Koko Takes a Holiday (29 page)

“Roger.”

Hoon shuts down the com.

Koko’s lower lip overlaps her upper. Her eyes shift back and forth as she snorkels through her thoughts.

“What do you think?” Flynn asks.

Koko wrinkles her nose.

“Damn it,” Flynn says. “We should pull up. This could be a trap. Delacompte could kill us all.”

Jot whimpers. “
What?
Kill us
all
? No, no, no, no. Who is this Delacompte you speak of? Why would this person want to kill us?”

“Just shut up, Jot, and keep flying,” Koko says.

Flynn stamps a foot. “Koko!”

“Maybe I wasn’t clear with you before,” Koko says, wheeling her head around. “This is personal for Delacompte. She’s not going to bring in a whole squad to take us down outright. Oh, sure, I suppose she could use the SI batteries to blast us from the sky, but we’re well within range now and if that were the call she probably would’ve taken her shot already. Plus, when you consider her colossal ego and the bad press? No way. Trust me, she’ll want to meet me face-to-face and alone. Like the tower just said, this might be some kind of a programming error.”

“Yeah, but you don’t believe that.”

“Listen, Flynn,” Koko says, “Jot and Hoon. You’ve all been super. Really. Hijacking and knockout blows notwithstanding. And there’s no reason for you to get hurt. Especially you, Flynn. So let me ask our pilots here something. Once we touch down, is there any way of dropping out of this bird while we’re taxiing toward the hangar?”

Jot and Hoon ease their yokes from side to side as the ship continues its descent.

“There’s a maintenance tube behind you,” Jot answers. “Inside that tube is a small ladder leading down to a second series of hatches that open directly below the front landing gear. There, the yellow stripe. Lift that flap. There’s a red D-ring lock under it. You twist that red D-ring lock counterclockwise to release. What is it? What are you planning to do?”

Koko eyes the yellow strip. She bends over and lifts the metal flap with the toe of her boot, exposing the red D-ring lock Jot has just described. She returns to her position behind Jot’s seat and leans over.

“What’s the inside of the hangar look like?”

“Why?”

“Just give me the damn details, Jot. Windows. Platforms. Exits. Hazards. Dimensions. I used to work on The Sixty but I never spent a lot of time out there, so tell me everything you can think of.”

“But we can’t help you,” Jot protests. “They could bring us up on charges if we assist a hijacker. Oh, I am too old for the re-civ penal camps.”

“Relax, Jot. No one is going to a re-civ penal camp, and nobody’s ever going to know you helped me. I keep my word to the grave, and Flynn here? Well, like I said, he’s planning to off himself anyway. Ain’t that right, Depressus boy?”

Hoon swivels her head, dropping her jaw.

“No way. You have Depressus?”

Flynn recoils. “I was scheduled for the jump we flew through.”

“Oh, wow. That really sucks. I’m so sorry.”

A curious pang catches Flynn by surprise. It’s strange, but in the wake of all the vivid, near-lethal stimulation he suddenly has difficulty pinpointing even a shred of his malaise. Maybe Koko was right after all. Was a cognitive shift of gusto enough to set him free? Could it be that simple? Flynn isn’t sure, but still he finds himself offering a heartening, modest smile to Hoon.

“Don’t be.”

A heavy waft of thermal turbulence bumps the ship about, and Hoon’s attention spins promptly back to her screens. Steadying their flight level, she helps Jot try to describe the insides of the hangars on The Sixty as best as they can remember. While they’ve never docked at hangar nine before, they are pretty sure the structures are uniform and consistent.

“Great,” Koko says, slapping the top of Jot’s seat. “Okay, this is what I need you guys to do.”

Runway nine’s hangar is a hulking steel and aluminum Quonset-style vault built to accommodate three freighter-sized aircraft side by side, and the hangar doors are drawn back, leaving an opening of approximately three hundred fifty meters. Spiraled collections of gray and yellow power and fuel cables protrude from housing panels locked into micro-fusion reactors on either sides of the building, and there is enough random hardware to fully service a full house. Three triangular-shaped ladders on locking casters, assorted hover tows, and a group of corrugated cargo bins are parked at the rear of the hangar beneath a set of massive sliding wall winches. Other than that, the hangar is barren with little room to hide. Delacompte parks her terra-sled out of sight just behind the recessed hangar door on the left side of the building.

