“Yet someone knew where to get into position to shoot down Franz,” Tamara said as understanding dawned on her.
“Exactly! And there have been other things as well—too many to be purely bad luck.”
“Who is it?” Michi asked in a steely voice, her thoughts drifting back towards vengeance again.
“We don’t know. I don’t know. I am getting paranoid, suspecting everyone,” Cheri admitted.
“Someone inside the WRP had Franz murdered?” Michi asked, her voice rising, bordering on hysteria.
“I’m not saying that. I still think it was the company, or even the Federation itself. It’s just that they had help from inside,” Cheri said.
“If it goes as high as the Federation, that explains the Marines,” Tamara noted. “They needed an excuse to send in their enforcers, and by us acting out, we handed it to them. This could be another Ellison or Fu Sing.”
“What? Ellison and Fu Sing?” Michi asked in a confused voice.
“Geez, Michi. Don’t you follow anything? Both planets had worker protests put down, and it was the Marines who did it. On Fu Sing, the Navy even bombarded the refugee camps. Maybe 50,000 were killed,” Tamara said.
“I think I remember that one, but wasn’t that a revolt? Didn’t the Navy and the Marines have to rescue the people there?”
Tamara snorted as Cheri said, “Really, Michi, dear, do you even have to ask that? You’ve seen the newsfeeds here. Is that what’s really happening, or is that what the Federation propagandists want you to believe? Do you think it was any different for those two planets?”
Michiko sat for a moment, digesting what she had just been told.
“So, killing Franz was just a set-up, to create a situation where the Marines could be called in?” she asked.
“We think so. I think so, at least,” Cheri said.
“And I gave them that excuse,” Michi said, more to herself than to the other two.
“You gave them? What do you mean?” Cheri asked.
“Michiko!” Tamara warned.
Michi held up a hand, palm outwards, stopping her roommate. “No, she needs to know.”
“Know what?” Cheri asked, obviously confused.
“You know those two jacks? The one that got killed? Gerile Fountainhead? And there was another that got mugged, his Jamison stolen. We did that, Tamara and me. Or we did the second jack. I killed the first one.”
Cheri slid back into her chair, looking at Michi in stunned silence.
Michi looked down at her hands, examining the fingernails as she waited for some sort of reaction.
“You what?”
“I killed the first guy. Broke his neck. I don’t think I planned that, but maybe I did. We, Tamara and me, we jumped a second jack, right before they declared martial law. We did that. We gave them the excuse to come here with the Marines.”
“Why? I mean, I know why, but we figured that that Fountainhead lad wasn’t just some drug deal gone bad, but we thought it must have been the NIP who did it, deny it all they wanted. But you? You’re a—”
“I’m a First Family, from both sides, Clan and Kaitakusya, I know. But they took my Franz, and that’s all that mattered. I might as well have given the Marines an engraved invitation,” she said bitterly.
Cheri edged forward, putting a hand on Michi’s knee. “It was coming anyway, dear. You may have sped the process up, but you didn’t cause it. If Franz was killed by them, and I completely believe that to be so, this was a long time planning. If it wasn’t you, it would be something else. Now, we just have to think of what to do with it.”
“It should be obvious,” Tamara, said. “We have to nip this in the bud. No freakin’ Marines are going to be allowed to run over us. We’ve got our Highlander Samurai here, our Jeanne d’Arc. She’s a marketing miracle, so use her. Let’s push them back off Kakurega.”
Cheri listened to Tamara’s rant and seemed to consider it. Michi could almost see Cheri’s thoughts war against each other across her face.
“Actually, that falls in line with what some of the WRP think, and certainly the NIP agrees with that. We’ve been discussing it, to be honest. The trick is to make it uncomfortable enough for them to leave, but not go over the line and invoke a severe retaliation,” Cheri said. “Michi, I want you to tell me exactly what you did, every step along the way. Don’t leave anything out.” She looked at her watch. “And it looks like you’ve got a guest tonight. I won’t make curfew.”
