by Kieran Shea
Wire’s munitions and clothes are stowed in a hold beneath the cockpit, but in one of her tactical suit’s deep cargo pockets she carries her evasion and worst-case scenario gear. Bifurcated and sealed in two vacuum-pack pouches, this gear includes: a blowout trauma kit; two laser flares; a multi-tool gyro-motion-powered flashlight; a tarry of synthetic energy protein (toasted coconut); a rack of five pulse grenades; and a holstered Sig Sauer sub-compact pistol flush-fit with an extended power magazine.
Wire has been itching to try out the Goliath’s pulse cannons and briefly she entertains a daydream of turning around and blowing by The Sixty, smoking every last inch of the resort just for spite. Yeah, lighting up those islands would be so satisfying. If she was lucky she might even take out that stupid fink Britch who deported her to Surabaya. But she left the resorts’ greater coordinates hours ago so now her retaliation will have to take the shape of a carefully crafted flowcode message she types into the Goliath’s comms.
Once her message is away, Wire checks her transoceanic navigational charts. Assembled, the lustrous arrays in front of her indicate a small commercial trawler up ahead, plugging northward across the sloppy seas at a steady twenty-eight knots. The vessel is of meager manifest value, hauling scrap metal destined for the offshore smelting rigs in the Sea of Okhotsk.
A closer examination of the charts reveals the nearest vessel to the trawler is over one hundred and ten nautical miles away. As the vessel isn’t connected to any larger commercial syndicate that might cause her any future concern, Wire dips the Goliath beneath the clouds and increases her speed.
Soon the trawler is within range. Seventy nautical miles out now and in the next second—fifty. With a sweep of her finger, she syncs the Goliath’s pulse cannon guidance systems to her newly repaired ocular, and half a second later a red-tinted overlay melts into her vision: ACQUIRED.
With a single blink of her eye, the pulse cannons fire. Strafing past, one of several rounds catches the trawler’s stern fuel tanks and obliterates the vessel in a molten fireball.
Fuck yes!
Wire streaks past the flaming smear on the ocean’s surface like a predacious black demon and pulls back on the Goliath’s stick, grinning. Dragging g-forces instantly engage her tactical suit stress functions to modulate her blood flow, and climbing higher into the sky, the Goliath finally stabilizes. Soon Wire thinks—Oh, why the hell not?
She steers the Goliath into a victory barrel.
As the sun’s glinting orb spirals over the translucent rind of the canopy, Wire lets out a bellowing whoop. Flying higher still, she whoops some more.
THE SIXTY III
HORACE BRITCH, IN REPOSE
Meanwhile, back on The Sixty, security officer Horace Britch sinks into a comfortable recliner and stares out the window of his residential quarters. The setting sun outside washes a golden shimmer across the ocean’s surface and burnished edge, and the cheerless, dreadnought silhouettes of several massive Second Free Zone lower orbital barges can be seen in the distance.
Speculating on what has happened to Wire, Britch wonders if the bounty agent is still amongst the living. He’s heard stories about how the poorest of the poor in Surabaya sometimes resort to cannibalism in order to survive, and he realizes the odds were certainly not in Wire’s favor. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone ahead and forwarded all of the records on Martstellar to her, but really—where was the harm? The Sixty and the Custom Pleasure Bureau’s board of directors elected not to pursue the matter further, so it was no skin off his nose. Britch felt a certain meager obligation to keep up his end of the bargain, if only as a final, insulting taunt.
Switching his thoughts to his extorted credits, he tests a cocktail of rum and muddled lemon in a glass and wonders if maybe he should’ve taken more. After all, executing such a reprehensible play with Wire was chancy. If his superiors somehow learned of his less than honorable gains, the act would be grounds for immediate punitive action. With disciplinary infractions all staff on The Sixty receive a three-count tally before lethal measures are addressed, but dear lord… the extra influx of credits… it was so worth it. A well-deserved, welcome dividend; something for life’s rare and precious luxuries for a change.
