Koko the Mighty

by Kieran Shea

  Wire wouldn’t have lived as long as she has if she’d not been able to defend herself against such a predictable move. With jaded ease, she breaks Koko’s hold and pitches her off her arm like an overgrown tabby. Landing on her back, Koko blacks out. A split second later and coming to, Koko is actually stunned that Wire isn’t chewing out her eye.

  Rally time.

  Koko revolves over two fallen Commonagers and pulls one of the bodies on top of her. It’s a last hope to shield herself, and when she sees that the empty-eyed corpse is actually Pelham, Koko’s adrenaline spikes. Heaving Pelham up onto her back, she drives herself backward.

  Be as small as possible…

  …be nothing…

  …be the…

  Zero.

  A pulse round slams into Pelham’s body and the impact clobbers Koko back to the bricks with a grunt. Instantly Koko’s shoulder burns with an incredible jag of cauldron-like pressure as the penetrating round melts into her own flesh. Mocking her with rough, wolfish mirth, Wire steps forward and hovers.

  “Here’s a last request,” Wire says, pointing her weapon down at the back of Koko’s thrashing head. “How about you come out from under there, and I shoot you in the spine. I’m told acute paralysis can abate some of the misery of being blasted at close range. Of course, I’ll have to crank down the levels on this pretty Sig here to make it worth both our whiles, but to tell you the truth, in the end it might make things easier. I was planning on chopping you to itty-bitty pieces for fun anyway.”

  Koko claws forward with one arm, but Pelham’s weight has her trapped. Knowing the warm pooling sensation beneath her chest is her own blood, the oncoming certainty of her death purifies her mind and her pupils dilate. Somehow she’s always known that this was how it would turn out for her. Koko P. Martstellar? Grow soft-toothed, flappy, and gray? Not a chance. Everything has brought her to this moment like one achingly long joke. Still, Koko is determined not to give Wire even a morsel of satisfaction.

  Bitch thinks she knows how this plays out?

  Give Koko one chance.

  Just one.

  “Oh, well, have it your way…”

  A wet, throaty snarl twists Wire’s head and a radical vision of blue-furred bloodlust roars up.

  Gammy!

  Knocked sideways by the crippled dog, Wire brings an arm up across her face to protect herself. A frenzied mass of canine froth, Gammy scrapes wildly up Wire’s body as Koko sweeps out a leg and hooks Wire’s calf. Gammy’s weight combined with the hooked leg takes Wire to the ground.

  Koko wriggles out from beneath Pelham. Flesh thrumming, Gammy leaps on top of Wire who punches the dog’s sides to no avail. Thrusting her saliva-drenched muzzle again and again, Gammy’s fangs snap and Wire plants the tip of her Sig against the dog’s skull. When she pulls the trigger, a jagged quarter of Gammy’s head separates and lifts off like a pressure-cooker lid, but somehow Gammy’s remaining circuitry appears unaffected. Her programming defaults go from protect to kill.

  Gammy sinks her fangs into Wire’s neck.

  Clutching her shoulder, Koko scoots back and watches as Gammy and Wire gator-roll across the courtyard—a braided convulsion of rearing limbs. But then Wire manages to snake her weapon between herself and Gammy, and when she fires again flashes of blue-flecked viscera and fur fly outward. Gammy jiggers and carves apart in two hinged, flaming sections, but miraculously her jaws do not release their hold on Wire’s neck. Now on fire herself, Wire spanks at the flames and her weapon clatters to the ground.

  Wire grabs Gammy’s head, and pulls her jaws apart. Clambering backward and kicking frantically, she sees Koko targeting her dropped pistol, and for Koko to grab it Wire knows she’ll have to dive across Gammy’s broken body, which is now a crackling electrical fire. Wire doesn’t wait to give her the chance, and in the next instant she scoops up the Sig with one of her half-broiled hands as out of nowhere, a broken brick strikes her in the back.

