Cyber Dreams 4.42 - Escape

You didn't think things would be straightforward from here, did you?

Have a great weekend :)

-Plum

“Why are armed synths boarding?” Juliet asked as she sprinted down a long, empty corridor, following the route Angel had laid out to the shuttle bay.

“I don’t know! Perhaps the combat synth you destroyed was meant to check in regularly.”

“Can’t Fido slow them down?”

“Oh, he is. He’s closing every bulkhead door in their path. You shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the shuttle ahead of them. There’s one maintenance synth working in the shuttle bay, however.”

“Okay.” Juliet tightened her grip on the shotgun, envisioning her violent reaction if the synth got in her way. She didn’t feel bad about it; Angel wouldn’t lie about the cognitive abilities of synths like these, and according to her, they were just machines that could speak and respond to human input.

Fido made her flight through the ship easy, opening doors ahead of her, summoning the lift that would take her up to the correct level before she arrived, and closing off doors that led to occupied areas. In just a few minutes, she was barreling into the wide-open space of the shuttle bay. She’d expected to see two shuttles, so she was a little taken aback when there was only one and then further dismayed to see an industrial maintenance synth standing on one of its short, triangular wings, operating an impact wrench on something beneath an open access panel.

Juliet ran toward the shuttle, a little surprised by its size—it was almost as long as the Lady Hawk, though certainly a lot stubbier with much smaller drives. “What are you doing?” she shouted as the synth, trying to be heard over the rattle and clank of the wrench as it pounded against a bolt.

The noise stopped, and the synth turned to her, its white LED eyes flickering as it processed what it saw. “Hello, technician Fuentes. Is there a problem?”

Juliet smiled inside her helmet as she realized Angel was still projecting the identity of the technician she’d tricked the doomsday airlock with. “What are you doing with this shuttle? I need to use it.”

“Pardon, but this shuttle is scheduled for maintenance. I’m removing the port, A-4, maneuvering jet for nozzle descaling.”

“Cancel that. Check with the ship’s maintenance schedules if you have to, but this shuttle is needed immediately. Button it up.”

“Fido will alter the necessary files,” Angel reassured her.

“Apologies! I must have failed to receive the updated schedule. I’ll have this closed up in nineteen minutes.”

“Angel, can that thing fly without that maneuvering jet?” Juliet subvocalized.

“Yes, we can compensate with the other thrusters, but . . .”

“You have thirty seconds to clear out. I’ll fix that maneuvering jet myself later.” Juliet hurried around the back of the bus-shaped shuttle and climbed the short ramp to the access hatch while the technician synth stared blankly, trying to make sense of her order.

“The synth is seeking confirmation of your authority to dismiss it.”

“Well, he better hurry, or he’s going for a ride.” Juliet pressed the green “open” button, but the shuttle door didn’t move. “Why won’t this open?”

“Just a moment! Fido is working on . . .” The door hissed open. “. . . it.”

Juliet hurried through the shuttle’s empty cargo area and then opened the bulkhead door to the cockpit. There were four empty seats—not acceleration couches. Juliet sat in the front-most one, then plugged her data cable into the console. “I’m not sure how to even start this thing, will you . . .”

“On it.” LEDs sparkled to life all over the cockpit, and the viewscreens came alive with prominent, crystal-clear images of the cargo bay as though Juliet were looking through massive glass windows. Juliet heard a series of thuds and scrapes through the hull, and, looking through the port viewscreen, she saw the synth dropping down from the stubby wing. With a whining, high-pitched discharge of gas and steam, the main drive rumbled to life, and Juliet glanced in the aft viewscreen to see the ramp retract. “Grab the stick. I can manage most of the systems, but you’ll need to steer. I’m plotting a course to your rendezvous.”

“Roger.” Juliet took hold of the flight stick and began operating the maneuvering jets with the floor pedals, lifting the shuttle off the deck with a sudden surge as she underestimated their initial pressure. She corrected and began to spin the shuttle toward the unopened hangar doors.

“I’m compensating for the missing maneuvering jet, but be careful. Slow down the spin!”

Juliet backed off on the pedal and the stick, trying to follow Angel’s instruction, but she still over-rotated and had to nudge the nose back to the starboard side gently, with halting taps on the opposite pedal. “Is Fido gonna get the door?”

“He’ll send the command, then I’ll extract him wirelessly.”

