Ardent Red

by Harry Schofield

  Frost and his four companions all occupied an elevator, en route to Grumman's reception. If his company were to say anything of the burly commander, it would be without question how decidedly daft he looked wearing a black business suit and dark blue tie. The garment strained around his mountainous shoulders and hugged his frame like a boa constrictor. Wilkins was suited up in the same style; being a mere two thirds as broad as the captain, he was better equipped for such a formal occasion as this one. Morgenstern, standing half a head's length shorter and nearly as wide as Frost, wore her own black tuxedo suit, complete with dark blue bow tie to contrast her bright teal hair. Hopelessness and botheration crossed paths to craft her facial expression. White wore no suit, having clad herself in an evening dress of eponymous colour and a modest diamond necklace.

  Out of the entire quintet, however, none of them came within spitting distance in the field of raw, untethered magnificence than Danica Bridger. She too wore an evening dress like White's, of deep royal blue silk; a golden jewel-encrusted bracelet was worn on each arm, a silver fox fur collar wrapped around her neck, and a pair of black high heels tipped with small diamonds crowned her feet. Her usual eyeliner had been reapplied denser than before, embellishing her countenance in tandem with a deep crimson lip-gloss. A standing, living, breathing testament to corporate profligacy she might have been, yet Frost could hardly help but notice that none of Bridger's cosmetics were applied in excess – there was nothing vulgar, unnatural, whorish or otherwise improper about the dress whatsoever.

  "What?" Morgenstern hissed at the sound of giggling.

  "I still can't get over how stupid you look in a suit, Mags," White hid the huge grin on her face behind her hand, struggling not to laugh.

  "Baaaaagh..." Morgenstern growled at her attire, exerting her full willpower to suppress the urge to scratch at her tuxedo. "It bloody well itches! Whichever godforsaken good for nothing dick-and-balls jackass of a tailor made this wretched thing, when I get my hands around his bloody throat..."

  "Now you know why it's wise to wear a bra!" White's composure vanished like a cockroach caught in an explosion, and she shrieked with laughter.

  "Verpiss dich!" Morgenstern swore in her mother tongue as her face turned an alarming shade of crimson.

  "I trust you all remember the plan," Frost cut the conversation short.

  "Yup." White.

  "I do indeed." Bridger.

  "Mhm." Wilkins.

  "How can I forget?" Morgenstern.

  "Good," Frost stated. "Now go and enjoy yourselves. And Mags, don't let me catch you trying to kill anyone."

  "Y'know me, boss," Morgenstern laughed. "I'll only kill if they deserve it."

  "No murder," Frost turned to her, and stated with a quasi-serious expression. "Even if they deserve it."

  "Not even a broken arm?" Morgenstern asked.

  "Not even a broken finger," said Frost.

  "Aw..." Morgenstern pretended to be deflated, before issuing a thunderous laugh.

  At that moment, the elevator doors pulled open, prompting the quintet to make their way across the hall. Before another set of doors stood a sleek android, wearing its own custom-tailored suit and an amusing little bow tie to go along with it.

  "Good evening, Miss Bridger, Mister Frost, Mister Wilkins, Miss White, Miss Morgenstern, and welcome!" the robot recognised the group and spoke in a grating drone. "I have already sent a message informing the governor of your arrival. Proceed through the door, and please, enjoy your time here!"

  Bridger and White smiled. Frost and Morgenstern gave no such gesture, retaining their typical stone composure. Wilkins, being the first to the door, held it open for everyone else; the instant he caught sight of the interior, his mouth flew agape.

  What met them was an illustrious penthouse floor, a balcony propped up on flying buttresses circumnavigating the second floor. As he gawked at the immense room, Wilkins was immediately reminded by the décor of a modernised medieval court, each pointed window a tale from the mythology of mankind rendered in stained glass, suits of old power armour suits mounted on stands around the room and gold-rimmed watercolour portraits, one of whom Wilkins recognised as bearing Grumman's militarised features, fixed upon the walls. There must have been twenty or thirty other guests at this reception, each and every one of them being dressed with equivalent if not grander opulence to Bridger. Gentle piano music danced through his ears, its source coming from a mini orchestra in the corner to his left. Far from what was to have been expected from an ostensibly ascetic corporate entity like the Wayland Company.

