by Kieran Shea
“There’s never been a need for defenses so there are none.”
It’s as though someone spilled a tall glass of ice water on Koko’s retort gauge, burnt her toast, and dropped a sack of dead cats in her mental sink. Ten slow seconds later, she blinks once and then responds.
“None at all?”
“The specifics are much too intricate to get into now, but as a Special Economic Zone, let’s just say nothing ever really bothers us here.”
“But you’ve got walls.”
“The walls were here previously. Two centuries ago when the republic tanked, this place was crudely designed to be a small township reservoir. Excellent bones. We customized the outer construction to fit our needs and had the compound filled in with enriched, contaminate-resistant—”
Koko holds up a hand. “You know what? Stop. Just stop because the colossal shit I’m not giving right now might start filling this room. I want out of here as soon as possible, understand? The next available transport when Flynn is stable.”
Sébastien gets up from the desk. “That may take some time to arrange, but very well.” He moves for the open door. “You know, it’s been said that people are quick to judge others in order not to be judged themselves. Maybe you should think about that some. Come, Gammy.”
Dutifully, Gammy pushes up and after giving Koko a quick sniff she trails after her master. When the two reach the open door Koko whistles and, in sync, Gammy and Sébastien turn.
“Yes?” Sébastien asks.
“Earlier when your guys brought us back from the sub, besides Flynn we were hauling along a dead body. Some kid.”
Sébastien looks down at Gammy. Patting her head, he then carefully pokers up his gaze.
“Yeah,” Koko continues, “if this place is so peachy, what was her deal, huh? Did she wise up and try to get out while she still had a fighting chance?”
Sébastien purses his lips. “That, I’m afraid, was an accident.”
Koko sneers. “Right. Huge storm, a tra-la-la-la-la hike along the cliffs, an accident.”
Sébastien tosses his ponytail. “Since you’re electing not to be forthcoming about your plight, and we’re helping your friend Flynn heal, perhaps it’d be best right now if you simply respect our grief. Come, Gammy.”
And with that the two depart, and Sébastien firmly closes the door.
* * *
The second after the door shuts, Koko shimmies out of the blanket and sheets wrapped around her and sawmills the rest of the food on the tray. The cheese, bread, and all of the other potently sweet fruit—she even wolfs down the cores, including the one she casually tossed on the floor earlier, and the apple core Sébastien left behind on the desk. Brooding and gulping cool slugs of water from the carafe, she feels her strength coming back in slow waves. Koko then picks up the pear that fell on the floor and sticks it in her mouth.
Nine hundred kilometers give or take?
Damn, the storm blew the sub so far off course from her intentional heading, and now it seems it’s totaled. Not only that, but they re-activated the tracking transponder which makes Koko wonder what, if any, additional electronics they may have retrieved from the vessel and what onboard files they might have looked at. It’s a safe bet Sébastien and his doctor chum know all about her and Flynn by now or will soon: where they’ve come from and where they were headed. And none of this information sits well with her at all. All of this trying to be hospitable could be some elaborate ruse while they make contact with the CPB and The Sixty.
Sébastien’s big show of the open door—What, was that some kind of a test as well? Does he actually think she’d even think of taking off without Flynn? Deeper personal emotions with Flynn aside, a fragment of her old private military code of conduct flips past Koko’s thoughts—
Never abandon your wounded…
Fuckin-a right, so now is certainly not the time for Koko to sit idle. The clock is ticking, and she needs to get hopping.
After finishing off the pear from the floor she snaps out the folded clothes that Sébastien brought. A pale brown kurta-like top, just like the one he was wearing, tough canvas pants, two pairs of socks, and two single-piece Farmer John undergarments with functional snaps at the crotch. Koko runs the tips of her fingers along the seams and inspects the hems closely, searching for hidden software. The clothes appear clean. She lifts the material to her nose. Real clean. Targeting another whiff at her armpits, Koko frowns. Unlike her.
Checking the toiletries, Koko finds the items are basic. Four expandable chamois towels, a thick-toothed plastic comb, dental cleansers, and the usual pain-in-the-neck assemblage of feminine necessities. Unfortunately, Koko sees there isn’t a razor in the supplies. Gray-haired bastard destroying her weapons and the first-aid kit laser scalpels. So much for trust.
