Sucker Punch

W
elcome to
…An Uneasy Future 2.0:

Sucker Punch: A Baker & Ban!drn Adventure

V
i
never liked math and aftermath isn't floating her boat either….

Hurricane Wu Tamika Felipe has moved north. Yeah, the storm almost killed Detective Violet Baker, but it also blew some romance her way. Her uptight partner, Dzholh “Joe” Ban!drn actually kissed her. 

But there's no time for any follow-up kissing, much to Vi's regret. They are hunting something very bad. Something that tried to kill them while they were dirt side during the storm. 

And has now escaped up into New Orleans New. 

It's not business as usual, though there is some 
deja vu 
in there, when Vi and Joe get sent to a FEMA camp to check out a dead body. 

Until that body turns into a trail that might lead to the evil it. Or to its next victim. 

Just when Vi thinks things are 
crapeau 
enough, the MITSC (Men In Top Secret Color) show up and take over their case. Are they after Joe or the evil it? 

Before they can find out, the evil it lures them into a trap. 

It's it versus them and it hasn't lost yet….

Spinning off
The Big Uneasy Series
and with a guest appearance from
Project Enterprise…

What others had to say about
Core Punch:

“
Core Punch
read like it was the introduction to something bigger, and I really want to see whatever that is.” 
Science Fiction Romance Quarterly
 

“
I enjoyed the partnership between Joe and Vi. Pauline Baird Jones does a great job with dialogue. I particularly liked Joe's POV.”
Smart Girls Love SciFi

“The characters are also well developed and the romance is awesome. I have to give kudos to Pauline Jones for writing a science fiction novel that I actually enjoyed.”
A Girl and her Kindle

“Readers of science fiction are sure to enjoy this intriguing adventure between a human and an alien, both determined to make their world safe.”
Long and Short Romance Reviews

…
E
rror
…error detected…illegal program installed…reboot Nod programming….

Help! I am here and I need—

…Error report invalid…reboot halted…all systems functioning correctly….there is no Nod programming….

It blinked, shook the new head, felt a sense of something lost that needed to be found, but the feeling faded when it saw its face reflected in the forward screen. A particularly unattractive specimen of humanoid. It would have to change that as soon as another host could be identified. Something more attractive to the human, Violet Baker, than the decaying Jimbo.

…searching….

Violet appears to be related to a great many male officers within the NONPD. Perhaps a less direct approach was advised.

…searching….

Ah, yes, while inhabiting the criminal Calvino, Afoniki had mentioned finding the detective “hot.” Possibly a point of contact? Find Afoniki. And then—what would it have to do to get arrested in NON?

…searching….

Of course. Vi investigates homicides….

V
iolet Baker did not look
at guys as accessories, but it was kinda cool dating a guy—okay an alien named Dzholh Ban!drn that she called Joe because she couldn't pronounce his name—who matched her eyes
and
her name. Way better than shoes or a coordinated tote. He was for sure prettier than anything in her closet. And purple, in all its shades, was NON's “national” color, so he wouldn't go out of style any time soon. Even better, Joe was a guy she most wanted to kiss
and
who wanted to kiss her. That hadn't happened for a while, mostly because about ninety percent of the datable males in the New Orleans New Police Department were relatives. It was a Baker-rich environment, which made it a dating desert. And the few guys who had wanted to date her? Most of them couldn't get past all the cousins and Captain Uncle
to
kiss her.

On the downside—did there
always
have to be one?—was the sentient nanite sharing Joe's brain. And the fact that Joe wasn't only here on an intergalactic cop exchange program. He and Lurch were hunting a dangerous and ruthless…something or other that liked to cook people from the inside out. This something or other could hide inside people, which had resulted in a minor misunderstanding during which Joe had almost shot her with his ray gun.

But she was over that.

A kiss had made it, if not all better, then ninety percent that direction.

And the truth was, if she had been hosting this something or other, being shot was quicker than being painfully cooked from the inside out. So she might be one hundred percent better. Or ninety-nine. Yeah, for sure ninety-nine.

She studied Joe's profile, her gaze lingering on his lips. All right, she might be one hundred percent okay.

Except for…

She looked morosely out on a world that was, if not forever changed, then destined to be markedly different for a very long time.

Hurricane Wu Tamika Felipe had been one for the history books. A book she wished she could read in hindsight and not be currently experiencing. Though living through it was better than dying during it. She'd had her doubts about surviving one or twenty-five times.

“The trouble with surviving a hurricane,” Vi glanced at Joe again, as he steered their new-to-them skimmer through a reconfigured New Orleans New, “is that then you have to get through the aftermath.”

She'd never been that fond of math. So far aftermath wasn't floating her skimmer either. It was a lot like the before-math, but with less rain, less wind, and no utilities. Oh, and a city requiring all emergency hands on an unrecognizable deck for an indefinite period of time.

