Corporate Gunslinger

by Doug Engstrom

  “Sync your suit.” In her head, she added: asshole.

  Without taking his eyes off Kira, Don put his left wrist near the console pad while Kira punched in the commands that gave the simulator control over the shock generators in Don’s suit. She repeated the process with her own, and the system confirmed its control with a low-powered tingle.

  Don flashed a grin when Kira twitched at her test. Bastard. She’d give him something to grin about.

  The sliders to set the strength and duration of the shocks displayed. Kira shoved both values to maximum and acknowledged the software’s warning that the setting was dangerous for people with a heart condition.

  Don pointed to the settings. “Oh, hey, that’s just ridiculous. If either one of us gets a fatal, it’ll take all day tomorrow to recover. Felix will walk all over us.”

  Kira gave her left eyebrow a strategic arch and injected as much condescension into her voice as possible. “Oh? A ‘real gunfighter’ is worried about getting killed by some poser?”

  He stepped back. “You . . . You really are out of your mind, aren’t you?”

  Good. Let him be scared. Let him feel angry and frightened and wonder what was going to happen next.

  “I’ve been told that.” Kira removed one of the pseudoguns from its mount. She checked the safety, opened its action, and held it with the barrel pointed down. “Here.”

  Don glared at her, but he didn’t move.

  “Either take this thing or admit you haven’t got the ovaries to handle it.”

  Don rolled his eyes and shook his head. “This is what you do, isn’t it? Get a person so confused and frustrated they just quit.” He snatched the pseudogun from her hand.

  She walked back to the gun stand to retrieve hers. “I prefer to think of it as helping my opponents see the reality of their situation.” She followed up with a cold, cruel smile.

  A few minutes later, they stood side by side in front of the judge’s table, their pseudoguns holstered, looking down the field toward the start point and waiting for the simulator to run the match script.

  Kira absentmindedly scuffed her boot in the pseudograss. “You know, I don’t always psych people out and get them to quit.”

  Don responded with a derisive snort.

  “Sometimes I just get them so worked up they can’t shoot straight.”

  Before Don could respond, the Wall came up, followed by the recorded ward’s voice. They marched to the start point.

  Standing back-to-back on the red circle, the carefully hidden heat in Kira’s chest disappeared under a wave of icy calm. She brought her attention to a pinpoint focus and chose a spot half a meter to the left of the strikeline where she’d enter the kill box. She marched toward it with the lead ward’s cadence and executed a perfect turn. The Wall was up. Gun drawn, she moved into a double-handed stance, legs bent. The Wall came down, and she spotted Don well to the right of the strikeline, through his turn but barely clearing his holster. Kira’s front sight came into focus, and she fired. Don’s weapon flashed, a desperate shot from midbody.

  A burn flared in her upper right leg. A deep male scream and a burst of profanity furnished proof her shot found its target. Kira swore, dropped her gun, and braced her hands against her thigh. The burn intensified. She closed her eyes and strained, willing herself not to move beyond the limits set by the motion sensor. The outer thigh was a low-point hit. If she could remain standing, she’d win this. An infinite time later, the pain stopped, and Kira searched the other side of the field for her opponent.

  Don lay flat on his back, breathing heavily. A win light flashed on Kira’s side of the field. The scoreboard read: MYERS, 41; CLARK, 100.

  She scooped up her pseudogun and walked toward her fallen adversary, limping a little. By the time she arrived, Don was on all fours, puking bile onto the field surface.

  Kira stopped a few feet away. “You OK?”

  Don sat back on his haunches. “For somebody who just got the shit shocked out of him, sure. I’m fine.”

  Kira nodded. “OK, say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “What we agreed.”

  “What are you, a goddamn kid?”

  Heat rose in her chest and face again, but this time, there was no reason to hide it. “No, I’m the winner of a gunfight. Now say it. You know damn well you’d make me do it.”

  He glared at her.