For the next three hours, with Cheri being surprisingly thorough in her questioning, Michi and Tamara related everything they could remember. Michi knew that Cheri was high up in the WRP, but she’d always been sort of a slightly eccentric aunt to her. Only now, could Michi see the organized, driven leader Cheri really was.
“OK, I know that was tiring,” Cheri said as she had finally wrung all she could from the two roommates. “The question is, what do we do next?”
“It’s obvious what we do next. We jump a Marine,” Tamara declared. “We don’t kill him, but we let them know that we aren’t going to meekly stand by and let the company throw the charter out the window.”
“You know, I think you’re right, and that surprises me. I do think we need to make a statement,” Cheri said. “Do you think you can do it?”
“No problem,” Michi said, determination in her voice.
“A couple of things different, though. No more cozies for camouflage. I’m going to send someone over, someone I trust. He’ll have something a little better for you. And I want backup. No two lone rangers out there. Let me work some things out, and do not, I repeat do not, attempt anything until I get back to you. Agreed?”
“You can count on the Highlander Samurai and the Tattooed Avenger,” Tamara said in an excited voice.
“This isn’t fun and games, Tammy,” Cheri said. “This is serious shit, so no grandstanding. Am I clear?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Cheri turned to Michi and asked in the same serious tone, “Am I clear, Michiko MacCailín, blood of the First Families.”
Cheri, not being First Family herself, didn’t have the power to invoke a First Family honor-binding, but Michi didn’t care. She didn’t need to be honor-bound to tell the truth.
“If you will give me the means to get revenge, then I am your woman. I will do as you say.”
Chapter 16
“Oh, that’s pure dead belter,” Michiko said as she stared in the mirror, looking at the stranger’s face staring back at her.
The “stranger” had red hair and a pale, round face sprinkled with freckles across the nose. Her body was essentially Michi’s, but the face was that of a 15th Century Scottish lass, not the darker First Family countenance that Michi had grown used to over her 19 years. She reached up with a hand and touched the round, pug nose she saw, but felt her own smaller, familiar nose.
“OK, OK, I mean, this can’t be penetrated by anything in the electromagnetic spectrum, I promise you that,” Doug Taggart said excitedly. “It can be jammed, of course, but that would take a directed beam transmitter, not the surveillance equipment we have here on Kakurega.”
“My turn, Michi. I want to see who I’m going to be,” Tamara said.
Tamara pushed Michi away from the mirror, took a breath, then turned on the facial recognition spoofer attached to her collar. Michi thought it was freaky to see Tamara’s short brown locks and round face immediately switch to an exotic, dark-skinned stranger with close-cropped corn-rowed hair. Both girls had put on T’s for the test, and the top of Tamara’s jungle-scene tattoo disappeared, slightly coming back as her skin color faded lower into her chest. From under her bikini panties, her normal tattooed palette ran down her legs to her pale ankles and feet.
Michi stepped to stand beside her, both taking in the sight of two strangers looking back at them.
“Dougie, my boy, you done good,” Tamara said, awestruck for once.
“This is a pretty new development,” Doug started. “It was
started as an application for psychoanalysis, of all things, but progression with TET-cells made miniaturization and more refined refractory lanes—”
Tamara cut him off. “Slow down there, boy. I don’t really care how it works, just that it does,” she said, before turning to the redhead Michi. “Think of it, Michi, we can set our look in the recipe, then just turn it on in the morning. No make-up, just instant glamorous me.”
“Well, I guess that would be possible,” Doug started. “Let’s see, if we . . .”
Michi looked at her black roommate in the mirror, and both of them broke out laughing as Doug went on. They had met Doug only two hours before. If Hollywood had cast a resident geek, this is who they would have come up with. Doug was earnest, gangly, and overwhelmingly devoted to technology. He was like a puppy, eager to please. He had almost started stammering when the two roommates had stripped to T’s and panties, but once he had attached the small spoofing units, he had forgotten the fact that the girls were only half-dressed as he became engrossed in his toys.
