Koko Takes a Holiday (10 page)

Juke sways. “
Alaungpaya
’s casino? It has one of the better reputations in the orbits. Why do you ask?”

“After this fleecing I think I’m going to need a little more run and gun money.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“What?”

“I mean, maybe you should focus on saving yourself. As you said, this redhead is still alive and aboard.”

“Can’t run without credits. And given that her being up here and running me down isn’t exactly legal, engaging in the open with citizens around? I’ll take my chances.”

Juke sighs and finishes chewing. He picks up a data chit from the table and plugs the chit into a towered workstation humming on his right.

“While it’s against my better judgment to give away anything for free, I like you, Koko.” He ejects the chit and holds it out to her. “Here. Take this. Before I change my mind.”

Koko takes the offered chit and reads the logo on its surface.

“DropSledz?”

“It’s a coupon for a very reputable strat-sled rental outfit. If you’re going to be so stubborn as to venture out in public, you might need it.”

“Aw, thanks, Juke. I’m touched. I take back all the bad things I said about you.”

“Yeah, I’m a big softie. Don’t spread it around.”

Juke then hands over the holster and a black velvet pouch containing a pulse suppressor. Koko shoves the strat-sled coupon into a pocket and removes the suppressor attachment from the pouch. After slaving the suppressor under the barrel on the Sig, she slides the weapon into the holster. Koko clips the holster onto a slit cut into the inside of her jacket and shimmies a bit from side to side to find the feel of the weapon hanging off her body. She draws, spins the gun on two fingers, and slides the weapon home beneath the jacket. In another pocket on her jacket she stashes the pouch and the weapon’s extra power grids.

Tweaking the workstation prompts on his right some more, Juke downloads the vessel information she needs to a data plug. He then tosses the plug to Koko, and she pockets it too.

“After you hit the casino, you really should plan on leaving
Alaungpaya
before they initiate the Embrace lockdown.”

“The Embrace lockdown? What the hell is the Embrace lockdown?”

Juke twists side to side in his sling like a child dawdling on a swing set. His bathrobe flaps open a bit, and it’s a scope of hairy nakedness Koko wishes she hadn’t seen.

“Oh, you must have heard about Embrace by now,” he says. “Magnificent stuff, really. The current track has
Alaungpaya
on a descending orbit, and we’ll be poised over the southern Pacific just after dawn. Those laid low by the dreaded Depressus will jump and commit mass suicide. They shut down all outgoing and incoming air traffic.”

“They call that nonsense ‘Embrace’ here?”

“Branding.” Juke shrugs. “Gives the whole spectacle a more secular feel.” He indicates a thick, triangular window smudged with grime behind him. “I can see the tortured souls raining down from my little vantage point right here.”

Of course Koko has heard about the sanctioned mass suicides. When Depressus first started affecting the population in the Second Free Zone, those suffering the affliction inexplicably sought to kill themselves in gruesome public displays. Headers into well-traveled social decks, setting themselves on fire, blowing themselves up with less than sophisticated bombs in publicly traveled areas. Ultimately the governing confederacies of the Second Free Zone insisted on mass-euthanizing days to quell the distractive carnage. Despite the protests of some hardcore humanist sects, patient advocacy groups applauded the measure and longtime sufferers found themselves relieved not to be alone in their final moments. Or so they claimed.

Not all Second Free Zone barges utilize jumps. Some have chosen massive hydrogen pyres, and others organize collective last suppers laced with poison. All of the more colorful, ghoulish proceedings are broadcast on the live feeds.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Koko says. She gives Juke a farewell salute and then pivots for the exit.

“Oh, one more thing…”

Koko turns.

“Yeah?”

“Where can I reach you if trouble does happen to rear its ugly head?”

Koko hesitates. Again she wonders whether she should trust Juke. If the redheaded bounty agent or someone else does come by, asking about her whereabouts, Juke might forget their “history” and sell her out if the credits are right. Then again, she’s pretty sure Juke knows if she survives that kind of a double-cross she’s capable of torturing him to death in any number of mind-staggering ways.
What the hell
, she thinks.
At least it won’t be totally unexpected
.

