Koko Takes a Holiday (12 page)

Twenty minutes later Flynn has finished organizing the bulk of his shift download, and he grabs a lift upstairs to clean out his locker. Once upstairs, he finds next to his assorted toiletries in his locker’s top half a wrapped present replete with a bow and a red envelope. He unwraps the package and discovers a mid-priced fifth of beauty. Gutting the envelope, he finds a card signed by nearly everyone in Flynn’s division save for his jerk of a lieutenant and a few others who Flynn has always suspected kind of hate him for some odd reason. Lots of farewell best wishes on his upcoming jump. The card even contains a couple of doodles of sex acts, and when he shakes the envelope a coupon for a complimentary fellatio session at a massage parlor on the loop clatters to the floor. He picks up the chit and turns it over in his hands and studies the pulsing pornographic logo. Gee, how thoughtful. Kind of pitiful, but maybe there will be some fun on his last night alive after all.

After changing into his plain tan civilian coveralls, Flynn slumps down the hall to turn in his gear. The sergeant charged with collecting his official kit is a thick, brick-mugged hard case who over-juiced on frenetic physique tablets and now sits behind a wall of blast-proof caging in a globe of resentment for his troubles. When the sergeant speaks his voice is more than a little phlegmy, rough, and deep.

“Body armor…”

Flynn slides his lightweight chest protector across the counter through a partition cut in the bottom of the cage. The sergeant scoops the vest into a basket and checks Flynn’s file on the prompt display stationed on his left.

“Says here you were issued a Beretta J-X Gamma series.”

“Yes.”

“Hand it over.”

Flynn releases the grid chip on the weapon and gently lays it down. He pushes the grid chip and the gun, butt-first, across beneath the partition. The sergeant checks the gun and sets it aside.

“Two hooded uniform jumpers, one duty belt, ten restraining cuffs with pouch, three aerosol acid canisters, one retractable, lightweight impact truncheon, and a verification recorder with case.”

Flynn slides all the bundled clothing and devices across. The sergeant unclips the holster from Flynn’s duty belt and spins the empty holster back beneath the partition.

“You can keep your holster,” the sergeant says.

Flynn picks up the holster, a bit amazed. “Really? I can keep this? Seems you guys would want that back.”

The sergeant sniffs hard and spits between his feet. “Upgrades,” he says. “Those outdated holsters won’t handle the wider barrel on the new Beretta series they’re outfitting us with next week. Anyway, if you’re like most around here you probably have an extra piece at home, am I right?”

Flynn in fact does, so he nods.

“Consider it a parting gift.” The sergeant grins sarcastically.

“Oh. So, I guess you’re going to de-chip me now, right?”

“Hold out your arm and slide it under the bar.”

Flynn does as he’s instructed. The sergeant finds the black oval tattoo centered on the soft side of Flynn’s right forearm and sticks him with a reverse-suction syringe. Flynn feels a hot sting as the syringe pierces deep into his flesh. Suction pressurizes and his identification chip leaves his arm like a fat, buried tick. The sergeant tosses down a packet with an antiseptic pad, and Flynn picks up the packet and tears it open with his teeth.

Flynn swabs the oozing blood around the fresh, raw mark and remembers his upcoming suicide.

Antiseptic swab? In a few hours he’s going to leap to his death. Why does he even bother?

Setting the reverse-suction syringe aside, the sergeant inserts the grid clip into Flynn’s turned-in gun and frowns. With some irritation he tells Flynn that he is supposed to have more rounds loaded into the power grid clip. Flynn fashions a quick lie and says he hit the range recently and forgot to re-juice to the proper power levels. The truth is Flynn got bombed out of his mind a few nights back and, in a fit of self-pitying rage, decided to climb up a restricted topside platform. It was a foolish thing to do, going up top on
Alaungpaya
with only an emergency oxygen mask and without the full weighted safeties of a pressure suit, but the topside platform he selected is set into the barge’s hull kind of like a foxhole. Recessed staging areas are used by maintenance technicians doing external hull work and at the time he honestly didn’t care if he was sucked off into the sky, but he clipped into a safety harness anyway. It was ferociously cold up top, with a blaring wind, and he nearly blacked out. After all that effort, all Flynn ended up doing was taking pot shots at the silvery moon.

The Depressus afflicted
, Flynn muses.
We do many a rash thing.

The sergeant mumbles some more nonsense about not recharging after range time being a credit-punishable offense and adds that it’s no wonder Depressus-afflicted knuckle-shufflers like Flynn wash out of ASS. The sergeant then makes a notation in Flynn’s file on the prompt screen and tells him the full expense of a weapon recharge will be docked from his severance credit transfers. All in all it seems petty, but Flynn decides not to argue.

