up the chits with dainty fingers.

  “Oh yeth-yeth,” the clerk chimes, examining the chits beneath a scanner. “Our economy swed special with exthenwed wawanty. Pwart of our way-test pwomotion.”

  Wire nods. “Yeah, terrific. Listen, maybe you can help us. We’re sort of looking for a friend of ours.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. We’re supposed to meet up and travel together, but there’s been a bit of a miscommunication and now we can’t reach her. She may have come by earlier and booked a strat-sled. Has anybody come by and checked in under the name of Martstellar, first name Koko?”

  The clerk’s blinking eyes ping between the two women. Heinz strokes the ribs of her neckbands and scrunches her nose.

  “Oh. I don’t thwink so,” the clerk replies with cookie-cutter eagerness. “No, no one by the name of Koko. I thwink I’d wemember a name like that, and I’ve been on thwis shift for a while. Thorry. When would you two wike to departh Awaungpaya?”

  Wire grumbles and takes the chits back from the clerk. “Never mind,” she says. Then Wire reaches into her rucksack and peels off a bunch of credits from a banded roll. “Here. This is for you. We’ll check back in a bit. If anyone named Martstellar shows up to book a rental, maybe you can let us know. Oh, and one more thing. Our friend doesn’t know about my red-haired friend here. It’s sort of a surprise, so if you see her don’t say anything until we talk with you.” Wire gooses Heinz’s ass, makes kissy noises, and winks. “Ain’t that right, sweetie?”

  Heinz glares.

  The clerk looks at the credits held out to her in Wire’s hand. The credits are easily more than the clerk pulls down in a week. The clerk leans over.

  “I can’t accthep tipth,” she whispers.

  “Just take it,” Wire says.

  The clerk looks around and quickly palms the credits with a hasty nod.

  Heinz has already turned away from the strat-sled rental desk and is scrutinizing the terminal area as Wire joins her, chuckling. In the arrival and departure area there are dozens of zig-zagged queues ja
mmed with cattle-bored people awaiting transport. Most faces are upturned and glued to feed screens that hang at nearly every turn, and on a filmy blue membrane rotating above the entire area, a large scrolling display lists times, origins, and destinations of all departing and arriving aircraft. All listings on the blue membrane are underlined in red and marked CANCELLED UNTIL POST-EMBRACE.

  Heinz gestures to a busy café a mere story above the whole place packed with travelers.

  “We should probably set up surveillance there,” she observes. “Looks to have a pretty good view, fore and aft. I could take the port side; you could take starboard. Martstellar comes through here, we’ll spot her and cut her off.”

  Wire agrees, and they go up a short flight of stairs to the café. It is noisy in the café, and the cone-domed ceiling above the centralized bar is lit by thousands of tiny twinkling blue sequins of light. Bulling their shoulders through the patrons, they purchase a couple of large coffees and then position themselves at hover tables in their agreed-upon positions and begin their watch

  Twenty minutes later, Heinz’s ocular flutters on her skull with an incoming message from Vincent Lee down on The Sixty. From the communiqué’s tone it seems Lee is less than pleased and freaking out. Heinz immediately buzzes Wire.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Lee back at SI HQ wants an update on our status.”

  “He can bite me. Did Lee mention anything going down over at Wonderwall?”

  “Hold on.” A few moments later Heinz follows up. “Negative on Wonderwall, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe Mu is flushing her to us.”

  “Yeah, or maybe she’s already dead. I’m going to see if my uplink skimmer can probe the security coms. See if anything hinky has gone down anywhere aboard and run it back.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  “Yeah-yeah,” Wire says. “No other way off Alaungpaya unless she comes through here and blah, blah, blah. Just keep your post and stay sharp. We don’t want her slipping through the choke point.”

  Someone behind Wire laughs heartily. Wire has the distinct feeling the man is laughing at what she just conveyed to Heinz, so she turns around. She sees a dark-skinned, bare-armed man wearing a white wooly vest and drinking a pint of solar ale.

  “Is something funny?” Wire asks.

  The dark-skinned man sets down his drink. His head is enormous, like the head of a lion, and he is not the least bit intimidated by the stony look in Wire’s eyes. The man leans forward on his well-developed and folded arms.

  “There is always one other way off Alaungpaya,” he says.

  Wire lets her eyes drift down onto the departure and arrival area.

  “Oh, yeah? And how’s that exactly?” She looks back to the man.

  The dark-skinned man leans back and makes a sad face and then flutters his thick fingers down through the air and makes a small screaming noise. The amber-colored ale in his glass jumps as he smacks the table in front of him hard.

  He laughs even harder.

  THE JUNIOR EXECUTIVE WAITS

  As Vincent Lee sends his message to the bounty agent Heinz, he tries to put his boss’s warbling moans out of his head. Just behind the polished blonde shine of her wooden office door, Portia Delacompte is going through the required supplication service for the faithful.

  Lee frowns.

  New One Roman Church of the Most Holy Liberator.

  What a friggin’ joke.

  Lee has never understood the attraction of religion, particularly fundamentalist, hard-liner sects, and deep down he secretly dreads a future day when he will have to slurp up all the sanctimonious drivel like the rest of the CPB myrmidons with a big ol’ straw. Yes, he realizes it has to be part of his long-term plan if he wants to survive and get ahead; many of his peers at CPB have already entered the NORC/MHL aspirant process and shamelessly adopted the dogma. But to Lee, the notion of turning his back on cold-bath sensibleness, secular reason, and the broader discoveries of universe-based physics sits about as well as a ball of foul cheese in the back of his throat.

