“I can’t help you even if I wanted to,” Bishop said.
“Because of your Tokko ethics?”
“No, because my portical isn’t working. I don’t think I have a connection.”
Reiko checked her portical too. “That’s because your kikkai connection is disrupted.”
“We’re not that far from the border.”
“I know. But Nazis have disruptors everywhere.”
They arrived at the coliseum and parked a few kilometers away at the request of security. Reiko emerged from the Salamander, her suit immediately drying. She put on a jacket and cargo pants over the suit, then got her utility belt ready and checked her equipment. The belt had gotten heavier over the years, but she found most of the gear essential. This included upgrades for her portical that could extend scanning range and provide a bright light in dark spots, and a grappling hook she used in case she had to get back into the Inago as soon as possible.
“What’s all that for?” Bishop asked.
“They’re accessories I take with me on all my missions.”
“You mean like a toothbrush?”
“Toothbrush along with my blow dryer and lipstick,” Reiko sarcastically replied.
“Just asking.”
“You armed?”
“Of course.” Bishop raised his Nambu heat pistol. “It has an automatic directed energy reload and a smart target interface that’ll determine what spot on a target causes most damage and compensate for movement and environmental hazards.”
“Nifty. Standard Tokko issue?”
Bishop winked. “Not exactly. What you packing?”
Reiko had a solar-powered laser gun. It had minimal recoil, and the heating ventilation had been vastly improved so that it didn’t burn her hands if she fired too many times in quick succession.
Bishop looked impressed. “All the laser guns I’ve seen were big and bulky. That’s pretty damn cool.”
They descended from the Inago. It was blazing hot outside.
Bishop wiped the sweat off his neck as they waited for a shuttle. “Glad to be back at hell on Earth.”
Reiko shook her head. “Hell is a lot hotter.”
“You sound like you’re talking from experience.”
She grinned. “You’re welcome to join me on a tour if you’d like.”
“I like Earth.” Bishop looked up at the coliseum. “They have bear fights back when the Americans ruled this place?”
“It’s a Nazi invention.”
“How are they?”
“From everything I’ve read, they’re disgusting, decadent, and profligate.”
“Are we talking about bear fights or Nazis?” Bishop asked.
“Touché,” she replied.
The shuttle arrived and took them to the gigantic coliseum. Inside, there were swastika banners everywhere and the walls were painted a dark red. A majority of the attendees were carrying guns, though most had them holstered. There was even a group of elementary school kids visiting. They all wore bulletproof vests, and their teachers were armed with machine guns. There was a cloakroom that took jackets but also checked in bigger weapons like assault rifles and bazookas. “If there’s even a scratch on my darlings, I will hold you personally responsible,” one Nazi officer warned the coat-check worker about his pair of Skorpion machine pistols.
Holographic projections of savage bears loomed above them, snarling at spectators.
“It’s become the most popular sport in the German Americas,” Reiko said. “There’s our contact.”
A stranger approached. He had a short blond flattop, a golden visor, an oversized fur coat with a massive silver emblem covering his chest, and a diamond-encrusted rifle.
“Rudo at your service,” he said with an exaggerated bow. “Those small pistols all you got?”
“Were we supposed to bring bigger guns with us?” Bishop asked back.
“You gotta stay armed in Texarkana everywhere you go,” he said with a grin, then gave Bishop a jovial sock. “Nice to see one of my former kind. You new?”
“I am,” Bishop answered.
“Good thing about being Tokko is that you’re forever off their scan list. That’s probably why you’re not seeing me on your portical readouts.”
“My portical doesn’t work here.”
“But you heard why I left?”
“I heard why you were fired,” Bishop replied.
“All the bastards I blackmailed deserved it.”
“That’s your version of it. I don’t know the details.”
Rudo laughed. “Funny words from a Tokko agent.” He looked at Reiko. “Either of you ever see a bear fight before?”
They both shook their heads.
Rudo brightened. “You’re in for a treat. Gurgeh’s fighting tonight. He’s never been defeated. Hope you aren’t squeamish.”
“Why?”
“The fights are brutal. You gotta bet on the matches tonight.” Rudo said as he pointed at more of the holographic bears.
Reiko noticed several people staring at her and Bishop. At first, she thought it was a coincidence, but she saw so many odd glances it was making her uncomfortable. Rudo noticed it as well and said, “If people stare at you, don’t take it personal. They ain’t used to seeing nonwhite people who don’t got chains on them.”
“Why would nonwhite people be wearing chains?” Bishop asked.
“Because the majority of them are slaves.”
“So the Nazis dream of a world full of Aryans. But what happens after their dream comes true?” Bishop asked.
“The same thing that happened in Europe. They go after the poor people next, then the religious, then the eccentric and ideologically ‘impure,’ till pretty much everyone’s a slave. It’s not about race. Never been.”
One of the slaves bought the wrong type of beer and was getting slapped around by his German overlord, who demanded out loud why he shouldn’t be killed on the spot. Not a single German looked in their direction.
