Koko Takes a Holiday (17 page)

Not good
, Mu thinks. If those two board that lift she will more than likely lose them. Of course, Mu could just slam aboard the lift at the last moment before the doors close and go all close-quarter on them, but there are almost a dozen additional people waiting with them for a ride. The lift will be brimmed. Yes, Mu isn’t above a little hand-to-hand or smoking a couple of bystanders, but that jerk Lee down at CPB gave specific orders. He stressed discretion.

Mu has a brilliant idea.

She taps in. “Oh, I’m sorry you’re not feeling up to snuff, Nana. I’m sure I can get this issue all sorted out, but I’m kind of needed in a meeting right now down the hall. Can I patch you back in a few minutes?”

“Oh, of course, dear,” her grandmother answers. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” says Mu. “Just give me fifteen minutes or so and I’ll get back to you straight away, all right?”

Right
, Mu thinks.
Right after I kill these two bozos.

Her grandmother’s tone brightens. “Oh, that would be so helpful. I love you, sweetie. Be a good girl, Bootsy. Smooches!”

“Smooches to you, Nana. Bye.”

Mu terminates the patch. Bending her elbow and reaching back, she jerks back a zipper on her rucksack and paws inside, and immediately she finds what she’s looking for: a small translucent bag of microelectronic tracking chips. Edged with miniscule adhesive barbs, each chip is no bigger than a fleck of party confetti. She pinches out one of the chips from the bag and holds it to the side of her skull. The chip beeps softly in response to confirm synchronization with Mu’s ocular frequency.

Now all Mu needs is a diversion. Something simple that will allow her to get close. Mu remembers she has a sizable amount of credits in her pack, enough to bribe a small army if need be. She opens a second zipper on her pack and takes about half of her credits, figuring half will have to do. After she collects the bounty, hell, she’ll bill the outlay to CPB as a field expense.

Mu rolls left and around the hologram. She shimmies through the crowds, keeping her face averted, and moves ahead. When she believes she has enough distance, she hurls all the credits into the air behind her like a tossed wedding bouquet.

The diversion works. Once people on the concourse realize what’s fluttering down all around them, the scene becomes feeding time at the jackal cage. Shrieks and squeals, diving bodies lunging every which way in an all-out scramble of greed. Some people wrestle and even come to blows, and Mu couldn’t be happier when she sees a teenage busker wielding his pipe guitar at people’s heads like a battle axe. She sees Martstellar and her friend get shoved about in the crowd of people waiting for the lift. Mu slips past behind them and hooks back, planting the tracking chip on the tall bearded man’s waist with a passing tap.

Mu jogs ahead, patting the side of her skull to check the tracking sync on her ocular. A locater beacon echo flashes clear in her field of vision, and she can’t help but pump a victory fist. When enough distance is between her and her targets, Mu finds cover in a shop doorway and catches her breath.

Pulling up a previously uploaded file of
Alaungpaya
’s barge architecture and using an overlay, she cross-checks the chip’s location beacon. She sees the transmitting beacon board the lift and power upward. It takes eight minutes longer to assess the final location.

Deck 20, personal quarters of Flynn, Jedidiah; SFZ Citizen Identification 821612403.

Pay dirt.

After a moment of insisting that he enter his quarters ahead of her (no way in hell is she going to have her back to anybody, not even Mr. Nice Guy former lawman with the ass-grabbing hands), the first thing that strikes Koko about Flynn’s quarters is the number of packing crates and recycled cardboard boxes lying about.

Most of the storage boxes are sealed with clear packing tape and all appear to be labeled in thick black marker for shipment to the same location. Strangely enough, it’s the name of an organization that Koko is somehow familiar with:

new liberty international relief services (nlirs)
depressus donation division (d3)—second free zone

“Charity?” Koko asks, not turning around.

The unit’s augmented managerial intelligence system senses Flynn’s presence and adjusts the lighting and ambient background noise to suit his predilections. The soft carbonated bubbling of a meditative fountain rises in the background, and Flynn seals the entry’s magnetic locks with a soft click.

“Just unloading some clutter,” he says.

Koko puckers her lips.