Later, dressed in her new clothes (Koko opts to skip the undergarment—yuck), she retrieves her bug-out backpacks from outside the door in the hall. When she checks her wallet and counts out the credits, she finds that none are missing and that the NBC suits, while damp, are still intact. Koko pockets her credits, stuffs the suits back inside the backpacks, and tosses them by the bed.
It’s time for a little Koko recon.
A QUICK SNOOP AT THE SPD&K AND SEC FIVE
In the tedious frippery of Standard, Poor, Ding & Kwong’s Worldwide Register of Corporations, Syndicates, and Multinationals, Sébastien’s former employer, Pharma Impetus Worldwide Industries, a.k.a. PIWI is listed as such:
PHARMA IMPETUS WORLDWIDE INDUSTRIES, LTD. – PIWI
PIWI Platz. 3426-A, Kastrup, Denmark 2787 FC – 09087655-75A.21
<>Entry: 1490;5643 – Volume 2, Silo 96553-A-87021 Current Geo Cycle Edition.
Chrm—Sutherland Vongas, III, Dep Chrm—Myrna Ngai Chen, Chief Exec Officer—Eliahu Solganik, Sr Exec V-P—Minnie Hoffenstern, Exec V-P—Rafael Mosier, Sr V-P (Global Mktg)—Mohammed Krantz, Sr V-P (Cor Devel)—Rocky Sinohara, Sr V-P (Engr)—Junxiong Gurkin, Sr V-P (Strat Bus Devel & Nat Rel)—Bashir Ali, Sr V-P (Cor Resources) Diedre Litwin.
Revenue: Over 80.00 bil world credit units
Market Saturation: 97.6%
Employees: 8,600-9000
WG INDEX TICKER – PIWI;
Primary Bank(s)—HICH, Credezbank AG, Landesbank Groupe;
Primary Legal Firm—Wolff, Deloitte & Tupper, LLP;
Defense/Acquisition/Risk— CLASSIFIED
Management Representation— CLASSIFIED
PRODUCTS: Adv. pharmaceutical technologies, diversified.
Ref. 45463278-90934231
As for Koko’s aforementioned private military COC, Koko’s former handlers, Global Resource/Syndicate Deployment Initiatives succinctly defines the code of conduct as follows:
SECTION 1. – [INSERT SOLDIER’S NAME], you have been bred, elected for enlistment, and have trained to your fullest potential. As such, henceforth, your fellow operatives in the field (whatever their origin, politics, or manner) should now be considered extensions of your own self. While contracts, business, and political objectives may fluctuate with field assignments, this extended kinship demands you demonstrate respect and solidarity within the frameworks of rank.
SECTION 2. – Your contractual obligations are deferential to the work statements, timelines, and project scopes of your employer(s) missions and/or assignments until your incapacitation, disciplinary actions, and/or death. Small or large, all operations will be carried out to their defined ends and, if need be, at the risk of your own life. Discipline, ruthlessness, and courage in the face of hardships—these are your strengths.
SECTION 3 – As you are now an elite military contractor/soldier, it is mandatory that you maintain your physical strength and combat preparedness at all times. Your most precious commodities are your skills, your powers of acute observation, and whatever weapons are at hand.
And, of course, last but not least…
SECTION 4. – You act with stealth and resolute purpose. You never surrender your dead. You never abandon you
r wounded. And under no circumstances do you ever, ever relinquish your weapons.
WAS SHE HIS DREAMY LITTLE ROCK N’ ROLL? (KIND OF)
After his vexing call on Koko, Sébastien returns with Gammy to his quarters. He then continues to pull together and examine all the assimilated research downloaded from resources worldwide, along with the extracted and analyzed information pulled from the acquired submarine electronics. It takes him some time, but he now feels he has a better bead on Koko and Flynn. Sadly, the lot verifies what Dr. Corella already suspected.
The two are in major hot water and definitely on the run.