  Koko’s heart soars. Across the courtyard in front of the burning administration building, she sees that someone at last is coming to her aid. Unbelievable. It’s the little chicken swatter Koko noticed the day before with Sébastien. Chopping and wresting broken pieces of brick from a pathway with a shovel, the tawny-haired boy hurls his missiles in rapid succession as soon as each fragment is loosened from the ground. Soon other Commonage children join the boy, and Koko’s sudden elation is cut short because the children’s barrage is indiscriminate. Dark-red projectiles of all sizes hail down at every turn as a screeching pitch resonates from Gammy’s burning body.

  Both Wire and Koko look at Gammy, and the immediate forecast isn’t good: the dead synthetic’s internal batteries have superheated, and the lithium-ion cubes ignite in an effulgent belch of noxious smoke.

  It’s the chance Koko needs. Rushing forward, she seizes one of Gammy’s forelegs just above the paw and swings the synthetic’s disarticulated bulk at Wire like a hammer thrower. When bubbling specks of acid land on Wire’s face, Koko releases Gammy’s foreleg and charges. Wire lifts her weapon and fires. Both women collide just as everything for Koko jolts to an impenetrable, cold black.

  TABULA RASA

  Next to the last occupied gurney in the Commonage’s infirmary, Dr. Corella pulls up a stool and wearily plants himself. Staring dully at the floor between his knees, for the eleven thousandth time in his career as a physician, Dr. Corella fails to understand the savagery of the human animal.

  To say taking care of all the wounded has been murder and a half on his abilities is an irony of colossal proportions. It’s been a non-stop, around the clock, nightmare of triage—twenty-one hours straight without a break. Swollen feet, fingers past numb, Dr. Corella did his best to save those he could, but the reckoning of just how many he’s worked on vacillates. After the fires were brought under control and after the invading de-civs inexplicably turned tail and disappeared, at one point some of the children even dragged Gammy’s smoldering body into the infirmary in the slim hope there was a chance at rebooting her. The synthetic Mastiff was hardly the most pressing issue, and with one look Dr. Corella knew a full operational mending was impossible. He located and removed the dog’s memory stick anyway and assured the children that maybe Gammy would live on in another form, someday.

  After all his work, now in the end, one thing brightens Dr. Corella’s thoughts. With Sébastien’s demise, the TAM research and its insanely lucrative applications are now his to reap alone. Thank goodness the fires were finally brought under control.

  Rubbing his face, he compels himself to check the patient’s vitals, displayed on a projection screen alongside the last occupied gurney. The graphs, columns, and assorted pings emanate a positive assessment. Miraculously, the patient has stabilized.

  “Flynn? Can you hear me?”

  Ever so slightly, Flynn’s head moves but he doesn’t respond audibly. Dr. Corella grabs the handles of the gurney and then leans over him.

  “Koko is going to be okay. I’ve evac’ed her with two of the more critically wounded on the flight craft Sébastien requested. In an hour or so from now, the Akotitiwin Air transport will land in Calgary where Koko alone will be transferred to a second, larger transport. You’re safe—and that lunatic who shot you? I ordered the same AA transport’s pilot to drop her off in an isolated area several hundred kilometers north of here.”

  Flynn’s eyelids flutter. “Where?”

  “The woman who shot you?”

  “No… Koko.”

  “My God, man, do you really want to know?”

  Both of Flynn’s eyes open and the dolorous anguish reflected within is incomprehensible.

  “Just tell me,” Flynn wheezes.

  “It’s a Mars Class transport called the Omalhaut,” Dr. Corella says.

  “Mars?”

  “No, not quite. The Omalhaut was purchased by the Itokawa Corporation several years back. The Omalhaut is now refurbished as an interplanetary cruiser. It’s primarily used for the Itokawa Corporati
on’s lunar mining initiatives. I won’t trouble you with the details, but I helped the Omalhaut’s chief medical officer during her residency and she owed me a favor. You see, before we operated, I took what we discussed seriously. I went ahead and made all the arrangements. In time Koko will be fine, but before you went under you insisted I get her as far away from the Commonage as possible before she received the news.” Dr. Corella licks his lips tentatively. “This was your expressed wish, yes?”

