Cyber Dreams 4.53 - Lady Hawk

Here's today's delivery. Okay, I've skipped ahead a little more, and you all are just seeing some aftermath. I'm curious if this feels way too unsatisfying or if you're okay with how things are wrapping up. I figure another couple of chapters and book 4 will be done. Feel free to mention any loose ends you're still wondering about after this chapter. I'll try to make sure I don't miss anything :)

-Plum

Juliet stepped out of the docking tunnel and, somewhat apprehensively, mingled with the crowds of Callisto’s spaceport. She didn’t know exactly what she was expecting, but considering the explosive events she’d seen play out on the Humpback, she couldn’t help feeling like someone would be waiting for her. Nobody gave her any unusual looks, at least nothing beyond what she was used to, and soon, she was walking with the flow of pedestrian traffic through the busy terminal.

She wore her armor but not her helmet, and, as usual, her Texan sat comfortably on her hip. She didn’t plan to stay on Callisto long, so she’d left most of her gear on the med ship, now officially docked with a legitimate ITM number as Furies’ Wing. She wasn’t sure she loved the name, but she and Angel had come up with it together, and she was starting to get used to it. She’d wanted some kind of name related to Athena, but nothing too on the nose. Angel had told her about the Furies, goddesses of vengeance that Athena was supposed to have had a hand in creating. So, Juliet had decided that she and Angel would be Athena’s Furies, and the ship was their chariot, so to speak.

She had to slow her stride when the crowd grew dense, and she realized people were standing around watching a big vid display above a central flight information kiosk. Juliet rarely looked at the public vid screens, choosing to watch news or get information directly through her AUI, but she couldn’t help following the gazes of the people standing around gawking. When she saw the subject matter, she stopped stock still and felt some perspiration start to gather on her forehead. A newscaster was animatedly speaking, gesturing to a vid screen beside her that kept alternately showing still images of the Humpback, Sir Rodric Barrington, Antigone Barrington, and a short video clip of Rodric, hands shrink-tied behind his back, being marched into the judicial building in Callisto city.

“Give me that audio,” Juliet said, licking her suddenly dry lips.

The newscaster’s voice came into her ears, in sync with the video up on the screen, “. . . explosive revelation that Sir Rodric, the well-known public face of Eclipse Consortium, has been captured in a sting operation by the corporate anti-espionage arm of one of the many companies he holds a massive stake in, Greater Gas Corp. He was apprehended during a sale of illicit data to a competing corporation, Ark Industries. Worse for Sir Rodric, it seems his overzealous security team killed the crew aboard the vessel where he’d arranged the meeting, and multiple counts of premeditated murder have been added to his charges. The details of the leaked data are yet to come to light, but in their filing with the Callisto Judicial Consortium, Greater Gas indicated that they have evidence that Sir Rodric has sold the data to at least seven other competing corps and conglomerates. Whatever it was, it must be big—they’re claiming damages surpassing a trillion Sol-bits.”

“On the news already?” Juliet muttered.

“Antigone and her contacts move fast. Listen to the next bit.”

Angel stopped speaking, and the newscaster’s voice continued, “. . . as Eclipse stock values plummet, Sir Rodric’s daughter, Antigone Barrington, has stepped into a leadership role in a bid to halt the bleeding. The executives we reached out to were confident that she’s ready to fill her father’s shoes. Here she is making a statement.” The newscaster’s image shrank as the vid screen she was referencing expanded. Antigone stood on the steps of a massive, mirror-sheened black building wearing a beautiful, bright yellow executive-style dress and jacket over a cream-colored blouse. Her hair was a natural-looking reddish-blonde, and her makeup was far more subdued than when Juliet had last seen her.

