Cyber Dreams 4.48 - A Punch to the Gut

Enjoy this chapter! Have a great weekend!

-Plum

While Juliet busied herself, loading the ammunition magazines into the canisters on the Atlas suit’s arms, she asked, “Do you still have the code for Grave’s watchdog program?”

“I kept the interesting bits, yes. Why do you ask?” Angel highlighted the next step on the instruction flow chart for arming the power suit. Juliet followed the instruction, resetting the internal safety so the slide mechanism could actuate, priming the first ten-millimeter polymer round into the chamber.

Juliet slapped the magazine housing shut, shifted the heavy armor plate back into position, and then moved over to work on the other arm. “Well, I’m hoping I don’t have to kill all the pirates on that ship. I still don’t know how murderous their intentions are. If I can get any of them to surrender, including Mary Moon, I want to be able to keep tabs on them. You know, ensure they don’t recover any evidence of this bad boy.” Juliet slapped the thick, powder-finished, black armor plating she was currently trying to muscle open.

“I meant to ask you about that; are we certain this is the best plan? Troy seemed to indicate that this suit should be for last resorts . . .”

“I hate to admit it, but I think this is kind of a last resort. If they have a full crew on that ship, we’re talking twenty or more pirates. Maybe just as many synths programmed for, well, for pirating. If they take this ship and start to torture me . . .” Juliet grunted, finally getting the armor out of her way and ejecting the empty ammo canister. “Well, imagine if they pulled you out. They could probably get me to talk about what we found on the gas harvester. What if they got me to talk about Athena?”

“Yes, that’s a dire picture you’re painting. Do you think they’d do that?”

“They’re pirates, Angel. They might not be as crazy as Lacy Blake, but they kill people all the time. Besides,” she shoved one of the hundred-round magazines into the canister, then stooped to pick up another, “we probably won’t get much of a better opportunity to put this thing through its paces—we’re in the middle of criminal space, hiding in the Junk Belt, under siege by pirates, not corpo sec. I’ll make sure we wipe out any footage of the Atlas, so if they wanna talk about Lacy Blake and her black combat exoskeleton, it’ll just be another tall tale at the spacer bars.”

Angel was quiet for a few minutes while Juliet finished loading the second magazine and closing the armor plating. She stooped to pick up the first beer-bottle-sized, short-range missile, or “Havok Corporation, City Sweeper SRM.” They were explicitly designed to burst prior to impact, releasing a devastating sonic shockwave that would be lethal to unarmored personnel while avoiding infrastructure damage. The power armor had two missile magazines, each with a twenty-missile capacity. She loaded the first full of the City Sweepers and then filled the second magazine with armor-piercing, explosive SRMs designed to take out armored hardpoints. Their packaging labeled them “Shell Crackers.”

“What about the batteries? Are they good?”

“Yes.” Angel expanded Juliet’s AUI with half a dozen meters for the suit’s consumables, from air to power to ammunition. “The battery bank and air system are formidable. This suit can function for more than forty-eight hours on a full charge. The air will last in a vacuum for twenty hours, and if there’s any atmosphere with carbon and oxygen present, it will process it and refill the canisters on the run.”

“Awesome.” Juliet stood back from the hulking, black mechanized suit and gave it a good once over. Everything looked to be in place. All the ammo canisters were green in her AUI, so she knew she’d filled them correctly. She looked from the suit to the room’s exit and nodded; it seemed like it would have a hard time maneuvering through tight passages, but she could see how it would fit. The passages in the medical ship were plenty big; she just had to worry about the pirate ship. “Well, if it doesn’t fit, I’ll have to make it fit.” Standing before the mech, her head only came to about the middle of its thick, plated torso. “How do I get in?”

Angel manipulated the command menu on her AUI, going slowly so Juliet could see the process. As she selected the “Activate” button, the suit came to life with a shudder and a persistent, low humming sound. When Angel chose the “Admit Pilot” menu option, the suit's knees bent, lowering it by about a foot, and the front of the torso armor rotated upward at the shoulders, revealing the pilot’s compartment. Juliet could see how it worked—her arms and legs would partially insert into the suit’s, and her entire body and head would be cradled in the heavily armored torso. “Just climb in,” Angel prompted.

“No shoes, right?” Juliet unlaced her boots and began pulling them off next to her piled-up armor and gear.

