Rebel (The United Federation Marine Corps)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Yeah, Michi,” Cheri’s voice came over the line. “What’s up?”

  “I’m sort of in a bind here. My folks kicked me out of the house,” she told Cheri, the fact that it was she that had stormed out by choice glossed over. “Can you put me up for a few days?”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line, then a hesitant, “Oh, Michi-girl, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. We’re under pretty heavy surveillance now, what with all the recent troubles, and you’re still pretty clean of all the dirt. I think you staying with me now could cause some complications. You’re sure you were kicked out? Your dad’s just not angry for the moment?”

  “No, I think it’s permanent. He told me never to come back.”

  “What did you do? I’ve never met him, but Franz seemed to think he was pretty even-tempered, even if a bit conservative.”

  “Oh, it’s a long story, but really, Cheri, I need someplace. I’m willing to take any heat that comes along with it,” Michi said.

  “It’s not just you, Michi. Me, too. I’ve got to keep my nose clean. Bringing in the fiancé of Franz sends a pretty powerful message, one I’m really not anxious to send right now. They are still making random arrests over the jack murder, and I don’t want to draw any more attention to me.”

  That took Michi aback. She and Cheri had gotten close over the last few weeks, and she had fully expected being able to crash at her place until she figured things out.

  “You really have no place to go?” Cheri asked her.

  “No place. Nada,” she answered.

  “OK, wait for a few minutes. I have an idea, but I need to check first. I’ll call you back in five.”

  Michi broke the connection, none too pleased that the call hadn’t gone as expected. She was in front of a Seven, so she went in to grab a Coke. It wasn’t until she started to walk out that she wondered if her credit had been cut off as well. However, no alarms sounded as she walked through the sensors. The familiar buzz of a transaction relieved her. She pulled out her PA and checked.

  Well, it wasn’t totally normal. Michi had been on the family line of credit, able to charge pretty much whatever she wanted. Now, she had been shunted aside to a personal line with a limit of 50 credits per month. She knew that many people managed to survive on that, but she wasn’t sure how they did it.

  Her PA chimed as she took a swallow of the Coke, and she snorted out a stream of the drink as she grabbed the PA and opened the call.

  “Michi, I’ve got a place for you. Do you know the Brown Bean on Gasperson?”

  “Yeah, I know it.”

  “OK, I want you to go there. First, let me see what you’ve got on,” she said.

  Michi held out her PA and tilted it up and down so Cheri could see her.

  “OK, fine. I see what you’re wearing. Go to the Brown Bean, order a latte, and sit wherever you can. Someone in an orange jumpsuit will come and sit with you. If you both hit it off, you can shack up with her for awhile.”

  “What’s with all the secret agent stuff? You’re not coming?”

  “No. We’ve got five jacks sitting outside right now. Hell, they’ve probably broken the scramble on this call, but no use making it any easier for them. Better you go alone without me. Let me know what happens, though.”

  Michi was still a little miffed. She had expected Cheri to welcome her with open arms. Instead, she was being sent to meet someone whose name she didn’t even know. But beggars not being choosers and all, as the old saying went. She drained the Coke, threw the can in the bin, and started the walk to Gasperson.

  Twenty minutes later, she walked in the door of the Brown Bean, the aromas assaulting her nose. She wondered if she really had to get a latte, but taking no chances, she placed her order. She grimaced at the 1.2 credit charge. That would never have fazed her before, but now, she knew she had to make some adjustments, at least until she could get her full credit line restored.

  There was no one in an orange jumpsuit, so she found an empty table by the front window and settled in to wait. It was almost another 20 minutes before Miss Jumpsuit arrived. Orange was an understatement. It had multiple shades of orange and even some reds that somehow revolved around themselves along her arms and legs, giving the impression of fire. This girl was only 1.4 or 1.5 meters tall, and she couldn’t have weighed more than 40 kg, but she was obviously not afraid to make a fashion statement. She got in line and ordered her drink, then looked around as if trying to find a seat.

