Koko Takes a Holiday (24 page)

Flynn ducks beneath a low-hanging pipe. “I don’t remember. I think the flight decks have to be completely sealed off and crosschecked before the hangars shut off completely. I’ve only been in a couple of drills before, and they were achingly slow. The outer doors are really big, and they need to completely seal off the pressure membrane.” The floor beneath them shakes as though struck by a small, shifting earthquake. “You feel that? That probably means the outer hangar doors have just been released from their storage slots. There’s no time! Here! Through here!”

“Flynn—”

“We get aboard a transport or something else and we should be okay to ride the depressurization out. Here, go. Up this ladder. I think it’ll take us to the main deck.”

Koko doesn’t have time to argue. Flynn lets her by, and she takes the ladder first. She climbs toothed rungs quickly and comes to a round hatch painted with yellow and white zebra stripes. The hatch is locked off by two manual screw hinges that take all the strength in her wrists to spin down and undo. When the latches are free, Koko shoulders up two heaving whacks until the hatch slams open. Koko finds purchase on a grimy ledge and cautiously raises her head. They are directly beneath a large crescent wing of a cargo frigate, and the frigate’s scorched and travel-beaten belly and wings stretch out left and right. The open hatch is hidden behind one of the ship’s landing-gear wheels, the wheel as big as a rolled bale of hay.

Koko slithers out of the hole, followed shortly by Flynn belly-flopping out beside her.

“Addendum—today’s Embrace ceremony has been suspended until further notification. One hundred seconds to completed emergency sequence and full security depressurization. All personnel move immediately to secure areas. Ninety-six seconds…”

Flynn rolls over and scans the craft’s belly on his back. He points.

“There! Thirty meters down, a ship engineering portal. You can blow the lock with an incendiary round, and it should lead up to the hold. It’s our only chance.”

Koko groans and clambers in the direction Flynn indicates.

“This better fucking work,” she says.

Flynn gets to his feet and follows. When they are under the engineering portal, Koko takes careful aim at the lock with her Sig and then both of them look away to shield their eyes. The short blue burst from Koko’s gun splits the panel’s lock with a shower of white-hot sparks and reveals yet another toothed ladder leading up and into the dark, unlit bowels of the frigate.

“You first,” Koko says. “I’ll cover us.”

“No, you go.”

“Go now, Flynn, or I swear I’ll shoot you right here.”

“Ninety seconds. Outer hangar doors closing, outer hangar doors closing. All personnel—”

Flynn’s eyes flit to and fro. Koko raises her gun to the center of Flynn’s forehead to focus the issue.

“Go, Flynn. Now.”

Flynn nods and pushes Koko aside. He jumps up, grabs the ladder, and swings himself upward in a leg-kicking pull-up. Drawing Flynn’s Beretta from her belt, Koko spins around in a low squat with both guns in her hands, searching for targets, but it seems anyone left up top on the main flight deck is gone, hauling ass for cover.

God.

Fucking Delacompte.

Fucking Finland.

I should have never, ever, ever, ever…

Flynn yells down the portal tube. “Koko, hurry!”

Koko doesn’t want to lower her weapons, but she knows she has to. She jams both guns into her belt and looks up for a place to fit her hands for the climb up the ladder. That’s when, hot-eyed from the hatch Flynn and Koko just climbed out of, the redhead with the neck-extension bands prairie-dogs. The woman seems so close Koko thinks she can even hear the soft, wet click of saliva in the woman’s mouth as she curses and pulls herself out of the hole.

Koko can’t believe it’s going to be so easy. She yanks the Sig from her belt just as the redhead locks her one unbandaged eye on her. Koko aims clean.

Gotcha.

The discharged pulse from Koko’s gun severs the redhead’s neck just above her collarbones. The woman’s long-locked skull flops backward across the open deck before it finally comes to a rest against a snaking section of ribbed fueling hose. Neckbands from the dead woman’s throat scatter everywhere, and the rest of her bucking, decapitated body slams back into the hole and plummets down the shaft. A livid wail of irritation follows, and Koko knows the second agent in pursuit is going to be busy, at least for a little while.

