Koko the Mighty

by Kieran Shea

* * *

  Twenty minutes later, the three children drag fat mesh sacks of food across the open fields. When they cross into the cover of the trees, their faces are aglow, full of excitement.

  With startling force, Trick jerks the mesh sacks from their grasps and then orders them to sit still and keep quiet. The ginger-haired girl, thinking that the worst of their chore is now over and this might be some kind of spirited game, reaches for one of the mesh sacks. Trick backhands her brutally to the ground.

  The girl shrieks and the two boys try to cover her with their bodies. Together they watch powerlessly as Trick delves through the sacks. Completing his inventory, he pulls out three bruised apples and holds them up in his hands for the children to see, a sinister gleam shining in his eyes like acid.

  “Now then,” he says. “Tell me everythin’ you gooned and don’t leave nothin’ out. You speak truer than true, only then can you eat.”

  TAKING ACTION

  Thinking that likely everyone is keeping tabs on her under Sébastien and Dr. Corella’s orders, Koko leaves the bench and adopts a blasé façade as she circles and takes in the Commonage’s central administration building.

  Her basic scope of the premises reveals that, besides the infirmary and possibly Sébastien’s quarters, the building houses the commissary and central kitchen. Following the heated smells of oil and steam, she locates the kitchen’s rear entrance on the far north side of the building. Baskets of raw vegetables and three compost wagons are parked alongside a ramp, and the ramp leads up to a set of screened and kick-plated doors and a secondary disposal area with two thermite incinerators.

  Once inside, Koko glides across the moist tiles of the kitchen with an indifferent air. Big chow assemblies are always in some level of chaos, so she reminds herself to act like she knows what she’s doing. Nearing the far end of the kitchen, she passes a long prep table on her right where four cooks are peeling onions with their heads down. A quick look at the cutting boards, and Koko’s mood improves.

  Knives.

  Any blade is good in a pinch, so she trips a worker carrying a load of bain-marie pans from the dishwashing pit, and the cymbalic cacophony has the desired effect. When the cooks’ heads turn to see what’s happened, Koko deftly swipes a serrated paring knife from the prep table, tucks the blade under her new shirt, and keeps moving.

  She punches through a second set of doors at the end of the kitchen and enters the dining area. There isn’t a meal in progress and the room is empty. Immediately she swings left and heads down a hallway toward a set of stairs.

  Sébastien is the vain sort, and the likelihood of him grabbing a top-floor slot makes perfect sense to Koko. She climbs to the top of the stairwell and wonders, Hmm, just how long should a burial take? From their discussions she knows Sébastien is the long-winded type, so Koko sets her mental clock to a thief’s window of five minutes in and out.

  At the uppermost floor Koko enters a corridor. There’s a blind corner on the opposite end, but the corridor is vacant. A quick jog and she locates a locked door slightly grander than the others, and it looks right. Oddly enough, a small strip of metal is on the door with the initials S and M.

  Kinky.

  The door has to be Sébastien’s.

  Adjacent to the door there is a keypad like the one Bonn used at the infirmary downstairs and for her room over in Lodge Delta. Taking the paring knife from beneath her shirt, Koko lines up the knife’s tip on the keypad’s casing and screws. Four quick series of twists and soon she’s able to lever the keypad free from its backing. The wiring underneath appears standard—sheathed, color-coded wires: red, green, black, and yellow. God, how many times has she done something like this? Enough to know that even basic security measures can be wired deceptively. Loosen the wrong wire and an alarm could go off or worse. On operations, Koko’s seen people burnt to a crisp or even blown in half from freeing the wrong wire. But lethal countermeasures? Here? In Commonage Cuckooland? Unlikely. Rapidly, she bypasses the circuit. There’s the sound similar to a carpenter bee shuddering off to her right, and the door lock pops free with a soft click.

  Koko resets the wiring and keypad plate so nothing looks awry and tightens down loosened screws as quickly as she can. Checking the vacant hallway right and left, she slips inside and closes the door behind her.

  Keeping the paring knife handy just in case, she takes in a neat white room. There’s a library, various lab equipment, a desk, and a bedroom area off to the left with an unmade king-sized bed. There’s a musty dog smell too and a bowl of nugget-sized dried kibble with a water dish set lapped clean. The rooms are definitely Sébastien’s. After checking the bathroom and returning to the larger office area, Koko steps on something that gives with a crack.