“Okay, get him home, and we’ll blast off.” Juliet watched as big red flashing strobes lit up the hangar, and then the bay door began to open, splitting in the middle, half going up and half down. The bay’s atmosphere streamed out through the opening in whipping gusts of white steam, and Juliet had to fight to keep the shuttle steady as it struggled with the change in pressure and air density. As soon as the opening was wide enough, she pushed the throttle forward gently. Then she was out, steadily increasing thrust as she put distance between herself and the harvesting ship.

She was beginning to breathe more easily, feeling like she’d actually pulled off the crazy stunt of a mission, when red LEDs began to strobe through the cockpit, and alarm klaxons began to sound. “We’re taking fire. The hull is breached, and the cargo bay is depressurizing.” Juliet didn’t need Angel to say anything else. She jammed the throttle forward, jerked the stick to port, and slammed down on the starboard maneuvering pedals, throwing the shuttle into a crazy, rolling dive, trying to evade whatever incoming fire they were taking.

The shuttle might not be a grown-up spacecraft with an engine capable of pushing high Gs or traveling between planets, but it sure felt like Juliet’s guts were going to come out her nose as she was slammed back in the pilot’s seat. The alarms continued to ring, the lights continued to flash, and Juliet continued to perform the evasive maneuvers she’d learned in her flight simulator and practiced under Nick’s sharp tutelage. All the while, she tried to steer the shuttle roughly in the direction of her scheduled rendezvous with the stealth ship.

“We’ve stopped taking fire,” Angel announced after several dozen tense, painful seconds of evasive flight. She’d squelched the sirens, but the red lights still flashed in the cockpit, and Juliet looked around for a button or command to disable them. Angel beat her to it, though, and Juliet pulled back on the throttle with a groan as the usual amber and green LEDs took over.

“What shot us?”

“When Fido locked all the bulkheads through the ship, the combat synths exited via an airlock and were attempting to intercept you on the exterior.”

“They were spacewalking to the shuttle bay?”

“Yes. They opened fire on the shuttle as it emerged.” A video began to play on the front viewscreen, showing the three synths standing atop the gas harvester’s hull, firing automatic weapons toward the camera’s perspective. “I’m afraid they badly damaged the shuttle. You’ve lost hull integrity and are venting critical fluids, including coolant for the reactor.”

Juliet groaned and slapped her hands on her helmet. “Ugh, that sounds familiar.”

“This shuttle’s systems are far less robust than the Kowashi’s. I don’t see any alternate course of action; if you don’t initiate an emergency shutdown in the next three minutes, the reactor will meltdown.”

“How far are we from the pickup?”

“Two hours; the interceptor is awaiting you beyond Ganymede’s horizon. I imagine the rendezvous was set up that way so it could avoid detection by the station as it fired its engine to stop and reposition.”

“Two hours . . . do I have enough momentum to make it if shut down the reactor?”

“I would have said yes, but your evasive maneuvers brought you into Ganymede’s gravity well. It’s possible that you can get quite close, though, before falling out of orbit.”

“Okay, put the course in, and I’ll push it as hard as I can before I shut down.” Juliet saw the course on her AUI and began angling the shuttle onto it, driving the throttle forward. Angel also provided her with a countdown for the reactor’s impending meltdown. She could see Ganymede's deep, icy canyons beneath her on the viewscreen. It grew closer and closer as she burned as hard as the shuttle’s drive would allow, always with an eye on that countdown. True to her recent streak of luck, Angel spoke up when the countdown was at forty seconds.

“Juliet, another shuttle just left the station. It’s burning hard toward us.” Juliet didn’t reply right away; she’d sort of frozen as that timer ticked down, and she tried to wrap her head around this most recent bad news. When the timer said thirty-one seconds, Angel spoke again, “Juliet?”

“Dump it. Don’t shut it down—dump the core.”

“Juliet . . .”

“Now!” Suddenly, with thunks that reverberated through the hull, the drives cut out.

“I’ve performed an emergency core jettison. I hope we gain enough distance before it blows.”

“We will, Angel. Have some faith.” Juliet watched the timer, saw it hit zero, and still nothing happened. Had Angel been wrong?