  The worst part is NORC/MHL’s weaselly metaphysical framework. Sheesh, if you’re going to pick a massive delusional farce to cocoon yourself up in, at least have a backbone. You want to follow Mohamed to Allah? Terrific. Follow Mohamed to Allah. You want to flex your legs, get to know the chunky, mellow-looking guy breathing shallow? Have at it. But from the outset, the New One Roman Church of the Most Holy Liberator recognized the destructive nature of such antiquated limitations. Hell, even the breeziest study of antiquity could illustrate the fact that 99.9 percent of humanity’s blood-spattered plunges down the commode were caused by religious fraction. So, to avoid this, the church founders forged a new path of aggregated non-exclusivity, accepting all arguments, parables, taboos, and truths of convenience. To Lee, the crippling truth is that it’s all a snow job. A con. A ruse of solace designed specifically to justify the intentions of greed and power and to bless those in charge with the ability to shape and manipulate the future.

  The most encompassing credence for peace and success?

  The right way and the life?

  People can be so stupid, Lee thinks. Like a flock to slaughter, like a flock to bloody slaughter.

  Just beyond the door, Delacompte brays and Lee’s chest spins out a sigh. It’s all so ludicrous. Delacompte going through that crazy medallion ritual? Of course his boss is totally faking it. She’s a former mercenary, and she has a ridiculous tolerance for pain. Lee has personally seen the woman take an incredible beating in CPB fitness center’s sparring octagon and brush it off with indifference.

  Still, he supposes, Delacompte has to sell it. The myopic, self-righteous NORC/MHL officials would only believe her if she quaked daily for absolution.

  Bunch of masochistic maniacs.

  Anyway, what on earth is taking these bounty agents so long? Why won’t Heinz answer his messages? This whole affair should be completed by now. Where is this Koko Martstellar?

  Lee tries to send another message to Heinz but the transmission again goes unanswered. He attempts secondary priority communications with both Mu and Wire and still receives no response.

  In disgust, Lee pushes away from his desk, stands, and proceeds down the hall toward the floor’s break room. His status as Portia Delacompte’s right arm has always given Lee a slight edge over his fellow office workers, but the day’s souring events have sucked all the haughty marrow from Lee’s usual smugness. Avoiding others’ eyes in the break room, he makes himself a large green tea and then heads back to his desk as quickly as possible.

  Upon his return Delacompte’s cries are in full swing, and he gulches down a burning swig of tea. Not that he’d know, but from the sound of the woman’s histrionics if someone were to pass by just then Lee is sure they’d think his boss was thrashing through one very intense and protracted orgasm.

  Lee shudders and tries the Alaungpaya team again.

  TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS, PART 2

  In a half-squat, Flynn leans his back against a wall next to a smudged metal door that opens out onto the Alaungpaya’s main arrival and departure terminal. Koko squats next to him in a wushu rest stance.

  “Let me see that strat-sled coupon you told me about,” Flynn says, pulsing his fingers.

  Koko removes the coupon Juke Ramirez gave her from her borrowed jumper’s breast pocket and hands it over. Flynn examines the logo lettering on the chit: DropSledz. Flynn recalls seeing the strat-sled rental company’s advertisements on the feeds. Smartly groomed, sophisticated men and women encapsulated in the personal propulsion crafts winging through a graphically enhanced atmosphere like angry hornets. Flynn slides up the wall and drops his hand to a bar that opens a perpendicular slit in the doorway just off to his left. He scans the view and eases the door closed again, keeping it slightly ajar.

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  Koko clutches his arm.

  “Wait a second. Wait here? What do you mean, wait here? No, no, no. Uh-uh,
I’m going with you.”

  Flynn eases the gap in the door closed and leans toward her. “They’re looking for you out there, Koko, not me, remember? Me? They probably don’t know about me or what I look like yet. Listen, I’ll just go over and secure your strat-sled rental with this coupon. After the Embrace lockdown is lifted, you can take a strat-sled and take off out of here.”

  “Maybe we should think of something else,” Koko says. “There might be a better way.”

  Flynn shakes his head. “Not unless you want to join me at the sunrise lemming ceremony. Shuttles are too conspicuous and freighters are completely out of the question. Too many tracer scans and cross-checks. Trust me, a strat-sled is the call.”

  Koko looks down. She wrinkles her brow and frowns.

  “So, just how long is it until the… um…”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “The Embrace ceremony?”

  “Yeah. When do you need to check in for your jump?”

  In his head, Flynn tallies. He estimates the time since they left the dead agent down in his quarters, plus their interrupted lengthy climb out near the vessel’s hull and their hiding out in the custodial closet.

  “It’s probably just over twenty minutes before they release the first wave of jumpers, give or take. The Embrace organizers are pretty flexible on participant check-ins, and they’re supposed to stagger the jumps. I’m probably late for the first and second calls and dosage allotments, but they’re kind of used to people dragging their feet at the last second.”

  Koko closes her eyes and slowly shakes her head. “Man, that’s so weird.”

  “What now?”

  “How can you be so laid back about ending it all?”

  “Hey, it’s not like I haven’t been thinking about this for a while, you know. Embrace is not some random impulse buy. After you make your initial commitment and encode your personal contract, you sort of get used to the idea of your death just being out there. Like a big clock winding down.”