“You’re free to go,” the sergeant says.

“Thanks.”

Flynn turns to go, but stops. The sergeant looks up.

“What now?”

Flynn shrugs. “I don’t know. Good luck, I guess.”

“Good luck? What do you mean, good luck? Good luck with what?”

“I don’t know,” Flynn answers. “Good luck with the rest of your life?”

The sergeant leans back and snickers. Then he balls his fists and rubs them in his eyes, mimicking a crying baby.

Wah-wah-wah.

On the seventy-fifth floor of a skyscraper overlooking the Plaza San Martin in Buenos Aires, the jowly CPB director retrieves Portia Delacompte’s and Koko Martstellar’s personnel files on his desk prompts. Predisposed to follow up meticulously on any and all suspicions in his business matters, the director scrutinizes the breadth of the two women’s capabilities and accomplishments.

To the jowly director’s dismay, it appears Vice President Delacompte was being truthful when she claimed Martstellar’s disposition tends toward slovenliness and depraved, impetuous distraction. Martstellar’s former private military career had as many demotions as it had commendations, with most reprimands attributed to reckless disregard to the conduct becoming a paid soldier. But if this Koko Martstellar is so scandalously irresponsible, why on earth would Delacompte recruit her to work on The Sixty, the crown jewel of CPB’s resorts?

Leaning into the prompt projections, the director soon stumbles upon a singular possibility: a hostage-rescue operation on a supercore drilling platform off Ghana.

De-civ rebel factions had taken over the structure and Martstellar’s actions, in the face of extreme duress, were awarded quadruple bonus credit payout under her contract’s valor clause. Using a variety of weapons and wounded after her team’s insert aircraft crashed, Martstellar managed to suppress the de-civ rebels, free the company hostages, and disarm a major explosive device rigged to cripple the platform. Martstellar also consolidated and provided medical aid to the casualties under fire for two and a half hours until reinforcements arrived.

One of the wounded on the Ghana platform that day?

None other than one Portia Delacompte.

Hmm. Interesting.

But would Delacompte
really
order an eliminative action on someone who once saved her life in the field? Well, perhaps the jowly director judged Delacompte too quickly. Maybe her executive commitment to CPB management is absolute after all. The jowly director takes a fresh cigar from the steel box on his desk and chomps the cigar’s tip between his teeth.

Maybe.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSET/MERCENARY RECRUITMENT FEED SOLICITATION/ADVERTISEMENT—0:45

CLIENT: Global Resource/Syndicate Deployment Initiatives, LLP (GR/SDI)

PRODUCTION ENGAGEMENT: 2516 All Hemispheric Seasonal Cycles

VISUAL FEED 1: BLACK SCREEN.

AUDIO: THRILLING, TRENDY BEATS AND/OR MUSIC CUSTOMIZED TO FEED BROADCAST MARKETS/AGE/DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETS—POWERFUL SOUND, RAGING TO EARDRUM-TEARING CRESCENDO.

VISUAL FEED 1 (CONT.): BLACK SCREEN SLASHED AWAY TO REVEAL RAPID, ICONIC, MIXED STILL AND MOTION MEDIA IN LUSTY, SAFFRON TINT—ALMOST SUBLIMINAL NIGHTMARISH

FEEL. (Note: Client Suggested Inclusions: Third and Fourth North America and Middle East Smartwars with catastrophic regional devastation imagery, satellite scans of once-dominant political/economic centers marred, smoldering radioactive infrastructure ruin (Beijing, US/California/New York, Eastern Mediterranean, etc.), body-count clocks, riots and upheaval, etc.) AS AUDIO VISUAL CRESCENDO CLIMAXES CUT TO BLACK.

AUDIO: SILENCE (hold—5 seconds).

VISUAL FEED 2 (CONT.): BLACK SCREEN SLICED LEFT TO RIGHT BY EYE-POPPING GREEN LINE (HORIZONTAL) WIDENING. AS GREEN BAND GROWS, THE BAND FRAMES A DAZZLING MOSAIC OF FULL-COLOR MIX IMAGERY/MOTION—THE CORPRATE AND SYNDICATE MERCENARY EXPERIENCE. DE-CIV COMBAT ACTIONS, INTENSE FIELD-TRAINING PYROTECHNICS, MARKET-TAMING MISSION ENGAGEMENTS. (Note: Client requires footage of “happy” soldiers, solidarity imagery, payday pillaging, and the like. Please review attached creative brief for additional specifics.)

VOICEOVER: We are the peace. We are the order.