All together it was rudimentary to connect the dots. The wrecked submarine was part of a fleet owned by the massive entertainment syndicate known as the Custom Pleasure Bureau. Of late, the Trang Xi Class unit had been used for underwater maintenance operations on the notorious resort archipelago known as The Sixty Islands. Several days prior, the CPB and the SI had filed a claim with their indemnification arbiters asserting that a vessel matching the sub’s description had experienced an onboard electrical fire and subsequent implosion during a deep-water dive. A quick crosscheck of the CPB’s less than adequately protected insurance companies’ mainframes revealed that both Koko and Flynn had been employed on The Sixty Islands and that they’d perished in the wreck.
Odd.
Why didn’t the CPB and The Sixty just report the submarine stolen?
Of course it would be a small challenge to orchestrate a fraudulent wreck site, especially at the claim’s stated depth, but Sébastien wasn’t so naïve to assume insurance assessors could not be bought, not with the financial resources at the CPB’s disposal. In his previous luminous career at PIWI, Sébastien had been privy to the ingenious sorceries involved in public relations spins. If matters were suitably embarrassing perhaps the CPB meant to extract their retribution off the books. The idea of contacting the CPB briefly crosses his mind, but of course then he remembers the TAM research.
Koko’s interest in the northern borders, Flynn’s wound, a covered-up theft, a subsequent bogus insurance claim, coupled with Koko’s prickly evasiveness—all of it suggests deeper problems.
The secondary task of finding and then sifting through Flynn’s rather boring background turned out to be rather painless. Sébastien’s systems confirmed Flynn, a former security deputy aboard the Second Free Zone sky barge known as Alaungpaya, opted out of his duties because of a Depressus diagnosis, just as Dr. Corella’s blood work indicated. It’s strange that Flynn never elected to follow through with his scheduled group suicide (something which nearly all the Depressus-afflicted commit to by contract), and the timeline of his predetermined commitment intersects and overlaps with some violent incidents aboard Alaungpaya. Intriguing stuff. Sébastien dwells on it and imagines that Koko was probably involved in some way.
In contrast, Koko’s background was a bit more challenging to extrapolate. It took Sébastien’s systems over an hour to hack into the intricate encrypted databases of three separate corporate military service providers until they hit upon a declassified Global Resource/Syndicate Deployment Initiatives file. Examining the data, Sébastien was horrified by Koko’s gory career highlights: daring operations strewn across the planet with demonstrated skills at economic espionage and long-term combat operations. Never advancing much, Koko Martstellar apparently left her mercenary work to take a position on The Sixty Islands as a saloon and brothel operator, not once but twice.
Saloon and brothel operator?
So how did she partner up with Flynn? Their backgrounds were so drastically different. Were they or are they lovers, as Dr. Corella suggested? God, did it even matter?
Whatever the case, after the catastrophic incidents aboard Alaungpaya, both Koko and Flynn ended up on The Sixty Islands so the question is, what happened? What exactly prompted them to abscond with a submarine? All of the sybaritic violence on the resort is supposed to be simulated, but Flynn was shot. What other events had forced the two of them to do something so dangerous?
Sébastien time-tags and then saves all of his active analytics before terminating the blue-tinted arrays of his systems’ projection screens and slowly thumbs his tired eyes.
Perhaps Dr. Corella is right. Perhaps the best way to keep handling Koko for now is to be hospitable and keep up the face. After all, Koko has just made it plain that her intentions are to move on and leave the Commonage as quickly as possible. Sébastien then remembers talking to Dr. Corella about starting Flynn on TAM to further whet the interests of his pharmaceutical contacts. Best to get on that, he thinks, so he opens a boilerplate document and spends a half hour spinning dispatches to those in the industry who have already expressed an ambiguous curiosity about some of his earlier communications. Indeed, previously, Sébastien shrewdly left out specifics as to what he and Dr. Corella have been working on (revealing your ideas and findings early in the pharmaceutical industry is like unzipping your own fly and having relations with a nest of fire ants), but since the project is so close to completion, now might be the suitable time to reveal a tiny bit more. With each message Sébastien makes sure to add the optimistic lines, “While present exploratory efforts are now in the advanced stage and nearing completion, I am happy to report there may be applications for distressed Second Free Zone populations. Naturally, I look forward to sharing these new findings with you soon.”
Tactful. And just enough.
Once his dispatches are away, Sébastien then quickly types a message to Dr. Corella.