Sweeping her eyes over the space, she assesses the baking-hot structure. Above, weathered crossbeams the width of the building’s curved ceiling frame off in double X-shaped steel catwalks. Delacompte considers the angles and the possibility of rappelling right on top of the craft when it eventually parks after taxi and power down, but no. The catwalks are too exposed. She could easily be spotted from the ship’s cockpit as they pull in. Then Delacompte notices a rain catch bolted above the parted hangar doors. The ledge projects several meters outside into the air, curving slightly downward for tropical downpour runoff, and inside the metal creates a small ledge. The inside ledge is a sheer parallel to the ground. Basket ladders accessing the catwalks are bolted to both sides of the hangar. She might have to do some free climbing to reach the inner ledge but dropping down from there and catching Koko
in flagrante
is the call.

At the back of the hangar and scabbed and flecked with rust, a faded digitized wall display runs an arrival-time countdown. The numbers indicate she has mere minutes to get into position. Taking her pack, she sprints across the open hangar floor and then prowls up the rubberized rungs of one of the basket ladders.

Up top, the X-shaped catwalks give her a bird’s-eye view of the hangar floor below, and Delacompte is struck with a passing sense of vertigo. If she slips and falls, it’s easily a fatal drop. The temperature up top is roasting, and perspiration slicks Delacompte’s face. Even with the solar reflectors affixed to the hangar’s roof, the sun on The Sixty is brutal. Like God’s own fist hammering down.

Maybe she should have waited for Koko in her quarters or perhaps the silky cool of her air-conditioned office. Koko would have eventually shown up and tried to make her play. Oh, well. Too late for showboating on familiar ground now.

Soot from blown exhaust is thick and loose on the rusty beams above Delacompte, but she manages to pull herself up and lock her arms around a padded section of pipe that tracks toward the ledge before it elbows out in opposite directions. Delacompte figures the pipe will get her close enough, so she tests it for her weight, and it seems sturdy. The padded insulation gives Delacompte a decent grip, so she loops her legs around it and inches her way along the pipe in an upside-down commando crawl.

As she nears the ledge, she lowers her legs and pumps herself in a draping, pendulum swing to clear the final distance to the ledge. She counts to three and releases, and her feet land with a clean, loud echoing bang. But then a bolt of panic seizes her chest. Her balance wavers.

Frantically, Delacompte windmills her arms in an effort to forward the last of her momentum. It seems almost to the very last second that she has completely miscalculated her impromptu gymnastics and she’ll now plummet backward to an ungracious and stupid death. However, her balance steadies and her weight shifts forward. Her hands reach out and grab hold of a coarse edge of sectioned seam in front of her eyes. Delacompte lets out a titter of relief. She wipes a hand across her face to clear some of the sweat and turns her head to look at the hangar floor.

Phew.

That was close.

Delacompte gets to work. She finds a distended rivet in front of her where she can hang her pack and slips off the nylon rucksack. She hangs the pack by a strap, unzips it, and inventories her gear. She removes a Browning 70 sub-compact and the bandolier of pulse grenades, and then assembles the close-stock Italian prototype that, on full auto, burps out an astounding one thousand pulse rounds per minute. She knows from experience that at that rate of discharge the pulse from the prototype will be a solid beam of burning blue light and will blister her skin—so she tugs on protective gloves. Delacompte gently sets the prototype down on the ledge by her feet and inspects the Browning. She adjusts the incendiary setting on the smaller weapon, releases the safety, and blasts two matching holes through the wall of the hangar in front of her.

As the molten metal drips from the two holes on either side of a perpendicular beam, Delacompte loops a holster strap over her shoulders and secures the backup Browning 70 sub-compact.

Still waiting for the metal to cool, she retrieves a climbing harness from her pack. She delicately steps into the climbing harness’s loops as though trying on a twist of skimpy lingerie. The climbing harness is programmed with augmented intelligence, and its straps and fasteners adjust to her thigh and hip measurements like snakes locking off in mid-helix. After attaching an auto-feeding A.I. rappel hammer to the center hook on the harness, she threads the end of a black nylon line through the slides of the mechanism and ties off a double safety surgeon’s knot on the end. The opposite end of the line she feeds through the two cooling holes she’s cut into the wall, and then she ties off her base.

