by Kieran Shea
Archimedes quietly slides the Belgian sub-cutter from the trunk.
A surge of warmth flushes through Koko’s heart. She can’t believe her young stud has read the deteriorating situation like a pro. Go, Koko thinks.
Go, boy, go…
A collective snigger passes among the security detail as they inch closer, and Koko, as casually as she can, slides her hands under the bar. Half a second later she finds what she is looking for: the stock of an MG-88-Ventilator. Koko installed the weapon almost a year ago because she was bored one rainy afternoon. Just like with the sub-cutter in the bamboo trunk upstairs, she never thought there would be a circumstance in which she’d actually have to use it. But like all long-shot wagers, sooner or later there you fucking are.
Like so many times before, the cold edge of hyperawareness narrows Koko’s world. The pulmonic tempo in her chest increases, and the details of her surroundings sharpen. Koko sees everything. The mist of perspiration on the senior officer’s forehead. The long golden shaft of morning sunlight pouring through the open window, a lone fly lazily sputtering in its beam. Koko can even hear each distinct, curling whoop of a troop of Gibbon monkeys clutched in the nearby Banyan trees. Archimedes raises the sub-cutter to his shoulder, and Koko sees the indicator lights winking that the weapon is now hot and ready to rock.
As Koko releases the Ventilator’s safety, a charge prickles beneath her hand.
The senior officer barks, “Hands where we can see them, Martstellar!”
Koko drops right, and the room explodes with pulse-gun fire. Archimedes is a lousy shot with the sub-cutter. The first cerulean-colored blasts from the wide mouth of the weapon smash the floorboards and allow the CPB squad members to scatter for cover. Subsequent blue blasts fly clean, and Archimedes finally gets some. Two searing orbs of light catch the moon-faced officer just beneath the heft of her breasts and slam her backward into the far wall.
Meanwhile, on the rubber runner mats behind the bar, Koko pushes up, tightens her grip on the Ventilator, and starts blasting straight through the bar’s wooden skin. The majority of the bar’s siding is reinforced with steel except for a narrow slotted track that allows Koko to unload the weapon in a wide arc, and the arc covers the room.
Squeezing the trigger at will, Koko hopes she’ll hit someone, and she does—the blonde officer attempting a go-for-broke hurdle over the bar. The Ventilator round tears through the woman’s stomach and pitches her sideways into a table, smashing it to pieces.
Archimedes screams wildly from the landing.
“You mess with my Koko-sama, you die-die! You die-die!”
Archimedes returns fire at the remaining security personnel, but his aim is just plain awful. The heavy recoil of the sub-cutter is too unwieldy for his slight arms and black acrid smoke blinds him. The remaining security detail remember their training. They triangulate their aims and eviscerate Archimedes in a grotesque gyration of sizzling flesh.
Koko peeks over the lip of the bar just as Archimedes’ jawbone flies across the room like a ragged, bloody bird.
“NO!”
Koko snaps the Ventilator off its mount beneath the bar and brings the weapon up. She targets those remaining and lets fly without pause.
FU-CHEW! FU-CHEW! FU-CHEW! Heads liquefying.
Dandelions of bone and bloody discharge patterning out.
Four shots are four kills, and the whole room is swallowed in flame.
Koko’s eyes sweep the burning area for signs of life before she charges up the stairs. Not looking at Archimedes’ crumpled body on the landing, she yanks open all the doors to the rooms, shouting at the boywhores to move, move, move. She hustles the crying and hysterical young men down the stairs, through the slaughter, and out the bar’s batwing doors.
In the sandy street outside, Koko uses the Ventilator to blast a perimeter to keep the Komodos away. In complimentary SI robes, curious onlookers from thatch-roofed cabanas and modular bungalows across the way have gathered outside to watch. They eat bananas and sip coffee, thinking the morning’s bedlam is just one more simulated part of their vacation experience. A few even pose for pictures, mugging and gesticulating to the burning building behind them.
