Alone with only two of my crew members, I paced the alley crosswise, back and forth, my hands in my pockets, my jaw clenched, my shirt ruffling in the jungle breeze.
My new crew numbered five, which meant three of my boys were late. Deluski was here, of course, and Wu had just arrived, but the others were dragging their feet, a sure sign of insubordination. They’d be here soon, I told myself. They had no choice. I owned those assholes. Yet they took every opportunity they could to make me sweat. I checked the time. Only ten more minutes before the lights went out.
The Lagarto Power Authority was shutting the power down regularly now. They simply couldn’t keep up with our increasing energy demands-so they claimed. Everybody knew the real reason. A hundred years of deteriorating equipment and outright mismanagement had finally taken its toll. Our energy capacity was on the decline, just like everything else on this planet, especially the standard of living. Electricity rationing was just the latest punch in the face for a planet that had already taken a full ten count.
For two weeks now, the city had suffered through rolling power outages. And when the lights went out, so did the riffraff: criminals and opium heads; unemployed and undereducated; anarchists and militants; disaffected youth and the hopelessly impoverished. Night after night, they’d mobbed the streets with unbridled anger. Their vicious, uncontrolled rage would spread like wildfire and they’d leave nothing but tornado-like paths of destruction in their wake.
Because of the riots, the power authority stopped broadcasting the times and locations of the blackouts to the public, and instead notified only the police. The theory was that the bad elements from all over the city wouldn’t know where and when to gather. So far, the practice hadn’t proven to be very effective. Apparently, every neighborhood had plenty of homegrown bad elements to get shit going without needing imports.
I checked the time again. Seven more minutes.
“The others will be here,” said Paolo Wu, his downturned brows tugging at the scar under his hairline. “Froelich said he’d bring at least ten unis with him. We’ll keep this alley secure.”
I gave the hommy dick a nasty stare. “He should’ve been here an hour ago. If you humps can’t be reliable then I have no use for you.”
“Don’t get your sack in a twist. They’ll be here.”
I paced like a caged tiger, my temper on a slow simmer, my energy positively toxic. On my next pass, I made sure to veer into Wu’s space, forcing him to get out of my way. The little brush-back was a not-so-subtle reminder of who was the alpha.
If those assholes didn’t show soon, the whole deal could fall through. I’d told Chicho there’d be a crew of cops out here. A crew. Two cops and a past-his-prime enforcer didn’t qualify. I needed a show of fucking force to bluff the pimps and madams into believing I was pulling the strings at KOP.
Kripsen and Lumbela finally entered the alley. That made four out of five. The recent arrivals were in full riot gear-helmets, full-length body shields, shocksticks, and cans of fireline hanging on their belts.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I demanded.
Freddie Lumbela looked down at the ground. “We couldn’t get away.”
“Bullshit.”
“They just deployed us,” he said defensively. “Until ten minutes ago, we were trapped on a fuzzwagon with the rest of the unis who got called in on crowd control. We snuck away the first chance we got.”
“Anybody see you leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“An honest one.”
I shook my head and started pacing again. These stiffs were fucking worthless. And where was Froelich with my force of ten?
Kripsen chimed in. “What do you expect, Juno? We’re on duty. We can’t just walk away whenever we want. At some point, people are gonna notice.”
“Will any riot police be coming this way?”
“I doubt it. Our orders were to guard the banks around the corner. This block’s expendable.”
“There been any changes in the schedule?”
“Nope. Blackout in five minutes.”
I made eye contact with Wu. “Where the hell is Froelich?”
“I don’t know, but he’ll be here.”
“What did he say when you talked to him?”
Wu rubbed the scar on his forehead, a broad groove that ran from one temple almost to the other. The way I heard it, he got the scar from standing too close to a competitive knife fight, one of those betting matches they run under Koba’s many bridges. “I didn’t talk to him,” he said. “I left a message.”
“You telling me your partner doesn’t take your calls?”