  Flynn nods.

  Dr. Corella pats his arm. “Good.”

  Standing, Dr. Corella then notices the bandages around Flynn’s midsection trembling. Flynn coughs and attempts to hide his face—a courageous effort—but the doctor knows there’s no need for Flynn to hide his confusion or his pain, not anymore.

  “Now then,” Dr. Corella says. “I need to give you another shot in the eye.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE HIGH AND BELOW

  Twenty-three hours later…

  Face-down in an elliptical zero-g berth aboard the Itokawa Corporation’s interplanetary cruiser Omalhaut, Koko stirs and then wakes to the sound of classical piano.

  The music drifts from a small speaker hidden somewhere above her. Ornamental in melody, the music is pleasant but it isn’t a piece she recognizes. Later on, Koko will learn that the music is part of an aria composed many, many centuries ago by Bach, the Goldberg Variations.

  Her focus gathering, Koko realizes she’s no longer at the Commonage and appears to be in a cramped, windowless, sickbay compartment. With insulated cream-colored ribbed walls and limpidly lit, there is no one else in the compartment and a console on her immediate left senses she’s awake. The zero-g berth rotates one hundred and eighty degrees, and an indigo-colored projection screen materializes two feet in front of Koko’s bandaged head.

  As the screen concentrates, a logo for ITOKAWA CORPORATION appears with the word OMALHAUT refracted as shadow in the background. Koko tries to touch her face, but she can’t. Once again within a week she fumes at the fact that she’s secured down by restraints. There are hundreds of pressure pins and tubes plugged into her arms and directly into her shoulder.

  An ether-like disruption to her vestibular system makes her feel nauseous and when the aria in the background abruptly clips silent, the projection screen above her head goes blank. After a pulse beat, Dr. Corella’s face appears.

  “Hello, Koko,” Dr. Corella begins. “If you’re watching this, you’ll be pleased to know the recovery monitors have assessed it’s safe to revive you from your tranquilizers. This means you’re recuperating well from a parietal fracture in your head and from your shoulder wound. At this point you’ve probably guessed you’re no longer at the Commonage. I know this may come as a shock, but you’re now aboard a vessel known as the Omalhaut and you’re in lockdown on the Omalhaut’s medical deck. In a few days your final destination is the Itokawa Corporation’s lunar mining facilities located on the outer rim of the moon’s Copernicus Crater.”

  The Copernicus—wait—what?

  Koko tries to sit up, but the restraints immobilize her. A woozy reel sloshes back and forth in her stomach, and the metal sutures beneath her shoulder dressing start to strain.

  “After everything that’s happened and not knowing who else may be looking for you, for your safety I felt it best to dispatch you on the Omalhaut once your initial surgeries at the Commonage were completed.” Dr. Corella’s sunken eyes look up as if he’s searching to pull down the right words. “The events of the past few days have been exceptionally trying, and honestly, I don’t know what else to say other than you did what you could for us, and for that I thank you. The Commonage as a whole thanks you. Much to his chagrin, I believe if Sébastien were still alive he might even find the will to thank you as well.”

  Koko heaves hard and her shoulder sutures start to bleed.

  “I know you’re not completely one hundred percent yet, but since the monitors feel it’s fit to revive you, I believe you deserve to know. I’m sorry to have to convey this, but Flynn did not survive his injuries.”

  All at once it is as if the air has been sucked out of the tight compartment. The news of Flynn’s death collapses Koko to a cold and infinitesimal pinprick before atomizing outward.

  Koko can’t breathe.

  No, she heard that wrong.

  No, she’s hallucinating.

  He’s lying.

  Koko’s stomach convulses and one of the stressed metal sutures in her shoulder rips. She dry retches again and a second suture tears, then another and another. Like quills swept by the blackest of winds, the pressure pins across her body chatter together.

