by Kieran Shea
“Listen,” Koko says, “all things being even it might be a matter of ego with this one, you know? If I were in her shoes I know unfinished business would have stuck in my craw. Back on Alaungpaya you told me there were two bounty agents on our immediate tail. For this one to survive an emergency depressurization at that altitude, I mean, I thought we were in the clear. What matters now is the payout on my elimination looks permanent.”
Flynn droops. Koko pats his arm.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“Oh, sure. You’re sorry. Is that somehow supposed to make me feel better? Goddamn it, I really hate all this.”
“I know, getting shot really hurts.”
“No, not getting shot. I mean, that hurts, yeah, but I really hate all this. You and me, how when things start going good, everything just turns to shit.”
“Can you stand?”
“Did you miss my whole getting shot thing?”
“I’m serious, Flynn. You need to get up. We’ve a chance of getting out of here, but it’s a slim one at best.”
Flynn dabs at the blood-soaked towels secured with the kimono belt. Without being asked, several employees in the saloon rush over and, with some orchestration, get Flynn up on his feet. Somebody picks up Koko’s white walking cane and holds it out to her, but Koko waves it off. Even if she’s still recovering from the damages inflicted on her by Portia Delacompte, Koko is definitely of the mind that now is not the time to be relying on props.
Flynn hops and Koko drapes one of his clammy arms across her shoulders. The two release specialists Koko sent to retrieve the backpacks from the pantry return while, outside the saloon, the electric motoring sounds of the cargo ute and terra-sled draw near.
Flynn notices the backpacks. “What are those?”
Koko shifts Flynn’s weight against her body and discomfort twangs down her leg. “Bug-out packs,” she explains. “A few thousand credits, minimal rations, a couple of side arms, NBC-protective suits, potable water, stuff like that.” Together they limp around the fallen bounty agent. “Here, watch your step.”
Flynn looks over his shoulder. “Wait, we’re just going to leave her like that? But she could come after us. Shouldn’t we, like, do something?”
Koko stops. “Oh, so you want me to kill her, is that it?”
“Well, I know it sounds cold-blooded, but it seems sensible.”
“Sensible? Oh, really? Hmm, maybe you want me to bite out one of her eyes for good measure while I’m at it.”
“I didn’t say you had to go to extremes.”
Koko resumes dragging Flynn forward, adding sarcastically, “You know, I seem to recall a short time ago a certain somebody complaining about how I should turn over a new leaf. Gee, how did he put it? Broaden my emotional capacities? Embrace my softer, gentler side?”
“I was talking about with us. I mean—”
“You know what, Flynn? I don’t want to hear it. Not now. If SI Security is on their way here that bounty agent is their problem, not ours. They’ll deal with her. Priority one for us is to get good and gone.”
Flynn looks over his shoulder once more at the saloon’s main bar area and hesitates. Fleetingly Koko wonders if he’s stalling because he wants to take his chances with SI Security. Koko supposes she really can’t blame him for being freaked. Yeah, sure, he used to be a cop, but being hunted down on a dead woman’s orders, this sort of psycho scenario is in Koko’s wheelhouse, not his. As the traumatized saloon staff watch them leave, a few of the release specialists start to cry.
“What about them?” Flynn asks.
Koko knows who he means, but she keeps her mouth shut and her eyes fixed straight ahead. Before she met up with him in the Second Free Zone on Alaungpaya, Koko had fought her way out of a whole smorgasbord of hellacious situations and not once in all those times has looking back ever helped.
“They’ll be fine,” Koko says. “Somebody will take over this joint. I mean, all the work we’ve done getting the saloon ready and all the promotions? The whole operation is practically turn-key.”
She resumes getting Flynn out of the building with as little pain as possible. Passing through the batwings and making their way across the broad boards of the front porch, Koko fully expects to hear the hooting blares of SI Security sirens at any moment. Lightning flashes and after a deafening thunder crack, the savage downpour that had been threatening all afternoon cuts loose, and the straight-nailed monsoon rain sounds just like a round of applause.