Doug worked for the company, probably as they were the only ones on Kakurega with a big enough lab to interest him. Somehow, though, Cheri had recruited him. Michi wished she knew how Cheri had done that. Doug didn’t seem like the political sort. But he had come through. If the face-spoofers, for lack of a better term, could spoof the surveillance cams as well as they fooled the eyes, then no more pulled up cozies. This was brills.
They had met at a local shawarma stand, and before anything was said, Doug had handed Tamara an envelope. There was no subterfuge, no attempt at a covert hand-off. He just said hi and passed the envelope.
The handwritten note told the two roommates that no one else at WRP knew about “anything,” and that Doug’s presence was also a secret, known only to Cheri. Once they had finished reading, Doug opened his mouth to speak when Tamara hushed him. Evidently, Doug was not a fan of spy flicks. Neither woman was anything close to a real spy, but both knew you just didn’t openly discuss potential illegal actions at a café table on a public street.
They finished their shawarmas, then walked back to their condo, Tamara’s arm in Doug’s as if he were her boyfriend with Michi trailing behind. Even in a make-believe world, Michi was a third wheel, she thought to herself ruefully.
Once back in the condo, Michi found herself liking the eccentric young man. Actually, he was some seven years older than her, but something about him spoke little brother, rather than big.
Eccentric geek or not, his little toys, which he had modified to be portable and with a two-hour battery life, were invaluable. They would make it that much easier for Michi to strike back at the Marines, and through them, the Federation.
Chapter 17
It was an unseasonably warm evening, and Michi and Tamara strolled through some of the small cafes around the Riverwalk. They had contemplated going back to the Gut, but with their face-spoofers, they decided they didn’t need to search the Gut’s warrens for a victim.
Michi kept glancing at Tamara, trying to get used to her roommate’s appearance. The face-spoofer only changed the area around the head (although Doug kept insisting he would get that range extended), so Tamara could not show as much skin as she might have wanted, but in her zebra-striped unitard, she combined the exotic look of old Africa with the lithe body of a sprite or elf. Tamara had insisted that Michi was quite a looker as well, but perhaps conditioned by her time in the dance studio, she felt big and ungainly alongside her smaller friend.
She consciously worked to sway her hips as they walked, trying to give the picture of two young girls out for some fun. So far, the two had received a few interested glances, but from locals. No Marines were out and about, despite Cheri telling them that this was one area where a few Marines had been spotted while off-duty.
The day before, Michi had seen her first Marines. Four of them had marched down Harrison in their combat suits, two-and-a-half meter tall monstrosities that moved with surprising grace. That sobered Michi; there was no way she could do anything to one of them. She just hoped the information she had been given was accurate. She could deal with a Marine who had snuck out for a drink or two. From what she had heard, it wasn’t as if the Marines in the city were restricted to the stadium where they had set up a base camp. The newsfeeds had shown them playing with the kids at the company-run orphanage and playing basketball against the Lipper University team. Generally, though, the Marines seemed to stick to the stadium when not on duty.
Michi wiggled her shoulders, trying to loosen up. She had to be ready when the opportunity presented itself. She had to remember that they were the enemy.
“You look like you’re pissed off,” Tamara whispered to her. “Smile, at least. Act like you’re having fun.”
Michi tried to take off her war face and smile. She probably had been scowling.
“Not much better, there. Now it looks like you’ve got constipation.”
Michi broke out into a laugh. Tamara had her way about her.
“Ah, there you go. Now keep it up if we’re going to catch us a Marine.”
Two middle-aged men walked up to them, and Tamara flirted with them for a few minutes before promising to meet up with them later at the Belly Up, a well-known music venue.
“Done wasting time?” Michi grumbled.
“If we’re supposed to look like we are out on the town, we can’t very well ignore everyone, right? ’Sides, the Belly Up? Knossis is playing there tonight, and they suck. You wouldn’t catch me dead listening to that crap.”