  Without moving her arm from its relaxed position, Kira thumbed the pseudogun’s reset, eliciting a chirp from the capacitor. Would the suit provide another jolt without an initialization message from the cab? He probably didn’t know, either.

  Don pushed himself to a standing position, spread his arms, and shouted to the ceiling. “All right. Kira Abigail Clark is the best goddamn real gunfighter at TKC Insurance.” He looked down at her. “Happy?”

  She smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

  Chapter 32

  The bile tastes worse than the chunks that came before it, and the contortions of her now-empty stomach add their own sharp spike of pain to the background agony in Kira’s abdomen. She shudders and wobbles.

  Diana again. “It’s OK. It’s OK. Good to get that out.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Kira lets her head hang. Fuck it all, that hurt. What was taking the judge so damn long?

  She tries to look up again, to see Niles. She catches only a glimpse. He tries to straighten—maybe to get a look at her? He sways, his arms wrapped around his upper chest, and he only gets about halfway to upright before he sags down and staggers a little. He can’t possibly last much longer.

  But neither can she.

  Fog narrows her visual range, and color washes out. Almost out of sight on her left, something stirs. A person. The ward? How did he get over there? Wait. Diana is talking to him over on her right, so it must be the EMT. But the EMT is short, and this person is tall and thin. And now there’s another one. Shorter. Who the hell is letting people on the field, and where are they coming from?

  She adjusts her hands, trying to minimize the blood flow from her wounds, and turns toward the gathering crowd.

  Rusty Cunningham.

  Canfield Harper.

  Jason Armitage.

  The first three people she killed on the dueling field. Kira sags, Diana takes a sharp, sudden breath, and Kira stabilizes herself.

  “Diana, can you see . . .” Kira stops. Of course Diana can’t see them. Her second doesn’t have one foot in their world, not the way Kira does. They’re coming for her. Kira presses down harder on her wounds. She isn’t going to go. She’ll stanch the flow, she’ll be OK, it was just . . .

  The crowd on her left gets bigger.

  Santiago Rodriguez, who’d put a bullet within inches of Kira’s head but hadn’t lived through the mayhem her round inflicted on his liver.

  Patricia Stevens, hair as red and wild as it had been on the day of the duel.

  Jake Garn.

  Reginald Dupree.

  Roger Cummings.

  Benjamin Lopez.

  Elaine Thomas. Tall and elegant, wearing the dress she’d worn in the waiting room. Had they buried her in it?

  Kira gasps and looks away. “No. I don’t . . .”

  Diana’s voice, concerned. Far away. “You don’t what?”

  Kira squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t want to die.”

  “You won’t, you won’t . . .”

  Easy for Diana to say. Her kill list isn’t forming up next to her, getting ready to take her away. Kira looks again.

  Oh shit. Lotila. She stands in front, autograph book tucked under one arm. Kira tries to wet her lips and faces the growing sepulchral crowd. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . .”

  As if they’re going to buy that. Diana would say they all chose the dueling field, but Kira chose it, too. Maybe for reasons that weren’t as good as theirs. All the stuff Kira was afraid would happen to her—a job that would break her in mind and body, being used up to gratify someone else, facing death without having re
ally lived her life? Most of it had already happened to them, one way or another. And Kira chose to defend the system keeping them all in place.

  Fuck. Might as well give up and tell them to take her to hell where she belonged.

  All eleven, now. All the people she faced on the field who came up short. She’d tried to talk each one of them out of it before their match. She’d used every bit of her skill to dissuade them. But it doesn’t matter. They’re here for her.

  A sharp jab of pain runs from her ankle all the way to her neck, followed by a flash of heat. Kira groans and Diana says . . . something.

  With her vision dim and her legs wobbling, Kira turns to face her final audience.

  They look back in silence.

  Not reaching for her. Not gloating. Not even showing smug satisfaction at her comeuppance.

  Watching.