  She slowly made her way to Michi, pointed at the empty seat, and asked, “This seat taken?”

  “Please,” Michi said, trying to act nonchalant.

  The girl took a sip, and without looking at Michi, said, “Baggy yellow sweats, an old faded grey cozy, ratty blue jump-ups. You must be Michiko. I’m Tamara, and Cheri tells me I need to give you a place to stay. So we might as well get at it.”

  She stood up and stared at Michi, her brilliant blue eyes barely above Michi’s sitting eye level.

  “Well, you coming?”

  Michi didn’t know what else to do, so she got up and followed Miss Jumpsuit, Tamara, out of the Brown Bean.

  Chapter 8

  “That’s just not good enough,” Michi said in exasperation.

  “Calm down, Michi,” Cheri told her. “We really are working on this.”

  “It seems to me that you’re just sitting here waiting for the company to make its final report.”

  “Michiko, I want to assure you that we are doing all we can,” Hokkam said.

  Yeah, like you told Franz to instigate a strike, she thought.

  “I loved Franz as a son, and I’m devastated about what happened. Every word I said at his funeral was true, and I will not rest until we uncover the truth. But you don’t know how the game is played—”

  “I can assure you that this is not a game,” Michi snapped.

  “No, of course not. Sorry, poor choice of words. What I mean is that you don’t know how we deal with the company or the city offices. We can’t just bull in. It takes finesse. We’ve already filed a protest with the city. We had a valid permit, so technically, the jacks had to protect us, and they didn’t. So we will have a legal argument, but we have to wait first for the initial report. Once we see it, Su will go over it with a fine-tooth comb so we can choose our next course of action.”

  Tian Su was the chapter advocate and a member of the board. By reputation alone, Michi knew that if there was a legal opening that could be exploited, Su would find it.

  “So you see, we are working on it. Please have some patience. Things are heating up, and if it looks like we’re addressing those other issues right now, rest assured that we have not forgotten Franz. How could we?” Cheri asked.

  Michi looked over at Rosario Del Mare, the chapter security chief. He was an easy person to blame as he was in charge of keeping the protestors safe. Rosario seemed to sense her blame, and his defenses were up. He hadn’t said a word during the meeting but rather glared at her.

  Kuso kurae[7], ye boaby, she thought, combining curse words from both sides of the family tree for greater effect. If you would’ve done your job, my Franz would still be here, so take your glare and up your arse with it.

  She looked at the three chapter board members. They were cowards, all of them, professing to fight for justice, but afraid of the big, bad company. She was going to get nothing done here. If she wanted vengeance—more vengeance, that is—it would be up to her.

  She stood up, cutting the meeting short. She almost sat right back down when all three let their relief show on their faces, but she realized that would do absolutely nothing. Cheri and Hokkam kissed her cheek goodbye, and Michi turned and stalked out of the office.

  Michi had already extracted a degree of vengeance. She really hadn’t intended to kill anyone, even if she had accepted it now as an unintentional consequence. It was something she was almost totally at ease with, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to kill anyone else. If she were going to take
any further action, she would have to figure out what would hurt the company most, and then how she could get that done.

  Chapter 9

  Michi took a sniff of the tuna casserole. It was one of Talla’s recipes, a real recipe, with real cooking, not just punching something into the fabricator. Michi was far from a domestic goddess, but frankly, she was going a little stir-crazy in Tamara’s apartment. She had been Tamara’s guest for two weeks: she had cleaned the condo five times, and this was her third attempt at manual cooking.

  It wasn’t Tamara who was the problem. Her new roommate was funny, intelligent, and a great companion. It was just the being cooped up, away from school and her friends, that ate at her. She had gone to the WRP several more times, but the bustle there as the staff considered their reactions to the ever-increasing pressure being levied by the jacks pointedly bypassed her. They didn’t have much time for a girl who hadn’t even been a member, but was merely a girlfriend of a member.