  “Flynn’s penetrating injury had complications. Combined with the immediate dramatic blood loss and the tenuous state of his physical being after his previous infection, hypoxemic shock led to a cardiac arrest and it couldn’t be helped. Please know I did everything I could to bring him back, but Flynn remained unresponsive. I’m sorry.”

  With all her strength, Koko heaves herself upward until the restraints across her chest give way with a stiff snap. Trailing a shower of pressure pins and tubes, half of her lifts up in weightlessness. The console next to her starts to beep urgently. Bending over in dizzying pain, Koko seizes the last restraint holding down her legs and wrenches it off. Grabbing the gown covering her by the collar, she shreds the fabric in two and screams.

  Lifting higher off the elliptical berth and her gown dropping away, Koko’s torment is all consuming. Pin-balling from wall to padded wall, her mind floods with confusion and sadness, anger and disbelief. She kicks and punches the air and it feels as if her head is about to blow apart. Sobbing, Koko beats and smashes everything within reach.

  It can’t be.

  It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t…

  * * *

  Meanwhile, four thousand and twenty-seven kilometers back down on Earth, Wire hikes across the North American prohib border into the Canadian Territories.

  Bandaged and dehydrated, Wire still isn’t sure how she ended up wrapped in a solar blanket inside the ruins of a roofless church three hundred and fifty kilometers northeast of the Commonage. The last thing she remembers is that massive blue dog on fire, the acid, and Martstellar getting knocked comically out of the air by a flying brick. After that—everything is a concussed curtain, an unexplained blur.

  Wire figures Martstellar must have fed her a line about those people in that compound not having transport. After all, someone must have dropped her off in the middle of nowhere. The same someone must’ve taken her weapon too and even relieved her of Trick’s jackknife. To her astonishment, whoever it was, however, left her other things. Her multi-tool, three days’ worth of water in a large plastic canteen, a solar blanket, and a few fat apples. It’s unsettling. Why didn’t they just finish her off? Goddamn, doesn’t anybody know how to fight dirty anymore?

  Like an oozing saddlebag, the carcass of a jumbo-sized wood rat she snared earlier that morning is now lashed to Wire’s waist. She plans on roasting the creature over a fire as a protein treat on her next rest, a fine comeuppance to the late rodent’s Surabayan relatives.

  Hiking on a northwestern heading, Wire estimates she’ll reach the fringes of the New Vancouver supercities in three or four days, tops. Those environments will present their own brutal challenges, but for now she concentrates on the task at hand, keeping one foot in front of the other. The densely forested relief grades upward and Wire stops to consider the terrain. Once part of a major interstate, the impression between the trees snakes through the wreckage of a large, overgrown town and through the sloped wedges of ruin, she studies the mountain peaks beyond. Yeah, it’s going to be a hell of a slog to clear those higher elevations, but if she keeps moving she should make the foothills by nightfall. Pulling the solar blanket from around her waist, Wire drapes it over her shoulders. A waxing crescent moon rises in the east, sharp as a scimitar.

  Taking a deep breath, Wire picks up her pace.

  THE END


  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sequels can be angry circus bears. Briefly I want to thank all those who helped me hotwire the clown car to avoid being eaten alive by this book: my wonderful agent Stacia J.N. Decker at the Donald Maass Literary Agency; my incomparable editor Cath Trechman and all the enthusiastic cats over in London at Titan Books; all my crime and science fiction writing compatriots; my ever mystified family; and (of course) fans of Koko P. Martstellar both near and far. Finally, a special note of gratitude goes out to Commander Peter D. Quinton USN (Ret.) for his input and guidance on extra-tropical weather systems. As my late uncle always used to say, I’ll see you in the funny papers.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amongst other things, Kieran Shea once posed as a Secret Service agent protecting JFK on the cover of fictional news tabloid the Weekly World News. He prefers red wine over white, sunrises over sunsets, and is convinced that sooner or later we’ve all got it coming.

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