Koko drops the hot weapon into the open zippered space on her canvas jumpsuit and launches herself upward, catching the ladder halfway up in her grip. Koko scales the rungs, looking up while the hot suppressor attachment of the recently fired Sig blisters the naked skin on her front as it fishes its way down to her waist. She sees Flynn reaching down to her with the fingers of his right hand splayed wide.

“Seventy seconds to depressurization, sixty-nine, sixty-eight—”

“Seal this!” Koko snaps.

“Get in here, then!”

Flynn grabs her hand, pulls Koko through the passage, and together they both slam the hatch shut behind her. Flynn works the hatch locks, and when he raises his head Koko is heaving next to him on her knees. Koko’s jumpsuit is fully unzipped as she fumbles inside for the Sig. She rips the hot weapon from down near her hip and, with her arm extended, swings the gun ready for who or whatever is next.

The hold is freezing and the stench inside is hellacious.

“My God, Flynn, what is that
smell
?”

“I don’t know!”

“Sixty-five seconds—outer
Alaungpaya
hangar doors closing—repeat—outer
Alaungpaya
hangar doors closing—sixty-three seconds—”

As Koko scans ahead, she targets a tiny female in an oversized filthy flight suit. The girl—not more than a day past her teenage aero-cadet comps—flattens herself against a barely open hatchway in the bulkhead leading to the frigate’s main cockpit; she has her hands up in a trembling gesture of surrender. The young woman’s face is half pleading mercy and half pure terror, but she beckons them.

“Please! The hold isn’t airtight! Come on! Get in here now or you’re both dead!”

Koko grabs Flynn by the scruff of his collar and yanks him to his feet. With simultaneous frustrated moans, they charge forward.

It is, after all, what’s next.

Albeit briefly, the terabyte bedlam of the worldwide media feeds glisten with recent
Alaungpaya
developments:

<
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> …

“LEEEEEE!”

Lee gulps and dives for Delacompte’s office door. When he stumbles inside, he finds Delacompte rigid behind her desk. Like a dueler, she points a gun directly at his head.

“What the hell is going on up there, Lee?” she screeches. “The feeds say there’s an emergency sequence in progress on
Alaungpaya
. This is what you call cleaning up?”

“I-I-I…”

“Shut that door now!”

Lee hastily shuts the door behind him and whimpers. To his sudden horror, he senses a small, warmish trickle of urine leaking from his penis. As the dark spot on his pants blooms, he turns around on jellied legs to face his boss.

“What the hell is happening up there?”

Lee babbles, “I-I don’t know. They weren’t, I mean, the orders I laid out were specifically parametered not to… well… what I mean to say is—”

“What? What, Lee? Out with it. What?”

“Discretion!” he gushes. “I was specific. Very specific, Madam Delacompte. I mean, all this, this might not even be related to the Martstellar situation at all. It could be something else entirely. Something that has nothing to do with… God. Oh God, oh God, oh God—”

“Don’t you
dare
blaspheme in front of me!”

Lee is aghast to feel his urine flowing freely now, and his shame at wetting himself is compounded by the stirring pressure against his clenched anus. But, oddly enough, the sensation of warm piss leaving his body feels good. Humiliating, of course, but it’s a welcome relief finally to let go of all the endless job tension and stress.

Lee finds himself praying for the precision of a headshot. He wonders sadly if his merchant sailor will mourn his loss and remember to water their plants.

Across the room, Delacompte’s floating prompt screens flash white, alerting her to an incoming message from the Custom Pleasure Bureau’s board of directors—marked urgent. Delacompte’s fuming eyes fall to her prompts, and she lowers her weapon with disgust, slapping the gun against the hard meat of her thigh.

“Oh, lovely,” she says sarcastically. “This is going to be just great.
Just
great. Way to jam me up here, Lee. My word, this is turning out to be one hell of a day.”