COCHON DE LAIT: HORACE BRITCH
Horace Britch is about to sink his teeth into a kebab of suckling boar meat when his shoulder’s epaulette mic warbles.
“Britch-3493? SI Security priority message. Please respond, over.”
Britch neglected to pick up napkins at the end of the buffet line, and grease drips down his arm in a warm rivulet.
“Britch-3493? Repeat, SI Security priority message. Please respond, over.”
Britch aims the kebab away from his body like a fencer’s foil. Sweating, he flattens his chin on his epaulette and keys the mic.
“This better be good,” Britch answers crustily. “I’ll have you know, I’m on dinner break.”
Dispatch is unsympathetic to his concerns.
“BOP event, Island Thirteen. Confirmed report involving unidentified female and a male resort manager, over.”
Britch flattens his chin on his epaulette again. “Oh, for the love of—a breach of peace call? What, somebody got punched in the snot-locker again?”
A long fizz of static and then, “Uh, that’s a negative.”
Britch kicks an empty bamboo masu box at his feet. With both hands he then lifts the kebab and quickly chomps down the meat lanced in between. Hand-seasoned with turmeric and basted with coconut water, the fatty pigskin snaps in his mouth with each bite and is so delicious Britch’s head actually starts to swoon.
As luck would have it, Britch is supervising officer for SI Security response that evening, and nearly everyone on The Sixty is throwing down big time on Island One. It’s The Sixty Islands’ weekly luau—an open-invitation, all-out bash publicized heavily by the CPB’s promotional and marketing departments. Counting the stuck-up vacationing patrons, the full-time SI employees, and the high-priced pyrotechnic entertainment (DJ Rajini Superwong and the Slavectors doing percussion duels, don’t you know), an eyeball estimate puts the luau crowd at nearly fourteen hundred and change. Most are scantily clad and nearly all are blitzed out of their minds on fortified rice liquor and God knows what-all. Between flame-spouting, caterpillar-tracked kulkul watchtowers, blade-juggling trapeze artists soar from catch bars as a tethered aerostat drifts overhead like a massive, gas-swollen dong. In the aerostat’s gondola, go-go dancers use hoses to disperse hallucinogenic rainbow-colored dyes over the crowds. The wilding masses below hail their approval and extend their tongues upward to catch a taste of the sweet narcotic mists.
All in all, The Sixty’s luau is an apotheosis of hedonism multiplied to the tenth power. If anything were to go wrong on the archipelago tonight, the sands of Island One are the odds-on favorite for ground zero. As Britch chews and swallows bite after bite, his beady eyes mirthlessly dart in their sockets. Eastward, past the flickering torches and garish massage tents, he can make out the smaller humps of The Sixty’s teen-numbered islands. More than a dozen kilometers away, the crepuscular contours look like the backs of dozing animals, and the storm front forecasted for that afternoon looks to have finally cut loose in their vicinity. It’s not raining just yet on Island One, but Britch can smell a charged fried-ion scent as a crimped vein of lightning marbles the darkening sky. The luau crowds cheer. Thunder rolls.
With almost two years’ tenure on the resort, Britch appreciates his position well enough and knows, given his morbidly obese liabilities, he’s damn fortunate to have it. Unlike most of his peers in SI Security, Britch didn’t come from a hardcore battle-tested soldiering or policing background. Initially, yes, he’d been bred in one of the colle
ctives and applied for such training, desperately hoping for field work—all that squashing of the de-civ ilk and shoring up economic interests and such—but his practical test scores indicated he lacked a certain amoral fortitude to serve as an active duty solider or law enforcement officer. A squeamish washout the recruiters said. Though he marginally passed the physical examinations, the recruiters were adamant Britch needed to perform without mercy to be of value as a soldier or policeman. Three months of extensive virtual-reality training pretty much ferreted out his lack of brutal grit. Crushed, Britch protested and begged for another chance, but the recruiters told him no way. However, they did inform him he wasn’t completely worthless. While Britch didn’t have the coldblooded makeup to be a full-time policeman or soldier, his cognitive assessments demonstrated he’d prime attributes for administrative duties.
