Koko Takes a Holiday (2 page)

Ten years Koko’s senior, Portia Delacompte hung up her own mercenary spurs years before Koko. Traded in her weapons for spreadsheets, went corporate, and sharked her way up through multiple leisure-syndicate postings until Delacompte landed the cherry gig of all cherry gigs—Executive Vice President of The Sixty Islands Operations. It wasn’t long after this wild success that Delacompte reached out to her old comrade, and at the time it was an offer that was, as they say, hard for Koko to refuse.

Run her own brothel and saloon on The Sixty? The most expensive and violent pleasure resort on the planet? Color Koko grateful. She took that opportunity with both hands and feet. Koko figured she was more than a tad overdue, actually. After all, she’d yanked Delacompte’s fat out of the fire on more than one occasion, and after that one terrible night back in Finland, Koko just assumed things had finally found their way of working themselves out.

It isn’t such a bad life running a brothel. Keep the customers well-oiled with the hooch, manage the games of chance, and pair up guests with whomever they desire from her roster of sexual pleasers. Nearly an equal split between haimish work and a snoozing hammock routine. It beats making planetary regions stable for long-term capital concerns, that’s for sure. Most evenings Koko even kicks off early and finds herself joining the party.

Standing at the bar, Koko reflects upon an earlier time when she and Delacompte were out fighting for the multinational conglomerates. They had been on a re-stabilization mission for ElektroCorp and were pinned down beneath marginally radioactive debris near the obliterated ancient seaport of Sanya. A former noodle-manufacturing facility. Jejune, Koko had been a few years into her service, but one bombed-apart industrial landscape looked pretty much like any other to her. Initially, things had gone well on the mission. But then, in a blink of an eye, everything went straight to hell. With two operatives from their brick killed, she and Delacompte ended up cut off from the rest of their unit.

* * *

“Hey, Delacompte,” Koko said, “has ElektroCorp even looked at the recon saves we uploaded? Their pre-op barrages scorched out everything, and this whole sector is toast. What’s the big deal with this place anyway?”

Delacompte was using her tactical knife to cut a chunk of amphetamine chew from a block she had removed from the flak rack on her compression suit. Delacompte handed a wedge of the sticky black chew to Koko and then slabbed off a chunk for herself. With her thumb, Koko crammed the chew into the feeding gate below the chin on her helmet. After a short disinfectant spray, the inner seal on the helmet’s feeding gate opened and Koko fished out the potent gunk with her tongue. Like gnawing on a burnt hunk of rubber. Amphetamine chew was vile-tasting stuff, but it sure as hell kept you focused when you were in the shit.

“Real estate,” Delacompte answered, waving the barrel of her KRISS F9 pulse rifle slightly. “All this? This area is a prime shipping quarter. Grind it out and dump the scrap offshore, bring in the prefab hardware, and ElektroCorp can be online for immediate manufacturing and distribution in a year flat. This is all about emerging markets, Martstellar. These de-civ Kongercat gang lords know the investment value, and the short of it is they think they deserve a piece of the action.”

“Friggin’ bottomfeeders.”

“That they are. That they surely are.”

Koko shifted her legs. “I hate to break it to you, D,” Koko said, “but we’re kind of on the worse side of screwed here.”

A sneer slithered across Delacompte’s lips. “No, we’re not.”

Delacompte’s blasé contradiction floored Koko. “What? What do you mean, ‘no, we’re not’?”

“Just that,” she answered. “We are not screwed. Not entirely.”

Koko looked left and then right. “How do you figure? One, we’re outnumbered. Two, our unit is fragged and down multiple heads. And, three, we’re at least an hour from any sort of evac from ElektroCorp.”

Delacompte sheathed her tactical knife on her belt. Chewed thoughtfully.

“You’re not framing the big picture, kid,” Delacompte said. “Look, Davidson’s and Kamiński’s bricks are holed up right over there near the waste tanks on either side of the gap framing the Kongercats’ position, right? You and me, we’re going to lay down a diversion and draw them out. That’s how we’re going to play this.”

Koko uneasily ventured a peek over the pile of rubble in front of them and then hunkered back down.

“Um, I know you’re point on this mission, D, so no disrespect here, okay? Those are some long freakin’ odds.”

“Have a little faith,” Delacompte said.

