Rebel (The United Federation Marine Corps) (3 page)

Chapter 3

Michiko pinned the red wig she’d bought at Harrelson’s into place and then carefully pulled the hood of her cozy up and over her head.   She checked the mirror one more time, but even with the wig, her face was deep within the hood, out of sight.

She checked the rolled tissue she has taped inside each Clodder, up against the outer heel.  Both were secure, so she slid in her feet, careful not to dislodge the taped tissue.  She took a hesitant step in the heavy work boots.  It felt different, at least.  Whether it would spoof the surveillance cameras or not by giving her a different gait, she didn’t know.  Super Agent Franny Justice had used the technique in “The Pullman Gambit,” but flicks didn’t always adhere to reality.

Michi pushed open her door a fraction and listened.  The house was quiet.  She slipped out, crept down the stairs, and out the kitchen door in back.  She checked her PA: 11:45.  She had a hike in front of her.  If she drove her Sullivan, the hover’s position would be recorded and could be evidence against her if things went wrong.  For the same reason, she couldn’t very well call up a taxi, so it was a five km hike into the entertainment district.

One thing she hadn’t considered was that with two cozies on, she was getting pretty hot.  The night was cool, but the exercise and extra clothing was making the hike rather uncomfortable.  She slowed down her pace to keep from overheating. 

Within 30 minutes, she was out of the residential area, the lights of the Slab visible ahead.  She didn’t head directly there, though; she turned left, instead, down G Ave, coming across the first people she had seen since she left her home.  A man and a woman were staggering past, leaning together for support, clearly drunk, and both in very good moods.  Michi waited until they passed, then stepped into the small garden in front of the Krishna shrine.  This was an area that Michi was positive was not under routine surveillance.  She gratefully pulled off her cozy and sweat pants before stashing them in back of the far right bench.  Underneath, she had on another cozy, this one with the Firebird logo of Lipper University on it.  She felt a little weird wearing it.  Michi was not a big proponent of interscholastic rivalry, but still, the Firebirds were the “other” university in town as opposed to Michi’s own University of Holcomb Diamonds. 

She settled this cozy’s hood around her face and then pulled out a few strands of the red wig so they were visible.

You can still quit
, she told herself. 
Nothing’s gone too far yet.

But she didn’t turn back.  Taking a deep breath, she walked around the shrine and went out on F Ave, a totally different person than the one who had entered from G Ave. Super Agent Justice would have been proud of her. 

It still took her another 20 minutes before she entered the Slab.  It was almost 1:00 AM, and the party animals were out in force.  Consequently, the jacks were, too, keeping the peace.  Michi stood taller as she wandered through the bars, restaurants, hookah dens, and music venues, trying to find a target. Two drunk frat boys hooted at her, each raising his hand in the Firebird salute, but she ignored them.  Unfortunately, the jacks were ignoring her, too.  She tried to catch a few of their eyes, but with the hood over her face, a fat lot of good that did.

She hadn’t really thought things through.  She had a burning desire to extract some payback, but she didn’t really have a detailed plan.  Even if she could catch the attention of a jack, what was she going to do?  There were too many people out and about for Michi to do anything.

There was a place, though, where things were quieter.  Michi and her schoolmates had driven through the Gut a few times for kicks but had never even got out of the hover, much less wandered about.  She had to push down a little tremor that tickled at the back of her mind.  The area had a reputation, and good girls didn’t go there. 

At that, Michi laughed out loud.  Whatever she was, whatever she was about to become, a “good girl” wasn’t it. She straightened her shoulders and made her way past the city’s elite as they sipped their specialty drinks and listened to the latest zhoul or boxbox tunes.  Michi had spent more than a few evenings herself doing the very same, but now she looked at the partygoers with more than a little disdain. 

How could they party when the PI jacks could get away with murder?
she wondered.

Michi walked several blocks more before turning right on Craxton.  Immediately, the lights of the Slab disappeared. 

Welcome to the Gut!

Several shapes stood in the shadows, rentboys and rentgirls plying their trade.  They stirred as Michi made her appearance, but no one approached her.  She didn’t look the part, she guessed.  She was not dressed as one of them, nor did she look like a party girl out for a fling.  Party girls did not hide behind cozies, and they did not wear steel-toed Clodders.  It was just as well.  Michi wanted to quietly fade into the further recesses of the Gut where she could lay her trap.

A drunk came out of the darkness, making Michi recoil, but other than a slurred, “Hiya, baby,” the man was too far gone to be really interested.

One huge advantage of the Gut was that there was no surveillance there.  The company put it up, but the rentboys and girls immediately took it down.  The fact that PI bigwigs came into the Gut themselves probably accounted for the fact that the jacks didn’t seem too dedicated to keep replacing the cameras.  What happened in the Gut was not illegal, other than the inherent tax avoidance and some drug use, but still, not too many people in high places wanted their presence in the Gut widely known.