Antigone looked over the top of a glass podium to an array of people whom Juliet reasoned must be Callisto’s press corps. Most of them had little drones hovering near their heads, shining lights and aiming microphones at the young woman. “While I cannot reconcile the crimes my father is accused of with the loving man I’ve known my entire life, I also cannot refute the evidence I’ve been shown. I’m deeply troubled by the treachery and criminal behavior, and I can only speculate as to his motivations. I will say that he hasn’t been himself for months, if not years. As you all can verify with just a little digging, you’ll find that the shareholders and executives operating under my father’s leadership have been worried about his decision-making for a long while now. That ends today. I have big plans for Eclipse, and I can assure you they don’t involve stealing data from our subsidiary corporations and trying to sell it to our competitors!”

The image shifted again, back to the newscaster, and as she began to repeat things Juliet had already heard, she tuned her out and worked her way around the crowd. Someone nearby barked a laugh and said, “Yeah, right! We’ll never see him on trial. That guy’s dead meat.” Juliet smirked—she didn’t doubt he was right. People like Barrington who fell from grace had a remarkably high chance of committing “suicide.” For once, that would be fine with her, though she supposed the embarrassment of being on trial would be nice to witness, too.

It only took her another twenty minutes to walk to Nick’s rented hangar, and as she approached the bulkhead door separating the hangar from the spaceport, her heart rate noticeably increased. She’d avoided thinking about it, but seeing the Lady Hawk would be hard on her, she was sure of it. She’d almost decided to bail, to leave her duffel and belongings on the ship, but there were two things in that bag she didn’t want to lose: her leather jacket and the bullet she’d pulled from the wall when Eve almost blew her head off. Worse, Nick apparently had a nephew on Callisto who’d been named as his beneficiary for the ship’s title, and he wanted Lucky to help him get access—Nick had never set up his biometrics.

Steeling herself, she wiped her palms on the sides of her armored pants, wishing she hadn’t decided against wearing her gloves. Angel helped break the tension by saying, “I’ve connected to Lady Hawk’s systems and can see Nick’s nephew, Franklin Timms, sitting on a crate not far from the ship’s port wing. He appears to be playing a game on his AUI.”

When Juliet had first landed in port two days ago, one day after the sting on the Humpback, she’d had Angel connect to the Lady Hawk and found a contact for an attorney. One thing led to another, and Juliet ended up shipping his remains to his home in the agridome. The attorney had contacted Nick’s family, which led to the young man sitting in the hangar waiting for her.

“I didn’t even know Nick had a sister, let alone a nephew here on Callisto. Am I that self-absorbed? Did he ever talk about him?”

“Not at all, and he had many opportunities during your conversations. I believe he preferred to keep them at arm’s distance, perhaps because of his penchant for making friends and enemies.”

Juliet smiled, finally starting to feel okay thinking about Nick, reminiscing about the fond memories and pushing the not-so-fond ones out of her mind. “Yeah. Everyone either loved Nick or hated him.” She pressed her hand to the door panel, and it whooshed open. When she stepped through the inner door and saw Nick’s nephew sitting on the crate of thirty-millimeter ammunition belts, her heart lurched into her throat. He looked like a twenty-year-old version of Nick. She stopped and stared for several seconds, her mouth partially open, before he looked up and nearly fell off the crate in surprise.

“Woah! You startled me! Sorry, did you say something? I was lost in a game.” He even sounded like Nick. It was unnerving.

“Um, hey. Franklin, right?”

“Ugh! No, no, call me Clank, if you please. It’s my handle in the Robo Rumble League.” He chuckled and stood up, shrugging. “I know it’s silly, but it’s how I make my living, and everyone I know calls me that. Frank or Franklin makes me feel weird. Anyway, you’re Lucky, right?”

“Yeah. Well, how can I make fun of a guy’s name when I go around telling people my name is Lucky?”

“Lucky’s not so weird. I’ve heard some crazy names among operators. My technician has a brother in that line of work who calls himself Icepick.” As he stepped closer, holding out a hand for Juliet to shake, the illusion that he was a younger Nick began to come apart. He was shorter and wore a gray rain jacket, some skin-tight blue pants, and shiny silver sneakers that Nick wouldn’t have been caught dead in. More than that, his handshake was soft and brief, and he shied away from making eye contact with her.