“Oh, look, there's Jackson Square,” Vi said, as she spotted the familiar lines of the cathedral. “I wondered where it got to.”

Well, maybe unrecognizable wasn't the right word. She could see landmarks—why did they still call them that?—in the air space that was New Orleans New-ly Rearranged, but not in
their
place in the air space that had been NON.

“And there's Lake Pontchartrain,” she added. At least it hadn't moved, just expanded its borders for a bit. “Lots of white caps down there.”

“WTF caused considerable disruption,” Joe observed. “Do you wish me to log the location for Jackson Square?”

“I got it.” She entered the coordinates in the hastily cobbled-together program designed in hopes of putting Humpty Dumpty, aka NON, back together again.

The bright idea, conceived fifty years ago, to lift the city up out of the flood zone, had clearly failed to anticipate the effects of 200 MPH-plus winds on floating structures maintained by underperforming, aging thrusters. The problem had been further complicated by the anti-collision technology—though the anti-collision tech had performed better than the thrusters, much to the delight of the Anti-Collision Board, who had almost been voted redundant in the last election. Of course, performing correctly had helped scatter the various parts of the floating city even further when WTF tried to bump everything into everything else.

The City Alignment Board, who had been magnificently confident in the run up to the storm, were now deep in CYA mode—about the only thing aligned about the Alignment Board. They were lucky everything was mostly offline. The shell-shocked NONians playing “Marco Polo” in a huge and very unfamiliar pool might have time to get over it. Though Vi wouldn't make book on that. This was a lot to get over, Vi concluded, watching another piece of the French Quarter floating beneath them.

Somewhere out there in the drifting bits of city was home. She hadn't seen it since reporting for duty well ahead of WTF. At this point it didn't matter that she didn't know where it—or where her parents were. After working overtime ahead of, and during, WTF all emergency services were now in mop-up mode, snatching sleep and food on the go. At least she'd heard from her parents and knew they were okay, if not particularly happy. Eventually someone in her seriously extended family would find and log them into the database. And eventually they'd get far enough ahead of the emergencies that she'd get to go home and sleep. If she didn't die from exhaustion first.

There were crews heading down from a variety of cities up north. The city fathers were hoping the utility guys could help repair the umbilical—which was also not as durable as advertised—that had supplied the city with utilities. Hospitals and essential services had emergency generators, unearthed from old emergency stores, but most of the city floated darkly over the slowly receding lake that was usually known as dirt side, or more officially, New Orleans Old.

While it was possible to fly above the fragmented city, without lanes or traffic indicators, it wasn't fun and tended to verge on life threatening. Only emergency vehicles were supposed to be up there, but people needed food, water and help. And for many, their skimmers were the only way to cool off in one thousand percent humidity coupled with August heat.

If someone was keeping score, it was NON: 0 and WTF: a seriously big number.

It wasn't just
crapeau
on a cracker. It was a cracker buried in tons of
crapeau
and topped with a nasty cherry.

Joe opened his mouth, but closed it again. Joe never wasted his words, particularly in stating the obvious. He settled for flicking her a sympathetic look. The warmth behind the look took the edge off her morose. She wasn't quite used to the notion that her alien partner liked her like
that.
Super easy to get used to perfect features and yeah, perfect build, too, but—they had a lot to work out before they could call themselves a couple, if that's what Joe even had in mind. He was from another galaxy. And she wasn't sure—if invited—that this Baker could go where no Baker had gone before. She wasn't sure Joe would survive to take her anywhere when all the Bakers found out he'd kissed the girl.

And then there was Lurch. A tiny, sentient computer living inside Joe and witness to the few kisses they'd exchanged. Because she didn't want to think about Joe's…internal entity, she said, “Still not seeing the FEMA MEC. Geez, I hope it's not moving, too.” NON had stopped rotating as fast as WTF when the storm moved northeast and was downgraded. But the crazy air currents in its wake had created odd drift problems. “You see anything on your side?”

Joe did much better with questions.

“I do not.”

Sometimes he did better.

“Isn't that some of the Irish Channel there?” Nothing channel-like about the scrambled blocks of houses now. Someone had logged it into the Ninth Ward, unless it was a different section. Which it could be. Because this wasn't where the Ninth Ward used to be. Okay, she was pretty sure this wasn't it, but it was getting harder to remember how it had been when dealing with what it was now.

“It does appear to be some of it.”

It was going to be a delicate—and expensive—job piecing the city back to its previous configuration. Assuming that was even possible. And they managed to get three times more money than was needed, because yeah, graft.

The more NON changed, the more it didn't. Even when it really did change. Which it pretty much had this time.

