@ Kidd: I think that's "ha ha ha" in Thai. A friend of mine worked in Bangkok for a year and I went to visit, but can't claim any real knowledge of the culture: just thought it would be nice to feature a group that doesn't get much coverage in the fiction.
@ DOC_Agren and Tegyrius: I did give it a listen, and folk isn't really my bag but I've got to admit I've had it stuck in my head ever since. Still, are we seriously going to pretend
this isn't the only soundtrack this thread needs?
* * *
EPISODE 1-9: In which things become personalReina found an auto-hotel near the docks called the ‘Cousteau’, one of the ones with nobody at the front desk, just a machine that displayed the available rooms, took your money and spat out the passcard key. She fed a couple of C-Bills, waited while the machine hummed and whirred to itself before scooping two keys out of the tray at the bottom.
The rooms were as inviting as a Capellan reeducation camp with none of the creature comforts. Two beds with mattresses on the microscopic side of thin, a threadbare carpet whose original color would forever remain a mystery and a shower stall whose most powerful setting appeared to be ’Astrokaszy desert during a particularly long drought.’
We slung our bags on the beds and sat down, Reina on one, me on the other, facing her.
“You going to tell me what that was about, or do I have to ask?”
“What was what about?” She said it with a weary smile, like she knew the question had been coming. Well, of course it had.
“The secret handshake or whatever between you and Gatling Grandma back there.” She batted her eyes innocently, which I admit, made me laugh. “You being chummy with the Tong have anything to do with you getting kicked out of the NAIS, miss child of the Paradis clan?”
“Could say that,” she nodded slowly. “Your nosiness have anything to do with you getting kicked out of the Eagle Corps, Sunny-boy?”
Touché. The tattoo. “Wasn’t kicked out, but yes, in a way. So how about it?”
“Tell you later, maybe.”
That seemed to be the best answer I’d get. “I can wait. In the meantime, we got a plan?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line, nodded. “If you can call it that.”
“Gonna share? Like why, for example, do I now have back-to-back life sentences’ worth of black market military-grade hardware in my bag? We gonna take out Edwards?”
“I was tempted to, at first,” She sighed, just kind of let herself go at the waist so she fell backwards onto the bed. Looking up at the ceiling, she said, absently: “Then I got a better idea, a way to really pay him back: A little coup d’état. I’m gonna take over the unit.”
“Okay?”
“Call Edwards out, challenge him to a duel, better than just killing him if I want to keep the unit together. I’ve got the support, but I need time to make that challenge, which is why you need the Beam Gun.”
“All right. And the ACDC?”
“Yeah, about that.” She lifted a hand to her forehead, ran it through her hair as she lay on the bed. “There’s a chance a rival clan, Tong or familia or maybe yakuza, saw us at the Granny Gun Club and is either gonna try to kill or kidnap us. Nothing personal, you understand, just turf wars. Just business.”
*
I’ll bet Edwards was feeling kind of nervous when he walked into the hangar the next morning. Striding down the lines of fighters ready to be loaded onto the DropSip, making a final inspection—F-90s down one side, F-100s down the other.
The unit was set to take off in 24 hours, and he hadn’t heard a word from Hanzo, had he? The zeppelin rental had reported Manny and Groucho’s deaths as soon as we were out of sight, but he had to be wondering what had happened to Reina and me.
So when he walked into the hangar, with two military security guys, as well as the heads of logistics, transportation and communications in tow, maybe he was feeling a little jittery. Can’t have helped the mood when he saw me sitting on the nose of his factory-fresh F-100, Beam Gun pointed at his pancreas.
“Morning Eddie,” I said.
He froze. “How did you—” Then kind of recovered. “What are you doing here, Glass?”
“Oh, you know, this and that.”
He was scanning the hangar with his eyeballs, trying to figure out where Reina was. “And Flight Lieutenant Paradis?”
“You’ll find out where she is soon enough,” I shifted the Beam Gun so it was pointing at one of the milsec guys, who was trying to be subtle about getting his assault rifle ready. “Do me a favor and put those on the ground, okay fellas? Making me jumpy. And the rest of you, maybe give the big man a little space.”
Edwards gave up looking for Reina, just stared hard at me as the two rifles clattered to the ground, echoing in the hangar. And found himself in a widening circle as the three section heads shuffled carefully away from him. “This is mutiny, Glass. I’ll have you shot—”
“I’d be a little careful with the threats right about now if I were you.”
“—what about loyalty to the unit, Glass? What about honor?”
Funny thing was, I think he meant it. To him, loyalty was a one-way road, something that was owed rather than created. Loyalty is earned, you know, not paid for. “Since you mentioned it, what about loyalty, Eddie? What about hiring malkin’ Hanzo to murder us? What about loyalty to Manny? To Groucho?”
I doubt he’d thought of it in those terms. The ACES were a mercenary unit, and to Edwards it was a business like any other. People weren’t people, they were ‘assets,’ to be used until no longer profitable. Killing Manny and Groucho, it hadn’t been personal. To him, purging the disloyal was just a kind of office politics. In that, he was no different from any backstreet thug with more bullets than brains.