Urine puddles around Lee’s shoes, and he shakes a foot. “I sent a communiqué only minutes ago, but the team members were unresponsive. If something has gone wrong, I know it can be fixed. I mean, yes, I understand you’re upset and naturally this is a major screw-up on my part but—”

“Wait a second. Hold on.”

“What?”

“What did you just say?”

“When?”

“Before. Did you just say ‘team members’?”

“Uhhh…”

“
TEAM MEMBERS
?!”

“Yes! Yes. I didn’t want to bother you. I mean, I was going to tell you about sending a few additional operatives to take care of the Martstellar situation, but with everything that’s happened—if you just give me another chance I swear I can fix this.”

Delacompte drapes a hand over her aching eyes. She can’t believe this. How does one simple little chore like getting rid of someone spiral so quickly out of her control? The board members will be furious with her. Perhaps the jowly director was right after all. Maybe her executive chops are truly the pits. Delacompte’s shoulders sag, and she blows out a long, cleansing breath.

“You can’t fix this.”

There’s a merciful pause before Delacompte brings the gun up and fires. The pulse cuts Lee in half at the hips.

The exquisite look of astonishment on Lee’s face is almost comical, and he doesn’t make a sound as both sections of his body fall in opposite directions and hit the floor with simultaneous thuds like the sound of dropped luggage.

Delacompte resets the safety on her weapon and lays it down on her desk. After taking a moment she crosses the room and stands above the two sections of Lee’s corpse. She takes in the sulfuric reek of fried intestinal waste and disemboweled guts. Delacompte frowns.
Oh, this just gets better and better
, she thinks. The antique Persian carpet beneath Lee’s exploded core is absolutely ruined.

Passionlessly, Delacompte gazes down into Lee’s flat, lifeless eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. With an aimless, dying impulse, his left foot spasms for a few seconds and then settles still.

It has been so long for Delacompte. She’s nearly forgotten the sublime buoyancy that comes with taking a human life—the confident rush of power. Bending forward, she lowers herself to a single knee.

“You know,” she says, coolly gathering herself, “when the CPB recruiters first brought your file to my attention, Lee, I felt you were an excellent executive assistant choice for me because you were so responsive to taking orders. It’s the truth. You were a perfect—oh, what is the phrase? Aide-de-camp? Never a misplaced step or ill-advised word, never a snotty reproach. Despite all outward appearances, please know I did sort of like you. But let’s be honest here. You’ve been slacking off as of late. Perhaps that is my fault. Perhaps I should have started your junior executive penalty count sooner to snap you back in line, but oh well. Spare the rod, hmm?”

Delacompte gently seizes the sides of Lee’s blood-spattered face and hauls his head up to meet her own. She makes a small circling motion with her chin as she looks for the right spot. Flexes her jaw.

How does one do this again?

Oh, that’s right. She needs to set her teeth right over the supraorbital bone and use her tongue to probe and scoop, sucking at the same time. Then you have to pull back and sever the optic nerves with a crosscut sawing motion of the front teeth.

Delacompte counts to three and bites down on Lee’s right eye.

Pulling back, she rips the flesh free and swallows the eye whole, letting go of Lee’s head and dropping it to the floor with a flat crack.

Standing, Delacompte uses her forearm to smear the dribbling blood from her mouth.

Meanwhile…

…<
newest
> authorities verify blood and DNA re-civ identifiers—23 losses aboard second free zone host barge class ALAUNGPAYA, including 3 progenics, 50-plus related injuries—confirmation pending—ALAUNGPAYA lockdown initiated <
newest
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newest
> weather: continued deficient soy harvest conditions in northern polar regions, 5-day high above 37.7°C expected <
newest
> last month’s lunar mine collapse corrected, holding at 89%, confidence potential officially corroborated <
newest
> // E-X-C-L-U-S-I-V-E! // are de-civ convict sitcom hits
MYSTRIFE4LIFE
and
GUILTY, PLEASE
canceled for the next feed cycle? know now-now! update in fifteen seconds <
newest
> …