After Wire’s deportation, Britch spent his first dip into the purloined credits on hard-to-procure foodstuffs. The luscious quadruple-distilled Himalayan rum he so shamelessly watered down with lemon for instance, and the tin of tank-raised Ossetra caviar spooned onto butter-crisps on a plate at his elbow. Ever careful, Britch prudently used back channels and scrambled these expensive food purchases via his private off-world accounts. It felt thrilling to round out his personal larder frankly, and with little things here and there, as long as he doesn’t overdo it, he’s confident he shouldn’t attract any unwarranted attention.
As he leans over to select a caviar crisp, a ponging two-note at his door chimes. His quarters’ augmented intelligence systems advise him on the callers:
“Three visitors, Horace.”
Visitors?
Britch freezes. He has few friends on The Sixty (none at all, to be honest) and a chill drops through his stomach and shrinks his balls.
“Identify, please.”
Before the AI systems can reply, the locks on his quarters’ entry are bypassed—kla-klack!—and the door swishes inward with a reptilian hiss.
Getting up and turning, Britch sees three men. The first sports a slicked-back white pompadour, and the green rectangular badge fastened to the man’s lapel is bad, bad news.
“Good evening, Officer Britch,” the pompadour man says prissily. “Odin Riche, Chief Inspector with the SI Customs Office. Might I have a word with you for a moment?”
Britch doesn’t move. The two men with Riche he recognizes as novices in The Sixty’s security ranks. Hard, Gauleiter-like eyes and side arms at the ready.
“Um, I was just about to turn in,” Britch replies, placing the caviar crisp back on the plate near his recliner. “Not feeling all that well, actually. Is something wrong? What’s this all about?”
Riche starchily steps inside. “I’m sorry to intrude, but earlier this afternoon a distressing matter was brought to my office’s attention.”
Britch’s face goes sheet white. “Oh?”
“Yes,” Riche replies. “A flowcode message, actually, sent from an individual you recently handled for deportation proceedings.” Riche flashes a neat reef of tiny teeth. “As you probably know, our office typically dismisses such messages from patrons who’ve experienced untimely expulsions from The Sixty, you know, sour grapes and all that. But SI management is electing to adopt a more hands-on stance with following up on any and all complaints. Part of the quality control initiative the CPB announced last week. Did you, by chance, happen to read the quality control brief circulated?”
Britch drains the rum in his glass. His hand shakes.
“Um, I’m not really sure…”
“I see. Well, there are so many briefs circulating these days I can see how you might’ve forgotten. In any case, this deportee, the one who sent the flowcode message? She alleges that prior to her expulsion you obtained a significant amount of credits from her under great physical duress.”
Britch forces a short laugh. “That’s preposterous!”
“Preposterous or not, this is her assertion.”
“Can I see a copy of this alleged flowcode message?”
“By all means.”
Riche produces a datatab from his jacket and hands it over.
After taking the device, Britch reads a neat, single-spaced, typed paragraph. Twice. The details within are devastating.
Why that muscle-headed…
“Well?” Riche asks.
Britch hands back the datatab. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t true. It’s a blatant lie.”
Riche stuffs the datatab back into his jacket.
“So this is your position?”
“Of course it is my position!” Britch squawks. “Good lord, you know you can
’t trust a person like that.”
“And why is that?”
“She’s a bounty agent. They’re not exactly known for their scruples.”
“Indeed,” Riche says, “but as you just read, the communiqué also listed violations of at least three security protocols.”
Britch whines, “Oh, c’mon. This Wire person is just raw because I arrested her before she took out her supposed target. Wild allegations like that—she only sent the message to get back at me because I was the primary on her infraction. It’s ridiculous. Nothing but sour grapes, like you said.”
Stepping farther into Britch’s quarters, Riche approaches the window and takes in the now darkening view.
“But this patron asserts you transferred credits from her to an off-world account. If this did occur, under the threat of death no less, it’s my responsibility to verify the accusation.”
“So?”
“So, once we received this message we confirmed some unusual purchasing activity from your own off-world accounts.”
