“But the transport is already on its way.”
Koko forces a smile. “Oh, transport… transport can be canceled, right? No biggie.”
Flynn moves closer, and they both settle back beneath the covers. As the light from outside fades and the room darkens, soon Koko rolls to her side so Flynn can spoon himself against her back. Eyes open, Koko tries to allay her hypomanic dread and rage, but can’t. She stares wide-eyed at the wall as Flynn yawns and rolls onto his back.
“Gosh, it’s really hard for me to say this, Koko, but I wish you would at least try to show me some respect sometimes, you know? The truth is I do like it here. I can’t explain it, but it feels like… I don’t know… like I’m home somehow.”
Oh, Flynn, baby…
What did they do to you?
Like before (only more aggravatingly so), the de-civs’ second offensive comes in the middle of the night. This time, however, the first blow is announced by the telltale whump of a pulse explosion.
Leaping out of the bed, Koko has her pants and boots on before Flynn even has a chance to rub the sleep from his eyes.
“Flynn, get up! We’re under attack!”
“What?”
Koko tugs her kurta tunic down over her head. “Get dressed, I need you.”
And boom—like that, she’s out of the room.
Gone.
On her way out the door, Koko snatches up her wooden battle staff. Ripping down the hallway, she raps the staff on the walls to sound the alarm.
“Everybody up now! De-civs! I repeat, de-civs in the perimeter! The Commonage is under attack!”
After the events of the previous night, Koko fully expects a mad spill of Commonagers marshaling behind her, but sadly this is not the case. The ones who do materialize in cracked doorways are terrified. Koko can’t wait for them. When she reaches the stairwell, she drops down the steps, pouncing from one landing to the next like a leopard, until she reaches the bottom and throws herself out Lodge Delta’s doors.
Once outside, it’s painfully obvious who has the upper hand as the de-civs have doubled their numbers. Men, women, and even de-civ children are everywhere running amok; many of the marauders have torches and set fire to whatever they can. Few if any of the Commonagers attempt to stop them. When she sees Pelham across the courtyard tackling a de-civ trying to set fire to a trellis, Koko feels a brief throb of hope. The de-civ gets up and throttles Pelham’s neck, but Pelham slaps the man’s hands away and wrestles him to the ground again.
Muscle memory from t’ai chi. Maybe later Koko will compliment Pelham on her moves, but right now she’s busy. As she sweeps the grounds for a target, a sharp pain bites Koko in the back of her head and looking down she sees a crooked wedge of rock in the grass. She sights the thrower: a boy transfixed fifteen meters off to her right. Koko promptly picks up the rock and flings it back at the boy. Clipping his knee, the boy drops with a yowl.
Behind Koko the doors to Lodge Delta bang open, and Flynn, half dressed in boots and pants, quickly gimps over to her side. Dabbing her fingers on the back of her head, Koko’s fingertips come away scarlet and wet.
“What’s happening?”
Koko grits her teeth. “Take out as many as you can.”
Before Flynn can respond, Koko is off again, slaloming, running, and leaping through the fracas. She keeps wondering where the rest of the Commonagers are because the whole situation is deteriorating into a five-alarm mess.
A pulse explosion? Where the hell did these de-civs get explosives?
Beyond the administration building, the geodesic agriculture tents and livestock pens blaze. The petrified ensemble of animal cries is awful and sprinting toward the area Koko wields her battle staff in wide, debilitating arcs. A de-civ woman cradling a sheep runs past her, and Koko splinters the woman’s shin. Using the battle staff, she follows through with a secondary swing and splits the woman’s face. The sheep bounds away across the grounds just as a spear plugs the ground at Koko’s feet.
Another de-civ, a man, steps out of the tunnel and readies to throw a second spear. Flynn lopes toward him and the man steps back. Flynn yanks the spear from the de-civ’s grasp before he can throw, and when Flynn looks back at Koko she makes repeating stabbing motions. Flynn tosses the spear aside.
“This is what we’ve been reduced to?!” he yells. “Sticks and stones?!”
“Flynn! Look out! Behind you!”
From the smoky darkness and at speed, two de-civ children jump Flynn as the spear-thrower gets up. The two children pull at Flynn’s flesh like rabid monkeys and the spear-thrower punches Flynn in the stomach. With his weakened leg and the blow, it takes little effort for the three to drag Flynn down like a roped calf.
