Cyber Dreams 4.33 - Intelligence Hunt

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-Plum

Juliet sat at one of the tables in the “mercantile district” of the pirate base. It was a shoddy, rough affair, with benches built from scrap hull plating. The table’s uneven legs gave it a wobble that made setting a drink down something of a risky affair. Nick was on his way, having just met with one of the representatives of the Five to go over the specifics of their cut of the wine they’d pirated. TC stood nearby, eyes vacant, doing something either online or in his own head while he waited for Juliet to ask him for information or directions.

She’d spent time with Bradbury on the Kowashi, and even he, with his mismatched, obviously mechanical parts, never acted so much like a machine as TC did when he wasn’t actively engaged in a conversation. Watching his blank stare and motionless body, her curiosity got the better of her. “What are you doing right now, TC?”

“Hmm? Pardon me, was I inattentive? I create dream-rig scenarios in my spare time and sell them on Dream Hub.”

“You’re creating a DR scenario right now? Standing here?”

“Yes. This one is an adult-rated noir mystery with a few love interests for the player. The murder case is only half the plot; the real replay value lies in unlocking various sexual conquests.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, very seriously. I’ve tried selling scenarios without adult content, but they’re not nearly as popular.”

“Intriguing.” Angel sounded more than intrigued to Juliet.

“You’re not going to start making DR scenarios to sell on the nets, are you?” Juliet subvocalized.

“I wouldn’t mind knowing what nets he’s marketing them on . . .”

Juliet decided to humor her and asked, “You sell ‘em on the Jovian pub net?”

“Dream Hub is propagated on all of the major pub nets. If I post a scenario for sale on the Jovian pub net, it will make its way to Luna, Earth, Mars, Saturn, etcetera.”

“I had no idea. I don’t really spend much time in DR scenarios, mostly just piloting practice.”

“Well, you must have a busy and fulfilling life. Most of the people here at Vengeance Base spend a significant portion of their meager earnings in the DR lounge, trying to escape the ugly realities of their lives.”

“Jeez, TC, nice bleak image.”

“Yo, Lacy!” Juliet turned to see Nick approaching, making his way around the weird little atrium at the center of the open market.

“This is the companion you awaited?” TC perked up and turned to watch Nick approach. When he was close to the table, the synth held out a hand, “Hello, sir, I’m a synthetic person, and it will be my pleasure to help you and your partner acquaint yourselves with the base. My designation is Trashcan, but you may call me TC as your partner prefers.”

“Seriously?” Nick took TC’s hand and looked at Juliet. “The pirates have hospitality synths?”

“Access to the base is infrequently granted to new members, and the Five have found that, in some cases, it helps to avoid trouble if they provide a liaison like myself.”

“In some cases?” Juliet prompted.

“When violence or distrust is anticipated.”

“Hah! I can see why they assigned you to Lacy first.” Nick winked at Juliet, but his grin faded when she didn’t respond, and he couldn’t see her expression behind the mirrored visor of her helmet. “Ahem. Well? What’s the room and board situation around here?”

“Sir, every square centimeter of this base is claimed by individuals with a license from the Five or by the Five themselves for future expansion of their operations. If you wish to sleep in a space other than your ship, you’ll need to speak to one of the members with rooms to spare on their ships.”

“Oh? There aren’t any living quarters on the base?” Nick straddled the bench across from Juliet.

“There are, but they’re in use by the Five and their crews.”

“Well,” Nick’s voice sounded in Juliet’s ears as he switched to subvocalizing into their encrypted comms, “what do you think of this guy? Should we ditch the tour guide?”

Juliet locked eyes with him. “Depends on if we need any more guidance around here. Any idea how we’re going to find this chick among hundreds or, shit, maybe thousands of pirates?”

“Let me see here . . .” Nick switched to verbalizing and turned to TC. “Hey, if I wanted to look up an old contact in this place, is there any way to figure out if he’s here?”

“As you might guess, the people who call this base their home don’t exactly tend to sign a guest book or anything like that.” TC’s voice dripped snark, and Juliet, for the millionth time, wondered how much a synth’s personality was acquired and “real” and how much was just a programmed algorithm of behavioral quirks.

“Come on, Trashcan. I bet the Five know exactly who’s on their base at any given moment.”