Britch’s mouth falls open. “My accounts? But those, those are supposed to be private.”
“Are you assuming I’m not taking the new quality control initiatives seriously?”
“No, sir, I’m not, but—”
“Given your depleted compensation package, which also is no big secret I’ll tell you, these purchases were quite disproportionate to your means.”
“But I’ve been thrifty.”
“Thrifty?”
“I saved up and bought a few things to treat myself. It’s not unheard of.”
“At present the going market price for quadruple-distilled Himalayan rum borders on the insane.”
Britch deflates. Dancing shoes or not, his stonewalling jitterbug with Riche appears up, so now what? The little pompadoured twerp and his novice flunkies are going to escort him back to resort HQ for a disciplinary hearing? Great. That is just fucking great. They’ll probably stick him with extra patrol shift assignments and cut his pay again to send a message. They might even elect to sack him completely, the bunch of nit-picking jerks.
Riche then notices the plattered caviar crisps next to Britch’s recliner.
“Ooh, is this the Ossetra you purchased? May I?”
Britch sighs resentfully. “At this point, why not? Help yourself.”
Riche selects and slides a crisp into his mouth. Cocking an appreciative eyebrow, he emits a snuffle and then gently takes the empty glass with the smashed lemon from Britch’s hand.
“Listen, had you waited to appease your gluttonous appetites, we might not even be having this conversation. The truth is I need to be somewhere in a few minutes so it would be better for us both if you just admit out loud what you’ve done. Forthrightness could bode well for you in regards to this evening’s disciplinary measures.”
Britch glooms. “Fine, whatever. So I shook that bounty agent down for a few thousand credits. Big deal. I bet half the security staff on The Sixty are guilty of worse chisels and then some.”
“That may be true, but those malfeasances are not my concern.”
“Sheesh, so now that I’ve admitted it, do you think we have time for one last drink?”
Demurely as a debutant Riche pats his chest. “Oh my, you mean the quadruple-distilled rum? Well, I really shouldn’t, but yes. Thank you for offering.”
Britch looks at the two security novices. Declining, the two steely-eyed men shake their heads, so Britch trudges over to a nearby table where the bottle of expensive Himalayan rum sits. He makes Riche a drink and when he comes back and hands it over Britch removes his glass from Riche’s other hand and glugs out a hefty four fingers of rum for himself.
“This hardly seems fair,” Britch complains. “I mean, so I went ahead and bent a few rules. This bounty agent, she’s the real criminal if you ask me. I swear, the CPB and SI management’s priorities are all out of whack getting upset over something like this.”
Riche jerks the bottle out of his hand and rum splashes all over Britch’s shirt.
“Seriously, you don’t remember the quality control brief circulated last week? It outlined a new zero-tolerance policy.”
“Zero-tolerance?”
“Mmhm.”
The two novices draw their sidearms.
Britch barely registers the split second before the two open fire and his body bursts into flames.
THE COMMONAGE IV
AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL
Back at the camp, Trick leaps up onto a set of the mortared bricks half buried in the ground, and the rest of the gathered de-civs settle down. Weary, bloodshot eyes abound, and more than a few of them pick at festering facial lesions.
It takes Grum some effort, but he climbs up onto the half-buried blocks and takes up a bodyguard pose behind Trick. When Grum is set and Trick is sure he has everyone’s undivided attention, only then does he begin.
“All right, I’ll keep it short. As you know, our southin’ has been longer and more difficult than most of us expected. After that storm, I bet lots of you probably flat out thinkin’ just how much more of this southin’ you can actually take. No lie from me. Be months yet likely, right-right, and I bet more than half of you will die.” Trick passes his gaze over the sunken, diseased faces and holds a moment for dramatic effect. “So, here we be, in the godforsaken wasties and what do we goon here on this little pit stop on our journey south? Truer-than-true, I’ll tell you what. A settlement, right smack in the middle of a place not supposed to have a livin’ soul for a couple hundred years plus. Like you, when I gooned them walls, I thought, this can’t be good. Best move quick, right-right?”
