The Atomic Question Ch 09

Not long after dawn, Dawson woke up to the feeling of someone elven sucking on one of her nipples in her sleep. She expected Alenia but found that girl had her face between Dawson's legs. It was Vayger was sucking on her breast.

Reaching up with one hand and stroking the rainbow-colored hair on her head caused Vayger to mumble quietly, drool-wet lips moving around Dawson's only slightly tender areola.

"..revolution... wbring t'light..."

As softly as she could while still making noise Dawson replied, "It's just a matter of fighting the fight."

Vayger's left eye parted open slightly and in her gaze there was none of the fatigue, terror and loneliness that had lurked in her gaze for the entire time that Dawson had known her, and only most of the madness that been there in the time she'd known her as a captain of the Ancients. This moment was the elven woman with her guard completely down, attached to her at the breast as completely as Alenia was to her at the groin.

This look was just for her. You're the one person I look at this way, it conveyed. It wasn't a matter of need... It was a matter of refuge.

Dawson leaned forward and kissed the elf on her forehead. Her eye slipped back shut.

She did not however return fully to sleep, revealed when Dawson tried to move and suddenly the teeth in Vayger's mouth bit down on her nipple. Not enough to draw blood but enough to send another message: you're not going anywhere. It was in its way just as cute as Alenia's frequent complaints whenever Dawson left bed at an hour she deemed too early, with a greater promise of bodily harm added onto the implied emotional injury she would be inflicting.

There was a lot to get done today, and Vayger--even exhausted from the previous evening--would keep her in bed until well past noon if she could help it. Commanding Voice was unlikely to sway her, but moments like these were exactly the sort where a second iteration of her proved invaluable.

Reading the situation just the same as Dawson had, Instinct maneuvered her way through the puddle of bodies on the bed and came to rest on her left.

First she kissed Dawson on the side of her head. Second, she took Vayger by the back of the head and gently reassigned her from Dawson's left breast to Instinct's right. The elf's eyes opened partway during this process and it was clear she was mildly annoyed to have been passed off onto this imposter tit, but she quickly reacclimated and shut her eyes once more. Third, Alenia received a similar treatment that saw her moved from Dawson's crotch to Instinct's. The decker didn't seem to wake up in this exchange, her only response being wrinkle her nose and upper lip when the generous black bush between Instinct's marbled thighs tickled her. Dawson's fingers through her hair calmed Alenia back to deeper slumber.

Having taken her place as a sacrifice to elven intimacy, Instinct kissed Dawson's shoulder again. Dawson swept hair out of her savior's face and whispered, "Precious creature." Instinct looked away to hide her immediate blush.

While stroking Vayger's hair Instinct spoke. "The commissar that Kincaid told me about wants to meet the cell today. I'm not sure when."

"You'll tell me everything you can," Dawson said evenly. Instinct looked at her sharply.

"I'll tell you everything," she corrected.

In the past Dawson would have obfuscated to avoid the fragile subject. Now she had the clarity to cut to the heart. "Your love is not a liability."

It was the right thing to say. Instinct smiled, showing her pointed teeth. "I got lucky with you."

Dawson kissed her on the mouth. "You get lucky a lot."

Showering was quick without Instinct to incentivize drawing it out, and no elves to fastidiously clean behind the ears of, or troll to sleepily grope and wet-hump her from behind. After dressing she stood before the bed where a chorus of snores was rising and her own face looked back at her.

Instinct said softly, "You cut quite a figure. Want to fuck?"

"Yes," Dawson replied, "But I have to go fuck some other people first."

"Save some for me."

Commpad in pants pocket, water flask in coat pocket, Accelerator in hip holster, Dawson left her domicile on foot headed for the Orchard where Gaines was surely in his office. His habit had always been to be working by sunrise.

= = =

Thomas had always felt himself destined for great things. Wealth, certainly. Prestige. Clout, even. The ability to wield influence over things broadly. To fan flames, or to dampen them. To exploit trends or choke them. The Sixth World could be a frightful place. Frightfully unjust. Frightfully violent. With clout he could push history the right way, using a light touch. Try to influence things for the better without making himself a target.