“I’ve checked into a place on the far side of the lower concourse. Wonderwall. Do you know it?”

“Ewww.”

“Yeah. My sentiments exactly. I might head back there, but believe me, as soon as I can I’m going to take your advice and get the hell out of here.”

“As you should, my dear.” Juke nods. “As you most definitely should.”

Vincent Lee drops his head into his open hands and plants his elbows in the clutter atop his cubicle’s desk. Clenching the tender flesh inside his cheeks with his teeth, he rolls a nugget of fizzy saliva back down his throat. He rereads the message on his screen prompt once more before erasing it.

Custom Pleasure Bureau Executive Offices
Date: 7.2.2521
TO: Lee, Vincent T. (Tikayama) Employee 01124-18930
Contractor/Freelance Employee: Heinz, Cleo F. (Faye) Freelance 89713-99220
Subject: Status Report—Containment; Martstellar, Koko P. (Penelope)
Vendor 456712-20189
Trans-Feed Code: 12-33-899 Executive Archive Routes Only (classified)

Following trace of Pod 288, Martstellar, Koko P. (KPM), arrived
Hesperus 6
and confirmed target. Weapons confiscated at Customs. Initiated pursuit of KPM to residential and leisure-class vessel
Alaungpaya
. Upon arrival target became aware of pursuit and target was engaged for containment and erasure. Engagement aborted—medical. Possible witness. Acquiring location of witness and legal enforcement contact for follow-up SOP erasure measure protocols. End transmission.

Lee takes a licorice-flavored hard candy from a dish to his right and crushes it between his molars.

Great. His day has just gone from bad to full-blown shit-puppet shambles.

Lee looks over his cubicle’s partition and surveys the other CPB junior executives outside the senior staff offices that line the floor’s glassy perimeter. Men and women of similar age to him attending to their assigned SI executive duties with the rote fervor of jacked-up wasps. He wonders how many of them have executive counts on their heads. From the drawn looks on many faces, he imagines more than quite a few. Comes with the territory.

It’s not the first time Lee has drearily regretted his career choice. Lee could have pursued any number of reputable and less stressful fields of employment. After all, he possesses the mental proficiencies, raw intelligence, and skills for a livelihood in just about any field. But the glamour and excitement associated with the Custom Pleasure Bureau and The Sixty Islands … those temptations pulled him in like a seductive vortex. Now, with an executive count on his tenure, Lee feels that nagging wash of runny doubt and desperation that threatens to paralyze him.

Lee thinks of his lover, the merchant sailor. His lover has constantly cautioned and encouraged Lee to find other means of gainful employment, something that doesn’t hang a deadly sword over even the most minor managerial blunders.
One day
, his sailor boy warned,
that boss of yours is just going to snap like a twig and kill you.

Gosh, they don’t execute accountants when they screw up, do they? Or lawyers, for that matter?

Well, they do execute lawyers when they screw up in most rebuild regions still.

Oh, relax
, Lee tells himself.
Martstellar is a former soldier for hire, for crying out loud. She’s practically steeped in suspicion and spent years fighting for the multinationals. She is out there scrabbling for her very life—is her winning one little skirmish any surprise? I mean, my word, can you blame the poor woman?

So Heinz got checked by someone with better moves. It happens. And it’s not like this bounty agent Heinz is dead or out of the game altogether, although she damn well should be. The transmission indicated that Heinz is still engaged in active pursuit post-medical. By the day’s end? All of this? This whole debacle might be a laughable memory, and Lee will be able to shrug it off with a chilled glass of sparkling wine.

Lee quickly sets about sending Heinz additional instructions. First off, he informs Heinz that classified transmit protocols shall henceforth not be sent via executive archival routes. They are, indeed, engaged in sort of a quasi-illegal action, and he adds that all transmissions should be scrubbed clean of encoded tracers upon Heinz’s receipt until the Martstellar situation is closed. And he tells her to forget the witnesses. More dead bodies means additional clean-up, and he’d rather not go through the headache. Lee also decides to up the stimulus on Heinz’s assignment by upgrading Koko’s elimination to Ultimate Sanction status, fixed credit transfers and percentage incentive bonuses secured upon completion.

There. That ought to motivate you.