Trick is spouting gospel as far as the rest of the de-civs in the camp are concerned. There are more than a few sickly, bobbing chins.
“Yeah, we’ve known fortifications back north. Them and their paramilitary lapdogs, treatin’ our kind like we ain’t even human. Starvin’ us, huntin’ us down, some of you’ve even been kicked out of their so-called assimilation locales and damn well know what kind of hell those places be. Shit, it’s why most of us lit out for Sin Frontera in the first place. I swear, this mornin’ with that place I half expected armed squads roustin’ us up, but no-no. Here we be, here we be.”
A few heads turn to look at each other, but no one says anything. Trick pauses again, and when one finally raises a voice Trick is not at all surprised by who speaks up. It’s a woman he’s been keeping tabs on for a while now—a gap-toothed, former tar-sand pitter named Shirley.
Shirley claims she used to jockey an extraction crusher before she got reclassified as de-civ, and she’s made no bones about how she’s been gaming for Trick’s leadership slot. Despite her coarse, corn-cobbed looks, Trick knows the woman has that unctuous, politicking charisma about her. Lately Shirley has been going on and on about how they’re on the wrong track, arguing that their group should move off the coast altogether and head east for the mountains. When she brutes her way to the front of the group, Trick tenses.
“Judas Priest on a strat-sled,” Shirley cries. “What we waitin’ for then? We need to get a move on now while we still gots ourselves a chance.”
Trick turns to Grum and gives him a calibrated look that he should keep an eye on Shirley before he turns back to address her.
“And where do you think we should go, huh? To the mountains? Oh, I know that’s what you’ve been campaignin’ for. Oh me, oh my! Run for the hills! Run for the hills! Be safer up in the mountains.”
“Damn right,” Shirley says. “We pack up now we could make them foothills by sundown. That compound? We got no idea who they be and that means trouble.”
Trick takes his jackknife from his waistcoat and unfolds it.
“Okay, okay… let me ask you a question then, Shirley. Do you know why walls like that be built?”
“Hell, man, I don’t know and don’t really care.”
“Well, you should,” says Trick. “Other than prisons, walls are for keeping things of value in or for keeping tho
se seekin’ those same things out.”
“So?”
“So, if them got it in for us do you really think we could outrun them to the goddamn mountains?”
“Maybe they’re fixin’ to now the storm’s passed.”
“Doubt it. Grum and me, we be just up there and gooned no natty-like or corp-o logos. Not only that but we gooned no weapons neither. No logos or weapons? That compound might be independents, like down Sin Frontera.”
Shirley glances back at the others. “Thinkin’ like that could mean our lives, Trick.”
“Oh, dry up, Shirley. Did you goon them up close? No, you be back here sucking down grackle-bone porridge and dandelion tea. I’ll put it to the rest of you. When was the last time you ever heard of anythin’ remotely natty-like with corp-o be unfortified?”
Someone else in the camp, a woman gathering a child close to her side, raises her voice.
“But they could be hidin’ their guns.”
Trick laughs. “Oh, c’mon! Hidin’ their guns? Why’d they do that? Tell you what, though, they looked clean and well fed, that’s for damn sure. If them people ain’t armed and are independents, I say we jig that to our advantage.”
Shirley says, “How?”
“Send out some of the runts to beg for supplies.”
“Them?! Out there on their own? For all we know there be concussion mines surrounding the place.”
Trick looks to the others. “How many of you be hungry?”
A lot of murmuring now and belly rubs.
“Yeah, me too,” Trick says. “Stretchin’ mealy oats with whatever creatures we can catch, washing it all back with bad water killin’ us slow. Yeah, I know you think it be better to protect them runts, but this be about their survival too. We be dyin’ out here. Them runts could goon the place out and get a drift of what’s what.”
Shirley steps closer and jabs an accusatory finger up at Trick.
“You. You’re nothin’ but a bald-faced, scheming liar. I knew you were a weaselly little prick the minute I laid eyes on you. Hell, you want to beg? You want to get killed or blown up, maybe you ought to do it your own damn self.”