Koko storms back inside the growling inferno. With no time, she knows what she has to do. The safe is in the pantry behind the building’s small galley kitchen in the rear. It takes a couple of wipes of her watering eyes to get a clean retinal scan, but once the safe pops open Koko grabs all the credits she can carry, a small stash of crinkle-flake, plus an extra bottle of aged forty-five-year-old beauty she’s been saving for a special occasion. What the hell, Koko thinks. She may not live through this, and now is as good a time as any. She cracks the seal on the bottle and chugs a huge gulp.
Fuckin’-a.
Smoke singeing her lungs, Koko scrambles to her feet and punches out the back door. Outside, she whips a camouflaged tarp off an escape pod half-buried beside the storage shed next to the waste bins.
Koko knows if she moves fast enough and gets enough altitude she can sail on through to the atmospheric orbital barges of the Second Free Zone before the SI security batteries can knock her from the sky. The sky barges and arks of the Second Free Zone are not the greatest places to lay low as a fugitive, but her life on The Sixty is all but a memory for her now.
Saddled inside the pod, Koko clips in and hauls the hatch shut on top of her. Four thrown switches later and the craft is online. Koko hits the primary ignition and a single fusion engine beneath her growls.
The pod shakes and shakes and shakes, but soon it’s free from the shallow rut in the ground. Hovering at fifteen meters, Koko engages the secondary engine and her organs practically flatten out as the lift off booms her skyward.
As the escape pod climbs, G-forces wobble the skin back across Koko’s skull. Her teeth chatter, and she strains to take one last look to port. The burning building and the lush, tropical smear of The Sixty Islands recedes beneath her like a coiled, emerald serpent fixed in an impossible expanse of oceanic blue. A single thought creases Koko’s mind.
Archimedes.
Man, she’s sure going to miss that boy.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, AT SI HQ…
Vice President Portia Delacompte slumps in her desk chair and visibly fumes.
Across the gleaming, sterile expanse of her dojo-esque office chamber her assistant, Vincent Lee, braces on his feet. Lee is twenty-three, groomed and polished to CPB junior executive standards, and quite unaccustomed to delivering such bad news so early in the day.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Delacompte begins.
As he clears some gummy residue from his throat, Lee is unsure as to where he should clasp his hands. At first Lee laces them in front of his pressed trousers, but quickly he decides the submissive gesture might intensify his boss’s irritation. Lee decides to adopt a full at-ease posture and wrings his hands behind his back.
“I’m afraid not, Madam Vice President,” he replies. “Six security personnel were assigned to the Martstellar detail. All six are dead apparently, and the firefight razed the building.”
Delacompte kneads the space above her eyebrows with four fingers. “And where is Martstellar now?”
“She’s heading for the Second Free Zone.”
“The Second Free Zone! What? How is that even possible?”
Lee shuffles nervously. “It seems she had a suborbital escape pod. I’m not sure how she concealed the craft from The Sixty Islands’ trace sensors and routine inspections, but Martstellar was out of range before anything could be done to stop her in mid-flight. Best guess is she smuggled the pod onto The Sixty in pieces and cobbled it together over time with modified electronics. Her training, naturally.” Lee clears his throat again. “I’ve already dispatched a confidential memorandum to our enforcement office. Robust penalty assessments for not discovering this are attached, of course.”
Delacompte scowls. “Idiots…”
“Yes,” Lee agrees. “I should have
added myself to the detail as oversight, so I accept full responsibility for the mix-up. I’ve prepared my file for downgrade penalties across the roster as well.”
Delacompte snaps, “Not you, you slimy little twerp. That security detail! Incompetents the lot. Bunch of good-for-nothings living the high life on a cushy CPB assignment. Tell me, they were briefed on Martstellar’s background, were they not?”
“Most definitely. A complete history.”
“And still they screwed this up?”
Lee nods.
Delacompte bangs a fist on the arm of her chair. “Order a full staff recycle immediately. Flush all the corpulent deadwood. I mean, it’s not like we can’t find fresh militarized personnel salivating for SI duty. Now, then, as long as my day has turned into a giant flume of shit, how’s media? As bad as I expect?”