Flynn covers up as best he can, but the de-civs pummel him. When the spear-thrower sees Koko rushing over, he warns the two children and all three take off. Koko skids and drops to Flynn’s side.
“Are you okay?”
Flynn’s forehead is gashed and his eye bandage has been torn off.
“Those were kids!”
“Not exactly a fair fight, is it?”
Koko helps him to his feet, and they push their backs together and circle. Koko points to a nearby apple tree with her battle staff and they dash for it. Outside the administration building, a few Commonagers—including Sébastien, of all people—have now finally appeared. A second explosion bursts on the opposite end of the compound, and Koko notices that the twins have joined the fight. But then a de-civ woman splashes some kind of accelerant on Bonn and Eirik and—
WHOOSH
!—the two brothers go up in tandem, screaming flames.
“Oh God, what do we do?” Flynn cries.
“They’re setting fires to increase hysteria.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“They must’ve blown the tunnel gate’s fortifications. This is why they probed the Commonage before, to see if we were ready to defend ourselves from a second assault.”
“Oh, so it’s ‘we’ now, is it?”
“Now’s so not the fucking time, Flynn.”
Flynn wipes some blood from his face. He touches his swollen eye and then squinting he scans the walls. A terrible, familiar shape moves fast along the allure up top, and his jaw drops.
“Koko?”
“What?”
“I think we’ve got a problem.”
* * *
With the Sig in a two-handed downward-pointed grip, Wire hustles for a protective section along the top of the allure. Reaching it, she is pleased to discover the blockish architectural highlight bookends an open staircase that empties out into the greater compound area below.
In her half-compromised vision, she sees despite her instructions that the de-civs are already screwing everything up big time, and the raid is turning into a major-league Charlie Foxtrot. Breaking and smashing useful things, setting fire to structures willy-nilly—Wire specifically told them to torch the residential structures only, to draw out the occupants, and now they’re setting fire to everything in sight.
No matter. Wire crouches behind the protective section and surveys the grounds. Botched instructions notwithstanding, within seconds what Wire hoped for actually materializes. Maybe seventy meters off from her position, Martstellar and that Flynn bastard are hiding behind an apple tree.
Wire sets up fast. Under normal circumstances her marksmanship is grade A-plus, but with her ocular being fried she reminds herself to compensate and stabilizes her forearms on the protective section. Taking a deep breath, she aims and eases her breath out.
Do it.
Take the shot.
* * *
Koko jerks her head.
“Where?”
As the bounty agent braces herself atop the staircase, Flynn throws an arm around Koko’s shoulders and pulls her to his bare chest just as the impact of three quick, consecutive pulse rounds blister the apple tree on the opposite side. A follow up pulse blast rips the battle staff from Koko’s hand.
“It’s her!”
Koko glares angrily at her battle staff sizzling in the grass.
“Who?”
“The bounty agent! The one from The Sixty!”
Koko grabs Flynn’s shoulders with both hands, mini ten-megaton explosions going off in her eyes.
FU-CHEW! FU-CHEW! FU-CHEW! FU-CHEW!
Four more rounds of blue pulse fire cross within fractions of the tree.
“Koko, what do we do?”
Koko has no idea.
* * *
Shit
.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…
Wire aimed for the edges of their bodies and compensated. Even so, she missed her targets by an embarrassingly wide margin and only managed to hit the damn tree. Fuck, she should’ve hit at least one of them. Bleakly she wonders if maybe the action on the Sig is off. Stupid. She should’ve sacrificed a couple of rounds before she and the de-civs set out. Then again, she thinks, the situation isn’t totally roached, not entirely. The two are still pinned down. They can’t stay behind that tree forever, and sooner or later they’ll have to make a move. Wire contemplates unloading on the tree again until there’s nothing left, when the sweetest of revelations hits her.
The two are not returning fire.
Not returning fire?
Wire rises.
They’re mine.
* * *
Consider role reversal for a moment.
If Koko were in the bounty agent’s shoes, she has no doubt of what she would do. Koko would just blast away at the apple tree until she and Flynn were exposed or until one or both of them caught a fatal round. The possibility that the bounty agent on the wall will do just that is leveling.