  Lifting her boot, she looks down and sees pieces of a shattered needle drive on the floor. She crouches down to take a closer look, and finds one broken piece is larger than the others, about the length of an almond. Using her fingernails she pries the piece open and gently removes the memory dot from the backing circuitry. Koko sticks the memory dot in her pocket, squeezes the piece shut, and places the broken piece on the floor approximately where she found it. Rising, she moves round Sébastien’s desk and runs her fingers over the surface, looking for system activations. With the light streaming in from the windows she misses it at first, but a pale mauve projection icon the size of a gumdrop hovers in the air above the desk.

  Three minutes, Koko, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Koko strokes the gumdrop icon with a finger and a dozen blue screens materialize in the air. All are blank, so she tries to engage each screen, working as fast as she can with basic operating gestures. None of the screens respond. Damn, of course Sébastien’s systems are secure. Koko clears her throat, hoping for voice activation, but again there’s no response.

  Now what?

  Drawers.

  Maybe Sébastien lied to her before. Maybe her weapons haven’t been destroyed and maybe, just maybe, the arrogant jerk has them tucked away in his desk to keep them close. She finds the drawers unlocked and, tragically, nothing of use. Some binders full of numbers and graphs, stuffed files, stationery supplies, and so forth.

  Two minutes, Koko.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  Focus. Find something.

  She stops.

  There are voices in the hallway.

  Koko spins to the windows and looks out. No way—too visible, and she’s too far up. Second option: hide, but quick. Hiding is always a bad choice and she fears she’s now trapped.

  But then again, if it’s Sébastien coming down the hall perhaps she could just wait him out. If his systems are voice activated or if he uses a password she could wait until he’s distracted, grab him, and put him in a choke hold until he orders a transport for her and Flynn, stat.

  Koko remembers her quick patch job on the door keypad; did she reset the wires right? If the keypad doesn’t work and it is Sébastien in the corridor, he’ll know something is off. Quickly Koko engages the floating gumdrop icon at the desk to shut down all the activated projection screens.

  Taking cover in a closet in the adjoining bedroom, Koko listens for the door. She runs one of her thumbs along the serrated edge of the paring knife and laments her choice. A longer blade would’ve been better for close quarters. Another brain-flash—shit! What if Sébastien has his dog with him? Synthetics can be fierce, and the dog will definitely sense her presence.

  Damn, this little infiltration is turning into a real bust.

  Koko’s mind races. She thinks about Flynn and how he’s in no condition to travel just yet. If she’s found, yes, she could probably get away from Sébastien and Gammy, scale the walls, and take her chances in the wilds, but then what? Nine hundred plus klicks on foot without fresh water or weapons in the prohibs? That could take weeks, dangerous weeks. Even if she persevered and came back to spring Flynn, who’s to say Sébastien wouldn’t decide to sell Flynn out to the CPB in the meantime?

  The talking i
n the corridor glides past the room, and she hears the sound of another door being opened and closed, followed by a hollowed silence. Koko eases from the bedroom closet, slips the paring knife into her pocket, and takes a deep breath.

  Whatever, it’s time to go.

  Forty seconds later, Koko is back downstairs in the commissary and heads outside into the courtyard. She trudges across the pathways back to Lodge Delta, lost in a thick, dark cloud of her own thoughts.

  SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC II

  THE NOT SO FRIENDLY SKIES

  Rugged constitution and all things being equal, conceits end up taking the back seat when you blow your lunch all over your new tactical suit.

  Ensconced beneath the Goliath’s cockpit canopy, Wire is chagrined to find her stomach is a disaster area, and it’s been a disaster area since she crossed into the first fierce, fading bands of the storm. While the Goliath’s onboard systems advised her that the bulk of the weather had already crossed inland, the systems also conveyed that the storm’s lingering disturbances were going to be bad. Real bad. Wire initially thought she could handle it, but once she entered the unstable air proper, it was like she was thrown into a full-blown, three-ringed circus.

  Chop.

  More chop.

  Bowel-siphoning, fluey rollercoaster draws of turbulence.