Reiko was about to intervene, but Rudo stopped her and shook his head. “You don’t want to do that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“You’ll get the slave killed for sure if you do. But more importantly, you’ll be kicked out of the coliseum and deported back to West Texarkana.”
“Nazis sure fit their stereotype,” Bishop noted.
“They’re not stereotypes if they’re real,” Reiko replied.
The slave was a man of Asian descent, thirties, maybe forties. He had a chain around his neck and took the beating silently. Reiko closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Remember your mission. This is not the time or place to—another harsh kick to his chest. “Goddamn Oriental slaves aren’t good for anything!” the officer exclaimed.
“How’s Akiko doing these days?” Rudo asked Bishop.
“You know each other?”
“We go way back. I’ve never met anyone so adept at killing. You work with her?”
“She’s my boss.”
“Boss?” Rudo said, and seemed amused. “Hard to imagine her as a bureaucrat. But good for her. She once killed a dozen terrorists with—um, what’s she doing?” he asked, noticing that Reiko was moving toward the Nazi officer.
Reiko pretended to stumble, collided into him, timed it so her arm pushed his face hard against the floor. He was unconscious on impact with the cement.
“Oops, sorry about that,” she said, gave the slave a wink, then came back.
Rudo bounced in agitation and whispered angrily, “You want to risk our lives for a slave?”
“Don’t worry,” Reiko said. “By the time he wakes up, we’ll be long gone.”
Rudo’s face shifted from consternation to incredulous amusement. “You got guts, Captain Morikawa.”
“We all do, Rudo. It’s just a matter
of how much crap we can take before it bursts out.”
They went up the escalator and entered through the southern gate. The main arena looked like a sumo ring if the ring were floating on a platform. There were 12,209 people present according to a scrolling text on the portical display that went around the entire coliseum. Gigantic German words were printed on the gates. Bishop asked, “What’s that say?”
Reiko translated it: “‘Can spiritual ideas be exterminated by the sword?’ It’s from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”
“I’ve never read it,” Bishop replied. “I heard it’s boring.”
“It was part of the curriculum when I studied in Paris for a year,” she said. “We were required to read and study all five volumes: My Struggle, My Rise, My Triumph, My Peace, and My Art.”
“Hard to think of Hitler as an artist. Was he any good?”
“There’s a whole wing of his art at the Louvre, but members of the French Resistance vandalized all the paintings, so I couldn’t see what was underneath.”
“The museum didn’t clean it up?”
“The curators didn’t want to fess up to the security lapse, and all the Nazi officers thought it was what Hitler intended and were too afraid to mention it in case it was.”
Bishop laughed and said, “I could swear I’ve heard this story before.”
Their box seats were a floor above the center ring, a private room with eight chairs in total. It gave them a good view of everyone in the crowd, many of whom were drinking beers and acting rowdy. There were some attendees in Nazi uniforms, but most were wearing civilian clothes, mixing red leather, velvet tracksuits, leggings, and sporty hairdos. A group of performers onstage were clad in togas and played trumpets as the bear fights began.
“How’d the bears get so damn big?” Bishop asked.
Rudo explained as he chugged down a beer: “They receive genetic modifications before birth to increase aggression and fighting prowess. The trainers use growth hormones to make them twice as big as their normal size. They hook the bears on to wires from an early age and train them to combat each other in midair. Do you see the device on their foreheads? Those are special neural enhancers hooked in each so that a manager can give them instinctive pushes and adrenaline surges. Savagery is rewarded, cowardice is punished.”
The first fight they watched was savage. The bears ripped into each other. Both were at least three meters tall, maybe even more. The way they floated in midair gave it an almost acrobatic feeling, spinning, diving, and attacking. The crowd was lively, screaming at the more deadly exchanges. The match ended when the bear called Bermoiya had its arm cut up like a messy casserole of flesh.
“What do y’all think?” Rudo asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bishop replied as the combatants bit each other, one bear cutting out part of the other’s shoulder.
“That mean you like it? Feel free to say what you want. I have a nullifier on me so the Nazis can’t hear.”
“This is animal cruelty,” Reiko said. “It’s disgusting.”
She was repulsed by what the animals were being forced to do, but even more by the audience, who were enraptured by the brutality, gulping down beers and reveling in the event.
“No disagreement here,” Rudo said. “Gurgeh’s the best. He’s won thirty-two matches in a row. They really push it, since it’s a frontier town and people get their release here. They’ll get more vicious in the later rounds ’cause they let them fight till death and inject them with more drugs to make sure they last longer.”
Rudo was right. Meat chunks from the bears started dropping into the audience. The combat was all over the place as the bears swung above the audience. A bloody piece of bear flesh hit Reiko in the face. Rudo handed her a towel and an alcohol wipe. The whole crowd was mesmerized, roaring and screaming with each violent strike.
“So this is how Nazis have fun,” Reiko noted, revolted and sickened.
“It’s an acquired taste,” Rudo stated.
“Not one I hope to acquire,” she said.
“Nature is cruel. The Nazis embrace that reality and refuse to shy away.”
