“That’s a dirty trick, lady.” He looked at her sternly, shaking his head at the coy expression she was trying pull off. “Don’t you pout. I mean it,” he added, shifting over, propping his knee up over her leg. “I’m very upset with you.”
“Mmhmm.”
§
Stein woke up with a start, wondering why she was so uncomfortably warm, before remembering where she was. She groaned. A fugitive living in the ship’s lungs. She sniffed. With a very smelly co–fugitive not far away.
She rolled over to look at Bruce, who was still messing around with the little maintenance robot. In his hands, he had a funny–looking tool he was apparently trying to bind to the robot’s manipulator. “What is that?” she asked.
Bruce didn’t look up from his work. “Lube–planer.”
She nodded sleepily, watching him twist the robot’s manipulator around violently. “Okay.”
“Would you like to know what that is?”
“Thank you, I know…”
“It files down a surface and then applies a thin coat of…”
“I know what a planer does.”
“It makes stuff smooth.” He looked up. “You only had to ask.”
Stein rolled over and closed her eyes, sincerely intending to go back to sleep. This sincere intent lasted about twenty seconds before it was interrupted by Bruce. “You’re not going to be able to get back to sleep.”
“And why is that?”
“You won’t be able to sleep without knowing what I’m doing. It will eat you up.”
She rolled back over to face him. He’d seemed to have gotten the planer attached to the robot, and was now poking something into his terminal. “What I’d really like to know is where you got a lube–planer,” she asked.
“Outside,” Bruce said with a half shrug. “There’s a workbench on the other side of the plenum.”
She sat up, wordlessly conceding the point that she would not likely fall asleep again. “And you decided to risk being seen for…?”
“To do something awesome.”
“I am filled with immediate dread.” She watched him fuss away on his terminal, deep in concentration, the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, silent but for the occasional cackle. She wondered how many times he had done this before.
“There.” Bruce picked up the robot and popped a filter out of place, stepping through. Stein watched curiously as he opened the outer hatch and set the robot down on the floor of the fan room. With a flourish, he made a final tap on his terminal and stepped back. The robot aimed its new tool down at the floor and waited as the tool glowed faintly. A couple of seconds later the tool shut off, and the robot retreated a short distance. Bruce walked over to the spot on the floor and rubbed it with his finger. “Slippery!” he said, looking back at Stein triumphantly. He tapped one final command into his terminal and watched as the robot pivoted and trundled off, crossing the room and entering the maintenance crawlspace where they had emerged.
“What’s it going to do, Bruce?” Stein asked again as Bruce closed the hatch and climbed back into the plenum.
“I told you. Something awesome.” Seeing her bemused expression, he expanded his thought. “It will move around to a random spot at street level and make it ultra–slippery smooth. Repeat.”
“To what end?”
Bruce stared back at her, mock shock on his face. “For people to slip on and fall over.”
Stein sighed. “And you think that your lifelong commitment to physical comedy was worth lugging that thing with you all this way?”
“I do.”
She shook her head and lay back down on the floor, feigning sleep again. This farce lasted about a minute before she gave up and rolled onto her back. “What are we going to do, Bruce?”
She heard Bruce tapping on his terminal. “Well, Sleeping Beauty, you’ll be happy to know that Sweating Beauty has been putting some thought into just that question,” he said. “And I’ve come up with a couple options.”
“Sweaty options, I hope.”
“Invariably. The first option: Escape to Freedom. This is a tricky one, seeing as we’ve moved several blocks away from where we wanted to go, namely, Freedom.” Stein snorted, and rolled over to face him. “We could maybe make a run for it, or try going back the way we came and then making a run for it. I think we can get within about four blocks of one of the bulkhead doors before having to go outside. Might be able to cover that distance unseen.”
“Lot of cops around those doors now, I bet.”
“No bet, here,” Bruce agreed. “According to the news, they’ve dug in quite a bit since my little distraction riot.” He cocked his head to the side and tapped again on his terminal. “So, that’s if we want to escape. Or…” he began, letting that hang in the air.
