Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 22: There Is No Law
Part 4: Bring the Hammer Down
Part 4: Bring the Hammer Down
1 november 2014.
Bremerton International Airport. The Learjet taxis in from SeaTac. In the terminal, Governor Brinkman meets with Hope Reston, Teachers Guild president and a leader of the general strike, and her redheaded cousin and lawyer Angela Coyne. The big man does not intimidate them in the least. He dreads the encounter. Hope shakes his hand. “Why, Governor! What a pleasant surprise to see you. What brings you here instead of Chairman Ross?”
Brinkman touchily throws off her handshake. In his high-pitched, nasal Southern-aristocrat accent, he commands, “You will stop that damn strike bullshit forthwith.”
“Governor, everybody knows how much you hate working people because you refuse to shut up about it. But treating the citizens like they’re your own personal serfs does not create much goodwill, to say the least. Originally, because your precious Tournament bullies have been wrecking our educational environment, some of the affected school clubs at the high school downtown decided to hold a ‘Friendship Rally’ specifically to bring the victims of bullying back into school society. We never counted on your well-known talent for transforming molehills into mountains.”
He points at her repeatedly. “Do you realize you’re throwing a Challenge at Order itself?”
“Whatever that means. Anyway, the students, parents, and teachers loved the idea. We wanted it to be a rally for the whole community and not just the kids. Up here in the big city, we call it community-building. Without strong community in strong neighbourhoods, Seattle might as well be Phoenix. But nobody expects someone as aloof as you or Mr Ross to understand that. Sure enough, Ross had a huge cow and personally shot the idea down. You can see the results all over the state.”
Brinkman listens in growing panic. Gathering his righteous offendedness, he barks, “You people don’t understand that this is a threat to public order—”
“You mean you’re all in favor of more school and workplace shootings, Mr Governor?”
“Don’t you realize the evil that men do? If you let up on the leash one inch, they’ll eat each other!”
Hope crosses her arms, looks him in the eye, and smiles ironically. “You mean like your gangster nephews’ juiced-up fighting dogs?”
For once, Brinkman has no answer.
“Do you realize what you just said? That’s awfully rich coming from a formerly weaponized wolfman. For such an all-powerful governor, you have not the slightest idea that dogfighting’s illegal in this state. So is bullying. Until you and your fellow CEOs put an end to it, the strike continues, whether you like it or not.”
ferry. Tana flies Shira’s hoverboard in her Tacoma delivery. Shira, dressed in blue school uniform and letter jacket, takes the ferry to Seattle with Willa and Jennifer’s new prototype brain scanner in her backpack. Leila sits beside her wearing yellow; her backpack holds her fighting gear. As the ferry speeds its wakeless path through narrow Rich Passage; Shira listens to two middle-aged men in business suits discuss the Port of Bremerton’s plans for the Naval Base Bremerton property once the Navy decamps to Port Angeles or Grays Harbor when her keen gaydar forces her attention to the seat on her left.
A female passenger in the next row back looks at the girls’ uniforms. “Aren’t you two young ladies supposed to be in school?”
“Saturday, ma’am,” says Shira. “No school.”
“Besides,” Leila explains, “our school got blown up. The Head Boy got beaten in a Challenge and couldn’t handle losing his position, so he just snapped. That was the day before the protests began. To think it would have been only a school assembly in support of bullied students, had the head bully not snapped.”
“Oh my god, that’s horrible!” says the woman sympathetically.
“There were other causes too,” says Shira, “but that would be a long story, and that would take too many ferry trips.”
Leila goes on. “It gets even better than that. The late Admiral’s dead wife’s brother is the COPCO section chief for this fine state, and he’s blaming his brother-in-law’s lover’s lover’s dad the Minuteman chief for his sister’s murder. And the Minuteman chief covets the COPCO section chief job anyway. It ain’t gonna be pretty once they clamp their jaws down on each other.”
An old lady stands up and shouts angrily at Leila, “Young lady! Stop disrespecting your betters!”
“Ma’am, I’m talking war. War is about to happen, right here in this city, and my very own family is right at the center of it.”
“That’s no excuse to talk badly about those above you!” rails the angry old Conservative lady. “It’s against the Law!”
“It pains me to inform you of this, ma’am, but when cop kills cop, there is no law. Listen to me very carefully if you don’t want to find yourself caught in the crossfire.”
The attention of every passenger on the boat focuses entirely on Leila and Shira.
East Tacoma. Martin Lansky takes Tana’s delivery behind Loco Moloko. “Shira send you?”
“Yeah,” says Tana. “She said she has business in Seattle.”
“I’m not surprised.”