Just past a cubby sitting area with a C-shaped settee and foot table is an accordion screen made of synthetic sandalwood and pale, gossamer fabric. The fabric-lined sections are animated, painted with moving abstract shapes, and just beyond the accordion screen Koko spies an unmade full-sized bed with wrinkled black sheets. A series of framed prints are hung on the wall above the bed. Enlarged images of nanometer processing chips in a succession that go from orderly and new to completely scorched and destroyed. Koko has seen the prints before. It’s an antique tongue-in-cheek pop-art series referencing the aggressive stages of the Radix3 electro-virus. Unleashed by an alliance of quasi-political and devout malcontents hundreds of years ago, Radix3 decimated global power grids, obliterated the Internet and wireless spectrums, and initiated Earth’s first foray into small-scale thermonuclear smartwars.

One of the recycled boxes resting on the foot of the bed isn’t sealed. Koko uses a sharpened fingernail to peel back the flap, leans over, and peeks inside. Neatly folded towels and assorted labeled toiletries. She doesn’t turn to face Flynn, but angles her chin upward to point.

“Is this the window view you mentioned?”

Just off the unit’s tiny galley kitchen, Flynn is busy emptying his pockets onto a table planking out from the wall. His habit-driven hands unclip his gun holster from the belt around his waist, and he sets it down on the table.

“It is,” he answers. “Pretty lucky I snagged a bulkhead unit, but like I said in the lift on the way up, I nailed this place on foreclosure a few years back. Sky views on this deck are pretty steep price-wise. If it hadn’t been for the foreclosure, I could’ve never afforded it. Here, let me open the protective shade for you.” Flynn raises his voice slightly to address the unit’s AMI system. “Window. Open, please.”

With a flat click, the protective housing covering the reinforced window releases and withdraws like a reptile retreating into a hole. Once uncovered, the window is about the length and thickness of Koko’s leg. Koko glances out the narrow window just as one of the bright columns of
Alaungpaya
’s outer klieg lights slashes through the clouds.

“Cool.”

“Well, there’s some stars shining through here and there,” Flynn says. “It’s much better in daylight.”

“I’ll bet.”

Flynn puts his hands on the small of his back and stretches. “When
Alaungpaya
tracks over the poles you really get a good show, particularly entering dawn or leaving any major climate systems. Last year’s triple typhoon that obliterated what’s left of India’s eastern coast? The most amazing sunrises.”

Koko turns and waits until Flynn looks her in the eye.

“Listen, Flynn,” she says, “About before… down at the restaurant…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but I think that kiss was a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Yeah. I’m afraid I haven’t been exactly forthcoming with you.”

“Oh? And how’s that exactly?”

“Well, for starters I’m not really on holiday from the holidays up here.”

“You’re not?”

“No. See, most of what I told you before was true. I mean, I used to do hardcore contractor stuff for real and for a long time, and up until recently I also used to be in the hospitality business too. But I’m not in the hospitality business either. To tell you the truth, I’m not really anything anymore, and now,” Koko’s voice trails off and she blows out a breath, “I’m in a bit of a muddle.”

Flynn hooks his thumbs into his front pockets like a farmer.

“A bit of a muddle?”

“Yeah, and that may be understating matters a bit.”

Flynn looks down at his boots in a thoughtful way and then looks up again.

“Well, as long as we are being candid with each other here, I sort of had a feeling.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. And while we’re tossing around honesty here, I knew something was up. That outburst at the table and even at dinner. You kind of gave the impression that whatever muddle you say you’re in, it’s not good. You’re sort of distracted.”

Koko crosses her arms and cranks a single eyebrow. “Really.”

Flynn shrugs. “Not that that’s a big deal or anything. Like I said, at first I thought it was because you’d lost so many credits at the tables. I mean, who wouldn’t be ticked off by a big loss like that? But then I thought you were just shining me, going from telling me you’re going to kick my butt to being all friendly, waiting for your chance to skip out. Which is fine too, but—”

A bell softly bongs twice behind him. The unit’s AMI system addresses Flynn—a raspy, feminine voice:

Jedidiah. Single visitor present at entry. Female. Do you wish to grant access?

Puzzled, Flynn swings his head to look at the unit’s door and then turns back to Koko. The expression on Koko’s face and her now-drawn weapon say it all.

Holy shit. Where’d that come from?