VISUAL FEED 2 (CONT.): FRAME OF THE CORPORATE AND SYNDICATE EXPERIENCE MORPHS INTO EARTH SEEN FROM OUTER SATELLITES.

VOICEOVER: Think you got what it takes to be “
the we
”?

VISUAL FEED 2 (CONT.) PAN FROM EARTH TO THE SUN. SUN FILLS THE SCREEN. DISSOLVE AND FADE IN GR/SDI LOGO.

VOICEOVER: If born in the collectives, contact your re-civ labor-assignment professional recruiter. A message from Global Resource/Syndicate Deployment Initiatives, its worldwide re-civ alliance nations, and your future.

Agents Wire and Mu whip off their sunglasses. The lenses of the sunglasses are shiny and green like the backs of dung beetles, and Wire’s voice sounds as if she’s just gargled a glass of shattered shale.

“Where is this problem child?”

Heinz and the two additional agents are in the buzzing pandemonium of
Alaungpaya
’s main arrival and departure terminal just outside of baggage claim and customs. In bellicose mannerisms and dress, Mu and Wire are practically carbon copies. Tight, olive-toned bodysuits and smooth, no-nonsense black assault shoes. Five foot even with ocular implants affixed to their temples and hair shorn convict-close. Heinz suspects Mu is engineered South American descent and Wire possibly a genetically engineered variation of Southern Mediterranean or perhaps Portuguese. Both women are blocky with cut muscle.

God
, Heinz thinks,
I must look ridiculously feminine compared to these two stacked cans of homely, brawny butch.
Heinz pulls her ample red hair back and lets it fall generously over her sharp shoulders and then notices with some disappointment that no skin or finger trophies dangle around Wire’s or Mu’s thick necks. So much for their files’ descriptive accuracy.

Self-consciously Heinz touches the drying bandage over the bite mark encircling her left eye.

“Martstellar is still aboard,” she begins.

Wire adjusts her bearing and sneers churlishly. “And just how are you so sure?”

Heinz shifts her eyes and places her hands on her hips. “Because no scheduled transports, merchant vessels, or personal craft are allowed off
Alaungpaya
until post-Embrace. They just gave the notice. You two are lucky you even landed. Your shuttle was one of the last arrivals, and the whole to-and-fro grid up here is now on lockdown until the Embrace ceremony concludes in a few hours.”

“Embrace ceremony? What the hell is an Embrace ceremony?”

“You know, the Second Free Zone mass suicides? Depressus?”

“Oh, those yahoos.”

“In any event,” Heinz says, “before you two arrived I bribed a barge tech and scoured all outgoing flight manifests and transport logs archived since I came aboard. There’s no record of a Martstellar departure. It’s a pretty safe bet that she’s still hiding out on
Alaungpaya
.”

Wire glances at Mu and then both of the women look back at Heinz. Wire clears some of the sedimentary rock fragments from her throat and speaks teasingly.

“Gee, Heinz, so what happened up here, huh? That simpering little twit down at SI HQ gave us the rundown. This Martstellar, she’s supposedly a has-been, and you’re still up and about sucking air? How the hell did that happen? Your file made you out to be death’s glammed-out little sister.”

Heinz’s face flushes. “Martstellar got lucky is all,” she says. Once again, the shame of her brutal takedown burns, and she starts to raise a hand to touch the triangular bandage above her eye.

Wire giggles. “Set her teeth on you, huh? Wow, that has got to suck. Hey, don’t sweat it, big red. Me and Mu are up here now, and this Martstellar? Trust me, that woman’s heartbeats are numbered.”

Mu takes a step forward and tosses a heavy rucksack at Heinz’s feet. The rucksack is black nylon with multiple zippered openings and thick buckled straps, identical to the ones Wire and Mu have secured to their own shoulders.

“What’s this?” Heinz asks.

“Your gear,” Wire says. “That suit Lee said your guns were confiscated on
Hesperus 6
so we thought, you know, we’d bring you some gear. One reinforced plasma HK U-50, a Ruger combat application GPPG sub-cutter with collapsible polymer stock and sniper bipod stand, half a dozen pulse grenades, one thermal-imaging scanner, an uplink skimmer, plus a whole boatload of extra power clips. Happy birthday.”

“Gee, you shouldn’t have.” Heinz crouches down and unzips the rucksack. She takes a look inside. “Any body armor?”

“What, you think we’re made of credits? Get your own.”

“Some birthday.”

Heinz picks up the rucksack. She swings it over her shoulder and starts to limp away as Mu and Wire put on their sunglasses and follow behind her. Soon all three agents are walking as a unit through the crowds.