He pays her, then opens up the package to reveal a set of identical circuit boards. “What is it?”
“These are sound cards.”
“You’re Israeli, aren’t you.”
“Ex-IDF, before the Messianists took over and started persecuting the non-Orthodox. And now here I am, protecting the Diaspora and collecting bounties with the Slasher Hunters.” He takes a pair of chips out of his jacket pocket and plugs them into the open sockets on a sound card. “These slots are supposed to be for a MIDI controller kit, but this firmware turns the card into a military-grade sound canceller. The perfect counterweapon for a Shofar.”
“What’s that?”
“The Shofar is the world’s largest and deadliest sound cannon, and it’s made deep in darkest Texas by the LRAD division of Yoyodyne Lockheed Boeing Dynamics, originally for the Kingdom of Israel’s secret police. Big Chief One-Eye’s special-ordered twelve of ’em just to ruin the special election here. They’re planning on using one of ’em on Election Day.”
“Oh my god — does Shira know?”
“Knowing the Man the way she does, that should be a no-brainer.”
Seattle ferry terminal. Lefty Lucy pulls Shira out of the stream of passengers coming off the ferry and gives her a big juicy kiss on the lips. Leila taps Lucy on the shoulder and clears her throat. Lucy takes a good look at her and smiles. “That must be that gorgeous girlfriend you been talkin’ ’bout. Mmmm-mm! she looks delish.”
“Oh, Leila, this is Lefty Lucy, one of the local Stylers. She bats southpaw, as we like to put it. Lucy, Leila Shelley.”
Lucy lets go of Shira, puts her hands on Leila’s shoulders, and looks her up and down. “Ooh! a bad girl with a bad reputation! And she’s a sexy sexy one, too! You better be playin’ for the all-girl team now.”
Leila smiles. “And lower my average?”
Lucy wags her finger. “Uh-uh-uhhhh.”
“You know I like to fool with my brother.”
Shira grins wickedly. “Twin molestation.”
“There’s nothing wrong with consensual incest,” Leila protests. “Just ask my sister...”
“Good for you, then.” Lucy checks her watch. “Oh no gotta go!” She plants a kiss on Shira’s lips and slips a business card into her right jacket pocket. “You girls gimme a holler and drop by naked sometime! You owe me a threesome! See ya!” She runs through the obstacle course of commuters and disappears into the crowd.
A camdrone swoops by Shira. She catches it and looks hard into its cyclops eye. “Chief Becket,” she says, “watch out for your friend Colonel Green. You’ve got what he wants, and he intends to take it from you.” She turns around and gives the drone to the copbot that has walked up behind her and is now staring intimidatingly down at her. She smiles at the copbot and walks away into the passing crowd. The copbot stares into the camdrone’s camera eye for several seconds. Then it sticks the drone into its mouth and eats it.
COPCO Seattle. “You gotta be kidding me,” says Jack Becket after the monitor loses its signal from the camdrone and turns blue. He turns to the agents in the situation room and yells, “Can you believe the nerve of that little bitch? I think she’s full of shit!”
“Never underestimate that woman,” Secretary Radisson warns. “You have lost too many agents to her deceptions already.”
“You should tell my cousin the Governor. He’s the one getting owned.” Becket paces around and shakes his fist. “If only we could find something to pin on her that’ll stick. There’s got to be some way we can nail her...”
Suddenly the room turns red and the emergency klaxon comes on. “We are under attack,” says the security system, “I repeat, we are under attack.”
Adam Gabriel:COPCO agents drop shock grenades at the SRO attackers from the roof of the Public Safety Building. Strike agents swarm out the exits to confront the terrorists.
This is a warning to CPMC and COPCO. Get your dogs off the people, or the Socialist Revolutionary Organization will fight you to the ends of the earth!
Shira:
Oooh, how manly! Ad-Man be macho rockin’ now! What manly heroic manliness, even. It sounds so, like, manly! Sounds like a Challenge. Problem is, all this heroic manliness is getting in the way of our strike. Besides, we’re trying to put an end to Tournament.
Pioneer Square. Shira and Leila watch terrorists of several factions stream out of various buildings and head north to assault COPCO’s fortress. They watch from the sidewalk as strike groups pass them by in the street. Suddenly Talia spots her. She runs over and grabs Shira.
“Shira, what are you doing?”
“What I’m doing, and not what you’re doing. So go get on with your business and let me do mine, okay?”
The two estranged sisters stare each other down for several seconds. Realizing at last that Shira has no intention of joining her, Talia lets her go and rejoins the assault teams.
“Who was that?” asks Leila.
“That was Talia Espinoza de Gabriel of the Socialist Revolutionary Organization, an older sister of mine who has no idea what the real revolution is. Shall we go?”