“There should be a tactical interface bodysuit in the crate. In fact, according to the manifest, there should be five of them. It’s a garment that allows the suit to interface with your biometrics, monitor your vital signs, and assist the impact gel to compensate for environmental factors optimally. It is also made of an ideally permeable fiber, allowing for fluid and waste transfer and processing. Most importantly, it allows the sensors in the suit to pick up your micro-movements, which will be mimicked by the actuators in the suit's forty-two moveable joints.”

Juliet chuckled while Angel ran through her brochure-like spiel. She got undressed, dug around in the big crate full of ammo boxes, and found one of the suits in question. It was a very flexible, gray once-piece garment, complete with fingers and toes. It took her a while to get it on, and she glanced nervously at the countdown Angel had given her for when the pirate ships would come into range; she was down to fourteen minutes by the time she was fully encased in the tight garment.

Juliet climbed into the power armor, stepping on one of its knees and then inside the torso cavity. The gel lining felt much like that in an acceleration couch, and though it wasn’t active yet, it hugged her comfortably. Her bodysuit had a data cable she had to connect to a port inside the cavity. Another cable hung near her shoulder, and she plugged that into her data port—she was hardwired to the suit now, so no matter what kind of wireless interference might come her way, she wouldn’t lose that connection. “We need to get moving,” she said, selecting the “Pilot Ready” option on her AUI.

The suit lurched upright, the armored chest slid down over her, locking into place, and then her AUI populated with a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the secret cargo compartment. The gel lining came to life, hugging her entire body in its embrace, to the point Juliet felt it sort of lifting her and gently throbbing, massaging in an optimal rhythm to facilitate her blood flow. “Holy . . . wow! That’s comfortable!”

“You are fully integrated with the suit now. If you move as though you were not inside it, the suit will mimic your movements. Remember, however, that you are nearly two-point-five meters tall.”

Juliet looked at her timer—ten minutes to go. “Talk about a crash course!” She flexed her leg as though to take a step, and though she was restrained from actually moving by the gel, the power suit took a step for her, and oddly, it felt like it had been her leg moving. The armor’s software, gel, and the bodysuit were giving her body some kind of feedback, tricking her brain or nerves, or some combination of everything into thinking she was the power armor, or, maybe more accurately, that the power armor was her. Juliet nodded, grinning, and the bulbous, armored head moved up and down with the motion, shifting the camera view. “Uh, this is freakin’ nuclear, Angel!”

Juliet started walking, ducking, and tilting her armored torso to make it through doorways. It was so easy to move that she couldn’t believe it. “Why don’t they build welding rigs and vehicles like this?” When she entered the long hallway leading to the airlock, she broke into a jog, more to try it out than because she needed to, and the suit hummed with power as it raced forward. Angel provided a speed estimate, and in the short sprint from the junction to the airlock door, she reached thirty kilometers per hour. “I feel like I’m an armor-plated grizzly bear!”

“With machine guns and rocket launchers,” Angel laughed. Juliet ducked into the airlock and watched as Angel cycled it. She made sure all the atmosphere was evacuated before opening the exterior door and also killed the lights; Juliet didn’t want the pirates to see her slip out. She’d made a brief plan with Angel to delay the pirates boarding the craft. As far as Mary Moon thought, Juliet was blind to their approach. Her sensors and cameras were supposed to be offline. Moreover, she wasn’t supposed to have control of the ship.

Juliet’s plan was simple; when they tried to line up for docking, Angel would fire tiny bursts of air from the maneuvering jets, making the precise alignment required for docking nearly impossible. Mary would probably blame her pilot at first, then perhaps the pilot of the “pilot ship” to whom Juliet had given her nav controls. It would probably be funny to watch her losing her cool, but the important thing was that Juliet would have time to get onto the pirate ship before they could start messing with hers. While she waited for the airlock to cycle, she had a thought. “Have you confirmed that’s Mary’s ship yet?”

“Yes, it’s the Red Betty, a converted asteroid surveying vessel equipped with salvaged torpedo launchers and cannons. Also, perhaps disturbingly, the smaller ship is the Sharp Lady.” At Angel’s words, Juliet’s heart skipped a beat. What did it mean that they had Nick’s ship? Was he flying it? Could they fly it without his permission? Suddenly, she pictured Nick tied up somewhere on the pirate vessel with a gun to his head. What if they hurt him when she started her little boarding action? She wracked her brain for another option while the outer airlock door clicked open and rolled aside, revealing the black void of space.