Delacompte carefully flakes the black line, making sure there are no kinks. Even with an A.I. rappel device, everything has to flow clean on a combat descent, and she wants a smooth slide before she brakes and opens up on Koko. It will be so perfect. Death delivered in a swoop from above.

She reaches into the pack and removes a sheathed seventeen-inch Kukri machete, which she clips to a slot on the climbing harness. Her plan, once down, is to cut the line, and if Koko is still alive, well, the machete’s carbon steel edge will sing true. Sure, her marking bite will take Koko’s eye and provide her with some satisfaction, but with one blow the Kukri will easily free Koko’s skull from her spine. A trophy is a trophy, and taxidermy isn’t a totally forgotten art.

Make a nice addition to her office.

Right over her fucking door.

Delacompte puts on the pulse grenade bandolier, tightens the straps, and crouches down to wait. The Italian prototype cradled in her arms, she evens out her breathing and orders her thoughts as she glides a single finger over and over the stock of the weapon.

As she fine-tunes her hearing to the roars of arriving and departing aircraft, one whine becomes more distinct in the surrounding airspace din. Delacompte eases up to a half-stance and presses an eye to a sliver of light escaping one of the holes where she tied off the rappelling line. Through the slivered crack she sees the septic frigate’s crescent silhouette bull’s-eyed in the rising sun as she grips the Italian prototype nestled in her arms.

Finally.

As the massive rubber wheels bite the shimmering tarmac, the waste frigate’s reverse thrusters roar. The ship slows to an advancing roll at two thousand-plus meters, bumbling on to its final destination like an overgrown puppy heading for a well-deserved bowl of kibble.

The shadow in front of the frigate’s nose is half the length of the craft, and at four hundred fifty meters from the hangar’s mouth, Koko drops from beneath and rolls quickly out of the way of the bow’s secondary landing gear. A quick scramble to her feet behind the massive front wheels and Koko keeps pace behind it.

Almost two kilometers away, ensconced in the dark globe of The Sixty Islands’ control tower, Flight Administrator Bardsley cranks the focus on a pair of binoculars wedged across his eyes. Even from the remote distance, Bardsley is fairly certain that the blue-haired woman who has dropped from the frigate’s nose and is now running behind the landing gear has some kind of weapon in her hand.

Bardsley whispers, “A CPB discipline issue, huh? Pull my lungs out through my balloon knot? Looks like you’ve got a surprise on your hands, Vice President Delacompte.”

A co-worker sidles up to Bardsley and peers through the tinted glass in front of them. The co-worker—stouter, slightly smaller, and balding—drinks from a plaque-stained ceramic mug of black coffee. He has a paper napkin tucked into the neck of his uniform, and the napkin is blotched orange—the result of the man’s hasty breakfast of reheated pigeon wings. Bardsley can smell the curried grease and briefly considers the nauseating combination of scavenger fowl with the cheap coffee CPB provides flight control and shudders. The coworker dabs his lips with the edge of his napkin.

“Hey, chief. There a problem out on the LZ?”

Bardsley lowers the binoculars and pauses. He then raises the binoculars to his eyes again, an amused smirk edging his lips.

“Nope,” Bardsley answers. “No problem at all.”

A deck of big, hairy
if
s shuffle and reshuffle in Koko’s mind as she keeps pace behind the front landing gear.

If—
she were Portia Delacompte…

If—
Jot and Hoon did exactly what she told them…

If
—her aim is keen and her timing is perfect…

If
—Flynn hadn’t helped her…

If
—she’d never dropped down on Delacompte’s balcony back in Finland and seen her snap the neck of her own child.

If
—she had just taken a big bite of the shit-pride sandwich and gone to ground.

All the ifs are too late now.

Koko slims her eyes. She takes in everything, every strategic vantage point and possibility. Even with the heat glistening off the runway and humidity pressing in, Koko feels an electric cool icing through her veins. Part trepidation, part levitation, it feels like it has always felt. Like she’s floating, the rims of the world honing in with coalesced, clear-cut detail. The anticipation of combat. The steady rhythmic bump of blood thudding in her ears.