Not personal. Just business.
*
Four guys did show up at the Cousteau, in the middle of the night.
Like I said, Reina had rented two rooms: We holed up in the one furthest from the elevator, where we could watch the door of the other room.
The four showed up, all dressed in a style I’d call Poor Life Choices: Ritualized arm scarring, shaved heads, tank tops and baggy combat trousers tucked into open work boots. Oh, and hold-out needlers, dinky little pocket-sized things that would still air out your intestines given half the chance—or any fraction of a chance, really.
One of them screwed with the door lock of the decoy room while the other three shifted nervously, looking up and down the corridor. Not very carefully, cos they didn’t see me peeking out our door.
There was a bright flash by the lock, then one of them kicked open the door and all four ran in. Dumb. Should have left someone watching the corridor, fellas. I could hear the hiss of needler fire, as they perforate the two beds inside.
Now, regardless of what Reina had said, that felt pretty damn personal.
The four
soldato looked a little surprised when they realized the doorway was now blocked by a guy with a submachinegun pointed right at them. A tiny little room like that, you’d have to be blind to miss and they knew it. Nobody felt like being heroes, thank Blake’s bare buttocks. I made them drop their weapons on their way out.
Smashed one guy giving me the stinkeye with the butt of the ACDC, right in the temple. Made the other three carry him out. That wasn’t business.
That was personal.
*
Back in the hangar, the three section heads were kind of looking at Edwards sidelong after my little speech. He saw it too, and I could see his internal temperature going up faster than a
Rifleman firing all four barrels.
“How dare you?” he shouted at them. “This is my unit. Mine.”
“Your father’s unit,” I corrected. Wasn’t much in the mood for his hurt pride. “Quite frankly I think if the old man could see what you’ve done with it, he’d tell me to pull this trigger and call it justice.”
Bet that felt pretty personal. Edwards levelled an accusing finger at me. “They deserved it, the traitors. This is my unit. MINE. MY BIRTHRIGHT. They deserved to die—”
I raised a finger. “Ah, Edwards old chum, should interrupt you at this moment to point out I took the liberty of patching your fighter’s comm into the PA system.” I jerked a thumb at the open cockpit beside me. “The whole unit can hear you.”
Edwards shouted with incoherent range. I miscalculated, though. Underestimated him. Turned out, the raised hand was an act, giving him time to pull a hold-old sonic stunner from a spring-loaded wrist holster and zap me with it.
Nails-on-chalkboard shriek from the stunner, like cold icicles hammering into my eyes and ear drums. I reacted fast, not quite fast enough. Rolled and jumped from the nose of the fighter, but still caught some of the blast on my right side, arm and leg going numb. Leg couldn’t support me, gave under my weight and dropped me to the ground. Numb fingers couldn’t hold the Beam Gun, it went clattering.
To be scooped up by Edwards.
He shouted for the milsec guys to pick up their guns, for them to shoot the three section heads for mutiny. Turned back to face me, still lying half-paralyzed on the ground. Raised the Beam Gun.
“It was Paradis I wanted dead, not you. Nothing personal, Glass. You were just in the way.”
And everything was washed out in two blinding, searing blasts of laser light, the two milsec guys reduced to greasy stains on the floor and fine soot flying in the air. Edwards looked up, eyes widening. At the F-90 sitting across from us.
Glowing hot lasers on either wing, and in the cockpit, Reina Paradis.
“I’ll give you one chance, Edwards,” she said on the speakers. “Get that
Riever up in the air, and I’ll fight you fair. Winner takes the unit. Refuse and I blast you now. I’m being more than generous: it’s a better chance than you gave Manny or Groucho.”
*
In the end, he fought. Didn’t think he had it in him; figured he’d run for it the moment his fighter was in the air. But nope, maybe it was the hurt pride, or the outraged sense of entitlement, whatever it was, like a cornered badger he fought. Edwards in his spotless, fresh off the assembly line F-100
Riever, Reina in her battered F-90, the
Lightning Shrike. Took maybe 30 minutes, but the outcome was never in doubt.
We watched through binoculars and cameras from the ground below, watched the two fighters twirl and spin together, then fly apart on filmy streamers of white, painting their feud in an abstract on the wide blue sky.
Reina just used her speed to stay out of range and out of the arc of Edwards’ forward guns, whittling away his armor until his fighter seemed to kind of sag in the air, bowing in the middle as though unable to support the weight of the fuselage.
A small crump and a flash of fire, it started to dive, then a few seconds later a massive fireball consumed the whole fighter, raining fist-sized chunks of
Riever and former Wing Commander into the ocean below.
Edwards didn’t eject. Gun cameras showed Reina scored a lucky particle cannon hit early in the duel that fused his cockpit shut.
Sure. A lucky hit. Sure thing, Reina.
Nothing personal, Edwards. Just business.