“Jesus, Juno, I called him four times, okay? He didn’t answer. What the fuck do you want from me?”
A serious loyalty problem. That was what I had. That was why I was so hot to secure a revenue stream. If I could fatten their wallets, they’d start thinking working for me wasn’t so bad. As it was, they were doing it because they had no choice. This crew had gotten into some bad shit a couple months back, some really bad shit. They fucking stank of it. They’d conspired with offworlders. They’d betrayed their own people, selling them off to be killed by offworlders who wanted to play executioner.
These assholes were traitors. Rat bastards, every one of them.
They hadn’t been the brains of the operation. Hell no. These humps didn’t have that kind of smarts, and they’d proven it when they’d let me catch them on film. The Killer KOPs. That was what I called my little documentary. It wasn’t a very long movie, barely three minutes, but still a pretty good flick.
Set in an abandoned warehouse, it starts when five cops enter through a cockeyed door and come face-to-face with one of their co-conspirators, a pudgy little local on the verge of squealing their devious deeds to investigators. The Killer KOPs are nervous and fidgety, you can see it on their faces. Wu keeps rubbing at that scar of his, and Deluski stands in back, shifting from one foot to the other. They’re desperate, see. Their traitor bosses are already dead, and they’re out to cover their tracks.
Wu pulls his piece. The porker knows too much, and they can’t trust him to keep quiet. Wu fires, and the beam of his lase-pistol burns through hair and skull and brain. A piece of the porker’s head comes free and falls to the floor.
It’s done. Deluski is staring at the corpse, his jaw gaping, his face ashen. Lumbela and Kripsen grab the de-lidded corpse by the arms and legs, and Deluski holds the door as they haul it out into the rain. Wu gives a look to Deluski, his finger pointing to the scalp on the floor. Deluski, the low man in their little cop clique, steps over to the porker’s lid and pinches a lock of hair between forefinger and thumb. He lifts it off the floor and rushes out with his arm extended, like he’s carrying a rat by its tail. Wu and Froelich are the last to leave, the pair of hommy dicks disappearing into the pouring rain.
Roll credits…
Like I said, not a bad flick. I harbored no illusions about these bastards-bad men through and through. But I knew a thing or two about bad men. Bad men could be useful. I was on a mission to take back the police department, and a mission like that required the accumulation of power. And if I had to start with these five misfits, so be it.
Instead of turning my movie over to KOP, I kept it for myself. And when I’d screened it for the five of them, they became mine.
I checked the time again-any second now. Where the fuck was Froelich with my ten unis?
Wu kicked at a gecko. “How long is this thing going to take? I need to call my wife and tell her when I’ll be home.”
“You kidding me?”
“She worries when I don’t come home on time.”
“Fucking unbelievable,” I muttered loud enough to be heard. I couldn’t be bothered with this shit. “Tell her you won’t be home. Tell her to use a vibrator.”
His scowl made the scar on his forehead dip. “Some husband you must’ve been. No wonder she decided to off herself
.”
Without thinking, I snatched hold of his shirt and yanked his scarred face up to my own. “You watch your fuckin’ mouth!”
Wu was grinning in my grasp, enjoying the fact that he’d gotten to me. What he’d said was true enough. I had been a bad husband. And had I been a better one, Niki might not have done herself in.
But that didn’t mean I was accepting opinions on the matter, especially from Paolo-fucking-Wu.
A door opened and the woman bodyguard came out. Maria was her name.
She froze when she saw me. I must’ve looked ready to kill. Probably because I was. Snapped back to my senses, I remembered that we were likely being watched from the windows above. I released the bastard. It didn’t look good to have anybody see us fighting among ourselves. With a self-satisfied smirk, Wu brushed at the stir of wrinkles my fist had left on his chest.
“I came to help,” said a tentative Maria. “Where do you want me?”
Before I could answer, the lights went out.
