Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  “Dr. Lamar.”

  “I’m no longer licensed, or … well I’m technically dead so, actually just call me Meme.”

  I hight Meme.

  His teeth are whiter than the turnout at a Mongolian neo-Nazi clambake, his lips slightly chapped. He turns to Yeshi. “Excellent work, my dear, excellent,” he tells her, taking her hand in his. “We’ll get the torn flesh on your arms and legs repaired this evening.” I get the sense that he’d like to examine her for a moment, but he suppresses this urge and moves on to foppish Noah.

  “Arm PHASRs,” he says. “A Mexican mod?”

  “Yes, I absolutely hate them.” Noah’s scowl could peel the paint off a wall.

  “Do you mind?” Hewman gets his jollies by lifting Noah’s arm and examining the PHASRs that are installed in his lateral antebrachial cutan (read: arm). “And they are retractable?”

  “They are. But they’re so dreadfully damaging to my e-skin when I use them.”

  “I see. We can remove them if you’d like…”

  Noah looks to Nelly, who is standing next to him with baby Rebel against her shoulder.

  “No,” he says, “the PHASRs are useful. I just wish they weren’t so brutal and unstylish; that there was a way to conceal them more or… bedazzle them up.”

  “We can think of something,” Hewman says as he moves on to Nelly. “I see you are back in your original body…”

  “I am,” she says almost defiantly.

  “I’m sorry for any anguish I may have caused by having your – well, Tyro Myrdal’s – body replaced after the incident at the Italian restaurant in LA. It was the only way at the time to keep you alive.”

  “I get it,” she says, but you could have at least told me what was happening. Waking up in a room in another man’s cyborg body is … quite traumatizing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hewman says, “we wanted to get involved as discreetly as possible. Please accept my sincere apology.”

  “We?”

  “Tim7, my partner. He’s in the control room now.”

  I almost say something, but for once, I decide to keep my trap shut.

  “Before we go, we need to handle something,” he says, looking at our transport vehicle. The two drivers stand around the vehicle discussing the damage. Hewman waves them over and speaks to them in Spanish. “They’ll be heading back to Tijuana now.”

  “And the vehicle?” I ask.

  “It’s coming with us. Manuel has some connects in Havana that will repair and send it back over with some … goods. However, before we leave, we need to take the tracking drone off the bottom of the vehicle.”

  Dr. Hewman takes a B-drone out of his pocket; it lifts into the air and flits around the transport vehicle, lands, flashes, and beeps when it finds the tracking drone. Hewman steps over to the device, which is stuck on the undercarriage of the vehicle.

  “Meme, do you think you could get under there and pry the tracking drone off?”

  “Me?”

  “I’ll get it,” Yeshi says.

  Before I can protest, Yeshi is on her back under the transport vehicle. “Do you have something to pry it off with?” she asks as the B-drone flutters out from beneath the transport vehicle and lands in its docking box, which Hewman places in his front pocket.

  “I sure do.” Hewman reaches into his bag and pulls out a multi-tool. “Hold out your hand.”

  Yeshi calls out, “Got it. Do you want me to destroy it?”

  “Oh no, no’ he says, “give it to me. I have plans for this tracking drone.”

  “This will be fun,” he says as he retrieves a bio-mechanical turtle from his leather bag.

  The TMN Turtle is a popular device with oceanographers. The turtle uses two spherical disco lights to keep underwater predators away. They’re used to map the ocean floor and explore sunken ships and other forgotten vessels. No, they haven’t found Atlantis (drat!), or found Amelia Earhart’s plane, but they have explored the Marianas Trench and have discovered what we’ve known all along – that shit is inhabited by some gnarly fish the likes of which only Ralph Steadman could have designed.

  I watch as Hewman strokes the back of the TMN Turtle as if it were a favorite pet. He retrieves a squeeze tube from his bag, kneads it briefly, and uses the fluorescent green adhesive to attach the arrowhead-sized tracking device to the TMN Turtle’s shell. He shows me the tube and grins. Zompocxy – the apocalyptically strong adhesive. Sets fast, waterproof, and stays stuck long after you’re dead. I use it for everything.” He hands the turtle to Yeshi and says, “If you’d release it over the side, it will know what to do from there.”