“Oh, shit,” she said, shaking her head. “I hate it when you say or.”
“Orrrrrrrrrrr,” he said louder, drawing it out, his voice growing shriller. “Or we could try doing something else.”
“That sounds promisingly vague.”
Bruce looked back down at his terminal. “Remember how I punched that guy in the face and broke his shit?”
“That’s happened a few times in my presence, but I’ll assume you’re talking about the most recent occasion with the guy and the fuse torch.”
“Well, they can’t have too many of those fuse torches, can they?”
She frowned. They would have had to fabricate the fuse torches from scratch. There was no telling how easy that was, but there was no reason they would have made a lot of them. “Maybe,” she allowed.
“No maybe. Definitely. And his terminal had a map of all the disconnects. Including which ones were jammed and needed to be cut open. If I read it correctly — and I must reiterate, I was doing this while sweating extremely heavily — they only had three or four fuse torches.”
“So, what?”
“Well, we broke one of them. That’s got to slow them down. Delay them from doing Split Plot again.”
“I never agreed to calling it that.”
He ignored her objection and held up his terminal. “And we know where they’re going. So option two: Escape to Destruction. We intercept the last cutting teams. And break their shit.” He watched her carefully for a moment before shrugging. “Or we don’t. We run. Or nap. You look like you want another nap.”
Stein sighed, seeing what he was getting at. “I don’t want to run.”
Bruce directed a long, thoughtful gaze at her. “Are you sure? Because you didn’t seem so sure before.”
“Before,” she echoed. “Before I got shot in the face. Before I got kicked in the face for resisting arrest.” She rubbed one of her still fading bruises. “After? Yeah, maybe I’ve got my fur up a bit.”
She crawled across the floor of the plenum to Bruce, taking the terminal from his hands and examining the map. She groaned. “There’s like a hundred of them.”
“You’re not reading it right, sleepy.” Bruce poked at the map, toggling another layer, showing more information on the various disconnects. “Some of them are flagged, see? These ones are functional. These ones jammed but have already been cut. And these ones still need to be cut through.”
“That still leaves like thirty. You want to check all of them?”
“Of course not.” He toggled another layer on the map. “They’ve got one team cutting this set in the upper–decks here. That’s only twelve. And honestly? We’re bound to get caught and killed long before we check all of those,” he said with a grin. “Really, checking them all is the worst case scenario.”
§
Kinsella stepped out to meet the public, this time thankfully to the sound of applause. He crossed the stage to the grinning idiot and warmly shook her hand before sitting down on the couch. He crossed his legs and looked important. “Thanks for coming, Mayor,” the idiot said.
Kinsella wondered if she had any idea of the amount that Kinsella had paid to be there. “I can always
make time for you…here…,” Kinsella said, his voice trailing off as he tried to dredge up the idiot’s name.
“Great, great.” A big empty smile. “So, what’s going on lately Mister Mayor? What’s all this coup business we’re hearing about?”
“Well, Captain Helot has staged a coup and stolen control of the ship.”
“Now, hold on…” The idiot held up a finger and looked up at the lights, straining her brain mightily. “I thought it was you who was couping Helot?”
Kinsella laughed lightly. “It’s a common misunderstanding. You see a coup is when the army takes over the government. And I certainly don’t have an army.” He held up his hands innocently, showing his lack of armies. “That’s clearly what Helot is doing, not me.” A massive round of applause burst out from the gathered audience. Kinsella had paid more for that, but even without seeing the post–interview polls, he could tell it was worth it.
“And that would explain why they’re doing such bad things?” the idiot asked. “Those awful shootings outside the anti–terrorism zone. And those attacks on the businesses along Europe–2?”
“That’s right. It was awful, wasn’t it?” Kinsella shook his head compassionately.