For the first twenty-five years of his life it seemed he would never have influence over anything greater than a limousine dealership parking lot. A dead-end job guarding slowly rusting hulks that few people in the Confederated American States could afford and even fewer wanted to shell out the nuyen for. And then one day Damien Knight needed a new tire for his luxurious ride and he'd been impressed with the way the lot was organized and asked Thomas if he wanted a job with Ares Macrotechnology.

And just like that, Thomas Gaines' career was spun out of whole cloth by Damien Knight. A new middle manager for Knight Errant, a man on the ground with his eye on the prize. The promise of more, if he kept Damien appraised. From that day, Gaines was a company man. He was well on his way to having clout.

A year from that day, Colonel Keiji Saito refused orders to pull out of San Francisco and declared himself the Protectorate General. Six weeks later Thomas Gaines met Impulse Dawson for the first time.

And from that day forward until the end of the occupation, all Gaines could do was try to hold on as she flew like a rocket towards anything in an imperial Japanese uniform, hoping to kill herself on impact.

His bosses called his team's success phenomenal. His colleagues called Gaines' rise meteoric. Damien Knight would give him this wink and a smile and say keep up the good work, Thomas. Impulse would drink, and get high, and fight and try to fuck anything that moved, her team barely holding her back at the best of times, and then she'd go into the field and commit mass murder for the sake of protecting the assets. Gaines had to be the Knight, and she would be the Errant no matter what anyone said or did.

Eventually he resolved to just cover it up. Pay for damages, pay for silence, pay for medical bills. The higher-ups were content not to look. The techs learned not to review footage from patrols or operations, not if they wanted to keep the contents of their stomach. And little by little, the occupation went away. And Gaines did what he could to influence things for the better. Even got his hands dirty on occasion. Kept himself close to the ground.

Sometimes though there was no helping it. After smashing a major ammunition dump belonging to the Protectorate, the executives in Silicon Valley wanted to throw a party. Gaines liked parties: they were an opportunity to impress, and the drinks were free. The real benefit? The clout they brought. The reputation. So he was all for it.

And then Redford Kirkwell, Department Head of California Munitions Marketing Analytics, said And we look forward to seeing your team there, too!

That had been a real neo-classical jazz music stops moment for Thomas. He couldn't hold on to his social graces at that moment, his smile falling away at once and a cold expression stealing over his face. He said, "That's not a good idea."

Kirkwell had looked at him with a raised eyebrow, unaccustomed to objections. In the brief gap of his confusion Gaines had continued.

"They're tired. They need conventional R&R." That meant drinking, somewhere in a dark club with poles people hung off of, and drugs on the tables. Anyone with a scrap of sense knew that, by this point. The psychological evaluations had been looked at and quietly tucked under an expensive rug.

The other department heads, their aides and even their security personnel had pointedly looked anywhere but at the two of them. Kirkwell had adopted this oblivious smile, the kind worn by someone who had convinced himself he had a good idea and was not interested in being convinced otherwise.

Nonsense, Gaines! Your team has lasted far longer than any other Firewatch personnel. Knight Errant's heroes deserve to be seen by the brass!

Heroes. Pickers: a low profile racist with terrible taste in body art. Reyes: a stress eater who had never reported for duty without food in his hands. Vayger: a barely functioning automaton so brittle she could cut diamonds with her eyes. And Dawson? No.

"I really must protest," Gaines had said. What he'd wanted to do was tell Kirkwell he was a fool who had no idea what the fuck he was talking about and to stay in his god damned lane of doing nothing all day, but that would have been harmful to Thomas' career.

And Kirkwell had just chuckled and patted Gaines on the shoulder and said, Relax, Thomas! These are good employees! They're doing good work, they should get to see some rewards! This is a celebration of them, after all.

He should have argued more. Should have raised his voice. Should have called Damien Knight and told him there was a problem brewing.

But as he looked at Redford Kirkwell and his smug fucking smile, Gaines had dwelled on how this wealthy man had never in his life heard a shot fired in anger. There was no reasoning him out of this dumbass idea because he had never reasoned himself into it. It was just something he'd innovated on his own, without any greater context. A way to revolutionize the paradigm.