  In all her years of pushing bad weather, she’s never endured such an outrageous airborne assault. Wire begs the onboard systems to provide her with options to reach the C-GRAP region as quickly as possible, but the systems inform her that the only way to safely avoid distress is to land immediately or reverse her course. The storm’s instabilities stretch across staggering spans, and neither recommendation is viable if Wire wants to stay hot on Martstellar’s tail, so she decides to bear down and ride the weather out.

  Hours pass. Very, very bad hours. Her airsickness morphs into a vinegary combination of dry heaves, tightened muscles, and jangled teeth. But then (lo and behold) a small miracle.

  Well, maybe not a small miracle because Wire doesn’t believe in such things, but eighty minutes outside the offshore boundary beacons of C-GRAP the Goliath’s systems inform Wire that the GPS transponder on the stolen submarine has been reactivated.

  Wire triple swots through the data. A sequence of vectors validates the sub’s exact location with an accuracy of ninety-six percent. Exhilarated, Wire can’t believe her luck. But it’s so outrageously bizarre. The confirmed transponder coordinates are in a littoral, coastal region along the Nor’Am prohibs, and nowhere near C-GRAP at all.

  The Nor’Am prohibs? Why would Martstellar head there?

  With the urban breakup toxicities and radiation levels from decaying power plants, few, if any, still exist in the prohibs, so immediately Wire is suspicious. Maybe the reactivation of the transponder is some sort of a trick. Martstellar is a wily one, and she’s used diversions before. Perhaps she’s orchestrating a total double-back. Of course, when Wire considers the weather, another appealing scenario wickedly gels together in her mind.

  Has Martstellar been dragged off course by the storm?

  It could be.

  Wire quickly uploads the transponder’s latitude, longitude, and elevation coordinates into her ocular, and then re-plots the Goliath’s navigations for intercept, just as the transponder transmission inexplicably ceases its signal.

  What the—

  A reactivation and now a subsequent shutdown? What the sweet fuck all is going on? Was it some kind of an error? No, Martstellar couldn’t possibly be that stupid. However, if Martstellar willingly or forcefully changed her destination maybe the scenario that Britch suggested back on The Sixty—that a hapless salvage operator has found the sub and reactivated the transponder—could be the case.

  But in the prohibs?

  Fuck it. The contact is a positive lead, and Wire decides it’s worth investigating. She ratchets up her speed. If the stolen submarine isn’t there and this is, in fact, a ruse, she can easily power back north toward the original C-GRAP heading.

  An hour later and she’s nearly to the point of the transponder’s last transmission. Closing in on Martstellar’s immediate trail makes Wire feel almost giddy, but then the Goliath’s systems deliver a thick, steaming bowl of bad news.

  “Owned?” she says out loud, incredulous. “What do you mean owned? Since when does anybody acquire geographies and airspace in the Nor’Am prohibs?”

  Chained by algorithmic logic, the Goliath’s systems are incapable of candy-coating the information.

  Airspace and terrain on the immediate heading are privately held by a denationalized title agreement and classified as restricted. See nav-screen three for details and activate enlargements on screen for review.

  Using her ocular, Wire opens the nav-screen enlargements as directed. A set of three-dimensional topographical charts loom outward, and the dimensional details are nothing short of astounding. The entire restricted area encompasses one hundred square kilometers north, south, east, west, with an offshore limit of ten kilometers. Trimmed with scrolling data, the displays also indicate no-fly altitudes upward into the lowest commercial orbital heights of the Second Free Zone confederacies.

  No way.

  That’s impossible.

  “Clarify title agreement origin.”

  Repeat. Title agreement origin classified. Any violation of land and airspace restrictions will force an immediate and permanent shutdown of all aircraft functions per guaranteed arrangements with PAE Aerodynamics.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  Critical terminal boundary limit is now sixty kilometers and closing. Immediate course correction advised.

  “Hold on, correct my course? But I’m nearly there!”

  On the port side of Goliath’s cockpit, a warning alarm blares a belligerent, undulating screech. Wire whips her head and looks for a way to shut the alarm off.

  Repeat. Critical terminal boundary limit closing and engine shutdown sequence imminent. Shutdown to commence in twenty seconds.

  Wire backs off on her airspeed, but she refuses to alter her heading.