One of the screens on the side of the studio began replaying footage of the incident. A half–dozen security officers, kicking in the stalls of a pornography vendor. That particular stretch of Europe–2 did a healthy trade catering to the kind of pervert who got a thrill from being seen in public being a pervert. “Why would they beat up a simple, honest freak like that, I wonder?” the idiot said, probably legitimately wondering.
On the screen, the security officers continued to demolish storefronts and rough up passersby. “This is a coup!” one of them shouted. “Give us all your belongings!”
“You’ll have to ask Helot, I’m afraid,” Kinsella replied. “Maybe his thugs need that material to boost morale? Maybe they need pornography to fuel their fevered dreams of a totalitarian, porno–centric state? It’s all possible.”
“I wonder,” the idiot said, still doing just that. “Isn’t that your bodyguard there?” She pointed at the screen. Kinsella’s toes clenched.
“I don’t think so.”
“No, it is. Can we get a zoom on that?” the idiot asked. Quickly — too quickly Kinsella realized — the footage paused, rewound and zoomed in on one of the security officers in the feed. The frame settled on a close up of Angry Gus, one of Kinsella’s large men, who had not earned his name because of his great intelligence.
The feed quickly switched to Angry Gus looking confused and angry backstage. The idiot looked at Kinsella and smiled. A flicker in the corner of her mouth — Helot had bought her first. “Let’s get a side by side,” she said, the feed doing that a fraction of a second later. They had probably rehearsed it.
“Mayor, did you dress up your goons in security outfits and send them to tear up the skin–rag–district? Why? Is this part of your coup business?”
Kinsella swallowed. “The captain has clearly been sending security spies to pose as my bodyguards. This is a terrible violation of…the identity theft laws. We can add it to the list of the crimes he’s carried out.”
“Really? Because that man has worked for you for quite some time.” The feed displayed a series of dated photos of Kinsella at various public events over the past decade, all of them featuring Angry Gus in the background, looking angry.
“This is appalling. The worst case of identity theft I’ve ever seen,” Kinsella said, shaking his head. “I ask you…as the host of this show, have you ever seen such a violation of one man’s rights?” Kinsella swallowed. They don’t have to believe you for the right reasons. Believing you for the wrong ones works just fine, too.
“Hmmm,” the idiot said. “Hmmmmmmmmm,” she added. Kinsella nodded at her encouragingly. Their trap was slipping. They had rehearsed everything up to this point, but they hadn’t rehearsed him barreling through it so brazenly.
“I’m really impressed,” Kinsella said, seeing the out, “at the level of journalism and…commitment to public truthbringingness that this show has displayed — and always displayed — in exposing the captain’s plot like this. Identity theft is a very serious crime, and your ability to bring this to light is just…really, really good.” Kinsella sat back in his chair and took a breath. “Nice work.”
“Thank you!” the idiot said, beaming. She blinked, looking up at the floor director’s frantic signals. “Thank you so much, Mayor Kinsella!”
“My pleasure.” Kinsella smiled broadly, right at the floor director, whose face was buried in his hands. “If I could add one thing,” he continued, “I’d say that if people are tired of all of these coups we seem to be having, and the identity theft, and even this case of security officers beating up innocent pornography users…” He paused for effect, enjoying the moment. He hadn’t felt this excited about lying in years. “Then they should come on down to the public arena. We’re getting a big old group of like–minded people together, and we’re going to have a hell of a fun time kicking old Helot out on his ear.” He stood up, wanting for all the world to dance back and forth from foot to foot like a prize fighter. “I cannot tell you people how much fun this is going to be. There’s going to be guns, and justice, and guaranteed good times! And guns. Guns for all!” Big smile now, the biggest he had. “So, come on down folks. You won’t regret it.” He pointed his finger at the camera sensor in the shape of a gun. Then fired.
§
Hogg wrestled another manikin into place on a rolling chair. This was deeply, fundamentally, unhappy work, and repetition had not made it any more bearable. They had needed something to serve for target practice as part of Kinsella’s scheme to turn an army of bakers into something that resembled a fighting force. This close to the arena, the epicenter of the ship’s athletics district, there had been one obvious source for targets, however distasteful they might be. But as soon as Kinsella had heard the idea, he had flipped out, and now Hogg was tasked with moving a pile of training manikins from the ship’s competitive lovemaking league up and into wheeled chairs.
