Two days and change later, we reached our destination. Hanoi was about as nice as cities outside of the USAS mainland and the west Euros got. Tall buildings, paved roads, nuclear power plants to provide easy electricity to everyone, what more could someone want? Of course, they weren’t allowed to purchase hydrocars for civilian use, that right was only given to state corporations and the military, who could give them out as terms of employment. Their ability to purchase all sorts of other products, such as food, weaponry, and any number of luxury items was also severely curtailed. It was all an effective means of getting the locals to work harder, and to permanently keep them in the pocket of the USAS.

  Walking in wasn’t exactly pleasant. We had to cross through miles of soybean fields, and it seemed like every farmer we saw stopped to look at us. Two Americans and a pig walking through their fields clearly wasn’t something they saw everyday, especially one who was carrying a rifle. There were only two types, those who stopped to stare, pure hatred burning in their eyes, and those who took one look and quickly averted their gaze. It reminded me of when I was a marine, though back then more of them looked away quickly rather than stared. Staring might get them noticed, after all.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Steve said, his voice full of nervous energy. “I feel like these guys don’t want us around.”

  “Oh, what tipped you off to that, numbnuts?” I asked him.

  “The ape-scientist is right,” Blart put in, irritated. “Coming here was a terrible decision.”

  “Who’s got the gun?” The rhetorical question didn’t need to be answered. “Besides, this was the best place for us to go.”

  “Why would you think that? I understand that you primates have severely limited intellectual abilities, but why would that even begin-”

  “First,” I started listing the reasons, “you two are about as trustworthy as a pair of rattlesnakes tied together. This lets me hold all the cards. Second, some of my old marine buddies transferred onto the astronautics base here, permanent-like, and having visited them, I generally know the layout. Third, Hanoi is the most independent city on the planet right now, nearly entirely run by huge corporations which only barely report to the USAS. Finally, it bothered the piss out of you both, so I figured it would be funny. And it was.”

  “You made up all those reasons on the spot but the last,” Blart whined.

  “Maybe I did, but it doesn’t make them any less true.”

  “So we’re going to the astronautics base?” Steve asked, clearly not liking the sound of the idea.

  “No, idjit, right now we’re going to that bar and getting drunk.” My pointing finger found a sign hanging over the doorway of a squatty two-story building. Its sign had some bit of angular foreign text on it, which said something I’d never been able to discern. “The Watering Hole!” I declared.

  “I don’t think that’s what that says,” Steve mumbled, but I gave him the stink eye and he shut up while we went into the bar.

  Hanoi was a special city, one of the few places like it in all the world, outside of the Sovereignty proper. It had never been struck by any nukes, and had only rarely seen any conflict in the streets whatsoever. Far apart from the rest of the Southeast Asian Sector, it was nearly a center of technology and education. The huge corporations which helped along the USAS used the city and its surroundings as a manufacturing hub, and for that, they needed a population that was simultaneously reasonably well educated, and highly dependent. For that reason, joints like the Watering Hole existed alongside traditional Vietnamese drinking and eating establishments.

  Though it was called “fusion”, the only thing there that anyone from the mainland would recognize would be the beer or fried chicken. Everything else was local food, and if someone didn’t like that, tough. Watering Hole wasn’t its real name, just what the soldiers on base had always called it, and it was one of the few local places that was generally considered something of a neutral ground. In spite of as many of the locals as the soldiers had killed, and how much most of the locals reviled or outright hated us, we frequently wanted things from one another. Whether it was a night with a pretty girl or some piece of local culture which couldn’t be sold or procured on base or back home due to cultural contamination laws, eventually everyone who stayed in Hanoi for longer than a year would want something.

  For the locals, the USAS didn’t sell any sort of drug or antibiotic without a prescription from a very expensive and rare USAS-certified doctor. If any of them wanted bullets that weren’t locally made with questionable machinery and essentially nonexistent standards, they’d have to trade with the soldiers. If they wanted real USAS dollars rather than trade notes, or modern amenities that were better than two decades out of date, they’d have to get it from the soldiers. Over the years, a peculiar sort of trust had grown between the locals and the soldiers who frequented the Watering Hole, based entirely around the illicit trade of semi-legal goods. In other words, it was my sort of place.