Lee swallows. “Unfortunately the feeds picked the incident up right away and containment on our end was impossible. As you know, Martstellar’s brothel operation was in a dense area, well-traveled and quite popular with SI guests given the nature of the sector’s… uh… um,” Lee searches for the precise words, “offerings.”
“So you’re telling me the witness distortions went viral almost immediately?”
“I’m afraid so, but all witnesses have been quarantined pending debrief assessments and fact cleansing. I’m confident we’ll be able to correct narrative fundamentals shortly. Public-relations containment is on full alert and working on distraction insertions as we speak. I expect an update in a few minutes.”
Delacompte fidgets. Working her shoulders and tightly cropped silver hair against her chair’s backing, she steers her eyes downward and fishes out a lime-colored plastic bottle from her bolero-style jacket. Refusing to meet Lee’s gaze, she snaps open the bottle’s lid and shakes out a small yellow capsule—a dose of the anti-anxiety drug Quelizan, commonly known as Q. Delacompte swallows the capsule dry and then pinches the bridge of her nose.
“What a mess…”
“Again, I’m so sorry, Vice President Delacompte.”
“So sorry does not unfuck this situation, Lee. Are you familiar with the sinister physics of a PR disaster such as this? The CPB and The Sixty may be all about licentious gratifications but our customers—moreover, our shareholders—demand rigid professionalism and oversight. Administrative decrees have to be respected. Even the slightest blowback from an incident like this and we could incur significant commercial losses. Minor at first, of course. A mere point tick here and there before adjustment corrections. But those annoying ticks can pick up steam, and if not redressed…” Delacompte lets the air completely leave her chest. “Not on my watch and not ever, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Madam Vice President.”
“Good. So, what else?”
“Excuse me?”
“What. Else?”
“Well,” Lee says, “like I said, we’ve tracked Martstellar to the Second Free Zone, so anticipating your anger I’ve taken the liberty of assigning a freelance bounty operative, one Cleo Heinz, for pursuit.”
Delacompte’s flinty eyes slit. “You do realize that hiring a bounty agent for pursuit into the orbital confederacies of the Second Free Zone is illegal, don’t you?”
“I do,” Lee quickly answers. “But given the extenuating circumstances and anticipating your displeasure I thought you’d approve of the measure. I mean, this Heinz… she’s good.”
“How good?”
Lee puckers his lips and whistles. “Really good.”
“Good, really good, I don’t want to hear either. I want—no, I demand—perfection. We wouldn’t even be in such a position if that team of assembled screwheads you sent had their acts together.”
“Again, I can’t possibly express how sorry I am.”
“So, if you’ve already engaged this operative, I trust you’re being discreet?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’d damn well better be.”
Delacompte stomps her boots on the floor and stands. The sound of her boots’ thunderclap jolts Lee in his stance. Sweat is running heavy for him now, and he watches helplessly as Delacompte retrieves a gun from inside the desk’s top drawer. Delacompte sets the weapon down on the right side of her desk.
Good lord, he thinks. Dealing with his boss’s narcissistic mood fluctuations has always been difficult, but Portia Delacompte brandishing a weapon? Well, that certainly is a new one. Would she actually use the gun, though? No, that seems unlikely. But then again, you never really know with Portia Delacompte. The woman has unrealistic standards and is, as they say, six jars past crazy.
Lee half-heartedly assures himself that the move is merely one more of his boss’s aberrant and malicious efforts at dehumanizing him. Yet, despite his telling himself this, a slow worm of dread twists inside. Corporal punishments on The Sixty are covered by executive immunity. Perhaps she would just wound him. Perhaps.
Lee looks out at the surrounding CPB HQ campus. The clean angles of glass and steel, and the mossy jungles, thick and vast, beyond. Five kilometers away he sees the rigged explosions in the Trauma Quadrant scorch the sky, wealthy vacationers burning whole manufactured villages to the ground. To the right and further out beyond the barrier reefs, an ad hoc regatta appears to be under way and the pristine blades of so many silver trimarans heel over on reach. Lee drinks in the whole panoramic view from Delacompte’s window with yearning and a twinge of despair. As if the next second might hold his last breath, he finds himself thinking on the last time he and his lover, a merchant seaman, engaged in affection—just that morning. Will his sailor truly mourn his loss? Lee has his doubts.