It was so humiliating. Reluctantly, Britch took the offer and to his surprise he discovered, in time, that the recruiters were right. Purchasing and actuarial logistics were the robust pillars of his ken, and for a spell Britch secured work as a quartermaster for long-haul projects in quarantined resource regions. Regretfully, though, with his ass parked behind a desk ninety percent of the time, a freakish genetic anomaly in his thyroid kicked in and prompted a dramatic if not startling weight gain.
Britch had always been a mite pudgy, but his sudden monstrous growth spurt was something else. The cataclysmic megalo increase in weight whittled away at the tenuous underpinnings of his fragile ego, so to counteract the condition he first sought out medical options and then attempted to bulk up with weights. Both solutions, however, only seemed to aggravate his problem, and Britch finally decided to take his condition in his stride. He defended a position that it did not matter how he looked because his intrinsic values rested with his managerial proficiencies.
As things turned out, several of the Custom Pleasure Bureau’s recruiters took notice of Britch’s fastidious knack for logistics and sought out his expertise. Naturally, in person the CPB and The Sixty’s personnel recruiters had their reservations regarding his physical detriments, but they hired Britch anyway with the assurance they wanted him for his talents at cost-slashing, supply management, and the like.
For six months on the resort Britch hardly needed to remind himself how good he had it. Honestly, a job on The Sixty Islands? One of the most lavishly insane resorts on the planet? Some people would murder for a slot. Working air-conditioned days at the resort headquarters, shuffling the provisions hither and yon and burnishing the bottom line—life was sweeter than sweet and more than cushy. But then SI management made a shift in policy. All security personnel (no ifs, ands or buts) were now required to pull patrol assignments regardless of their responsibilities.
For Britch, the sudden policy deviation was awful. Hoofing about and keeping an eye on people having the time of their lives was a sheer burden on his knees, not to mention insulting. He requested several times in writing for permanent excusal from patrol tasks, citing unabashedly that it was imprudent waste of his obvious strengths. Management did not appreciate his candor, and as punishment they upped his patrol count and drastically reduced his pay by half.
So now he’s being tagged with a priority BOP summons from Dispatch. Britch considers forwarding the call to one of the other officers also on patrol duty this evening and scans the crowds for someone else to lay the call off on. Dropping his spent kebab skewer in the sand, Britch sucks his fingers and keys the epaulette mic again.
“Clarify event specifics, over.”
“Initiating camerascope playbacks to your data tab now. Non-simulated shooting. SI saloon facility, one Martstellar, Koko P., proprietor.”
Britch’s head snaps: a wobbly double-take. Pork-slimed fingers be damned, he clutches his shoulder and nearly rips the epaulette mic free from his uniform.
“Dispatch, can you repeat that, over.”
“Transmitting…”
Britch yanks his data tab from its clip on his duty belt. He knows damn well the saloon’s exact location and recalls reviewing directives from the CPB and The Sixty’s executive offices that all security personnel should make an extra effort to keep an eye on its owner, a former professional mercenary known as Koko Martstellar. Something to do with a recent senior administrative upheaval. Of course Britch had heard the rumors about the skirmish on The Sixty’s runway apron several months back, when a late SI executive was blown to bits, but the files regarding what had actually transpired, or why it had even happened in the first place, had been scrubbed clean from the available archives. Word was Martstellar had been involved, but since then reports on the woman’s activities had been unremarkable. From all outward appearances Martstellar was just another vendor getting a saloon and brothel operation online to service vacationing clientele.
After the costly flak Britch received for requesting excusal from patrol duties, he knows better than to go kicking a skunk. Nevertheless, he has to wonder. Something like this? A non-simulated shooting connected with Martstellar? This sort of cock-up stinks of leverage. If he handles it well, Britch might even be able to get his compensation back on track and free himself of patrol obligations.