  I looked around when we got inside, hoping to see familiar faces, and was rewarded with the lopsided grin of the bartender. He was a perfectly average half-vietnamese man, with nearly nothing of note about him, except for a missing pinky and ring finger on his right hand. The last time I’d seen him, I was missing a nut and most of a leg, so we’d been something of instant compatriots, brought together by our mutual loss.

  “Hey, Carl! It’s Melvin!” I said, waving at him and moving to the bar. “How’s it going?”

  “Melvin? I’ll be damned, it’s been years! You’re looking fantastic! You must’ve gotten some serious plastic surgery, but I’d remember that voice anywhere. Walking on that prosthetic pretty damn well these days, I see.” My long pant leg must’ve hidden it, and I moved forward so as to not linger and break the illusion.

  “Uhhh, yeah,” I responded. As I pulled up a stool, he poured me a rich, dark brew and eyed Steve, who only ordered a water. Blart made a rather undignified noise as he dragged himself onto a stool that was significantly too tall and human-shaped for him. “Got real used to it, real good… yeah.” I took a long pull from the glass and sighed contentedly. “I’ll have the usual, them too,” I told him, and gestured to my companions.

  “What, they like spice as much as you?”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, talking over Steve’s objection and pulling a one hundred dollar bill from my pocket. Carl eyed it, more than a little surprised at seeing so much cash so suddenly. I put it on the bar between us and leaned in conspiratorially, while Carl did the same. “I’m looking for a resistance cell,” I said, not loud enough to be overheard.

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  “Yeah, and I’m looking for a pair of willing twin blondes to make my dreams a reality,” he scoffed, swiping the hundred off the bartop. “Why?”

  “Well,” I said, my mind racing to find a good excuse.

  “We’re here looking for samples of previous virus-bombs,” Steve supplied.

  “Ahh, you mean the weaponized virus samples that the local resistance released,” Carl said, with an eyebrow raised. It was the official story that anyone outside of the drop marines and the officer corps of any of the services would have heard, while the truth was something of an open secret, depending on who you knew.

  “Of course that’s what he means,” I supplied. “We’re here semi-officially, to see if we can’t gather some samples and ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.”

  “What exactly does ‘semi-officially’ mean?” Carl asked, a small smirk on his face. I pulled out another hundred dollar note and put it down on the bar.

  “Well funded,” I told him, and his smirk broke into a full smile.

  “Well funded indeed. Let’s get that food worked up for you, then I’ll see what I can do.” He walked off into the kitchen to tell the cook our orders while I took another long pull of my beer and spun around on my stool, looking around the bar. We’d arrived just after noon, and the place was a little over half full. A few guys from the local base were at one table, but the rest was taken up by suits and local workers. Clearly, the suits were corporate stooges, while the soldiers all had the familiar buzz-cut and fatigues enjoyed by members of the USAS’ armed forces the world over.

  I had half an urge to go talk to them, but the pattern of their camouflage told me that they were drone pilots. Barely one step above the pencil-necked nerd sitting next to me, and he only scarcely rated as a human being. Outside, people went about their business with all the same single-mindedness that one could find in any city. Barely minding one another as they went, carrying on the business of busy lives. It was all exceedingly droll.

  That is to say, it was all exceedingly droll until I saw a pair of daug soldiers shuffle-step into view. Standing over eight feet tall, built like a barrel that some demented scientist decided to sew too much muscle on, and carrying a 35mm cannon which was bolted to their flesh, they were horrific to behold. The one in the window turned and looked in, his overlarge face and all-black eyes sweeping over to look at everything inside, uncomprehending. There wasn’t a hint of humanity behind those wet, jet-black orbs.

  On more than one occasion, I’d seen the things get cut loose. They were strong enough to bend steel in their hands, and always angry, hungry, thirsty, or horny. Anyone unlucky enough to be their target would quickly find themselves the subjects of all of their appetites, frequently not in an order that they’d find palatable. I lowered my gaze away from those weepy eyes, trying not to draw their ire. Somehow even worse than their presence was the tiny, red-irised eyeball insignia which they wore on their shoulders. These weren’t just any daugs.

  They were under the command of the intelligence service.