“Of course, but they have a covenant with the captains and crews of the Vengeance collective. They’d never betray that confidence.”

Nick nodded, recognizing when to drop the subject before it became suspicious. “Right. Makes sense. I guess I’ll just hang around and hope my old buddy and I cross paths. Maybe some of the other folks around here know him.”

“Hey, TC,” Juliet stood from the table, “we’re probably good for now. If you have other things you want to do, I’ll just send you a message if we need something.”

“Are you certain? I was instructed to provide assistance during the entirety of your first day on base.”

“Well, technically, you still will be; I’ll message you with any questions.”

“Very well.” He gave Juliet a long, measuring look, and she wondered what was going through his synth brain. “Please remember to abide by the rules.” With that, he turned and walked like a man with places to be, beelining it out of the mercantile district.

“What was that all about?” Nick asked.

Juliet replied, but she did through their private comms, keeping her helmet’s external speaker off, “I had a hard time maintaining my Lacy persona with that guy. It’s like my brain can’t wrap itself around the idea of putting on a fake act for someone with no animosity or hidden agenda. I suppose that’s prejudiced, though—I have no idea how complex the motivations for a synth can get.”

“Perhaps it’s your inability to interact psionically with a non-living being. Your ‘gut’ may have a blind spot where beings like TC are concerned.” Angel’s words sparked a twinge of panic in Juliet, and she wondered if she’d royally messed up by not maintaining Lacy’s reticence and silence with the synth. Could he have ulterior motives? What a stupid question! Of course!

Before she could berate herself further, Nick interrupted her train of thought, “Well,” he said softly; he’d probably left his helmet in his ship, and he didn’t generally like to subvocalize, “one thing I’ve found helps when dealing with synths is just to forget you know they aren’t real. Treat ‘em like people, ‘cause otherwise, they’ll end up surprising you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. I probably messed that one up.” Juliet sighed, trying to review everything she’d said to TC, but she gave up. There wasn’t much she could do about it now. “Back on the subject at hand, though, I need to get access to the secure net in this place so I can hack it. Not sure how else I’ll find Antigone.”

This time, Nick subvocalized, “Well, the place isn’t that big! How about we just spend some time walking around the public areas with our PAIs scanning faces? We might get lucky.”

“Sure.” Juliet gestured toward one of the main corridors leading away from the dingy, neon-lit square. “Need to explore a bit anyway if I’m gonna find an access point.” While walking, Juliet kept one hand on her shotgun, standing tall and glaring around through her mirrored visor. She wasn’t trying to start trouble with her demeanor; she told herself she was just trying to avoid trouble with the many, many desperate, dirty, and sometimes outright hostile-looking denizens of the base. Nick followed behind her, off to the side a little so she could easily turn to see his facial expressions as he kept up a softly-spoken, running commentary about the people they passed by.

“Looks like he could use a solid night’s sleep . . . Good night! Did you get a load of that woman’s implant? Her neck had to have been two hundred centimeters long! What’s even the point of that? . . . Woah! Look at that sign, ‘Docking Bay Three.’ How big is this damn place? I bet all the bays aren’t as big as the one we docked in, though.” Between comments, Nick repeatedly took hits off his Nikko-vape, and Juliet smirked, sure that his nervous chatter and frequent vape usage were due to nerves.

“Nick, once we get a little intel, I’m gonna have you go spend some time on your ship. You should be ready to bail when I get the princess in hand.”

“So, what are you thinking when it comes to that?” Nick asked, speaking normally as he kept his side of the conversation innocuous.

“I think I need that cargo ship for what I’ve got planned, and I want to spend some time with Antigone, so I’ll take her with me on it. If the pirates don’t want us to leave, they might try to blow the ship or send pursuit, which is why it will be nice to have you ready to rock and roll in the Sharp Lady.”

Nick stopped, reached out to grab her shoulder, and when she turned to him, he stared into her mirrored visor. “Are you nuts?” he growled, then switched to forceful subvocalizations that contracted and expanded his throat almost comically. “The plan was to get the hell out of Dodge in the Sharp Lady! She’s fast, and I can outfly anyone I know when it comes to evasion, but if you think I can defend your fat whale of a cargo ship against dozens of interceptors and god knows what else, you better think again!”

“Okay, noted. Obviously, I’m still gathering intel, but this is my half of the job, remember? Leave it to me to figure it out. I won’t ask you to do anything impossible. Deal?”