“Well, I’m going to get my stuff off the ship, and since you’ve confirmed your identity with my PAI, I can set the Lady to accept your biometrics.” Juliet stepped toward the ship, then paused and asked, “What will you do with her, anyway?”

“Her?” He frowned and scratched his wrist a little nervously.

“The ship, goofball. Your uncle never talked to you about her?”

“Oh, um, maybe when I was younger. I haven’t spoken to Nick in years. He and my mom don’t get along well, and he’s always off-moon. Well, I mean, he was.”

Juliet kept moving to the back of the ship and the airlock. “I guess that’s why he didn’t talk about you or your mom with me. She’s his sister, I guess?”

“Right. She didn’t approve of his work, and he didn’t approve of my dad. That’s how the story goes, anyway. Um, his buddy contacted me through that attorney. Ray something? He wants to buy the ship.”

Juliet stopped in her tracks. “Oh, hell no.” She turned to face Franklin or Clank if that’s what he wanted to be called, and said, in a near growl, “That creep is the reason your uncle is dead.” She considered revising the statement, saying he was only one of the reasons, but decided not to; if it weren’t for Ray’s connection to the whole thing, Nick would never have gotten involved.

“Well, he offered me cash, and I don’t know much about ships, but it seems like a lot more than it’s worth.”

“Oh? Do elaborate.” Juliet stepped closer to him. Unbidden, her right hand fell beside her Texan’s grip, and her fingertips lightly tapped against it.

Clank looked her in the eye for a split second, then blushed and looked down, speaking rapidly, “Well, it’s a McDonnel-Chavez Ranger, and it’s almost twenty years old. I did a pretty exhaustive search, and ships like it are selling for around half a million bits. That Ray guy offered me seven-fifty.” Juliet scowled, took two quick steps, and slapped the kid on the side of the head. He flinched, stumbled back, and cried, “Hey! What the hell, lady?”

“Don’t you dare go talking about the Ladylike that! She’s not some piece of garbage stock Ranger that hasn’t been maintained for the last dozen years. Your uncle put everything into this ship!” She held her hand up, palm open, and her menacing glare made Clank back up another step.

“So? That’s probably why that guy offered me so much. Frankly, I don’t really care if Nick liked him or not; that kind of money is going to push me to the next division in the league. Now, will you please just do your thing with the panel so I can get inside and clean it out?”

Juliet stared at him while he stared at the floor, contemplating her next words. After a moment, she subvocalized, “Angel, what’s my balance?”

“Your primary Sol-bit vault is at 252,456, and your secondary vault holds an even 1 million after Roy Tornado’s transfer.” That had been Juliet’s deal with the pirate and Antigone—she’d walk away with an even million after their deals to sell the dark matter data. She probably could have bargained for more, but at that point, she’d just wanted to get away from the whole mess. She had the Wing, which was worth millions; she had probably more than a million bits worth of Cybergen equipment aboard, and she had the Atlas, which, she was confident, would sell for more than a million bits if she had to raise funds for some emergency. All in all, she wasn’t complaining about her payday.

“Listen, Franklin, I’m sentimental about this ship, and Ray will screw you over. I’ll transfer you 750k right now if you’ll sign the title over to me.” She lowered her hand and held it out to him to shake.

He looked at her hand, face still flushed, brows angled down in an angry scowl, and, without looking her in the face, said, “Make it 850k.”

Juliet lunged forward and snatched him around the collar of his rain jacket. “You little shit! Your uncle and I were friends! I’m trying to protect his favorite thing in the entire system, and you want to try to rip me off?” She was furious and didn’t hold back, shaking him with her cybernetic arm, jerking him so his head lolled forward and back. “Didn’t you hear me say your uncle is dead because of that creep? You really wanna try to screw me? You should be offering me a discount, not trying to prey on my emotions!”