“You’ve got control of my maneuvering jets, right?”

“Yes.” Juliet stepped out into space and then felt Angel pilot her smoothly to the side, positioning her to step onto the hull of her ship, her power armor’s feet magnetically gripping, holding her in place. She lowered herself into a squat and waited, looking like a bulky black shadow. When the pirate ship got closer, she’d make her move. “Angel, what do you think it means that they have Nick’s ship? I pictured him locked in a closet back on the base. What if he’s here?”

“Perhaps you should contact Mary.”

Juliet looked at her timer. Angel had adjusted it for accuracy now that the ships were closer together; she had just a bit more than six minutes. “Yeah. I’ll pretend I’m just cruising along, still waiting for the pilot ship to take me to the base. Do it.”

Angel had to route the call through the pilot ship, and the connection was voice-only again. When the line crackled to life, Mary’s voice rang loudly in Juliet’s ear, “What’s up? You should be here soon. Can it wait?”

“No. I have a bad feeling about Simon. I need to know he’s all right before I dock.”

“Oh yeah? Just a minute.” The line grew quiet, and then Angel highlighted a video feed from the ship in a flashing red border. It showed the long, rectangular, patchwork pirate vessel, Red Betty, firing maneuvering thrusters and swooping closer to the medical ship. The line crackled back to life. “Well, I’ve got some bad news, Lacy. Turned out your buddy was a spy. Yeah, one of my mates recognized his face. Imagine that? What kind of creep merc pilot comes around and tries to hang out with the pirates he’s made a killing . . . killing? Yeah, we had to let him go. You check out, though, Lacy. He swore up and down until the last breath that you were legit. Tough guy, too. Took a while before his body stopped working.”

Juliet had stopped breathing when Mary said the word “spy.” It felt like a physical punch to her gut. When Mary kept speaking, blithely describing Nick’s loyalty to the end, her eyes had flooded with tears, and she’d begun to grind her teeth in impotent fury. It took her a few seconds of clenching her fists before she realized the mechanized power armor was also clenching them. With that thought, she realized her fury wasn’t anywhere close to impotent. “You bitch. You better pray right now that you’re bluffing. Show me he’s alive or . . .”

“Not happening, sweetie. I’ve got control of your ship and, well, long story short, prepare to be boarded.” The connection closed.

Juliet breathed out her pent-up breath, a sob catching in her throat as she pictured Nick’s face, his confident grin, his constant tapping of his breast pocket for his vape, his smooth, cocky laugh as he drank his whiskey or talked about piloting. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she fought with her impulses; part of her wanted to sit there and sob, part of her wanted to scream. Part of her wanted to go on a rampage, and part wanted to run away. Part of her desperately hoped Mary was bluffing, that Nick was still alive in a closet, waiting for her to break him out. Finally, after several long, shuddering breaths, she asked, “Angel, did she sound like she was bluffing?”

“I’m not as good at detecting that sort of thing as you, but I don’t think so.”

Juliet wanted to wipe her cheeks, but the gel hugging her face did a good enough job absorbing her tears. Dark thoughts came into her mind, then, and she flexed her mechanized armor’s fists several more times before saying, “Plot the course. Let’s get aboard that ship. If she’s going to be stupid enough to brag about that to me before she even has me in hand, I’m going to make her regret it.”

“Optimally, we should wait two more minutes.”

Juliet didn’t respond. She was busy reliving her time with Nick, the many times she’d caught him crushing on her, the many times she’d secretly thought about him that way, always surprised at herself and banishing the thoughts. Why hadn’t she given in? Why hadn’t she shown him more affection? “Goddammit,” she growled, consciously working to turn her guilty, sad, hollow feelings into anger. She’d been planning mercy, been planning to try to take as many pirates alive as possible, but now thoughts of massacre ran through her mind. Should she even give them a chance to surrender? “How many of those scumbags knew what they were doing to Nick?”

“If I can get access to their camera logs, that might be something I can answer.”