The upgrade to Ultimate Sanction on the bounty is, of course, a total lie. Delacompte would never in a million years approve of such an additional measure. But if this all works out his boss will definitely cast an approving eye on Lee’s being so cunning and deceitful. Oh, why not. It’s not like they’re going to make good on the bounty anyway. Lee encodes a note to himself to devise a fool-proof post-operational plan for Heinz’s erasure as soon as Koko is eliminated.

Then Lee has a second brilliant idea. He encodes a restricted priority message to the CPB mainframe requesting additional freelance operative personnel files for review. Lee makes it clear he only wants freelance bounty operatives seasoned in the dark arts of taking care of business—ruthless, dedicated professionals who understand the value of zero blowback on assignment and who execute directives without question or mercy.

Moments after sending the request, Lee receives the files on his prompts. He pulls up Martstellar’s personnel record as well to compare side by side each potential candidate against Koko’s background, skill sets to lethal skill sets. It is good to exploit weaknesses. Lee’s cumbrous time under Delacompte has at least taught him that.

In the corner of the projection in front of him, Lee also cues up a highlights archive of Koko’s more colorful engagements. After a few minutes of examining the files, he narrows down the list to seven potential operatives and from that seven he shaves off three of the candidates to reach a final four. Then he sees that two of the best operatives (a couple of really good-looking men from the shores of the Black Sea) are unavailable for assignment, busy squelching re-civ insurgency factions in Greenland’s copper strip-mine melts. Oh, well, such a pity. It would have been quite the vicarious thrill to have had a couple of macho men to boss around.

That leaves two contractor operatives available—both women. Even though Delacompte would frown on the extra measure of assigning additional agents for pursuit, having these two plus Heinz already up top on
Alaungpaya
—surely that would be enough to squash this wayward whoremonger, no?

Examining Martstellar’s file some more, Lee discovers something else quite interesting. When Martstellar was still active and near the end of her private contractor career, she was reprimanded twice in the field on assignment. Her demotions for disciplinary issues outside of assignments, those were well recorded, but these in the field are worth noting. It appears that in two close-quarter situations when she was pitted against three or more assailants, Martstellar folded and needed to be rescued. One time in Uruguay during the South American water revolts and a second time during Geometronic International’s hostile takeover of Core Dynamics.

Well, well. It appears his judgment is spot on. Three is better than one.

Finally, Lee feels the first significant surge of relief in his long, long day at the office.

Cupping her arms behind her head as a pillow, bounty agent Cleo Heinz stretches out on a slanted gurney in one of
Alaungpaya
’s health clinics.

Above her a male nurse of Persian lineage meticulously plucks therapeutic narco-pins from Heinz’s quickly healing leg. The nurse daintily drops each blood-tipped barb into a bio-hazard slit in the top of a clear plastic drum affixed to an aluminum, doughnut-shaped base. As each disposed needle falls to the bottom of the container it makes a small, distinct clink.

The nurse looks up, and Heinz catches his watery, dark eyes. Heinz immediately props herself up on her elbows.

“What?”

“Nothing,” the nurse replies.

Although it’s still throbbing with traces of dense pain, Heinz twitches her leg away from the nurse’s gloved hands.

“You just fish-eyed me, boy. Don’t tell me it’s nothing. Hey! I’m talking to you.”

The nurse tries to resume his task, but Heinz moves her leg further away. Then the nurse seems to notice that the skin on Heinz’s face has darkened quite a bit. He bows his head apologetically, his voice rushing.

“I’m sorry. It really is nothing. It’s only, I mean, it’s just that—”

“Just that what?”

He gestures to the veritable porcupine that is Heinz’s upper leg. “It’s just that most patients feel major pain when these pins come out, yes-yes? Even with release narcotics you don’t seem to feel any discomfort at all.”

Heinz gives the nurse a flat look and throws her hair. No use telling this nutmeg-faced loser that she’s had it a lot worse. Yeah, once you survive a sonic concussion pulse dissolving your kidney and endure ten months of muscle grafts and excruciating rehab in a sweltering West African hospital, doing the pins for a minor fracture in some Second Free Zone patch-and-go seems pretty fucking uneventful.