Smearing a greasy forefinger on the data tab’s screen to activate the interface, Britch cues up the transmitted visuals from Dispatch. With resolution enlargements, the event images are distorted, but they reel out dramatically in an edited playback loop. Britch adjusts the data tab’s audio controls for volume, but hearing anything above DJ Rajini Superwong and the Slavectors on the main stage is impossible. Doesn’t matter. What Britch sees on the tiny screen is more than enough to gas his butt into high gear.
“This is Britch. I’m on my way.”
EVASIVE MANEUVERS
Flying down the access road in the cargo ute, Koko slams on the brakes, and the two release specialists trailing behind on the terra-sled come to a halt behind.
Climbing down from the cab and stepping out into the hammering rain, Koko grabs the bug-out backpacks from the ute’s bed and quickly tears open a pocket.
“You two, shut that terra-sled down,” she shouts.
The two young men do as she says, and Koko pulls a first-aid kit from the backpack. From the kit she retrieves a laser scalpel and without warning she stalks over to the two release specialists. Koko grabs one by his right arm and from his wet wrist quickly slices out his biometric identifier.
“Owza-wowza, Koko-sama! What you doin’?”
“Shut up.”
After cutting out the identifier, Koko cuts out her own and sticks hers into the whining release specialist’s shorts.
“Get back on the terra-sled and head straight for the airfield.”
“Me, Koko-sama? No-no, me stay with you.”
“No! Airfield! Now!”
Sheepishly, the young man does as Koko orders, loops a leg over the terra-sled and takes off. Koko then grabs the second by his arm.
“Come here, hot stuff. Help me get Master Flynn out of the cab.”
Together they head to the front of the ute. Flynn is in the passenger seat and Koko opens the door. When they drag him out, Flynn howls.
“Wait! Hang on, my leg!”
“Give me your right arm!”
“What?”
“I said, give me your right arm! Your wrist!”
On the ground, Flynn looks up at Koko, baffled. Reluctantly, he holds out his arm. Koko pulls it close and works the laser scalpel.
“What the—? OW! Do you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing?”
Koko finishes slicing open his wrist. “Evasive maneuvers, sugar.”
Picking out the bloody identifier from Flynn’s wrist, Koko flicks the tiny device on the floor of the cab and tells the second release specialist to drive the cargo ute as fast as he can to the farthest island on the resort. Visibly glad she didn’t take the laser scalpel to his own wrist, the young man spins around to the driver’s side of the ute, climbs in, and zooms off in a spray of mud. Koko takes a breath and l
ooks toward the brush alongside the road.
“There’s a maintenance access tunnel about twenty meters from here,” she says.
Flynn holds his bleeding wrist. “Maintenance tunnel?”
“Yeah, to the islands and resort’s support infrastructure. Right here there’s a gap in the archipelago’s scanners, so they’ll think one of us is still in the ute, and the other is on the terra-sled hauling ass for the airfield. I’m trying to buy us some time.”
Flynn swallows. “God, Koko, I don’t think I can make twenty meters.”
“Fifty milligrams of morphine says you will.”
Koko pulls a morphine injector from the first-aid kit, and sticks it into Flynn’s wounded leg. She then snatches the two bug-out packs and loops one on her back and the other one off her shoulder.
“Holy smokes,” Flynn says with softening wonder, “that’s what morphine feels like? That shit is amazing.”
“It’s reducing your brain’s awareness of pain, but it won’t numb it completely. Now get the fuck up. Let’s go.”
A minute and a half later they arrive at the maintenance access tunnel door. The door is rusted and covered with thick vines, but with a good pull, it opens with enough room for them to squeeze their way through. Inside, the passage is pitch dark, and Koko drags Flynn down a ramp.
“Where are we going?” Flynn asks.
“You’ll see. Keep moving.”
Soon the sound of sloshing water can be heard, and the dark passage they are in opens up to reveal a massive, cavernous space, replete with gangways, monstrous pipes, conduits, and overhead lights. Beneath them, on a series of docks hedging a large body of slopping seawater, are the humped backs of a dozen large and small winged submarines.
“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me,” Flynn says.
“You get seasick?”
“I’ve never even been on a boat!”