So Gaines had brought back his jovial, well-practiced smile and said "You're right, Redford. I'm sure they'll enjoy it."

- - -

Gaines kept his head down for the first hour of the party. It was a suitably opulent affair in the second highest floor of Cupertino's main office building. The ceiling was five meters high and had real chandeliers, not the holographic kind in the galleria at the Orchard. They spared no expense here at Knight's home away from home.

Rumor had it he might even show up tonight. Gaines hoped to hell and back he didn't.

He did not attempt to mingle, made no introductions of himself to anyone. They had no idea what was coming and he didn't want them remembering him being friendly beforehand. The space was filled with the clink of glasses and the din of conversation as people who had never worked a day in their lives jerked each other off over what a great job they were doing fighting the Protectorate. They prescribed, they conjectured and they prognosticated. They marveled at what this was doing for Knight Errant's image.

Above it some pleasant jazz fusion was playing. The hundred nuyen in scrip he had given the audio tech had seen to that.

Exactly an hour in the elevator opened up to let them into the banquet hall. The four of them were as dressed down as they got these days, which meant KE issue black fatigues with dull yellow trim, tactical vests with the ammunition and ordinance missing from the pockets and faded combat boots with metal toes. Dawson's pair had a dull red on the back of the heels, leftovers no doubt from past executions against street curbs or something similar.

The woman herself had a cigarette in her mouth when she came out through the doors, eyes looking up and around at what was surely the most lavish space she'd yet seen in her life. An attendant politely told her there was no smoking in the banquet hall, as it could set off the sprinklers. She pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and, still lit, flicked it into his face.

They largely ignored the executives who tried to talk to them and when they didn't, the executives quickly wished they had. Reyes went right for the buffet table and started scarfing shrimp and exotic cheeses. Pickers went to the drink table and looted three bottles of champagne, holding one in the breast pocket of his vest while he guzzled from the others back and forth. Vayger went from table to table stealing silverware and stuffing it into her vest pockets. Silver core with gold plating: useful metals in cybernetics, and therefore sellable on the street. She was not especially careful about not being seen doing it. The close-to-a-psychotic-break stare she gave people discouraged them from saying anything.

Dawson spotted him and began walking straight in his direction. The Department Head of Ballistic Munitions broke away from a conversation to try and talk to her and she put a hand on his face, shoving him back nearly a meter into a table. That got people looking.

When she was close enough to talk over the music, Gaines tried greeting her. "Captain, so glad you could--"

"Where's the novacoke?" She asked the question flatly, fully expecting there to be novacoke. That's what a party meant to her.

"Sorry to say, Captain," Gaines said over his drink, "There's no novacoke."

Her face didn't change which was always a bad sign. She wasn't controlling her emotions at all, she was just gathering evidence for the conviction and the sentencing.

"What kind of fucking party," she asked, "Doesn't have novacoke?"

Before Gaines could say This kind, captain, the Marketing Consultant for Personal Security Systems said to his side, "Isn't that a bit coarse a habit?"

Dawson moved more quickly than anyone around could see, planting her fist into the man's solar plexus and holding it there while he coughed out his drink and curled around her arm, then slid choking to the floor. Gaines sipped from his glass while everyone else nearby looked on in terror.

"Shit party," Dawson said, without looking at the consultant gasping on the floor. She did look straight at Gaines and the thousand-yard stare she gave him made her ordinarily striking features all the more transfixing. At the start of the occupation her eyes had been jumpy and restless, and now over five years in her gaze was arresting to the point of hypnotic. Able to pin someone down as surely as could a water-cooled machine gun of the fifty caliber variety.

Day in and day out, Gaines was surrounded by people who were as hollow as the zeroes at the end of their bank statements. Of those who would meet his eyes Dawson had a depth to her that couldn't be matched by anyone else. A look that simultaneously communicated Give me a reason and you're just like all the others, aren't you?

And though it was easy to predict how she would react to things, it wasn't always easy to predict what she would do. Leaving Personal Security Systems groaning on the ground, Impulse turned away and walked towards where Pickers and Reyes were eating and drinking everything. She took the bottle out of Jason's hand halfway to his mouth and started drinking, a move that historically did nothing to improve her mood.