Juliet heard her, wanted to focus on what she’d said, but couldn’t. She kept picturing Nick in his pilot’s seat, cracking jokes over long, boring hours as they escorted harvesters. She kept smelling his stupid fruity vapor clouds. She kept hearing him say, “Oh, that reminds me of a story,” then going on to spin the most absurd tales about buddies he’d known and crazy missions they’d completed. She kept seeing his face across the table from her on his neighbor’s deck in that beautiful little garden, smiling wryly as they ate a totally unexpected gourmet breakfast.

Her tears were still flowing when Angel announced it was time and fired the suit’s maneuvering jets. Juliet watched through her crystal-clear, panoramic external cam feeds as she approached the big, junky pirate ship, and it approached her perfect, clean, little medical ship that she’d been secretly excited to show off to Nick. “I’ve chosen an airlock on the far side; odds are her boarding party will be massing at the nearside airlock; they’re trying to line it up with the medical ship.”

Juliet didn’t respond, just watched as she drifted over the mottled hull. She could see where the pirates had welded turrets to the one-time industrial survey ship. She could see where they’d added thicker hull plating and replaced thrusters and sensor arrays. That ship had been through a lot, but nothing like Juliet planned on putting it through. Now that Mary had taken off the gloves, Juliet was ready to play hardball. The ship had come to a near stop, relative to the medical ship, and Juliet’s black shadow of a power suit quickly glided around it, approaching a red blinking light that highlighted her target airlock.

“Mary Moon is requesting a comm connection.”

“Now she’s ready to talk? Open it.”

“Lacy, why’s your ship moving around? If you somehow gained control of the maneuvering jets, you need to stop. I have no problem pumping some cannon rounds into your drive, but I’d rather take you in one piece.”

“Why would I cooperate, you idiot? You just told me you killed my partner and are boarding my ship!”

“I also said you checked out! Cooperate! Give me the data, and we’ll find a place for you on the crew. Quit making this harder than it needs to be!”

As she spoke, Juliet’s mechanized hands grabbed onto the tether eyelets near the airlock door. Thus secured to the hull, she no longer had to worry about what Mary Moon might do as far as flying her ship was concerned. She touched the menu button to extend the power suit’s data prong from its index finger and inserted it into the door panel. “Mary, I’m not feeling merciful right now, but I’ll give you and your crew one chance. Go to your mess hall, pile your weapons on a table, and kneel on the floor. If I find you like that, I won’t kill you.” She cut the connection.

“Angel, take out the comm array.” She felt and heard a series of clicks from behind her left ear and then watched the missile cam as her shell cracker sped through space and detonated dead in the center of the pirate ship’s cluster of satellite dishes and antennae.

“The pilot ship and Sharp Lady, too?”

“Yep.” More clicks sounded, and she watched as the little missiles hit home; the other ships were close, moving stupidly slow, confident in Juliet’s inability to take offensive action. She took a deep, cathartic breath and watched as the airlock door panel flashed green and swung open; Angel had done her magic. She glided through, a hulking, armor-clad shadow of destruction.

She wanted to revel in her deception, the impending havoc she’d wreak, but all she could think about was what a waste it all was. She’d come out there to help Nick. She didn’t care about Sir Rodric or Ray. She supposed she was still hopeful Larry and his daughter could get out, but she could have made that happen in plenty of easier ways. As she clomped through the airlock and watched the flashing lights as Angel’s daemons cycled the air, she said, “We’ll punish these pirates, Moon’s faction, and get them off our back, but we’re still going to use Tornado and Antigone. We’re still going to make Sir Rodric pay. Dammit, why didn’t I tell Nick to stay out of this? Why didn’t I just handle it?”

The air stopped cycling before Angel could answer her, and the inner door opened. Juliet stepped through and saw several pirates and industrial synths lift rifles and open fire. She heard the plinks of the bullets hitting her armored shell but didn’t feel a thing. The impact gel didn’t even quiver. Juliet mentally selected a Street Sweeper SRM and watched as it streaked forward to the corridor junction where her assailants were hunkered down. The suit filtered the deafening sonic explosion, filtered the brilliant flash, but the aftermath was clear to see.

The pirates had rag-dolled against the walls, blood flowing from eyes, mouths, and ears. The two synths were flopping on the floor, struggling to gain control of their overwhelmed senses and mechanical parts. Juliet strode forward, lifting her right arm, firing her ten-millimeter autocannon, permanently silencing the still-struggling synthetics. She looked left and right down the long, dirty, dimly-lit plasteel corridors. “Help me find the reactor, Angel.”