Koko vaults sideways and takes cover on the opposite side of Flynn’s unmade bed. Crouching down, she levels her weapon past Flynn’s hip and directly at the door behind him. The indicators on Koko’s gun glare red like the eyes perched on the snout of a demon.

Flynn lunges for his holster on the planking table and spins into the unit’s open bathroom area just as the front door pops with a suppressed
whump
. The muffled detonation sounds like a large pillow being punched.

Flynn draws back on his footing as a snapping shower of electrical sparks streak inward into his quarters. Sliding down the bathroom’s doorway, he pulls his Beretta and discovers the safety has already been released.

What the—

He flashes back on Koko’s sudden kiss at the bar.

Oh, that’s just perfect.

Flynn smears a forearm across his forehead and curses himself for being so stupid just as a body rushes past him. The AMI system announces the alarm. “Intrusion, Jedidiah. Intrusion.”

Flynn looks across the room and sees Koko and a second woman grappling. The second woman is shorter than Koko, forged in muscle, and has a gun. Each grips the other’s gun hand while her second hand attempts to execute attack strikes. The sound of flesh smacking flesh without pause or pity is sharp and quick.

The intruder reaches behind her back and withdraws a hidden blade. As the blade snicks open, the intruder whirls it around toward Koko’s side. Koko anticipates the stick, arching her body. The intruder’s knife misses Koko by a mere fraction, and to Flynn it doesn’t seem real. Koko bends her body in such an impossible angle, it’s as though she’s made of rubber.

Whipping her head around and down, Koko seizes her attacker’s knife hand in her front teeth and rips away a small sheet of flesh. The woman drops the knife instantly, but astoundingly she does not scream.

The AMI system continues: “Jedidiah? Intrusion and smoke detected within quarters. Repeat, smoke detected within quarters. Are you safe, Jedidiah? Ten seconds before alarm engagement and security notification.”

Flynn falters and panics. He doesn’t know what to do. He wants to squeeze off a round to at least clip the intruder, but he can’t get a bead on Koko alone, and he fears he’ll end up shooting them both. As the two women continue to thrash violently around, Flynn gets to his feet and sidesteps from the bathroom to the kitchen area. He keeps his gun up and his sights trained and hopes for a break, but it doesn’t come. The two women’s moves are so fast, so blinding, it’s almost as though the two are one blurred animal. A fusion of unstoppable limbs.

The assailant lifts a leg and stomps on Koko’s instep, and Koko throws her head back and roars. Reeling around, Koko claws a hand down and across the woman’s face and gouges four precise, deep grooves. Koko’s follow-through screws her free, and she backhands the side of her weapon across her attacker’s forehead. On sickening impact, the woman tilts for a second, and Koko plants the barrel of her gun into the woman’s side. Koko pulls the trigger.

The muted blue whelp pierces the intruder just under her kidney, swelling and lifting the woman clean off her feet and onto Flynn’s bed. The heated energy of the discharged round roams inside the woman’s body like a monstrous, squirming creature seeking an exit, and a split second later a chunky, wet, cough-like pop renders the assailant messily across the bed.

Something wet and hot splashes on Flynn’s face, and he knows it is showering viscera. Bits and pieces of the intruder have painted his quarters like a ruptured can of bright red tomatoes, and the exiting round has vaporized the entire right side of the dead woman’s body.

“Jedidiah? Alarm and security notification imminent. Five seconds to reply.”

Koko staggers backward. “Turn it off!”

Three seconds before alarm and security notification.

“
Flynn
!”

Flynn stammers past the hard ache in his throat. “Clear! Do not engage alarm! Repeat! Do not engage alarm!”

The AMI system’s voice waits a beat. The meditation fountain trickles in the background, and sparks from the blown-in front door fizzle on the floor.

Alarm engagement deactivated.

A heaving, blood-soaked creature, Koko crashes back against the far wall near the window and swings her gun back toward the door and then over at Flynn standing in the kitchen with his raised Beretta.

A dribble of the intruder’s blood winds into the corner of Flynn’s mouth, and instantly he feels sick. With a loud retch, Flynn twirls about and brings up all the dissolving medications, beauty, seltzer, sake, and food in his belly into the sink. When Flynn finishes puking, he wipes the vomit from his mouth and turns. Koko is on him. She throws a power cross across his chin, and Flynn splashes to the floor.