Looking up, I tried to calm myself by taking a moment to look at the thousands of tiny pinpricks of light twinkling in the sky. That was the good thing about these power outages. You could see so many stars when the city lights went out. The only good thing.
“Um, can I ask a question, boss?” asked Lumbela.
It took me a few seconds to respond. “Talk.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We wait.” A riot was about to start. Of that I had no doubt. The only question was whether the storm would drift our way.
I stepped out of the alley and into the street. Weeds bent under my shoes. This street was overdue for a good scorching. The Lagartan jungle was a persistent bastard. Inch by inch, street by street, the weeds and vines slithered across the pavement and up the walls, relentlessly seizing territory from a lazy population. You could slash it, and you could burn it, but you could never stop it. Once the roots dug in, you couldn’t get rid of the shit.
I heard my crew complaining behind my back. No matter. They could bad-mouth me all they wanted. My roots had already dug into them.
I looked off into the darkness and listened. I could hear people above me. They were leaning out their windows and venting their frustration. This was a city that had had enough.
For ten minutes, maybe longer, I waited, my senses tuned to the nervous energy all around me. People milled about, curiosity seekers and troublemakers, their voices anxious and agitated. I heard the sound of crashing glass in the distance. I caught a whiff of smoke from an unseen fire. They were getting right after it tonight.
Running footsteps. I flicked on a flashlight and caught sight of a young punk sprinting my way. “They’re coming!” he yelled. “They’re coming.”
Forgetting we had a gal in the mix, I called to my crew, “We’re on, boys!” I aimed my flashlight at Kripsen and Lumbela. “You two set up a fireline right here at the alley mouth.” Fireline was cheap but effective. You just squeeze out a thick bead of gel and light it. It would burn hot, and it would burn tall. With it, you could create a firewall of the literal variety.
Freddie Lumbela shook his black head, his skin a few shades darker than your typical Lagartan brown. “No can do, boss.”
I shined the flashlight directly into his face. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He used a hand to shade his eyes. “These cans of fireline are used up. This is the fourth riot we’ve worked this week.”
“You couldn’t swap those cans for new ones?”
“KOP ran out. They’re getting more shipped in next week.”
“Yet you two decided to keep carrying empties around?”
“It’s in the regs for riot gear. We’re required to carry fireline.”
Holy hell, where did I find these humps? I played my flashlight across their tense faces. This would be so much easier if I had my ten uniforms.
“Okay. Here’s how we’re going to do this. I want a single line. Spread out wall to wall to cover the alley mouth. Nobody gets into this alley, got it? Use any force necessary. And you two put some flashlights on the ground and aim ’em up at us. We want people to see us when they come barreling around the corner.”
“Hey, guys,” said a voice holding a flashlight up to his face. Froelich. “I’m not too late, am I?” His shaved head was beaded with glistening sweat, like he’d really raced to get here. He wasn’t breathing hard, though. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was just trying to make it look good, stopping off on the way to dump a cup of water over his head.
“Where are my uniforms?”
“Just a minute behind me.”
I told him to get in line. No time to ream out the late bastard.
I took my position, Maria to my right, Wu to the left. I leaned toward Maria and took a sneeze-worthy blast of perfume up the nose. “You know you don’t have to stay. Chicho doesn’t pay you enough for this.”
“I’m staying.” Her voice was firm enough to put any argument to rest.
Things were heating up on the street. I couldn’t see much, but I could hear plenty-hustling feet, fierce shouting, more shattering glass. Lase-fire crackled upward, a red beam stretching seemingly up to the stars themselves. I pulled my lase-pistol from my waistband and clutched it tight in my left. I pressed the weapon against my heart, where everybody would see it. I tucked my shaky right into my pocket to keep it out of sight. Damn thing was a nuisance.
We held our ground as the voices thickened, more and more of them all the time. People tried to stay clear of us, but it was getting harder as the sheer size of the crowd forced their collective movement wide. Kripsen and Lumbela stayed active with their shocksticks, and Maria took to waving a lase-blade from side to side.