“Yeah. I guess. Deal.” Nick didn’t sound convinced, and his eyes said he was about to lose it, so Juliet let the matter drop, turning and continuing down the rough access corridor, following a hand-painted sign to “Sharkey’s Swap ‘n Sell.” Nick continued to suck on his vape furiously, keeping pace with her as they passed by individuals and groups of people who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the slums near the ABZ in Phoenix.

Juliet had to admit that she’d had a very flawed mental image of what the pirate base would be like. She’d figured there’d be a hundred or two desperate criminals hanging around planning their next heist. Instead, she’d already passed more than a thousand people—Angel was building a database of scanned faces—many of whom were children and men and women who looked more like starved vagrants than hardened criminals. Using her audio implants to their full extent, Angel also cataloged and subtitled the conversations around her as she passed through.

Of course, Juliet was busy navigating the strange network of mismatched passageways, but she occasionally glanced at the text streaming through the window where Angel transcribed what she heard. People were talking about just about anything she could imagine, but a few themes seemed to predominate the topics—what people would eat next, how much they hated corporations, and rumors about raids. Nobody she’d yet passed by was planning their “next big score.”

After a while, she voiced her thoughts, “These people are barely scraping by, and they don’t strike me as criminal masterminds.”

“Yeah. It’s like walking through the slums of Callisto. No different. There might be gangs in those neighborhoods, but most people are just trying to make it through next week.” Nick’s picture of Callisto's slums sounded like Tucson or Phoenix to Juliet. She knew the colonies had gangs and crime, but she still had a romantic view of the domed cities. When she was forced to face that dirty underbelly, she found the taste of it bitter and disappointing.

“I hate corps.”

“You blame them for all this trouble?” Nick’s voice told her he’d put on his devil’s advocate hat.

“C’mon, Nick. Don’t mess with me right now. You know the disparity between the haves and have-nots gets worse every day. The corpos have one goal: increase the bottom line. Humanity has suffered as a result.”

“Humanity made the corporations.”

“Damn it, Nick,” Juliet paused and whirled on him. “Can we have a philosophical debate later?”

“I’m glad you have that helmet on ‘cause you haven’t called me Simon even once since I got here.” He grinned and sucked on his vape, no doubt proud of himself for getting a rise out of her. “Hey, I’ll let it drop, but consider this; these people, well, maybe not the kids, but the adults around here are on a pirate base for a reason. I mean, there are plenty of places to be poor where you don’t have to live in the middle of a junk belt cut off from society . . .”

“We don’t know their stories.” Juliet scowled, annoyed that she’d had to get the last word in but glad that Nick let her by not responding. After asking directions at a junction where she couldn’t find another arrow pointing toward the “Swap ‘n Sell,” she found herself back on track when a big, orange, faux-neon sign at the next junction announced, “S & S,” with an arrow pointing to the right.

On the way, they’d passed several junctions with red paint on the floor, and where Angel marked her map with skull and crossbones, indicating the off-limits beacons. Juliet was starting to think she’d have to infiltrate one of those sections to gain access to the pirates’ net, but she wanted to do a lot more surveillance first. The “Swap ‘n Sell” turned out to be a collection of base denizens set up in booths, tables, or simple floormats, trying to offload their wares. It was an ample space that, if Juliet were guessing, might have once been a mess hall for the original crew of the massive ship, likely one of many if Angel’s information about its crew size were accurate.

Like most of the areas in the base, the lighting was dim, provided by multi-colored LED bulbs and occasional neon signs near some of the more permanent-looking booths. One such merchant with a sign announcing his little shop as “Sharkey’s” had a prominent space at the center of the hall, with three long tables arranged in a U shape. Juliet walked toward it, noting his many goods on display and how they seemed a cut above his neighbor’s merchandise. She saw everything from high-end decks to ocular implants to boxes of explosive, nine-millimeter rounds. “Angel, can you send a message to TC and ask him if he can tell us anything about Sharkey?”

“One moment.”

“Nick, let me do a little snooping around. Meet you by those tables where that guy’s selling pretzels.”

“Yeah, all right.”