“This isn’t embracing reality. This is amplifying the worst elements and pushing everything to the extreme, then putting it on show for profit,” Reiko replied. “Where is Cossack?” she asked, irked by the sight of all the wounded animals.
“She’ll be here soon.”
“What can you tell us about her?”
“She’s one of the wiliest bear trainers in the Reich. One of the richest too. She has her own actual castle and personally funded Dr. Metzger. She’s very well connected in the Reich. She won the National Prize for Art and Science three times and an Adlersschild twice for her services to the state—those are huge awards here, handed out at the annual Nuremberg Party Rally. She’s also a key member of the Cultural Senate.”
“What’s the Cultural Senate?” Reiko asked.
“They control the culture here. Art is a big part of the life of the German Americas. The only class of people exempt from taxes in the Reich are artists.”
“Did not know that.”
“Art is probably the only area where the Nazis allow non-Aryans to excel,” Rudo said. “If you want to offer her something, talk art.”
“Does Cossack know Metzger’s dead?” Reiko inquired.
“It’s a good bet she does. But you can ask her,” he said as he received a buzz on his communicator. He stood up and explained, “She just arrived. I’ll bring her up from the lobby.”
He excused himself.
“Enjoying the fights?” Reiko asked Bishop.
“I haven’t been paying attention to them. Mostly checking out all the people,” Bishop replied.
“Oh?”
“Look at all those skinheads with tattoos of Japanese characters on their heads. That idiot over there misspelled a bunch of words so his tattoo says ‘I’m an idiot of honor and sacrifice pee in my toilet.’”
Reiko laughed hard and asked, “You want to tell him, or should I?”
In between rounds, advertisements from the coliseum played on the big display screen, including season tickets for the forthcoming alligator battles, the latest deals on flame-throwing chainsaws, and toy versions of their favorite bear competitors that had detachable limbs. For the elementary school students, there were ads for the latest “kid guns,” which were .45 pistols with smaller handles so they could protect themselves from the “Evil Empire” of “Oriental Murderers.”
Even their commercials made Reiko feel sick.
“Is there a plan?” Bishop asked Reiko. “Or are you winging it?”
“I’ve conducted eighteen simulations of our negotiations with Cossack.”
“Do any of them end up with us dead?”
“Four of them,” Reiko answered.
“Can we try to skip those ones?” Bishop asked.
“Depends on Cossack. I’ve brought a shipment of art that we know she’s very interested in.”
“What kind of art?”
“Last year, a dealer out in Sacramento kidnapped four artists and had them literally work to death in an underground studio. He was documenting how starvation and sleep deprivation changed their art. He tried to have it shipped to some Nazi galleries, but we confiscated all of it.”
“You’ll offer that in exchange?”
Reiko nodded.
“The Nazis even make art deadly,” Bishop noted.
“Even without Nazis, art is deadly,” Reiko stated bitterly.
“Thought you loved art,” Bishop said.
“I did.”
“I remember you used to paint mechas all the time in class, and you did that big mural too on the auditorium wall.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” Reiko said.
“It was a powerful image of the Battle
of Berkeley.”
Rudo returned with Cossack and her three bodyguards. Cossack had on thick shades and was a wiry woman in her forties of British and Dutch descent, with auburn hair that was straight, and an elaborate mink coat that made it appear as though her head was surrounded by a white bush. Rudo raised a tinted glass wall to cover the balcony so no one could see or hear them from below.
“I’ve always wanted to meet a member of the Tokko,” Cossack stated. “I know why you’re here. Tell me what you’re offering and we can go from there.”
Reiko had been expecting Cossack to ask about Metzger, but jumped ahead with her plan. “A shipment we’ve confiscated from Relm Bailey.”
Cossack showed no emotion, but her fingers began twitching rapidly in excitement. “You have access to them?”
Reiko raised her portical, and it was already set to a grisly painting of two bears savagely eating each other. Another was of a bear cooking another bear on a grill. There was a whole series of bear paintings that looked as though the artist was splattering random patterns on canvas, a bear barely visible as the hues raged at viewers with their clashing color contrasts.
“How can I be sure you’ll deliver them?” Cossack inquired.
“How can I be sure your information is worth the exchange?” Reiko asked back.
“Oh, believe me, it’s worth it.”
“Half the paintings are aboard my mecha. I’ll release them to you, but I want the name of the person you were sending the mecha parts to,” Reiko said.
“I want the paintings first.”
“I think I’d have a hard time leaving the coliseum alive if I reneged,” Reiko replied.
Cossack considered it. “Pris Watanabe,” she stated.
Reiko was shocked but quickly hid it, not wanting Cossack to see and, as a result, weaken her negotiating position.
It was too late. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Cossack asked. “One of your best mecha pilots planning a revolt.”
“It could be for personal use. She could be building her own mecha.”
“Trafficking our contraband parts?” Cossack scoffed. “You can believe that if it helps you sleep better.”
Reiko knew she was right. “Did she tell you why?”
Cyber Shogun Revolution Page 11