  As if they’re waiting for her to do something. But what?

  She can barely move without falling over. She tries to speak, but her dry throat and parched mouth refuse to make any sound.

  The dead stare back. Silent.

  Maybe they aren’t here to take her to her death. Maybe they’re here to influence her life. If she wins, she’ll be rich. She can make a difference. Is that what they’re here for? To push her into doing something good?

  Maybe she shouldn’t be rich. Maybe she should just take enough to pay off her debts, buy a plane ticket back to New York, and divide the rest among her victim’s families. She’ll have enough to buy Lotila’s father and her sister out of their lifetime services contracts. That will be good. There must be something she can do for the others.

  She could give some to those people blocking the entrance the day she showed up for training, SPD or SSD or whatever they called themselves. The anti-dueling people.

  Maybe that isn’t enough. Maybe they expect more. But what? And if she loses, what good is she to anyone?

  “If I get through this, I’ll do what I can.” Did she say that, or just think it? Did it matter?

  Another painful spasm. Kira closes her eyes and sucks in another deep breath, willing her legs to hold and the pain to stop. When she looks again, her victims are gone. Vanished.

  Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it was an elaborate hallucination concocted by her dying brain. Maybe.

  Chapter 33

  Kira drew a cleaning pad through her pistol while resting against the judge’s table in Simulator Five. Diana probably knew Kira’s complaint about a sticky action was an excuse to avoid another match, but it was late enough in the day her trainer probably didn’t care. A not-entirely-surprising management decree, promulgated just after the final evaluation session, confined all candidates for the professional match and their seconds to the training facility until the committee made its choice.

  Faced with the restriction, Don and his trainer hit the gym. Felix and Raj established themselves in the break area, putting away sports drinks and bullshitting with the assembled staff as though they were waiting for a firing point to open up instead of anticipating the most significant gunfighter assignment made by any company in the past two years.

  Diana scrounged simulator time and put Kira to work.

  When they started just after noon, a small knot of trainees and staff waited on the catwalk to watch her practice, but it was now nearly five; her audience had long since dispersed, and there seemed to be little point in another run against the mech. Kira put a drop of lubricant on the hinging pin and slowly wiped off the excess.

  Diana’s voice came over the earpiece. “Hey, come on up here. We have company.” Kira placed the pistol in its cradle and climbed the steel stairs to the control cab. She stopped with her hand on the door and got her breath under control. Should she make a big entrance or try to slide in unnoticed? A quiet entry would let her find out who the visitors were and what news they carried before she had to react. She opened the door just wide enough to slip through and closed it behind her without making any noise.

  Inside the cab, Diana spoke to a man in a dark suit with his back to Kira. His jacket’s cut matched his body so well it had to be hand tailored. Gold cufflinks, a white linen shirt, and shoes that probably cost more than Kira made in a month rounded out the ensemble. This was not a lackey sent to convey disappointing news.

  Kira approached and got a look at the man’s profile. Despite his fine clothes and high position, the executive focused on Diana and sought approval, like a subordinate delivering a report. Kira smiled to herself. By long custom, trainers were the undisputed masters of the simulator field and control cab, although it was hard to tell if the man was respecting the custom or just reacting to Diana the same way everyone else did.

  Kira stood quietly, letting his words float to her. “. . . she clearly would have been the choice, regardless, but when Don’s performance fell off in the final sessions this morning, the committee saw that as clutching under pressure, and it made the choice unanimous.”

  In the far corner of the cab, Betty Stimwald held a pair of data pads in a white-knuckle grip. Diana once told Kira that the departmental admin had held her position for as long as anyone could remember, outlasting five bosses and multiple reorganizations, apparently through a combination of efficiency and obscurity. With her plain blue dress standing out from the uniforms and coveralls worn in the training facility and no way to blend in with only four people in the cab, the admin’s uneasiness was palpable.