  "Don't let your jaw drop into the soup when you get to the buffet table," Frost bumped him in the side, drawing him back to the real world. "While the girls are getting suitably shit-faced, what say we have a talk?"

  "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Wilkins was unsure.

  "When has it ever been a bad idea to get to know your soldiers?" queried Frost.

  "When they're about to die," said Wilkins.

  "Oh please..." Frost brushed off the mercenary's concerns like they were nothing. "If you didn't get yourself killed last week, you won't get killed here. Now, either I've forgotten your first name or I never bothered to learn it. Remind me."

  "Philip, sir," Wilkins dutifully answered.

  "Ey, none of that 'sir' business," Frost growled. "The only 'sirs' around here are the knightly kind, and I sure as hell don't see any of them running around."

  He surveyed his immediate surroundings, the sole purpose of this gesture being to determine the veracity of his assertion. Seeing nobody within a few footsteps of him worthy of knighthood, he turned back to Wilkins.

  "Phil, eh?" Frost began. "My older brother was called Phil. He was an arsehole, though. Y'know what the little twat did to me once?"

  "What?" asked Wilkins.

  "So I must have been, what, fourteen years old?" said Frost. "Sat on the crapper, reading my newspaper – the next thing I know, Phil literally kicks the fucking door down, brandishes a BB gun and pulls the trigger. Beans me square in the bloody groin mid-shit, only missing my bollocks by a centimetre! I still have a scar there to this day..."

  Wilkins took notice at how some of the guests in the queue turned to hear the conversation behind them. Some sprouted disgusted looks, quite unable to believe that this boorish newcomer had picked this topic to discuss – and with such vulgar language, too.

  "Got the wanker back though, when I took the shaver he used for his pubic hair and replaced it with my dad's Taser," Frost continued unabated. "Gave him the shock of his life. Pun wholly intended, by the way..."

  By now the queue had more or less entirely dispersed, having apparently been put off their appetite by Frost's conversation. Some of them could be heard muttering to themselves, most likely expressing their disapproval for such a low-life and about the governor for inviting such a lout to this function. At that moment Wilkins felt a nudge in the side from the captain...

  "And that, Phil Wilkins, is how you clear the queue to the buffet table," said Frost, a smug grin on his countenance. "I haven't had anything to eat since breakfast, and I'm not waiting for these fops."

  As he proceeded along the table's length to survey the selection of food on offer, Frost's initial satisfaction at his success in reaching the dinner table began to drip into profound disappointment. Upon reaching that point, his expression proceeded towards near sadness, before ultimately corroding into his most typical visage of profuse irritation.

  "What sort of 'buffet' doesn't serve crab sticks..." he grumbled.

  "Uh, perhaps you'd like to try the megapig pork medallions, sir," a waiter suggested, grabbing the captain's attention.

  Frost stared at the man as if his head had fallen off. "What in the fuck is a megapig?"

  "Try one, sir." The waiter gestured to the suspicious pieces of meat on the table, arranged in a circle on the plate for guests to take at their leisure.

  "Can't be worse than ration maconochie..." Frost shrugged as he grabbed
a medallion with his fork to take a bite. His face expressed deep thought as he sampled the morsel, trying to determine whether the 'megapig' bore as much as a remote resemblance to the meat of an ordinary pig – whatever the difference was. As far as Frost could tell, the only serious difference between the two creatures was the texture, the stranger of the two possessed a similar degree of succulence to a large beefsteak.

  "Y'know, you never did tell me what a megapig even is," Frost stated. "It sounds like the title villain in some bootleg Arabic horror movie."

  "I can't say I know much about the film industry of the Middle East, sir," the waiter enunciated with a gentle smile. "But I can tell you that this particular one is a transgenic pig. The pride of EncelaGen's Agricultural Corps."

  "Transgenic?" Frost queried with a grimace. "I'm not gonna get prostate cancer from this damn thing, am I?"