“My estimate appears to have been off . . .” Suddenly, Juliet’s viewscreens flashed with static and then went dark, along with every other LED in the shuttle. She was immersed in silence, and for a moment, she flashed back to when she’d been hit with an EMP pulse back with Grave. Before panic could set in, though, she saw her AUI was still there and, seeing that, realized she could still see and hear. Either her newer implants had been well enough shielded, or her combat suit had been. She was about to confirm that Angel was all right when the shuttle violently bucked, throwing her against the seat’s harness. It shook and rattled for a dozen long, terrifying seconds, then finally settled, though it was still rattling and vibrating slightly.

She momentarily forgot her concern and asked, “Are we in trouble? Are the shuttle’s systems totally fried? Can I maneuver at all?”

“There are likely failsafe circuits that have been blown. This model shuttle should have some replacements in the cargo hold. Juliet, you have approximately fifty minutes of air in your suit, and I’m afraid the debris shockwave from the meltdown may have altered our course. It feels like we’re further in the grip of Ganymede’s gravity well.”

Juliet yanked the release on her harness and scrambled out of the seat, hurrying to the bulkhead door. She slammed the “open” button, but nothing happened other than a red “decompression” alert on the door’s control panel. Juliet grabbed onto a stabilization bar with her cybernetic hand and said, “Force it open, Angel!” Seconds passed, and then the door panel flashed green, and it hissed open with a violent exchange of air that whipped past Juliet and out through dozens of holes in the ceiling and floor of the empty cargo chamber.

Juliet held on tight until the air stopped hissing past her, then using her hands as much as her feet, she maneuvered through the zero gravity toward a glowing access panel on the floor near the shuttle’s rear. “I take it that panel you’re highlighting has the spare failsafe circuits?”

“Yes, once you retrieve them, I’ll show you where to plug them in.” Juliet wasn’t a wizard at zero-G, not without wasting precious air from her pack, so it took her several frustrating minutes to get in position over the panel and then pry it open without throwing herself around the room. Still, she finally managed to pull out a plastic toolbox filled with square plastic and alloy fuses. Angel directed her around the compartment, where she patiently waited as Juliet worked to pull open more panels, yanked out blackened and sometimes melted fuses, and plugged the new ones in. When she’d done so a dozen times, all the while freaking out about the ship’s vibrations, wondering if she was hurtling toward the moon’s surface, Angel directed her back to the cockpit, where she replaced half a dozen more.

At last, some LEDs began to light up on the control panel, and Angel announced that she was receiving sensor data. “We’re descending rapidly, but if we can get the maneuvering jets back online, we might be able to have a controlled crash.”

“The maneuvering jets? Don’t they need the drive, the reactor?”

“They have compressed air redundancy, though not enough to safely land us. We can redirect the oxygen to add to their longevity. It’ll eat into the ship’s life support supply, but you could top your pack off beforehand.”

“How much time do I have? Did the other shuttle stop following us?”

“I can’t see it on the sensors. Perhaps they took the drive’s meltdown as a sign that you were eliminated.”

“Small mercies. Time?”

“Oh, the sooner you can start maneuvering, the better our chances of choosing a good spot to crash. I wouldn’t wait longer than an hour . . .”

“I’m not going to wait longer than five minutes if you’ll show me what to do.”

“Plug your pack into that port near the door. We’ll top off your air supply, and then we can begin switching the valves over to feed the air to the maneuvering jets.” Juliet followed her instructions, pulling the tube from her pack and stuffing it into the outlet. While the oxygen transferred, she finally took a minute to realize how insane her predicament was. She was on a secret mission where nobody knew where she was. She was about to try to have a “controlled crash” on a barren moon. If she broadcast a mayday, the people who came looking for her would probably be looking to capture or kill her.

“Unless I get lucky . . .”

“Hmm?”

“I was wondering the odds of someone friendly coming to my distress call.”

“It seems the odds aren’t good; if the station picks up the signal, they’ll likely assume it’s you, the person who stole their shuttle. Of course, there are other interests around Ganymede. There’s a chance a different corporation or an independent operator may get your signal and find you first. It’s a shame there isn’t a domed settlement on the moon, but there are mining and research installations . . .”

“Angel!”

“Yes?”

“What about the coordinates? The ones from Engineer’s—Bradbury’s—head? The ones I had a true-dream about? Are they within reach?”