Most of their runs since the storm had been from HQ to Point Needs Help But Probably Won't Get It Because It Can't Be Found. Their search operation wasn't helped by FEMA, who had been slapping blue tarp things on every other roof, making the few landmarks still left harder to spot from the air. No one was quite sure what the tarps were for. When asked, their vid spokesperson—and quite possibly the only FEMA person not lost out in the city—had sobbed, “We're doing the best we can in a difficult situation.”

If that was their best…

The one thing that should have been easy to spot—the FEMA MEC—was proving to be elusive. Not that she was that eager to find it. Once there they'd have to leave the cool confines of the skimmer and check out a dead body. Last time they'd done that they'd ended up in a whole pile of trouble—trouble that was not completely resolved. But she didn't want to think about Joe's evil something or other. The evil that men did in the tent city was sufficient unto the day. Or something like that.

“That's got to be it.” Vi pointed at neat rows of what looked like white lines drifting on the outer edges of the ragged NON. It was the only straight lines of anything they'd seen since leaving HQ. The tents had been set up on emergency platforms hauled in by the underperforming FEMA, or so she'd heard. Didn't seem like that great of an idea, but it was probably better than setting them up dirt side when it was still hip deep in water.

According to Joe's Lurch—the nanite could sift through history in a blink—FEMA had never been very good at doing anything, so it was mystery how expectations remained so high. It seemed their only strength lay in finding their way to a trouble spot and staying until things were significantly worse. Whereupon they'd pull out, so that the locals caught the follow-on flack.

The only bright spot about their current assignment was that it delayed the moment they got to play Russian roulette with another meal-ready-to-eat back at HQ. The meals might be ready but she needed time to be ready to eat one. The old packages had lost their labels, making meal time feel like a series of bad, blind dates. Not that labeling would have helped. They'd probably lost their taste several decades back, so it was better to keep expectations really low.

Joe banked the skimmer, making a low pass over the platforms to find a secure LZ. A distinctive puke green FEMA transport lifted up from what appeared to be the service area and Joe grabbed the spot, causing a squawk of outrage over the communications grid. Joe shut it down, and then their engines. She popped the rear hatch and scrambled out. When she got to the rear, Joe had already activated the controls to release the body bag. It emerged smoothly, a stark and silent contrast from the one in the skimmer they'd crashed in the storm. Its body bag had developed some definite quirks, such as wanting to be carried once the body was on board.
So
old school.

The new body bag was the sole upside to being out of the skimmer, which technically wasn't a big upside. It was hotter than she'd expected. It always was in August. And if one thought one was prepared? August would up the ante, because that's the kind of month it was.

She stretched her back, to one side and then the other. It didn't help. Like WTF, tired had moved on, leaving something greater than exhaustion, but just shy of dead. There wasn't even a word for it. She should have grabbed a cat nap on the trip here, but Joe had needed her blood-shot eyes. The low budget skimmer didn't have enough tech for safe navigation through everything-is-different. And honestly, cat naps just made her feel worse at this point. Felt like it was taunting her body with what might of been but wasn't going to be for a good long while yet.

Of course, Joe looked refreshed and relaxed, no blood-shot red marring his gorgeous eyes, probably because of Lurch. It seemed there were benefits to sharing your innards with a nanite. Apparently it fixed what ailed him, though only if he wasn't dead. Which he wasn't. It was hard to like either of them at the moment, though this did not lessen her longing to kiss Joe again. Except, did that mean Lurch got in on the action, too? And the scary part? She kinda wished she had a nanite to fix her up. Which kind of creeped her out.

Nothing made sense, but this was the Big Easy. One didn't expect sense to be made here, even on normal days.

They didn't have coordinates to input into their body bag, so Vi tossed their CSI gear on it and then set it to follow them. The movement sent her a whiff of something not great. She glanced around. Not enough people close enough to blame. Her last shower had been right after their retrieval from New Orleans Old. She was kind of afraid to do the math on how long ago that was. Sure wasn't about to sniff an armpit. Though that might clear some of the fog from her brain. If it didn't knock her out.

She studied her surroundings slowly. This was her first experience with a FEMA Mobile Emergency Center. Kinda hoped it would be her last. It was probably better than nowhere to stay, but not by a whole lot. Containers of MREs, those mysterious Meals Ready-to-Eat, were stacked behind Points of Distribution for the meals, water and ice. Her gaze encountered line after line of blue coffin-like structures.

“What do you suppose those are?” She jerked her chin toward them and then wished she hadn't when she felt hotter.

Joe studied them for several seconds, then offered, “I suspect they are latrines. Note that one section is for males, one for females, and the other section for the gender conflicted.”

“Really?” Curiosity did a slow climb inside her head. It had always been her biggest failing. Probably. At least in her top ten. She trotted over to the closest one.

“I would advise you not—” Joe began too late.