  The casserole smelled good, at least, much better than her attempt at spaghetti puttanesca the night before. Tamara had tried to dutifully eat it, but after two bites, both girls had broken out into peals of laughter before dumping the sodden mess in the recycler. They’d dialed up breaded cutlets and a salad on the fabricator and opened a bottle of malbec instead.

  Michi glanced at the old-fashioned cuckoo clock above the holo. Tamara would be home in another ten or fifteen minutes. She placed the casserole on the table so it would cool, then started to rush to the shower to clean up. She had stripped off her sweat top when she had to stop.

  What am I doing? she thought. We’re not married!

  She shook her head as she grabbed the dirty top and pulled it back on. She must be going crazy. Even with Franz, Michi was far from meek and submissive. She resisted giving her pits a sniff. Tamara was just going to have to accept her, rank or not.

  She plopped down on the overstuffed red couch and asked the house PA to turn on the news. The lead story was the four “hoodlums” who had been arrested for “civil disobedience” the day before. The teenagers had been taunting the jacks, and while it wasn’t reported on the news, several jacks had beaten them senseless.

  Michi felt a slight twinge of guilt, one she quickly suppressed. She knew she had instigated the current round of unrest when she killed that jack. She hadn’t really intended to kill anyone, merely administer a beating, and despite the thrill she had felt at the time, it was still gnawing at her. She wished she could confide in someone. She had almost brought it up to Cheri two days before at the WRP, but Cheri was up to her ass in alligators, so Michi just let it lie.

  “Hey there, roomie!” Tamara said as she came in the door. “Um, something actually smells good. You order take out this time?”

  “Very funny, haha. I made it, and this time, you’re going to love it.”

  “You sure? Cooking doesn’t seem to be your forte, girl.”

  Tamara Veal was a Class One employee of the company, a free citizen. She had been born on the planet to two indentureds, and her parents were still under the yoke, but that status was not something that could be inherited. The courts had upheld that for the last 70 years, and it was accepted by even the most conservative corporation now.

  Tamara still worked for PI, though. She was a component engineer working on QC for the organics used in a series of Propitious Interstellar’s products. The job paid adequately, enough for her to pay for the condo and make payments on her parent’s debt (which was twice as large now as when they’d signed their contracts).

  Michi had been surprised at how close she had become to Tamara. Michi didn’t make many female friends, and in many ways, Tamara was so very different than her. Petite, hard-working, and very fashion conscious, she seemed to be a polar opposite of the large, dress-in-whatever Michi. However, they shared a warped and wicked sense of humor, and Michi thoroughly enjoyed her company.

  Tamara shucked her company overalls, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Wearing only a white tank and panties, Michi could see her myriad of tattoos. These were not temporary tats. They were done the old-fashioned way with ancient tattoo guns and covered almost all of her skin that was hidden by her work clothes. Michi had been shocked the first time she saw them, but she was also fascinated and wanted to examine them in more detail, but so far, she acted as if the tattoos were nothing out of the ordinary. Someday, though, she was going to get the background on all that skin art.

  The two roommates bypassed the table, instead sitting down on the couch with the casserole between them, each digging in with a spoon. They finished up the previous night’s malbec while watching a game show. Michi was smart, and she knew most of the answers to the questions, but the quicker Tamara usually beat her to the punch.

  When the host asked the three contestants for the name of the first cloned dinosaur, Michi launched into the attack, jumping on Tamara with a pillow, smothering the smaller girl so Michi could yell out “Annabelle!”

  Tamara struggled underneath Michi, but the smaller girl had no chance. Finally Michi let her up.

  “You cheated!” Tamara yelled out. “And you spilled the food!” she added, taking a small handful of the spilled tuna casserole from the seat of the couch and flicking it a Michi.

  “So sue me. I got the answer right, didn’t I?”

  “You know what they say? Payback’s a motherfucker,” Tamara said, licking the tuna residue off her fingers.

  Michi was brought up in the Clan, and good Clan girls just didn’t curse. She was somewhat fascinated at both how easily Tamara swore as well as her prodigious library of profanity.