[MESSAGE START]
M/: Status/F?
Moments later comes a reply.
C/: Conscious. Recovery prognosis good. First TAM treatment initiated per previous disc. Status/K?
M/: KUTF.
C/: ?
M/: Keeping up the face.
C:/: Ah.
M/: K agitated of course, and some additional minor concerns.
C/: Elaborate.
M/: K/F originated from Custom Pleasure Bureau resort—The Sixty Islands. Stolen craft and circumstances cloudy. CPB, however, avows submarine destroyed @ The SI and K/F listed as killed. Insurance claim has been filed w/ CPB arbitrators.
A short pause and Sébastien waits for a response.
C/: Verified? Really, the CPB?
M/: Confirmed. Cover-up likely.
C/: Do we cease TAM w/ F?
M/: Negative. Note—if possible keep K/F separated.
C/: Separation will be difficult.
M/: Nuance req. Expect K but try. Eventual evac. imperative for K and present evaluation is she is of independent orientation. TAM/Depressus opportunity too good to pass up. Cont. observations, etc. Note—brief comms to contacts regarding SFZ populations sent. Ambiguous phrasing but w/ TAM proj. nearing completion, preemptive luring appropriate.
C/: Any resp. frm contacts yet?
M/: No, but I’ll keep you posted.
[MESSAGE END]
Sébastien signs off, stretches, and then looks toward his bedroom. Gammy is curled up on his unmade bed, so he blows a short two-count whistle, and the synthetic jumps down. As Gammy parades over and attempts to curl beneath his desk, Sébastien moves his chair back and rubs a boot along her ribs. Gammy lets out a contented blast of air from her dark nostrils and lies down. After a moment a bleak pall of sadness swells in Sébastien’s throat.
Kumari…
So tragic and such a calamitous loss. He’d only shown the girl kindness, done his best to guide her, and this is how she chose to repay him? By hacking into his systems, running away, and attempting to destroy what he and Dr. Corella have sacrificed to build?
While admittedly Sébastien at first appreciated the girl solely for her aptitude, later on, he is pained to confess, it was Kumari’s maturing exquisiteness that stirred something unassailably darker within him. Sébastien winces at the very thought of it. God, it wasn’t as if he was some sex fiend or Nabokovian pervert; he knew such thoughts were wrong, implicitly, but still, from time to time he entertained other
possibilities shamefully. If he were still back in the rest of the world, pursuing such corrupt inroads with any growing young girl, particularly if he didn’t waste the remaining levels of his wealth, some may nary bat an eye. He knew of powerful people, men and women alike, who courted lovers with appalling age differences (typically vapid models or media darlings), but Sébastien’s intentions were never like that at all. No, he was cleverer than that and had the stamina and judiciousness to wait. Still, people do make assumptions, and the prospect of bearing the corrosive burden of seedy suspicion from Dr. Corella makes him queasy—after all didn’t he say something to that effect?
If you weren’t so enamored and taken with the girl’s intellect…
Sébastien replays some of Kumari and his times together. He questions whether he ever stepped over the line and let his more mischievous affections show. Encouraging light hugs and playful touches of camaraderie, of course, but did he ever present the rawer of his sentiments, even obliquely? God—women have a sixth sense about such things. Something suspicious misinterpreted could’ve set the poor girl off. Unspoken lechery and vile innuendos, equal parts decrepit and sexually hideous, did his unspeakable weakness for her motivate Kumari to pry into his systems and uncover the TAM research?
No. Sébastien definitely channeled his urges into her excessive tutoring, but damn it, he should have known better. The girl was a genius.
Climbing to his feet, Sébastien picks up the needle drive from his desk and then tosses it on the floor. With a quick succession of heel stamps, he smashes it to pieces and kicks the shards across the room. Gammy stretches, looks at him quizzically, and then barks.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
THE TRICK AND GRUM SHOW
Meanwhile, three hundred meters outside the Commonage walls, two de-civs—Trick and Grum—conceal themselves in a thick stand of trees.
With small, obdurate eyes, Trick scrutinizes the Commonage’s whitewashed walls. The smoky stench of campfire is strong on the morning breeze, and Grum drops a hand on Trick’s shoulder.