  “How did you know about the tracking drone?” I ask Dr. H as she walks away.

  “Lucky guess. Shall we?” he asks, waving us to the center console of the ship. “There are rooms to rest in below, if the baby needs a breather. I’d also like you to meet Tim7.”

  SEVENTEEN∞

  Off the coast of Somalia.

  Sinister clouds have settled over the Albedo, an aging Panamax class container vessel of forty-two hundred TEUs capacity, loaded with a hundred thousand tons of goods, from neon vomit-colored DisNike sneakers made by underfed and overworked Bangladeshis to packets of freeze dried kimchi from South Korea and everything in between, including powdered Black Rhinoceros horn ethically sourced through de-extinction. The Albedo, a nine hundred-sixty foot vessel owned by Pakistani business tycoon Saddaruddin Hashwan (Rude Hash to his friends) had been hijacked a week ago west of Maldives by Somali pirates.

  As soon as the pirates’ skiff had appeared and moved to intercept, the crew of the Albedo had used all of the U.N. approved humane anti-pirate techniques, such as water cannon, the Long Range Acoustic Device and the Super High Intensity Tesla Strobe. The pirates got wet, put on their hearing protection and sunglasses and replied with rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons fire.

  The one-sided exchange lasted just long enough for the pirates to close the distance and board the vessel. They killed three random crew members just to show they were serious, demanded eight million Euros ransom, and the jettisoning of all haram items of cargo.

  The pirates paid nominal lip service to the never-ending Islamic State Jihad, but they were mostly just straight-up pirates out for profit, masha Allah. Somalia stood out as a failed nation-state amongst failed nation-states; the only products it produced in any quantity were famine, disease, Islamo-terrorists, pirates and premium sorghum.

  At that very moment, none of this mattered to Aman Rajbhar, the youngest and most junior officer of the Albedo. A recent graduate of the Pakistan Marine Academy in Karachi and a trained second steersman, this was Aman’s first – and very likely last – sea-going assignment.

  He was confined in one of the crew quarters with nine other crewmen and guarded by a skinny, wiry, malodorous pirate in a sarong and vintage T-shirt that read YOLO (Until I KEEL You), which made no sense to Aman, as he’d never seen the world YOLO before, and couldn’t imagine what that had to do with the ship’s keel.

  “Up! We go!”

  The pirate’s mother had named him Jabin, but his associates called him Jabba. He fancied himself a big-time intergalactic criminal like his namesake, Jabba the Hut, rather than the insignificant, bottom-feeding, sadistic, cowardly hyena that he really was. His skin was intensely black and his eyes were the yellow of end-stage renal disease. His lop-sided jaw had been broken and never properly set and his neck was speckled with blotchy scabs. He had his finger all over the trigger of his AK-309 – the most recent Kalashnikov manufactured everywhere, and as endemic in Somalia as Islam and rabies and pubic lice.

  “Where are we going?” Aman asked.

  The pirate jabbed the muzzle his AK hard into Aman’s chest.

  “You go!” Jabin said, “Skiff!”

  There was a muffled explosion on deck.

  “What was that?” Aman cried.

  Jabba butt-stroked Aman square in the face, breaking his nose and avulsing his two front teeth. Aman
stumbled, caught himself, spit blood and teeth as he felt his nose swell. The pain was unlike anything he’d ever felt.

  “We go!”

  The crewmen put their hands up and hunched over in the please don’t shoot me posture as they filed out of the cabin they’d been imprisoned in for the last five days. They headed down towards the deck in silence, Aman in the rear, Jabba behind him, prodding him forward with his AK. Another explosion inspired them to crouch and cower.

  “What’s happening?” Aman asked Jabin.

  “We no talk,” the Somali pirate replied. “NO TALK, GO!”

  For the last five days, Aman had worked to engage the Somalis in conversation, make them see him as a person and not just an object; to be helpful, friendly. Sure, they’d killed a lot of the crew by now, but he figured any form of dialogue would maybe save his life and the lives of the remaining hostages. Throughout the entire experience, he recalled his pregnant wife warning him before leaving Pakistan. “I had a dream that your ship was swallowed up by the ocean,” she had said repeatedly. “Please don’t go.”