  “Hey, pass me the wine,” Tamara told Michi.

  “Sorry, all out,” Michi said, holding the wine bottle upside down. “You got any more?”

  “We drank it all? Oh well. Have you ever had Snow Wine?” she asked.

  “Snow Wine? Never heard of it,” Michi said, wiping the bit of casserole Tamara had flicked at her off of her face.

  “Oh, you’ve got to try it. Farking brills!”

  She jumped up and ran to the small pantry. She reached in and brought out an opaque blue bottle.

  “This is a new synth from Iverson Beverage. We’re getting the license to fabricate it, so we’ve got cases of it for development,” she said, hopping over the back of the couch, landing in a sitting position.

  “And you just happened to take some home?”

  “QC, my darling, QC. I’ve got half of the organics going into it, so I have to know what the distilled product is like, right?”

  “Good enough for me,” Michi said, reaching for the bottle.

  She took along swig, then handed the bottle back to Tamara.

  Woah! That is pretty good! she thought.

  “Not bad,” she said instead.

  “Not bad my grandmother’s hairy snatch,” Tamara exclaimed. “Well, if you only think it’s not bad, then I guess you don’t want any more,” she added, tipping the bottle up for a swig.

  “No, no, I didn’t say that. I think I need to taste it again,” Michi protested, grabbing the bottle.

  The Snow Wine had more of a kick than Michi was used to, and she was feeling pretty comfortable when the game show ended and the hourly news minute came on. It was a quick snippet of the head of PI security stating that after an investigation, the security team that arrested the four “hoodlums” had been cleared of any wrongdoing.

  “Oh, suck my balls,” the half-drunk Tamara said to the holo image. “Cleared my ass.”

  “I feel sorry for the four boys,” Michi said. “Seems like overkill, but they did sort of ask for it.”

  “Fuck they did. A month ago, the jacks ignore them. But with that drug killing of the jack in the Gut, the rest of the jacks are all on edge.”

  Michi’s heart faltered a beat.

  “We’ve never talked about that. What do you make of it?” Michi asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “What, that some jack got jacked?” she said, laughing at her own lit
tle joke.

  “No, really.”

  “What’s there to think? Some stupid jack got involved with Light, taking payments, probably to look the other way. He pissed off the wrong people and got ghosted.”

  Michi felt the Snow Wine cloud her head. She knew she should just shut up and change the subject.

  “No, that’s not what happened,” she said instead.

  “And how would you know that, my dear friend,” Tamara said, taking another long swallow before handing the bottle back to Michi.

  “Because I did it.”

  “Because you did what?”

  “Because I killed him,” Michi said, feeling the weight of the world lifting off her shoulders.

  “Ha, right! And I’m the Chairman of the Federation. Bow down before me!”

  “Really, I did it. I killed him. And he wasn’t involved with Light or anything like that.”

  Something in Michi’s tone must have registered through Tamara’s slightly muddled brain because she stopped, took the bottle of Snow Wine out of Michi’s hands, and placed it on the table.

  “What are you saying?” she asked calmly.

  “I didn’t know he would die. I was pissed about Franz, and I just wanted to jump a jack, to pay them back. But somehow, I kicked him too hard, and I broke his neck.”

  The momentary sense of relief she felt by unburdening dissipated as Michi felt a dread creep over her. Why had she said that? It was her secret, and it should have gone to the grave with her.

  She risked a glance up at Tamara, who sat there mouth open in shock.

  “You’re serious about this, right?” she asked her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy frack!” she finally exclaimed, jumping up. “By St. Chuck’s ass! You fucking ghosted a jack? You’ve got to tell me exactly what happened!”

  She sat back down on the couch cross-legged, facing Michi, taking her hands in hers.

  Michi turned towards her and crossed her legs as well, their knees touching. She took a deep breath, and then started from the beginning, with her vague concept of revenge and through all the events of the night. Tamara was quiet the entire time, her eyes sparkling with excitement. When she was done, she sat there, waiting for her roommate’s response.