After a few minutes of wandering, Michi found her own spot: a small, alley leading back to nowhere.  She positioned herself at the front of the alley, a trapdoor spider monitoring her web.  If a civilian came by, she eased back until she was in the darkness, only to edge back out again as he or she passed.  It took more than an hour, and Michi was beginning to second guess everything, when a lone jack came sauntering by. 

It was common knowledge that jacks sometimes demanded freebies from the rentboys and girls.  Everyone knew it was true—at least people repeated it, so it must be true.  Everyone also knew that college kids were in high demand in the trade.  So Michi stepped out farther in to the light, so the iridescent Firebird logo on her cozy seemed to take on a life of its own.  A jack, walking alone in the Gut.  A uni rentgirl.  This was a no brainer.

Only the jack didn’t even slow down.  He walked around Michi without saying a word.

“Uh, excuse me?” she said, afraid to lose the man.

With a sigh, the jack stopped, and with his body posture screaming resignation, turned around.

“Yes, miss?  Is there something I can do for you?” he asked without enthusiasm.

Michi had just realized that what they all knew about the Gut may be more rumor than fact, and she immediately changed tack.

“My friend, he’s, well, his dad’s a VP with the company. We bought some light, but something happened.  My friend’s back here, and he’s in trouble.”

The jack immediately became alert.  Light was illegal, and possession carried a stiff punishment.  And if the son of a company VP had taken it, well, the ramifications could be severe.  As a jack, one of his jobs was to make sure none of the higher ups were ever embarrassed in any way.

“Yes, ma’am,” he quickly said.  “Where is your friend?”

“Back here,” Michi said, pointing to the back of the alley.

The jack brushed past Michi, hurrying to find the VP’s son.  He got to the end of the alley and looked around in confusion.  “Where?” he asked as he started to turn around.

Michi’s roundhouse kick in her steel-toed Clodder caught the unsuspecting jack right below the chin and alongside the neck.  The man fell bonelessly to the trash-laden cement alleyway.  Michi followed through, pouncing on the man, giving the back of his head her elbow before she realized the jack was not resisting.  Warily, she got up, giving him a nudge with her foot.  The jack didn’t react, and it was only then that Michi saw the angle to the jack’s neck.  This jack would never be getting up again.

Michi jumped back, her vision narrowing as she almost lost her balance.  She had to take a few deep breaths to gather herself.

How the hell did that happen?

During Michi’s short foray into MMA, she had knocked out exactly one person.  In her second match, she had taken down her opponent and rained hammer fists down on the poor girl’s head until the ref jumped in to stop the fight.  Michi’s other three wins and her one loss came as a result of the judges’ decisions. 

Michi knew how hard it was to get a solid enough strike for a knockout.  Yet here, in this unnamed alley in the Gut, she had somehow, against all probability, broken the neck of a trained jack.  She couldn’t believe it.

She moved back to the jack, then reached forward, only hesitating a moment before placing her fingers on the man’s neck, feeling for the carotid.  There was nothing.  He was dead.

Michi fell back onto her butt as she stared at the jack.  He looked young, only a little older than her.  She wondered what his name was.  She felt numb, but not sorry, and that surprised her.  She was a Clan girl, a First Family girl.  She was supposed to go to school, choose a profession.  First Family girls did not kill people.

Yet she felt no remorse.  In fact, she felt a sense of pride beginning to build up within her, an ember flaring into life.  She recalled how
satisfying
it felt when her foot connected with the jack’s neck, how
solid
it felt.

She reached out with one foot and gave the body a kick.  It jerked under her foot’s impact.

I did that, you glaikit boaby!
[6]
  I did it!  I took your worthless life!  You weren’t worth a hair on Franz’ head, and now you’re less than that!

She felt a surge of righteousness at what she had done.  She knew the odds of what had just happened were infinitesimally small, so she wondered if there hadn’t been something else guiding her, some other higher power at work here.

Michi wanted to stand up and scream into the night, a lioness celebrating her kill.  She didn’t know what kind of sensors the jack had, and she knew she should get out of there before his buddies came to look for him.  Despite that, she had to stare at her victim for a few more moments, drinking in the sight and cementing it in her mind.

She stood back up and went over to the body, reaching across to slide the jack’s Jamison out of its holster.  The Jamison was the standard issue sidearm for the Propitious Interstellar jacks.  Some companies went on the cheap for their jacks, but not PI.  The Jamison was a sweet firearm, able to send out both lethal and non-lethal beams with a high degree of accuracy.  It was too bad that this jack wasn’t carrying a rifle, but the Jamison was certainly no slouch as a trophy.  Michi slid it in her cozy pouch pocket, and without another glance at the dead jack, left the alley.  There were fewer figures—service providers and customers both—still out, but she tried to walk with a purpose that might forestall anyone reaching out to her.  It must have worked as no one said a word.

In a few minutes she was back in the Slab, music still wafting out from various stages.  The lights seemed too bright after the dimness of the Gut.