  Now he wished that he had listened.

  _∞_

  Keva stood on the deck of the Albedo like Rose on the Titanic, her white hair beating in the wind behind her. Two Somali pirates who had tried their luck with the infidel whore lay in front of her, their bodies mostly splatter now from the terminal effects of her EM railgun. Clove and Monique were finishing up inside the ship while Keva maintained overwatch.

  Keva’s ocular display showed real time enhanced FLIR imaging from the drone lingering thirty thousand feet above them. The MercSecure Reps showed blue in her display, the life-chipped crew showed green, and the unchipped pirates showed yellow until they ran into the reps, and then they showed red and stopped moving. Keva smiled as three more indicators went from yellow to red.

  This was the third or fourth Product Recovery and Retrieval mission she’d been assigned to, and though she didn’t much care for them, sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to keep herself in lipstick, ammo, and pollutes.

  Keva: Group of greens and a yellow moving towards your location.

  Monique: Roger.

  Another muffled explosion preceded several short bursts from Clove’s drum fed flechette gun. The pirates never got rounds off, and four more indicators went from yellow to red.

  Clove: Easy peasy.

  Keva watched a yellow maneuver through a nearby passageway and pause at a hatch that opened onto the deck fairly close to where she stood. The hatch flew open and a barefoot pirate in pink camouflage shorts and a ripped and stained fluorescent green Mickey Mouse T-shirt rushed her with upraised machete and obligatory Allahu Akbar war cry.

  She sighed. Another arschloch ass-clown with a blade in his hands and Allah on his lips – ho-hum. He swung the machete at her head; she caught it between thumb and pointer finger and twisted it away from him. Her smile turned his bowels to water, and in his last moments of life, he knew that Shaitan had appeared to him as a silver-eyed, white-haired she-demon that devoured his soul even as it ripped out his throat.

  She laughed at him as he writhed at her feet and drowned in his own blood.

  Monique: Ten crew secured.

  Keva: Keep them under cover until Clove finishes with the roaches.

  More gunfire from Clove interspersed with return fire from the pirate’s AKs; the number of active yellows dropped to six. The drone feed showed a yellow with an RPG creeping along one of the bridge wings to get a shot at Keva. She zapped him with a railgun slug and sent him straight to Paradise.

  A series of muffled explosions choked off the last of the automatic weapons fire, and all of the yellow indicators were red and immobile.

  Keva: That all of them?

  Clove: Clear.

  Monique: Clear. Ten plus me coming out of the hatch forward of your position on your left.

  The crew exited with hands high, Monique trailing, covering the crew with her weapon. In Urdu she yelled, “On your knees! Cross your ankles, sit on your heels! Lace fingers behind your head palms out! PALMS OUT!”

  “English?” Keva asked.

  “Yes, I speak English!” Aman said as his eyes filled with joy. “Thank you … thank you for coming to rescue us! You saved us!”

  Keva narrowed her modded silver eyes on the man.

  “Saddaruddin Hashwan sent you for us! He sent you …” Aman was moved to tears. “Finally! Praise Allah we are saved!”

  “Your job on the ship?” she asked.

  “Second steersman. Back-up.”

  “Well, it’s good they have a back-up.” She smiled brightly at the crew. “Translate this for anyone who doesn’t speak English – good for you that you survived, and we’ll keep you alive as long as you don’t become a pain in the ass or jeopardize our mission. We are here to secure and ensure delivery of Walliburton’s cargo.”

  “Walliburton?” Aman asked.

  “Yes,” Keva said. “What? You really thought all those forty-foot containers from Korea were filled with freeze-dried kimchi? Sorry to say this isn’t the case, gentleman. Sorry to be the one to tell you that your lives mean nothing to a multinational corporation like Walliburton, but as they say, the truth shall set you free. Right, Monique?”

  Monique looked straight ahead, not making eye contact with Keva.

  Clove: The internal monitors on all of our shipping containers report all secure and seals intact. No surprise here, they’re all in the middle of the stacks.

  Keva lowered her weapon. “Your job is to get this ship to Kenya, where the all the cargo will be disposed of aside from the kimchi.”