They slowly wandered through the small streets and alleys, stopping for coffee or tea. They needed to keep alert, so no alcohol. The coffee was getting to Michi, though, and she had to pee when she spotted a man sitting alone at an outside table, a burger and a stein of beer in front of him. Something about him was different, and he just didn’t fit in. It might have been the clothes: they were decidedly out-of-date, and even if Michi was not a fashion zombie, she knew you didn’t wear socks and sandals with champs. It might have been the close-cropped hair. More than those, though, Michi thought it was the air about him. He was only eating and drinking a beer, but he had a look of utmost confidence.
After a few minor clashes when they first arrived, ones in which no Marines were reportedly hurt, things had been fairly quiet. Curfew had even been pushed back to 10:00 PM. But still, this was “enemy territory” to the Marines, and Michi would have imagined that anyone sneaking off for a beer would be more obviously alert. Seeing this man, though, changed Michi’s opinion. He just seemed too confident, as if no one could offer him a credible threat.
Michi was convinced he was a Marine, and his arrogant attitude angered her. She felt her fight come on. The Marine looked tough, true, but Michi was confident of her abilities. With the element of surprise, she didn’t think anyone, no matter how strong, could stand up to her roundhouse.
“Over there, sitting at the third table, I think that’s our man,” she whispered to Tamara.
Tamara didn’t stare but let her gaze cross over him. “Could be, I guess. What say we grab a table and see.”
They wandered over and took a seat. “Order me an ale,” she told Tamara. “I’ve got to pee.”
Tamara looked surprised, but the man still had half of his burger left, and if he was a Marine and their target for the night, Michi didn’t want to fight with a full bladder.
There was a drink waiting for her when she got back. She brought it to her mouth and acted like she was taking a sip. They were sitting two tables from the man, but he was more interested in his meal than in them. He was dipping his fries in what looked to be mayo, then putting each one into his mouth, sucking off the mayo, then popping the fry into his mouth as well.
“That’s pretty disgusting,” Tamara whispered as she lifted her own glass.
Unless she was dumping some on the ground, it looked like she had taken a few swallows of her beer. Well, it wasn’t as if she was going to be doing any fighting, so maybe it was OK.
Michi picked up her PA and dialed Doug. Doug was their “back-up,” as Cheri had made them promise to have. Michi wasn’t sure how much good having Doug around was, but with Cheri’s fear that there was a spy in the WRP, neither Michi nor Tamara wanted to bring anyone else in on their plan.
“Hey, Danielle. We’re at Yancy’s Café, over on Calamus Two,” she told Doug over the PA.
“I’m on Calamus Four, so let me move over. Do you have someone?” Doug asked.
“Maybe, but don’t you worry. We’ll let you know if we leave here,” Michi said before cutting the connection.
“Duty done,” she whispered to Tamara, bringing up the glass to cover her mouth.
“Ah, yes, Danielle is such a sweetie,” Tamara said with a laugh.
The laugh sounded a little forced, so Michi knew Tamara was getting amped. The girl had a mean streak in her, and Michi was glad they were friends. She didn’t think Tamara would make a good enemy.
As the man finished his burger, he asked for his check, his off-world accent clearly reaching them.
“Bingo!” Tamara said.
Whether he heard her or not, he looked up, catching her eye. Tamara smiled and lifted her glass up in a toast. The man nodded and lifted his up in return before breaking the contact.
“I already paid,” Tamara told her. “When he leaves, let’s follow him. If he starts to head towards the stadium, then he’s our man.”
The man sat at the table for another 20 minutes, seemingly happy to just relax while Michi got more and more tense. She was ready, and she wanted to get at it. When the man finally got up, Tamara had to put out a restraining arm to keep Michi from immediately jumping up to follow.
The man started to walk deeper down Calamus Two, which was a good sign. The stadium was only five hundred meters or so through the winding small roads that made up this restaurant district. At the point where the river bent around, there was a footbridge, and over that was the more open plaza where the stadium, museum, and opera house stood. If they were going to jump him, it had to be before he got to the bridge.
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