Koko the Mighty Read Online Free PDF Page B

there is not of concern.”
    “Yeah, but couldn’t you, like, I don’t know. Pick someplace else?”
    “Come, come, it’s not the worst place to be deported to. Did you know Surabaya was once known as the City of Heroes?”
    “What about all my gear?”
    “You mean the weapons Martstellar didn’t take? Those have been confiscated. A subsection of the aforementioned reservation agreement outlines property forfeitures. Zero reimbursement, I’m afraid.”
    At last the pressure cell’s measures take their toll and cream Wire to the floor. The impact on the smooth concrete is jarring, but now that she’s down the potent unseen energies sense her movement and grow stronger in intensity. Wire pants and grinds her teeth. Her brain might burst from her ears like runny pudding, but she wills herself to focus.
    “Wait, is Martstellar… still here? On The Sixty?”
    The officer runs the tip of his tongue over his thick lips as if tasting the mist of possibility.
    “That sort of information might require a small measure of recompense, don’t you think?”
    Wire tracks the officer’s image as it repositions in the air above her. Her head whanging like an unholy gong, it takes a few more seconds for his greasy innuendo to sink in.
    Figures.
    Everybody has his price.

WAY DOWN BELOW THE OCEAN

SEA MONKEYING
    Surfing the Kuroshio Current like a pro into the greater clockwork coil of the North Pacific Gyre, Koko is in the midst of getting a few quick Z’s when the submarine pitches hard to starboard. Like a flashing seraphic eye, a red bulb blinks at her on the forward console.
    Making certain all the onboard tracking capabilities were disabled, seeing to Flynn’s wound and securing him in a makeshift bunk fashioned out of a dropdown bench had Koko wiped, so she’d engaged the helm’s autopilot in order to catch a nap. Koko chides herself for being so stupid. Still at maximum speed, the submarine has now hit something, and somewhere along the starboard side an unhealthy tremolo wails.
    Koko kills the power to the sub’s engines, and a profound silence descends. An immediate diagnostic check discloses that the sub has entered a large, underwater debris field and has thusly been snagged. With a depth reading of a little over twenty-seven fathoms, everything outside the dense bow screen is ominously dark, but pulling up and reviewing additional vessel analytics, Koko is able to pinpoint the problem: a floating cable jamming one of the starboard-side rudders.
    Shitballs.
    This is all she needs.
    Whenever Koko has encountered mechanical issues (be it a finicky weapon or even a clogged privy) she’s found that generally a quick, targeted shot of brute force can solve most problems. Engaging the power to the engines again, she throws the sub into reverse to see if a short redirection can free the cable from the rudder. Sliding backward, at first her fix seems to do the trick, but then another hard listing rocks and the terrible starboard tremolo sounds off yet again. Koko shifts the throttle back to neutral, and sighing heavily she kills the power to the engines once more.
    Oh, man…
    She dreads it, but knows what she has to do.
    She needs to free the cable manually.
    Unbuckling her safety harness, Koko heads aft and stops briefly to lay the back of her hand across Flynn’s forehead. Feverish and a small mercy, Flynn is completely out, so Koko presses two fingers along his neck to check his pulse. His heartbeat is shallow but steady, so being careful not to wake him, she squeezes herself past him and into the engine-access area. Freeing a latch on a port-side locker, Koko drags out a heavy bag full of scuba equipment and returns to the center area of the sub.
    It’s been ages since she’s gone full frog. Underwater infil/exfil techniques, egress methods, months of underwater NOYFB † demolition training; it’s not as if she’s uninitiated to the rigors of diving, and thankfully the underwater gear stowed in the heavy bag