  Aman asked, “This is very expensive cargo! Our boss – ”

  Keva stepped and was about to kick his testicles up around his ears for him when she received IM from Lorem Ipsum.

  Ipsum: Murika, Beyoncé, Rav and Walt have been captured by Manuel’s cartel. Rinchi is MIA presumed KIA. Once you complete your current mission, RTB to prep for a rescue mission.

  Keva: Rinchi is KIA?

  Ipsum: Presumed KIA. Her craft exploded during exchange of fire with Anonymous Two. We’ve lost all contact.

  Keva’s hands trembled as Aman came to his feet, still voicing his complaints about disposing of the cargo. Again, the silvered-eyed she-devil stood upon the deck of the Albedo. Aman saw the transformation and saved his own life by immediately establishing a face-down dialogue with the deck as Keva fired through the space he’d been complaining in. The crewman directly behind Aman was not so fortunate; the railgun slug splattered his head over several of his crewmates.

  Those of the crew not already prone or dead went face down on the deck, trying in vain to press themselves through it.

  “Stop!” Monique said, raising her weapon at Keva. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “Get the fuck out of my way!” she said through gritted teeth. Both representatives stood with their weapons aimed at each other.

  “Keva, lower your weapon!” Monique said sharply. “Now.”

  “Rinchi is … ” Keva blinked rapidly. “Rinchi is … ”

  Clove appeared on the steps that led to the bridge, his weapon trained on Keva.

  Clove: Oh, this is just what we need! Lower your weapon or I will fire!

  Ipsum: Do not engage Keva! Do not engage!

  “You’re crazy … ” Monique hissed with her weapon aimed at Keva’s chest.

  “No, I’m … I’m in love.”

  EIGHTEEN∞

  The muzzle of Keva’s EM railgun was never more than a few inches from Aman’s back as he steered the little Somali skiff towards the Port of Mombasa. The rest of his crewmates were below deck, zip-cuffed and quiet under Monique’s watchful gaze. Always the total professional, Monique betrayed no outward trace of the incandescent fury boiling inside her. Once again, Keva had hijacked a mission, this time turning it into her own personal wild-Rinchi chase. And once again management was apparently perfectly okay-fine with Keva’s increasingly erratic and –
even for her – irrational actions.

  The super-urgent, high stakes mission to secure Walliburton’s cargo and get the Albedo to Kenya with the crewmembers intact was forgotten like yesterday’s political campaign promises. The un-crewed and abandoned Albedo was on an automated station keeping program off the coast of Somalia, just waiting for the next gang of Jack Sparrow wannabes to welcome themselves aboard while Keva high-tailed it after Rinchi like a rabid, crack-soaked female wolverine in estrus.

  Monique: She’ll get us both killed if she doesn’t kill us herself first.

  Clove: Agreed, but she’ll kill us for sure if we don’t go along with her Rinchi-quest.

  Monique: Not if we kill her first.

  Clove: True, but keep that as a Plan B for right now

  Monique: And WTF is up with in love with Rinchi? That twisted bitch wouldn’t know love if a ten foot Cupid stabbed her narrow ass with a giant, heart-shaped arrow.

  Clove: LOL – when we’re done with this one, Black Mesa is always hiring – that’s Plan C.

  Keva was oblivious to everything save her all-consuming need to get to her one true love. “Faster!” She screamed at Aman. The Pakistani steersman already had the skiff going flat out. There wasn’t much else he could do to make it go any faster aside from tossing people overboard. He thought it best to keep that jocose observation to himself, just in case the Crazy as Crippen, silver-eyed, white haired killing machine thought it a good idea and started with him.

  “Make this damn boat go faster!” she raged at him. “Why are you going so slowly?”

  From behind Keva’s shoulder Clove said, “This is the vehicle’s top speed. I don’t think skiffs go any faster than this.”

  “Shit technology!” She kicked the side of the center console, leaving a dent.

  Lorem Ipsum: Give me updates. Keva has disconnected from iNet and cut her ocular feed.

  Clove: We are still heading to the Port of Mombasa in a skiff with the crew of the Albedo. Keva plans to go to Mexico from there.

  Ipsum: Tell her to connect to iNet.