  "Oh no, sir," the waiter waved his hands in his efforts to reassure the captain. "New innovations from EncelaGen allow them to flash-clone livestock without using dangerous techniques likely to increase the presence of carcinogens."

  "And I suppose they paid you to say that?" a sceptical Frost enquired.

  "I don't work for them, sir," the man shrugged. "I just make a living serving their food."

  "Good enough." Frost observed the waiter's announcement of his profession as a cue to grab four extra medallions, moving onto the next part of the table with Wilkins in tow. The latter chose more modestly than the captain, adding only one of the medallions to his dinner plate.

  ~

  Forty five minutes later...

  Morgenstern's first destination had been the bar, as if a scientist was necessary to deduce that. She was currently posted upon one of the stools, eyes wandering along the vast display of boozes before her. Most of what was on offer included upscale liqueurs, most of which she never even knew were actual drinks. Hellfire Apple, Red Stone, Mirandan Ice. And they were just the ones whose descriptions she could actually read, the rest printed in foreign languages and fonts that likely made them illegible to even their native speakers.

  Taking another sip from her third glass of nigori wine this evening, Morgenstern concluded that perhaps retaining her usual tipple of cherry Bushido would be for the best. Now if only she had a hip flask of shochu on her, she could request a couple of bomb shot glasses and pour herself a Fat Man. That said, considering her current mission was to get utterly wasted, she could simply drink straight from the hip flask. If she had a hip flask.

  "Hi there, darlin'. You're lookin' mighty fine tonight."

  "Fuck off."

  The interloper jerked his head back by way of response to Morgenstern's sharp command, not even accompanied by a glance as she finished the rest of her drink.

  That marked the third lout that Morgenstern had to shoo away this eve. Throughout her years at dives, nightclubs and the like, she had learned to pick apart idiots searching for an easy score without so much as a look. They always arrived with a strong stench of sleaze about them, quite apart from the literal stench of their alcohol-infused breath. Wandering towards any and every creature with a pair of breasts in their immediate vicinity with a smidgen of uncertainty sticking out of their stride like acne, with their hollow, cookie-cutter pickup lines ready and waiting to buzz through the hapless woman's ears like the scrape of nails on a chalkboard.

  "Hell of a night for a party, ah?"

  This male voice was different, worthy of Morgenstern's attention, if only because its sound was much more sophisticated than the rest she had heard this evening. An Australasian legato, pleasantly different to the trio of drawls that had plagued her so far. Perhaps this one was worthy of conversation if nothing else; drinking alone always left Morgenstern bored out of her mind, perhaps for want of someone to complain about the world to.

  "Every night is a 'hell of a' night in outer space," she addressed the man in her usual gruff tone, turning to face him. "And so's every day, for that matter."

  Her original intuition did not fail her; there was indeed a man sitting two barstools down from her. Wearing a white suit, his light brown hair was combed in a fashion that evenly blended normality and sophistication, not looking so stupid as to be off-putting. A thick goatee coloured in tandem with his hair partially obscured the mouth of his moderately scarred face. The focus of his two blue eyes at the moment was on his cocktail glass, his drink of choice being a Bloody Mary if Morgenstern's skills of deduction could tell from appearances alone.

  "I know you from somewhere," Morgenstern reasoned with a squint.

  "Probably some of my old accounts on Chinwag or Netgaze," the stranger shrugged. "Name's Teddy."

  "Magda," Morgenstern introduced herself, spying the dark purple tie around his neck. "Aren't you one of Hermod's executives?"

  "One of? I am Hermod's executive!" announced the character introducing himself as Teddy. "Started out as security chief, blagged my way through the ranks like Red Bubblegum in an interview, and in the grandest somehow of my career so far, I've wound up here."

  "Then by process of elimination, you're Theodore Rourke," Morgenstern finally realised who he was.

  "It's funny," Rourke commented. "When I was cuter I'd always have my bosses breathing down my neck, going on and on and on about indiscretion. I was just having a bit of fun with some of the dolls, never even brought up my profession, y'know how it is?"

  "Oh, all too well..." Morgenstern chuckled.