  “Manual override. This is an emergency. I repeat, an emergency. Pilot is in distress. I repeat, pilot is in distress.”

  The screeching alarm doesn’t let up and a loud whirring noise starts to wind down behind her shoulders. There are two loud, flat snicks and then the ominous-sounding thuh-thunk of disengaged hydraulics.

  Warning. Engine shutdown has now commenced.

  Goddamn it, for the amount of credits she doled out for this stupid thing you’d think the double-dealing skells who sold her the Goliath back in Surabaya would have taken the time to counterprogram any bugs that PAE Aerodynamics installed. Mulishly, Wire disregards the secondary warning, and as she scours the charts vibrating in the air in front of her, a go-for-broke idea materializes in her head. Maybe if she lowers her altitude, yeah, maybe she can get low enough to bypass the agreement restrictions and get back in the pocket. She adjusts her flaps and compensates for trim.

  Her ears pop as the last of the rainy cloud cover peels away and foam-laced heaves of the ocean below appear. At first it seems as if the seas are calm, but then Wire realizes she’s dead wrong. Undulation and persistent, monstrous swells. Her crosswinds clock in at thirty-five knots.

  Be advised. Fusion drive shutdown complete.

  “C’mon, I’m in a jam here!”

  A deafening whine revs high and then squelches silent as the Goliath’s forward propulsion terminates. The sudden absence of sound is unsettling. The Goliath is now a sophisticated, sinking mass of metal hurling forward at a deadly rate of speed.

  Pre-ejection advisory statement starting….

  A bright screen superimposes itself over the navigational displays, and the portrait of a PAE Aerodynamics waxy-looking spokesperson appears. Unlike the Goliath’s vocalizations, the timbre of the representative’s pre-recorded voice is gratingly mellifluous. Standing before a backdrop of the PAE’s iconic logo, the prerecorded spokesp
erson speaks:

  “Greetings. Activation of this statement means an emergency engine shutdown aboard Goliath model number twenty-twelve dash seven has commenced. If your flight today has been ratified for wreckage identification, please make sure these location measures are prepped for extraction and/or retrieval.”

  Wire grinds her teeth and peers past the spokesperson’s ghostly face. Outside the cockpit, overcast daylight is fading fast, and she detects a faint, distant agglomeration of crusted coastline. She isn’t positive, but it looks like a long swim of at least eight kilometers, maybe more. The ocean’s surface keeps rising, blooming bigger and bigger, and tapping her temple she switches on her ocular’s night vision.

  Those scum-sucking black marketers back in Surabaya, it’d be just like their sort to remove the parachutes attached to her pilot’s seat and the Goliath’s gear lockers too. The treacherous possibility is almost enough to make Wire despair. No matter how you slice it, death or ditch, whatever is about to happen is going to totally suck eggs.

  “Please take a moment to be sure your pilot harness is tightly secured. Forward cockpit jettison in fifteen seconds. If jettison charges do not execute, manual override measures are located on the starboard side of your cockpit.”

  Wire looks right and finds the measures: a shaft with a finger groove handle and a bright red arrow indicating which way she needs to pull.

  Duh. Like that isn’t instinctual.

  “While PAE Aerodynamics regrets the termination of your flight today, we do appreciate your patronage. On behalf of all of us, thank you for choosing PAE and good luck.”

  THE COMMONAGE V

  PRESSING MISTER MAXX

  Koko spends the remainder of the afternoon and early evening prowling around the rest of the Commonage’s inner grounds and exploring other buildings, inside and out, looking for any kind of transport at all, and she comes up empty. Not even a bicycle.

  The compound, indubitably, isn’t the first walled complex Koko has ever seen. Before she banged out a relatively easy living on The Sixty for the CPB, Koko had been stationed at hundreds of firebases and forward garrisons, most of which could easily eat the Commonage as a light snack. Still, even with the frustration of no transport, she has to acknowledge Sébastien and Dr. Corella’s little weirdo facility isn’t totally lacking. The things that impress her the most are the structural economies. From what she can tell, the operative layouts are dutifully designed to service the occupants’ needs without extraneous waste. Austere buildings, well-pruned pathways, module sheds, geodesic agricultural tents, all are exemplary models of functionality. But, man, dull as shit.