“Oh, Flynn, baby,” Koko moans. “I think we’re hosed.”
Flynn stares at her. Whatever meager composure he has left evaporates.
“
Hosed!?
Goddamn it! I told you! You should’ve listened to me!”
“Listened to you?”
“Back on The Sixty—if you’d gotten rid of that woman in the first place…”
Koko’s face warps. “Oh-ho-ho, don’t even think of going there—you’re saying this is all
my
fault?”
Flynn drops his face into his hands. Koko peers around the edge of the apple tree.
“How’d she even find us?”
“God, does it even matter?”
Somewhere inside one of the buildings a woman screams and the body of another Commonager pitches out of a smashed window. A gargantuan, thundering
KA-POW
! sounds, and a split second later a crackling fireball ascends into the night.
“The reactivated transponder,” Koko says. “That bounty agent must’ve gotten wind of that intel somehow.”
“Oh, perfect. A little late to do anything about that now.”
“Will you quit your whining? Cripes, I’m the one she’s after.”
“You’re the one she’s after? God, could you be any more narcissistic?”
“I’m narcissistic? Maybe I should push you out there. You’re the one who’s so smitten with this place.”
“I can’t believe you’re bickering with me at a time like this.”
“You started it.”
“We have to
do
something!”
Koko speaks fast. “Listen, we’ve got to move now and in separate directions before that bounty agent opens up on us again.”
“Where?”
“Lodge Delta. It’s closest. There’s that wall near the side doors we came out of. Snake your way across as quickly as you can and try not to get shot.” Koko then squats down and digs in a toe like a sprinter. Flynn bends next to her and clutches her arm.
“Koko, wait. If I—I mean, if we—”
“Flynn, this is
really
not a good time.”
“I mean, yeah. Of course not. But I just want you to know—”
Quickly Koko cups Flynn’s chin and kisses him. Hard.
“Get it together, baby. Ready? On three. One, two…”
* * *
Wire checks the pulse-round readout on the Sig’s housing. Happily she sees there’s plenty of power left to dismember Martstellar and her ex-sky-cop dreamboat, sweet and slow. Picturing them groveling for mercy after all she’s been through makes her grin. It’s going to be so choice. Maybe Wire will keep them alive long enough so they can feel it when she chews out their eyes. Wire starts for the stairs.
“Hey, Wire!”
When taken by surprise and from behind, only a chump hesitates. Pushing off and staying low, Wire propels herself forward and corkscrews her torso just as a large rock sails past her head like a missile. Swinging her Sig across her body, she fires twice in rapid succession just before her back crunches on the steps.
Almost getting struck by a flying rock was a close shave for sure, but then Wire realizes that was Trick’s whole distractive point. When her shoulders hit the steps, she cranes her neck backward and sees the inverted wavering image of Grum running up the stairway from down below. Like a crazed Viking, Grum has a stick of rusty rebar hoisted above his head ready to split her head in two.
Instinctually, Wire tosses the Sig to her right and forces her feet over the rest of her body. It’s a mindboggling feat of spontaneous gymnastics given her hearty physique, but as she completes her backward rotation and pushes off the steps, her shins land on Grum’s shoulders and vise. Startled, Grum lets out a deep throaty sound as Wire yanks her body weight to the right. Together, she and Grum fall off the stairway and out into empty space.
The drop from the stairs to the ground lasts barely a second, but it is Grum who lands wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Upside down, the pile-driving, concertina crush on impact snaps Grum’s neck instantly. Wire releases her legs before Grum’s hulky mass lands on top of her and rolling over she sees Trick jump from atop the allure, a spread-eagled shadow of wrath.
When Trick hits, the collision is a shockwave. Fused together, Wire and Trick roll over and over in the grass, and before Wire can right herself Trick gains the advantage. Pinning Wire’s chest, Trick lets fly a shower of fists and as he draws back to land a jaw-pulverizing right cross, Wire catches his wrist, digs in her thumb, and compresses the median nerve. Trick’s fist splays apart, and Wire pulls his hand close to her face. Biting down as hard as she can, she rips Trick’s index finger off.
“You bitch!” Trick screams. “You just ate my finger!”