Two jacks came walking up to her, and for a moment, she wanted to bolt.  She kept walking at them, going over the various kicks and strikes she could employ.

“Evening, miss,” one of the jacks said as the two passed her.

Her heart pounding, she realized that taking the Jamison had been a stupid act of  bravado.  The gun bulged in her pocket, and if one of the jacks had seen it and searched her, her little war on the company would be over before it even started. 

She debated tossing the gun, but that might be worse.  Instead, she made her way back to the shrine where she had stashed her other clothes. 

Michi almost trashed the Firebird cozy, but then thought better of it.  The less evidence of her passing, the better.  The redhead wig came off and was thrust into the pocket with the Jamison.  She pulled on the other cozy and the sweat pants, and then slowly strolled out onto G Ave. 

An hour later, she slipped back into her house and up to her room.  She stripped down, hiding both the Firebird cozy and the Jamison in the back of the bottom drawer  of her wardrobe.

Michi didn’t even shower, but simply slipped between her sheets.  Within moments, she was out, and for the first time since Franz had been killed, had an uninterrupted and deep sleep. 

Chapter 4

“Do you have something to tell us?” Michi’s father asked as she came in the door. 

“No,” she responded in a surly tone as she dumped her backpack on the couch.

What do they know?

She made as if to go to the kitchen anxious to get out of her parents’ piercing stares.

“I think you do,” he said, stopping Michi in her tracks.

“We got a call today, from the uni, asking if you were OK.  They said you haven’t been to class since, well, you know since when,” her mother spoke up.

Relief swept through her.  This wasn’t good, but at least no one knew what had happened in the Gut last week, at least as far as her participation in it. 

The murder of the jack wasn’t a secret.  It had hit all the news feeds, and scores of women had been gathered for questioning, most from Lipper U.  There hadn’t been a surveillance photo released, but the fact that it was mostly Lipper girls was pretty darn indicative that there was some sort of evidence of her with the Firebird cozy out there. 

The jack’s name was Gerile Fountainhead.  He was 23 and a Navy vet who had been working for the company for only three months.  A native of RKR, he left behind parents and a fiancé.  Blah, blah, blah.  Michi didn’t care.  He was not a person to her, just a slab of cold meat.

That surprised her, when she was honest with herself.  She had always considered herself to be kind and caring, a good person.  But some of that inherent goodness had vanished at the rally.  She wasn’t even sure she felt a twinge of remorse for killing the jack.  For killing Gerile, she had to remind herself.  He did have a name.

She turned back towards her parents, put on a melancholy face, then said, “I . . . I just have not been able to concentrate since Franz was killed.  My mind is not working right.  I think I need time.”

She saw her father’s face soften.  Bingo! She was going to get out of this.

Then she noticed her mother’s eyes narrow.  “And where have you been going every day, then?”

Michi wondered if she could bluff it out, then decided it was too likely that someone would have seen her, so she decided it was better to admit to something.

“I’ve been down at the WRP.  They knew Franz, and they are working on getting the results of the investigation. I just feel better there.”

That seemed to put a stop to her father’s understanding.

“Michi, I hate to put my foot down, but you are going to have to stop going there.  It was bad enough when you were dating Franz . . .”

“Not dating.  We were engaged,” she muttered under her breath.

“. . . but what with everything that’s happened, you need to divorce yourself from that group.”

“But—”

“But nothing!  I know you were all hot and bothered when your firebrand was up there, all moral-like.  But his cause is not our cause.  His fight is not our fight.”

“So you are going to ignore all the injustice that is going on?” she shouted at her father.

“Injustice?  Is it injustice that Propitious Interstellar pays our bills?  That they pay for this house?  For yours and Yuzuki’s education?  For that Sullivan you got for your birthday last year?  Is that injustice?” he thundered back.

This was an old argument.  Most of the First Families made their livelihoods in service or selling to Propitious Interstellar.  Some people, especially from the Yamaguchis, went on to join the company itself in the management ranks.  The First Families, comfortable in their lives, liked the status quo and were afraid of anything upsetting the apple cart.

“And the indentureds?  What about them?” she asked.

“What about them?  They signed contracts to escape whatever
shite
-hole they came from.  The company is supposed to rescue them, then let them walk?  That’s ridiculous, girl.  And what are the Class Fours?  Twenty-five percent of the workforce?  Maybe 15 % of the planet’s population?  No lassie, this is not our fight.  And with all the attention on your rabble-rousing friends, we don’t need pressure being put on the family because your latest cause has you fomenting trouble.”

Michi just stared at her father, trying to form a response.

“Listen to him, Michi,” her mother said.  “Think of the family.  We do not need the attention, especially with contract renewals coming up.”

“You two just don’t get it, do you?  All you think about is your bank accounts, and to get that, you bow down to the almighty Propitious Interstellar and let them stick it up your arses.  There is such a thing as justice, as human rights, even if you’re too fat and happy to realize it,” she told her parents with conviction.

With that, she walked past her parents, opened the front door, and stormed off into the evening.