“Was this one of your famous misdirections?”
“No, but it gives us a perfect opportunity for us to seize. Let’s go or the meeting’ll start without us!” They run together into the nearest building and take the stairs toward the Underground City.
downtown Seattle. The Socialist Revolutionary Organization, the Earth Revolutionary Front, and other leftist factions take their war against CPMC and COPCO into the streets. Terrified by their violence, the peaceful crowds of civilian strikers and protesters disperse in a panic. The revolutionary élites try to hijack the revolution for their various rival causes, but only succeed in causing mere chaos. The COPCO strikers are more than pleased to shoo off the civilians and make it a Challenge.
Shira says, “This is disgusting.” Before she enters the techGothic, she decides to record a new video:
Shira:In the frenzy of battle, some combatants lose all sense of the Law. A pair of corrupt IRS agents decide to lead a COPCO strike team into a series of downtown banks and rob them. Factional fissures widen within COPCO itself; moles from the various factions and Syndicates switch sides to join the factions in their attack against COPCO. In the gang-ridden poor areas throughout the metro area, the Syndicates resume their war just to escalate the chaos.
Dear terrorist revolutionary elite, you suck. Stop interfering with our strike. You’re not going to take our moment away from us just so you can attempt to throw out the Man and become the Man yourself. So bug off and let us strike, or the Man’ll be mighty pleased.
Black Tower. Dr Henry Becket vidphones his nephew Brinkman. “Walter! What in the name of Jesus America are you doing?”
“Trying to stop the chaos, Uncle.”
“Well, you’d better find a better way to do it. You need to end this now, before the contagion spreads. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
COPCO Seattle. Next, Dr Becket calls his son Jack. His face takes up an entire wall of monitors. “John!”
Jack stands up and salutes. “Father!”
“Report!”
“Several terrorist groups decided to team up and attack us. We’re bringing them under control as I speak.”
“Well, you had better put more effort and more forces into suppressing this entire insurrection. The revolution is in danger!”
“Yes, Father!”
Spanner:techGothic. “Odd place this is,” says Ariel, staring at the strange automated corpses dancing in the go-go booths.
How are you gentlemen. The Conservative Revolutionaries say, “All your base are belong to us.” The Socialist Revolutionaries say, “You are on the way to destruction.” The Earth Revolutionaries say, “You have no chance to survive make your time.” They’re turning our revolution into their battle royal. They have a common enemy: us.
Somebody set up us the bomb. We must tell them to get out of our way. We must fight both sides together if we have to. We must take off all our Zigs. This is our movement — for great justice!
“I’ll say,” says Leila. “This is what Colette’s old body was supposed to be?”
“Yeah,” says Shira. They walk through the lit but empty club to meet Sparks, Deth, Taylor, and Arvid at their usual booth in the back. “So what do we do about these damn terrorists?” asks Sparks.
Shira answers, “We let COPCO have ’em, of course. If they don’t make short work of ’em, we can always turn ’em against each other.”
Leila kisses her uncle and then her mother. “Is Oliver here?”
“If he doesn’t,“ replies Taylor, “then he’s actually smart. But we know he ain’t smart, or he would’ve broke off the arrangement himself a long time ago.” She gives Leila a freshly forged ninja katana in its scabbard.
“Thanks, Mum.” Leila takes the katana and kisses her again, then slides it on the table while letting her mother strip her naked.
“Whoa! what are you doing?” protests Sparks.
“Yowza!” exclaims a shocked Deth. “No black undies?”
“Long explanation,” says Shira. She takes Leila in her arms, kisses her deeply, caresses her buttocks, then spins her around and gives her a single hard spank that makes her go “Ow!” Leila grins wide when she looks back at Sparks and Deth. She climbs onto the booth’s table and stretches her body. Shira gives her another hard affectionate spank, then kisses each big soft buttock. On a whim, Sparks kisses Leila’s butt as well. Shira’s red handprint is clearly visible.
Shira says, “Time to make our trade, then.” She grabs Sparks and Deth, then turns to leave. “See y’all!” Leila smiles and waves back at them. Arvid leaves elsewhere. No sooner have they left than the serious spanking begins.
Deth asks, “How come she’s letting her mom spank her?”
“Strictly for pleasure. She’s one of those type.”
“Well, well, well.”
Later, Taylor penetrates her daughter with the strap-on Shira left behind. Before sexual ecstasy dissolves her reason, Leila realizes that she does not have to defeat Oliver in order to defeat him. Even if he kills, dismembers, and then rapes her, she wins. Her fear of death dissolves with her reason, and does not return with it.
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