Delacompte smacks her hands down on either side of the weapon on her desk.
“Get me this freelancer Heinz’s file. I don’t care if she’s won a small war all by herself, I want to see it. And secure me a patch for the board of directors. Now. No doubt with the virals on the feeds they know about this disaster and already have their hackles up.”
Lee straightens with relief. “Yes, Madam Vice President! Right away.” He turns to go but freezes when he hears Delacompte snap her fingers.
“One more thing,” Delacompte says.
Lee turns. “Yes?”
Like the patient paw of an animal preparing to strike, Delacompte’s hand raises with a single finger upheld for Lee to take in. He nods and quickly scuttles out of the room.
Two and a half years on the job, a nearly perfect CPB junior executive record, and he can’t believe it.
Vincent Lee’s CPB penalty count has finally begun.
HEAVY IS THE MANTLE
After Lee leaves, Delacompte drops into her chair with a huff.
Quite desperately she wishes she could recall why the need to eliminate her former friend Koko Martstellar still plagues her, but for the life of her she can’t. Selective memory treatment; my goodness, that therapy took care of everything, didn’t it?
Years back, when Delacompte was recruited and offered her oversight position on The Sixty, one of her first measures was to sign up for the neurological erasure therapy. At the time, the elective brain scrubbing seemed prudent given her aspirations. Delacompte saw herself one day rising to a board-level position with the Custom Pleasure Bureau, and absolute memory downloads were required for final board-level clearance. True, making her way to such impressive heights was probably a long way off, but Delacompte realized both then and now that corporate advancement is a long-haul game, like chess. It’s imperative to strategize ahead and play things shrewd.
But why? Why does she want Martstellar dead? Didn’t she once serve alongside the woman? Weren’t they once friends? Martstellar’s file seems to confirm this, yet every time Delacompte even attempts to evoke a shred of insight as to why she wants Koko dead, the electrical impulses of her brain fail and betray her. Truly a frustrating and strange sensation. Sort of like casting lines out into a soft black abyss or as though a stack of warm, dark blankets has been drawn over the caged, fluttering canarie
s of her mind.
Mapped to brain cells’ degenerative DNA parameters, SMT therapy allowed Delacompte to privately and consciously select her memory erasures. The procedure required several visits to the clinic, and while she can’t remember exactly what took place, back then Delacompte likened the experience to watching short bursts of a montage. Glimpses of her past slid by like the soundless tags on the market feeds: assaults for syndicates like Klover International (wg index symbol—KLI Credit PPS/49) where she and Martstellar were part of a commando team sent to seize a rival corporation’s carbon mine. Or that long, brutal offensive for Tien Shan Initiatives (wg index symbol—TSI Credit PPS/12½) sanctioned by the Selvas Latin American Fund (wg index slaf: Total Return—17.9%). Private improvised militias clearing the way for international profit, whittling away all those who dared to stand in the way of Earth’s progressive reconstruction. Good times on Happy Street for sure, but life for Delacompte is all so different now.
Since the Custom Pleasure Board knew and respected Delacompte’s military background, it wasn’t all the wholesale bloodshed and mayhem Delacompte took part in that she fretted over. She has her suspicions the now-purged actions were something much worse. A transgression so abhorrent it would have chopped off her ambitions at the knees.
But what was it?
Damned if she knows now.
Delacompte rolls her chair forward and pulls up Martstellar’s file on her projection prompts. She stares fiercely at a three-dimensional image of Koko’s head in 360-degree rotation—a portrait, atop a translucent rectangle, gazing blankly into space. The emptiness of Martstellar’s eyes evokes nothing for Delacompte.
There must have been a good reason for all of this, but what? All Delacompte knows now is that before undergoing the SMT therapy she predated an irrevocable aide memoire to herself, and the memo’s reminder has been palpitating on her private-prompt retrievals for far too long. When word came several hours ago that Martstellar had killed those two Kongercat guests, she decided to get this tiresome chore off her desk once and for all.