From the far side of the stack of manikins, another beast with two backs approached, stumbling towards a chair. Hogg watched it separate, the half that looked like Linze dropping the half that looked like a manikin clumsily into the chair, where it slid off to the ground, coming to rest in what Hogg recognized as a dismount with a very high degree of difficulty. “Fuck this,” Linze said.
With Kinsella’s wary approval, Hogg had engaged some of his former unit to help with the training. Croutl and Linze had been the only takers, having deduced more or less the same thing about their former employer that Hogg had. Also, Hogg hadn’t asked any of the others in his squad. Only the best of Team Reject for him.
Linze hoisted her manikin back up into its chair, made sure it was going to stay in place this time, then planted a boot in its crotch and sent it wheeling across the arena. “Why’d I agree to help with this again?”
“Because you think our mayor is an honest, trustworthy man, worthy of our respect and lives?” Hogg suggested. Linze snorted, and he allowed himself a small grin. Bizarrely, with every sex dummy he handled, he was growing more convinced he was doing the right thing. Whatever oily qualities the mayor had, he certainly sounded like he was making sense when Hogg talked to him face–to–face. And Thorias had stopped giving him orders entirely. Although without any terminal — the mayor still hadn’t given that back — Hogg supposed he wouldn’t know if there had been any orders. Linze and Croutl had had to give their terminals up to Kinsella’s goons as well, but that hadn’t taken much convincing.
Hogg looked up to see his new oily boss enter the arena. A crew of idiots flocked around him, making a farce of their attempts to protect him from imaginary dangers — Hogg hadn’t seen a security officer north of the barricades since the riot.
Kinsella and his flock gathered around a large crate at the far end of the arena. It had been delivered a few ho
urs earlier by a different selection of idiots, though they wouldn’t tell Hogg what was in it. While two of his larger idiots fumbled with the crate’s latches, Kinsella looked up and waved at Hogg.
“Think he wants us to go over there?” Linze asked. “Or to stay away?”
“I can’t tell what his waves mean yet,” Hogg said.
“Hogg!” Kinsella yelled across the empty floor. “Get over here.”
“Well, now you do.”
Hogg shook his head. “Yeah, but now I forgot what the wave looked like.”
Together they crossed the floor, watching as the lid of the crate was finally pried off. Kinsella reached into the crate and withdrew a pistol, his mouth forming an O shape as he stroked the gun. “What do you think?” he asked flipping the gun recklessly at Hogg. Hogg’s eyes widened, and he side–stepped it, letting the pistol sail past and clatter to the ground behind him. Silence from the idiots as they evaluated whether that was a smart or cowardly thing to do. Hogg ignored them, bending down to retrieve the weapon.
“They’re not toys,” he said, examining it. “Sir.” He turned the pistol over in his hands, nose wrinkling at the hot pink plastic they had molded it in. “Are they?” He turned, aimed at one of the closer training dummies, and fired. A burst of particles sailed across the arena, impacting the dummy’s left shoulder, knocking it off its chair.
“Works though, don’t it?” Kinsella said. High–fives amongst the idiots, as they began collecting weapons for themselves.
“Spread’s a bit wide,” Linze said, coming up beside Hogg.
Hogg looked at the focusing ring at the end of the barrel. “Not too bad, though. It’ll work.” He cast a glance back at the idiots, then grabbed Linze by the shoulder, tugging her out of the line of fire of the impromptu target practice session that was starting to develop.
A furious cascade of shots erupted, sailing across the arena, leaving the training dummies almost completely unharmed. This didn’t bother the goons at all, amused by the simple joy of trigger pulling. But Kinsella seemed to notice and directed a meaningful look at Hogg. Hogg stroked his chin thoughtfully, watching the incompetence unfolding around him.
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