For the next twenty-six minutes things were mostly fine. They congregated near the refreshments tables, eating as only could people who spent time at the gym and drinking as if they had something they needed badly to forget. Anyone with a modicum of sense avoided them and one could almost have been forgiven for thinking everything was going to turn out alright.

And then Redford Kirkwell came close to him. The Department Head of California Munitions Marketing Analytics did not look pleased, and Gaines tried hard to hide his delight behind his somewhat intoxicated grin.

"What do you think of the heroes?" Gaines asked. There was no need to fake the mirth in his voice.

Kirkwell did nothing to hide his disdain. Whatever sterile image of Knight Errant's special forces he'd had was shattered by now, forced to see up close the ugly truth of what people turned into when you put a gun in their hands and paid them to kill. Paid them to see what was in those camps, in those ditches.

He cast a glare at Vayger as she hit another table for its semi-valuables. She was making a killing tonight.

The music gave out at that moment as the pleasant track ended to make way for another one. And, tactless as ever, Kirkwell spoke into the silence at a volume that only pretended discretion.

That one looks like a particularly diseased street-rat, doesn't she?

Vayger's pointed ears twitched, but Vayger was tough. Brittle. She didn't care what people like Kirwell thought of her. She'd seen what made them cheer and so their boos meant nothing. She didn't respond, didn't turn.

But somehow, even though she was fifteen meters away sitting on a chair talking to Pickers and well outside of what should have been audible range with the din of business-casual conversation between, Dawson had heard what Redford said.

She stopped talking mid-sentence and looked at Kirkwell, then at Vayger. Vayger straightened up, but didn't turn. Communicating to Dawson, somehow, that she didn't care.

But Dawson cared. Dawson cared a lot.

The next track started playing as Dawson tore out of her seat and Gaines thought to himself, And here we go.

"Got a feeling I've been here before... Watching as you cross the killing floor! You know you'll have to pay it all, you'll pay today - or pay tomorrow!"

People hastened to get out of Dawson's way as she crossed the banquet hall. A wave of awareness that something dire was about to happen swept through the crowd but somehow stopped just short of Redford, who was still eying Vayger like he was wondering if he should have security escort her out.

"You fasten up your beaded gown... Then you try to tie me down! Do you work it out one by one? Or play it in combination?"

So that meant he didn't see Dawson coming until he was already within arm's reach.

"You throw out your gold teeth! Do you see how they roll?"

Jazz-rock fusion drowned out the gasps and exclamations of fright and confusion that occurred as Dawson grabbed a suddenly terrified Department Head of California Munitions Marketing Analytics by his throat. His pudgy fingers and built-in water-wing arms pawed uselessly at a woman made of stone. State of the art medical technology kept her body as whole as the day she'd signed her contract, showing none of the stab or bullet injuries but the scars were still there on the inside. He had no hope of getting free.

Without difficulty she held him by the throat with just one hand and lifted him up. Then she started to walk away with him, towards the windows overlooking the street.

"I have seen your iron and your brass... Can't you see it shine behind the glass? Your fortune is your roving eye! Your mouth and legs! Your gift for the run-around!"

For this segment of the incident all the other executives wer too terrified to do anything, even to call security. They didn't understand what was happening--this sort of thing was unheard of at their level. Pickers was chortling into his bottle and Vic was just shaking his head. Vayger was watching with a blank expression.

"Torture is the main attraction! I don't need that kind of action! You don't have to dance for me, I've seen you dance before..."

Dawson carried Kirkwell to one of the windows and by this time someone from the checkpoint on the floor below had ascended the stairs to see what was going on. A uniformed and armored Knight-Errant employee got to see Dawson use the Department Head of California Munitions Marketing Analytics to batter the window. The first hit knocked the meter tall pane of glass partway out of its frame. The second hit dislodged it completely, sending the crystal-clear rectangle falling down thirty-five floors to land, fortunately, between two cars.

The security officer's face paled where it was visible beneath her helmet. She was unholstering her stun gun when Gaines intercepted her, drink still in hand.