People flowed past like a river of angry white water. Our line held firm as the crowd inched closer and closer. Aiming at the ground, Deluski squeezed off a long burst of lase-fire, scoring the pavement with a searing stream of heat, forcing the tide to dance back to a safe distance.
Six of Froelich’s uniforms finally arrived and filled the gaps in our line. Still not quite the show of force I was hoping for, but it was enough to convince the eyes watching from above I still held sway over KOP.
My plan was finally coming together.
A pair of teens charged. Wu drove the butt of his weapon into the face of the one on the left. The teen staggered backward, his hands to his face, blood oozing out from between his fingers, and then, just like that, he was sucked back into the angry tide, disappearing in the dark of night. I blocked the other teen with my body. He threw a punch at me, the eyes in his flash-lit face aflame.
I took the blow on my cheek and felt the sting of the shot, but I knew it was nothing serious. The kid had no meat on his bones. I swung my piece and caught him on the ear. At impact, the feral quality in the kid’s eyes instantly disappeared. It was like the demon that had possessed him was suddenly exorcised. Just a scared child now, couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen. I couldn’t let him stand there. We needed to keep this area clear so we wouldn’t get overrun. I shoved him backward. Had no choice. He lost his balance and fell under what seemed like hundreds of feet.
A fire broke out in the spice shop across the street, the madness of the mob scene now illuminated by a hellish, flickering glow. I looked for the kid, but couldn’t find him. I hoped he’d managed to pick himself up.
Already, I knew the kid’s face would stick with me. I had a helluva photo album going in my mind, the mementos of a lifetime of brutality. Over the years, the faces’ features had faded, all of them meshing and mixing into little more than a brown-skinned blur, but their expressions… I remembered their expressions-shock, fear, disbelief, hatred, humiliation…
Begging faces. Bleeding faces. Broken faces.
Quite a gallery.
I’d never escape the violence. It was clear by now that I was damned to spend the rest of my days repeating the pattern over and over. Served me right. A bastard like me didn’t deserve anything better.
I just had to trust that some good would come out of my mission to take back KOP. It might take years, but when I succeeded, Maggie Orzo would become chief. My on-again-off-again partner wasn’t corrupted like the rest of us. A chief like her would make a difference. I couldn’t let myself doubt that. Not ever.
And besides, I couldn’t imagine my life without the mission. With no Niki and no mission, I’d be left with nothing but emptiness.
I looked up and down our line. Kripsen and Lumbela were holding their ground, acting like real pros. They’d had plenty of practice the last couple weeks. The rest of my crew were doing the same, finally proving their worth. Even Maria looked confident. Chicho had scored himself a winner.
I tried to process what my eyes were taking in: a gang of punks with clubs, a woman with a baby cradled in one arm and a stolen chicken flapping in the other, an old man swinging a lase-blade at geriatric speed. Looters were everywhere, their arms overflowing with swag.
Shit started to rain down from the windows above the street, bottles and plates, chairs and lamps, all of it crashing down to the pavement from three, maybe four stories up. They were trying to protect their homes by heaving whatever they had handy down on the rioters’ heads. The mob scattered. People ran for cover, tripping and trampling.
I’d never seen anything like this. The scene before me was so… so raw.
I felt an unusual spark down deep, down where the emptiness was centered. I puzzled at it for a while, wondering what it was. It grew stronger, this strange feeling gaining power inside me. I felt it emerge from the murky depths.
It spoke to me. It was calling me, drawing me into the madness.
Not since Niki died had I felt anything so pure. I let myself indulge the feeling. Magnificent relief washed over me. Gone was the guilt and the self-pity. Gone was the pain. Gone was the burden of the mission.
I couldn’t believe I’d missed it all these years. The secret to life was so simple. All this time, all I’d had to do was surrender.
Dizzy with euphoria, I dropped my piece and stepped out into the glorious insanity.
KOP Killer k-3 Page 2