  I spun back around in my stool as Carl came out of the back with three bowls of noodle soup and put them down in front of us. They smelled heavenly, and their mere aroma cleared my sinuses. Knowing how precarious the situation was about to get, I tucked into the food with abandon, relishing how it set my throat on fire. That sort of thing was part of the attraction for me.

  “What the hell is this?” Steve asked after spitting out his first bite. His face was already turning red, and I thought I saw some sweat beading up on his temples.

  “It’ll put some hair on your chest,” I told him, my mouth full. Behind me, I heard the bar’s door open and close, and neat, precise footfalls on the wood behind me. “Eat up,” I commanded, and he looked at me like I was crazy. On his other side, Blart was eating like a pig, seeming to readily enjoy the spicy concoction. I put down the rest of my beer to quench the heat slightly and leaned back in the stool as a man in an olive overcoat hanging down to his knees sidled up to the bar next to me. I couldn’t believe that he was dumb enough to come within killing range of me without his bodyguards, but that was probably a side effect of him being perfectly safe for so long he’d grown complacent. You’d have to be dumb as a post or plum crazy to attack an intelligence agent. Unfortunately for this guy, I fell firmly into at least one of those categories.

  “You know, the intelligence service wasn’t made aware of any civilian flights into Hanoi recently,” he said to me as Clark made himself scarce.

  “As a matter of fact I didn’t know that,” I replied, turning towards him. “Do you have any other information you’d like to share with me?”

  “Share with me, sir,” he scolded, and stopped talking as if I was going to show him the respect he was demanding.

  “Guess not,” I said. “Where’d that bartender go?” I asked rhetorically, looking around. Clark was nowhere to be found, so I hopped over the bartop and moved over to pour myself another of the nutty, oaty dark brew.

  “You’re wearing at my patience,” the man said testily.

  “I get that a lot,” I told him, glancing at my companions. Blart was clearly possessed of far more good sense than Steve, because he’d made himself scarce, hiding under a table nearby. Steve, on the other hand, was pale as a sheet, terrified at being next to an officer of the USAS’ most feared policing apparatus, and was still as a statue besides a slight tremor in one hand. The rest of the bar was dreadfully quiet, too. “So, how can I help you?”

  “You can tell me what you’re doing in Hanoi, first off.”

  “Oh, you know, this and that. Visiting friends, seeing the sights,” I cheerily listed off, pausing to take a long drink of my new beer.

  “If you don’t begin answering my questions forthrightly, I’m going to bring my daugs in-”

  “Ahhh, that’s refreshing,” I interrupted, belching explosively into his face. As I’d hoped, he turned an ugly shade of red and shouted a command, which was what I was waiting for. The two daug bodyguards outside turned to move in, and I drew my kukri, flicking it sideways across his throat, cleaving through nearly everything but his spine. As soon as my blade was free of his throat I pushed him, hard, with my opposite hand. He gurgled in pain and terror, stumbling several steps and falling onto his back in the middle of the bar’s floor. His weakening hands clutched at his profusely bleeding throat like he couldn’t quite believe he’d been cut. As his struggling became more sluggish, the first of the huge bruisers walked in.

  There were two vitally important things to know about daugs. Firstly, they were extremely dumb. A daug is usually capable of enough higher order thinking to open doors and canned rations, though both of these strained their manual dexterity. Secondly, they’re extremely loyal. Each daug was equipped with a built-in drug pump or two buried in their massive bodies, which fed them a constant drip of happy drugs. When they followed an order, or when their commander was simply happy with them, they got a dose of the good feels. Every daug was hopelessly, impossibly addicted to this drip feed of chemicals, to the point that their nervous system would shut down if they were forced to quit.

  So, what happens when a six hundred pound, eight foot tall slab of meat with sub-refrigerator IQ sees his drug dealer, who is also his best friend, lying dead on the ground from a slashed throat? Normally, he tries to kill whoever did the slashing. Unfortunately for everyone, as soon as I’d completed my little violent outburst, I’d dropped my hand back below the counter and hid the kukri comfortably in its sheath. That meant that the daugs, not having directly witnessed what happened, needed to do a little investigating to find out which unlucky patron did the deed. All as expected. I took another drink of my beer.

  “WHO?!” The one in lead roared, inhumanly deep voice barely understandable, and charged.