Angel was silent for a couple of seconds, then she said, “They are! I believe you can pilot this shuttle to crash near them. Do you think that’s wise?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to do it. I mean, I already saw it. I think I’m going to hurt my leg in the crash, too.” Juliet chuckled as she unplugged her air hose. “Whew! What a relief! I was starting to think I was fried.”

“You . . .”

“I mean, all right, I know there’s a chance the visions I see aren’t guaranteed. There’s a chance I might be seeing possible things or alternate universes or whatever, but I feel like there’s a good chance. You know, this’ll be a good test. Let’s see if I hurt my leg.”

“Well, don’t try to hurt it just to prove a point!”

Juliet laughed again, feeling almost manic. Was she losing it? Was the stress finally getting to her? Had she weakened her grasp on sanity with all the deep dives she’d been doing? “Show me what to do to get these maneuvering jets online.”

Twenty minutes later, after she’d painstakingly crawled around in the cargo area, opening panels and twisting blue handles to redirect the ship’s air supply to the maneuvering jets, she clambered back into the pilot’s seat. The view panels were shot, destroyed by the pulse, but Angel projected the sensor and camera data on her AUI. Juliet watched for a long minute as the shuttle drifted closer and closer to the dark, icy, ridged surface of the giant moon. Then she got to work, gently correcting the shuttle’s course with pulses of air from the maneuvering jets.

When she was on a direct line toward Angel’s chosen landing site, a long, wide canyon directly south of the coordinates they’d gotten out of Bradbury’s memory, Juliet backed off the maneuvering jets, hoping the thin atmosphere and the way she was holding the nose of the shuttle up, would slow her significantly before her controlled crash. The air was so thin, though, that Juliet hardly noticed it as the shuttle descended. One thing they had going for them was Ganymede’s much, much lower gravity than Earth’s. She hoped it would allow the shuttle to hold together as it skipped and slid over the ground.

“The atmosphere is too thin to slow us, Juliet. You’ll have to fire the reverse maneuvering jets on my mark. We’ll use all the air in an effort to slow us as much as possible. Thirty seconds to mark.”

Juliet felt her hands begin to shake on the controls and knew they’d be dripping with perspiration if not for her gloves. She felt like she was outside herself as Angel started to count down from ten, felt like she was watching a lunatic performing a stunt. It didn’t help that another part of herself was buzzing with excitement as the dark surface rushed toward the shuttle. As the little craft continued to vibrate and rattle with more and more intensity.

When Angel said one, Juliet pounded on the pedals for the port and starboard reverse jets. The shuttle lurched and jerked, and she fought the stick to hold it straight, to keep the nose up.

“Ninety seconds to impact. Keep it just like that, Juliet.”

Juliet found it harder and harder to hold the tiny vessel steady. As the difficulty increased, so too did her mad enthusiasm for the task. Her lips spread in a grin, baring her teeth behind her helmet’s visor. A chuckle that started high in her throat and moved down to her belly began to spill forth as she watched the wispy air and condensation bead up on the lenses of the cameras providing her view.

“Twenty seconds to impact.” Angel’s voice was clinical, detached, and Juliet madly wondered if Angel had trouble compartmentalizing her emotions like that. Did she feel emotions differently? Juliet believed her when she said she loved or hated things. She believed her when she said things were scary or funny. Even so, was it hard for her to be calm at a time like this? “Ten seconds.”

Thinking about Angel and emotions, Juliet banished the mad giggles from her throat and said, desperately, “I love you, Angel!” Then, with a tremendous crash, she was jerked about in the seat’s harness like a ragdoll, and all thought of control was banished by her struggle to hold onto consciousness as her head was repeatedly pounded against the seat and her neck was jerked in every possible direction. The viewscreens went dark, and as she fought to see what was happening, another tremendous jolt shook her, sending stars into her vision. When it was over, she sat in darkness, but her AUI was still there, and so was Angel’s voice, like a comforting . . . angel.

“The controlled crash was a success, Juliet. The shuttle maintained integrity, and you’ve come to rest only four kilometers from your target coordinates. Are you there? Can you function? Your nanites are reporting extensive damage to your left leg. Can you turn your head enough to look in that direction?”

Juliet considered the words, and then she started to laugh—a deep, wheezing belly laugh that hurt in every beleaguered abdominal muscle.

“Juliet? Are you okay? You’re wasting air!”

“I . . .” Juliet struggled to contain her irrational hysteria. “Angel, I told you I was gonna hurt my leg!”