A little faith? Screw faith
, Koko thought. The data streaming into her ocular implant told Koko both Corporal Davidson’s and Corporal Kamiński’s bricks were down two mercs each. That meant, including their own two casualties, the insertion team was short six heads in total. Davidson had their entire unit’s medic under her wing, for crying out loud, and the medic’s beacon indicated that the medic’s body was now in four, count them, four separate pieces. Additional bio sweeps also indicated the Kongercat de-civs were in a spiraled thatch formation of at least three hundred, dug in at fifty-seven meters in front of their position. True, the Kongercats’ weapons were antiques and they couldn’t hit water falling out of a boat, but this was their ground. All they had to do was let fly, toss a few IEDs, and the whole ElektroCorp mission in Sanya was cooked.

Koko stared at her boots.

Man, she didn’t want to die here. Not here. Not in some smoking wasteland surrounded and outnumbered by a bunch of tumor-faced de-civs. Koko expected some kind of fry-out at any second and secretly hoped if an assault did come it would be mercifully quick.

Once again, Koko admired Delacompte’s absolute calm under fire, her unflappable leadership. Whenever they happened to be paired up on a mission, Delacompte never let even the most lethal of situations appear out of her stalwart control. Her tenacity and élan was something Koko had been trying to emulate ever since she had the good fortune to meet Delacompte. And the ElektroCorp assignment in Sanya was, what? Their tenth syndicate mission in the field together?

At first Koko thought their crossing paths on so many aggressive actions was merely coincidence, but eventually Koko learned there was no such thing as coincidence on reconstruction and industrialization ops. Too much at stake. And rudimentary examination of such operations showed success was in the statistics, right? So the corporations and syndicates took great pains to build complete, efficient teams. After all, when world conglomerates and their surviving puppet governments are trying to jumpstart commerce after a couple of centuries’ worth of false-start Armageddons, all the deadly ducks needed to be in a row.

Koko took a quick look at the webbed-out carcasses of the two mercenaries who were with them up until about five minutes prior. The dead faces of the two fallen were so serene inside their helmets, if it weren’t for the blood and pulverized bone you’d swear they were catching a few Zs. Poor bastards never knew what hit them. One minute you’re dittybopping around, collecting operational data and sucking down your morning’s paste rations, the next you’re lit up and deep-fried.

Delacompte saw Koko looking at the bodies and slapped Koko’s arm.

“You see that tower structure there?”

Koko turned her head and peeked over the mound of broken debris in front of them.

“You mean the one leaning just to the right of the enemy’s position?”

Delacompte nodded. The condensation in her helmet’s screen made her look almost faceless, like a ghost. “Yeah, that’s the one. Totally weakened base on that sucker. We’re going to discharge everything we got at the foot of that tower and hope she’ll topple right over in front of the Kongercats.”

“Everything we’ve got?”

“Yup.”

“But we’ll be defenseless.”

“That’s the idea,” Delacompte said confidently. “These de-civs have to believe we’re desperate. Unloading on them full bore like that will convey a sense of panic. If they think we’ve unloaded everything, then maybe they’ll take the opportunity to launch an all-out counter-offensive. If they do, the plan is to have Davidson’s and Kamiński’s crews out-flank them. If we’re lucky and we lure the Kongercats out, only a few of them will be left standing when the smoke clears.”

Koko motioned to the dead bodies behind them.

“And what? We just hope they don’t cut us to pieces like these two?”

Delacompte didn’t waste a look on the dead mercs. Instead she squatted down closer to Koko to make her point clear.

“Look, Martstellar,” Delacompte said. “I’m real sorry about these two. Hell, when ElektroCorp does our wash-up, I’ll even take the heat, let them dock my credits for their expense. The truth is we can’t wait this out. No way, no how. Those Kongercats are going to make their move, and they’re going to make it soon.”

Koko dipped her helmet. The rush from the amphetamine chew kicked in just then, and Koko felt the chemical heat burning up her blood.

“God, I hate this,” she griped. “Why can’t these obstructionist de-civs roll over for initiatives like everybody else?”

Delacompte laughed. “Hundreds of years of tested living, that’s why. Global contagions, a few centuries of smartwars, all the environmental and geopolitical ruin… like anyone, these pains in the butt are just trying to make their way in the world. Not to mention this is your job, soldier, so quit complaining. This works out and we go one-on-one with these de-civs? You’re going to impress the hell out of them with your moves.”