  Kira gave Betty a quick nod. Maybe that would be enough to acknowledge her presence without making her more uncomfortable. Betty responded with a stiff bob of her head.

  The movement must have caught Diana’s attention, because she interrupted her conversation with the executive. “Kira, this is Vice President of Contract Adjustments, Anthony Prescott.”

  The executive turned to Kira, and from that angle, she recognized his face from her selection committee interview. She stepped forward. “Pleased to see you again.”

  “Ah, Ms. Clark. Our fast, patient, and accurate blue heron, if I remember correctly.”

  Kira smiled, pushing aside the implications of Prescott remembering that particular detail. Executive decision-making became terrifying if she thought about it too much.

  Prescott extended a hand and Kira took it, taking care to make sure her grip was as firm as his. Three gentle up-and-down pumps, three seconds, release. His smile told her she’d cleared that social hurdle.

  “Ms. Clark, I’m pleased to inform you that you’re the committee’s unanimous choice to represent TKC in the match with United Reinsurance.”

  It was Kira’s turn to smile. “Thank you. I hope to justify your confidence.”

  Again, Prescott’s face told her she’d hit the right note of self-assurance without seeming arrogant and gratitude without tipping into servility. Kira relaxed and assumed an alert but comfortable stance. All she needed to do was look lethal and obedient while Prescott talked. He seemed ready to do quite a bit of that.

  He began with great seriousness. “I don’t need to tell you this is a matter of utmost sensitivity and importance. An amount greater than our profits for the entire third quarter is at stake.”

  And, of course, there’s the possibility I might die. Kira kept that thought from finding its way to her face.

  Prescott moved on to his next subject. “Because this is a matter of such importance, you’re being asked to review and recommit to the TKC Insurance Code of Conduct.”

  On that call to action, Betty doled out her data pads to Kira and Diana. Prescott resumed. “Please look through these copies and let me know if you have any questions. Pay special attention to the section regarding conflicts of interest.”

  Kira skimmed through the document. Nothing seemed different from the one she accepted when she started work at TKC. It committed her to what the company regarded as ethical behavior: don’t steal from the company, don’t release company information unless authorized to do so, don’t expose the company to unnecessary liability by harassing other employees
or contractors, and so on. No clause seemed to explicitly rule out shooting disgruntled customers or the representatives of unhappy contract partners.

  Since Prescott made a fuss about the conflict of interest section, she slowed down and read it more carefully. It stated she must “always act in the company’s best interest,” elaborated on that a bit, and then laid out the nasty legal and professional consequences for failing to do so. So, getting paid to throw the match to United Re was clearly frowned upon. She sped through the rest and acknowledged her understanding with a thumbprint.

  Diana wrapped up at about the same time.

  “Any questions?” Prescott didn’t seem to expect any.

  Betty gathered the data pads, and Prescott moved on to his next point. “We recognize that your preparation will require total concentration and focus, so you’ll move to the annex until the match is over. There you’ll be free from distractions and able to make your remaining training sessions as impactful as possible. Ms. Stimwald will show you to your quarters.”

  What was this “annex”? Kira’s brow furrowed and she looked to Diana. Her trainer flashed a hand signal: Later.

  Prescott was going on about the importance of this particular match and how it was falling to the team to extract the company from a difficult situation. “Team” apparently meant the entire Contract Adjustments Division, including Prescott, although no one but Kira would face an incoming round. Displaying the monumental indifference she felt toward Prescott, the division, and TKC was obviously the wrong move, so Kira adopted a pose of intense interest and . . . studied Prescott’s hair. Were those lush black strands natural or genetically encoded implants? The pompadour held its shape so well, with so little evidence of hair products, he must have laid out an amount close to Kira’s annual earnings to avoid baldness.

  At last, Prescott went for the close. “I’ll leave you in Ms. Stimwald’s capable hands, and I look forward to celebrating a victory with you on Friday.” He addressed the assistant. “Please take care of them. I’ll see myself out.”