Franklin’s dark blue eyes rolled around in his head as Juliet shook him, and his mouth opened as he began to wail in dismay. He pawed at her arm ineffectually and sputtered, “Let me go! Sheesh, lady! This is assault! I’m recording the whole thing!”

“He’s not recording you, though he might think he is. I’m scrambling your face, and his optics are low-end; there’s no way he’s getting a clean image. Shall I use the Lady’s comm array to jam his PAI?”

“Jam him,” Juliet didn’t bother subvocalizing. As she heard the tell-tale buzz in her ears, letting her know the jammer was active, she gave Franklin a shove, then, almost too fast to see, she drew her Texan and pointed the wide barrel right into his face. “Make a move, and I’ll send you to escort your uncle to the next life.” He blanched and began to tremble, and Juliet almost felt guilty. His utter disrespect toward Nick, his own flesh and blood, the man who’d left him the only thing he really cared about, helped assuage that guilt.

“Fine! Fine! I’ll sell it to you, damn, don’t kill me, psycho!”

“You think I’m a psycho? You should have seen the creeps who tortured and killed your uncle. He left you this ship, so he must have liked something about you, but I don’t see it. Maybe he just liked you a little better than the local charities. I’m going to send you a blockchain contract in Sol-bits. Put your authentication on it, and you’ll get your payment, and I’ll get the title. Are we clear?”

“I know how contracts work!” He straightened up, glaring at her, apparently no longer afraid she was going to blow his brains out. Juliet nodded and gave the Texan a twirl, holstering it with a flourish. “What? Were you his girlfriend or something?”

“Something like that, you little punk.” Juliet knew she was being unreasonable. When did she decide that forcing someone at gunpoint to sell her a ship was acceptable? She growled at that inner voice, reminding herself she was doing this for Nick so the Lady didn’t get stripped or sold off to fatten Ray’s pockets. She didn’t plan to start bullying everyone she met. “Right?”

“Huh?”

Angel interrupted, “I sent him the contract.”

“How can I verify this if you’re jamming my outgoing net connections?”

“I’ll allow him net access through the Lady. I can monitor everything he does.”

Juliet sighed and moved to sit on the crate he’d earlier vacated, putting herself between him and the door. “Standby. You should have access in a minute.”

Angel chuckled in Juliet’s ear. “He’s trying to contact Port Security.”

Juliet subvocalized, “Can you pretend to be Port Security? Tell him you’re on the way, but there’s a backlog.”

“Done. He’s done a few more searches on the value of this model of interceptor.” Juliet looked at Franklin—she refused to think of him as Clank now—and saw his eyes darting back and forth as he looked at information on his AUI.

After a minute, he sighed, briefly looked at her, and then back toward the floor. “Whatever, lady. I don’t care if you buy it or that other guy. It’s a good deal, I guess.” He waved his fingers in the air like he was doing something on a virtual UI, and then he glared at her. “Can I leave?”

“The contract has been executed. You have ownership of the Lady Hawk, and the Sol-bits have been drawn from your vault.”

Juliet nodded and jerked her thumb toward the hangar door. “Get out. At least now I know why Nick never talked about you.”

Franklin walked past her, and when he was standing by the door, hand on the activation button, he turned to her and yelled, “Suck on these nuts, lady!” Juliet’s eyes bulged out as he made an obscene gesture toward his groin, and then, before she could think to do anything other than cough out a surprised laugh, he slipped through the door and was gone.

“That was rude!”

“Eh, I wasn’t exactly polite in my bargaining.” Juliet turned back to the ship, and a slow smile spread across her lips. “Can’t believe I just spent 750k on a ship I don’t need. How am I even going to fly this back to Luna?”

“This ship’s mods are worth the money you just spent. Nick will be glad you have it. As for how we’ll get it back to Luna, I have some ideas.” Juliet laughed at Angel’s quick reply—they were a pair; that much was certain.