Koko grinned. “Didn’t know flattery was part of my compensation package, Big D.”

“Martstellar, you’re a shit-hot hand-to-hand fighter, and you know it.”

Koko couldn’t help but feel a small flash of pride.

Screw it
, Koko thought. She cranked the levels on her weapon and armed every last pulse grenade on her rack. Koko then attached a grenade launcher to her own KRISS F9 pulse rifle and fed the grenades into the weapon’s breech. Meanwhile, Delacompte patched the orders to Davidson and Kamiński’s bricks via her own ocular. After some confirmation static, a synchronized countdown began on Delacompte’s mark.

“You ready?” Delacompte asked.

Koko sucked in a deep breath. Exhaled.

“Born and bred, boss.”

“Then let’s do this.”

* * *

Turns out, Delacompte’s plan that day worked out just as she described it. It was as though Delacompte had foreseen every single one of the Kongercats’ useless tactics. Their group didn’t lose another specialist, and none of the Kongercat de-civ militants were left alive. Gutsy-as-hell move was what ElektroCorp called it. Gutsy-as-hell and bonus credits were awarded all around.

So, yeah, Koko thinks. Portia Delacompte has had her mettle tested with fringe clingers like this before. All in all, she’ll probably finagle Koko a slap on the wrist or perhaps a small fine. Plus, Koko tells herself, be realistic. It’s not the first time somebody stepped over the line on The Sixty Islands and got themselves popped for their troubles.

Koko picks up a glass and pours herself two fingers’ worth of rail beauty. She hasn’t spoken with Delacompte in almost a year, and when Koko did it was to see about financing a second brothel operation out near The Sixty’s landing fields. Something catering strictly to the merchant contractors and overworked SI staff. When Koko presented her pitch to Delacompte, Delacompte was excessively cool to the proposal and even chillier to Koko. Sure, she and Delacompte move in different circles now, with Delacompte being an executive and everything, but deep down Koko feels that something had somehow changed between them. Of course Koko realizes that even the best of friendships fade, so she attributed Delacompte’s quiet distance to Delacompte’s polishing her image above her bloody past, wrapping the façades of establishment and pretentiousness around her rough edges. Hell, could she blame the woman? Delacompte has been through a lot, and, like Koko herself, everybody reinvents herself some time.

Koko shuts down the prompts on the register and kills the last of the bar lights except for some piping blue neon looped above the projection piano. Tucking in at the projection piano’s hover bench for a spell, she fiddles on the holographic keys with an ancient tune she used to know and before Koko knows it, it’s a mere three hours before sunrise.

After taking a final throat-clearing splash of rail beauty on some shaved ice, she yawns and wanders back upstairs to bed. She slides beneath the damp sheets next to Archimedes, and reflexively the young man reaches down between her warm, smooth thighs. Coaxing.

“Koko-sama…”

Koko pushes Archimedes’ hand away. Phew, don’t get her wrong. She adores the boy’s panther-like athleticism in the sack and how he spends hours tripping her bells and whistles, but it’s well past late, and Koko is bushed.

With a sigh, Koko rolls over and quickly falls asleep.

A few hours later, Archimedes rouses Koko with a triple-shot cup of hydroponic espresso on a saucer.

Archimedes is dressed in a red cotton macramé thong and black rubber sandals and gushes a non-stop stream of indecipherable burbles and clicks, the gist of which suggests that a group of six CPB security personnel are downstairs in the main bar and very, very angry.

Koko rubs the heels of her hands into her eyes and sits up on sweat-soaked pillows. She takes the offered coffee from Archimedes’ trembling hands and downs the scalding liquid in a string of sharp, wincing slurps.

“What time is it?” she asks, stretching.

Archimedes takes the empty espresso cup and sets it on the saucer.

“Six-fifteen, Koko-sama.”

Koko’s eyes pop. “Six-fif-what? Goddamn it! Since when do CPB security clowns get their collective acts together before eight? The message on the prompts said they wouldn’t be here until nine. What the—”

Koko pushes Archimedes aside. Planting her bare feet on the broad planks of the bedroom floor, she searches for her discarded clothes and finds them draped over the arm of a nearby chair. Quickly, Koko yanks on a pair of khaki shorts and pulls a plain white tank top over the top of her head. She jabs her bare feet into a heavy pair of tan utility boots and jerks open her suite’s door.