While she waited for Angel to get ahold of TC, Juliet walked over to the prominent, central booth and began to peruse the wares. Some of the items were intriguing, and she might have been tempted to buy them, but she mostly tried to snoop, listening to the conversations around her. She picked up a machete-sized vibroblade and turned it over in her hands, looking at every part of it while she listened to the little, bald proprietor talk to a stocky, blue-haired woman wearing a baggy yellow jumpsuit.

“. . . says we’re off the hook when it comes to Royal Chemical. Talk about a close one, though.”

“Eh, you know Mary owns at least two people on their board, and there’s no way they’d be able to get together any kind of response force without forcing a vote.”

“She does? No, but that explains a lot . . .”

“Yeah, she’s connected. Not as connected as Hereford, but between them and the others, the Five have us pretty well covered.”

“Shit, Shark, I wish you’d told us that yesterday! I was sweating into my bunk all night. Didn’t catch a wink.”

“Hey, baby girl. You know I’m not gonna let my crew get into anything that’s gonna bring heat down on this base. Think I want to see you all spaced? Think I want to give up my shares? Nah, the penalty is a bit too harsh to mess about . . .” Juliet could feel his attention shift to her as he trailed off. “You need help with that, doll? Looking for something special?”

Juliet turned her gaze away from the big vibroblade, and from behind her mirrored visor, she rasped, “Bold of you to assume I’m a doll.”

The heavy-set woman barked a laugh. “Come on, sweetie. That armor might be heavy-duty, but we can see those curves. What you hiding under that helmet for, anyway? Somebody cut you up bad?”

Juliet thought it was interesting that the woman jumped to that conclusion as a reason for hiding her face. She supposed they wanted her to lift it to satisfy their curiosity. Instead, she shook her head and, still trying to sound hoarse, lowered her voice and said, “Don’t trust this air.”

“Well, this old ship’s been modified to hell and back, and sure, some of the areas have some dodgy welds, but this central location’s damn near as solid as you can get outside a Diamatex dome.” Sharkey gestured to the vibroblade. “Gonna buy it? I got a case for it that’ll strap to the little D-rings on your thigh, there.”

“I have a response from TC,” Angel interjected.

“Hold it a sec,” she replied, then more loudly, so Angel would know to unmute her helmet, “Let me think about it. Not sure I like a vibroblade this big.” She set it back on the table and tapped the smaller knife on her wrist. “Used to something a little smaller.”

“Oh shit, Shark! I think she’s flirting with you!” the red-faced woman chortled, slapping a meaty palm on the table.

“Oh, brother!” Juliet groaned, and as the words came out in her normal voice, she was thankful, as always, for Angel’s intelligence; she’d muted the helmet’s output. As the woman and Sharkey both continued to stare at her, chuckling, she appeared to stare at them silently. Rather than respond aloud, she rested a hand on her shotgun, then turned and walked over to the tables where Nick was sipping a drink pouch and sucking on his vape, looking around with narrowed, nervous eyes.

Angel spoke up, “TC says Sharkey’s a respected member of the Vengeance and that if we need to purchase any goods, he’s the man to speak to.”

“I could tell by the way he’s got his operation set up that he’s not a small fry. I think I’ll sit over here and see what I can dig out of his head, Angel. Might find a way to gain access to the network through him. Heck, he might even know where someone like Antigone would be.” Juliet sat at an empty table, receiving a strange look from Nick in the process. She selected her comm channel with him. “Time for me to get to work, Nick. I really think the best thing you can do right now is chill in your ship and wait for word from me.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Sorry, but this is where I gotta get serious. I’ll try to keep things quiet, but if shit goes sideways, I’ll give you a head’s up so you can bolt.”

“Hey, Lucky, can you look at me for a second?” He stopped speaking, and Juliet knew he was waiting for her to do it, so she turned her visor toward him and looked into his eyes. Even before he spoke, she knew what he was going to say; his thoughts, accompanied by emotions that he broadcast as loud as if he were shouting, came directly into her mind. She could feel his affection, his longing, his tightly harnessed desire, and his fear as his unspoken thoughts came through with his words:

Be careful! I’m gonna hate myself if this mess gets you killed. Are we going to die here? Are you crazier than I thought? Should I run? Will I ever have the nerve to hit on you for real? Why’d I have to get old?

“Be careful,” he said, voice steady and calm. Then he stood up and, sucking on his vape, walked into the milling crowd of criminals, fugitives, and desperate people trying to survive.