  "Now every fucking meathead and his cousin knows the name Teddy Rourke!" he seemed almost disappointed. "I just hope I haven't lost my charm. Now that would be a crisis."

  "Oh, charm away..." Morgenstern spoke, laughing afterward. "It's been way too long since anyone even bothered. If I didn't verge toward a more feminine company, I might even follow you home after!"

  Rourke nearly spluttered on his drink as he burst into hacking laughter.

  "There's plenty a' time fer the wrecking ball to come back, don't worry about that!" he chuckled. "If I hadn't helped with my fair share of turnarounds, then I wouldn't be much of a gentleman, would I?"

  "Oh, I wouldn't be so confident if I were you," Morgenstern spoke with a wide smirk. "But you're welcome to try your luck. You certainly stand a better chance than most of the idiots here."

  "I think I might just take you up on that offer," said Rourke, finishing his glass. "So what brings you all the way out here to this dump?"

  "Bodyguard work," said Morgenstern. "One of the Occator executives is here on a business trip, and she's heard bad things about New Seattle, so she brought a security detail to keep her safe."

  "Would that be Danica Bridger?" queried Rourke. "Something tells me that she's got all the security she needs from the one and only Edward Frost."

  "How do you know it's Edward Frost?" Morgenstern asked incredulously.

  "That's my job, m'dear – to drink, and to know things," Rourke explained. "Both are good skills to have in my business."

  "Moving parcels from planet to planet?" said Morgenstern with a raised eyebrow.

  Rourke erupted into another laughing fit. "Oh I could tell you, Sheila, but I wouldn't be a very good businessman if I gave away my secret to my rivals, would I?"

  "True enough..." Morgenstern sipped more from her glass. "Can I get you another drink?"

  "I thought it was common form for the lad to buy the lady a drink," said Rourke.

  "Truth be told, it doesn't matter much to me," Morgenstern shrugged. "I'm here to get wasted, maybe find some decent company."

  "Not to blow my own horn, but you might have met one of the two criteria already," said Rourke.

  "That's funny, I don't feel wasted yet!" Morgenstern stated before issuing a thunderous laugh.

  ~

  The sands of time passed, metamorphosing twenty-one hundred into twenty-three thirty four – at least if the cerulescent digits of the atomic clock on the wall were any reliable measure. Time had passed with Frost vacillating between disappointment with the continued dearth of his favo
urite snack of crab sticks at the buffet table, to impatience with the haste, or lack thereof in this circumstance, at which the spy assigned by Sparrow to meet with them performed their assigned task.

  Another minute would pass, and then the dances would begin. Frost had never been much of a dancer and hence stood at the side, along with Bridger who had already proclaimed her own lack of dancing ability. She had spent much of the function conversing with the other dignitaries with a similar look to Frost on her face; only hers was borne more from concern than his, who wore the same scowl he almost always did. Bridger would notice that the same expression would dominate his face, only the occasional variance taking place – and even that was limited to a raised eyebrow, widening of the eyes and the augmentation of his frown. Whenever he laughed, or smiled, he would slip right back into his usual glare afterward.

  Frost's face was no different to what Bridger had observed, even as the two of them took to the dance floor only out of social obligation.

  "Tell me you've met your friend by now," he stated in a low voice.

  "No," said Bridger. "Have you?"

  "Where the hell could he be?" growled Frost, scanning once again for any sign of a spy.

  Rather than any spy, however, he spotted an all too familiar bald face coming towards him, his expression denoting profound displeasure at something.

  "Ah, Governor Grumman," Frost recognised him. "I was wondering where you were."

  "A pleasure to see you too, Frost," Grumman stated with a straight face. "Except it would be if I didn't feel especially compelled to point out that your companion's behaviour is ... rather less than exemplary."

  "What, the big one?" Frost quasi-laughed. "She can hold her drink just fine. No reason to worry about her."

  "Actually, I was referring to your other companion," the governor corrected him. "The blond girl."

  Frost's mouth straightened with interest. He peered over Grumman's shoulder in search of the miscreant White. When his eyes met with a sight most curious, his brows shot up.

  "Oh, fuck my life..." he growled, shouldering his way toward what was transpiring right before his eyes.