Cyber Dreams 4.32 - Home of the Vengeance

Here's today's chapter! Hope it all makes sense - my descriptions, I mean.

Love to hear your feedback :)

-Plum

The Junk Belt was a lot different in person than Juliet had imagined. True, it was filled with thousands of derelict, stripped ships, hundreds of thousands of pieces of destroyed vessels, and just as many asteroids, large and small. However, they were all a lot further apart than she’d envisioned. Flying through the debris wasn’t difficult, especially as she’d matched her ship’s navigation to the pirate guide ship. Even with the distance between objects often being measured in kilometers rather than meters, there was enough interference in the belt to make scanning difficult, and plenty of large bodies floating around to make hiding easy. In short, it was a good place for pirates to evade scrutiny, especially considering the transient, orbiting nature of the belt—nothing stayed in one place for any length of time.

Some derelict ships they flew past were enormous, great dreadnoughts that would have given the Sunset Star Runner a run for its money, size-wise. It was one of those massive plasteel skeletons that the pirate ship finally approached, signaling Juliet and Nick to slow down and precisely follow its guidance. Juliet carefully nudged the controls, trusting Angel to fine-tune her input, ensuring a perfect replication of the guide ship’s navigation. It banked around and under the massive derelict, stripped, on the outside, at least, down to the plasteel alloy frame. No armor panels remained, no weapons or sensor arrays, and no insignias left to indicate what navy it had once belonged to.

As they drew near, the guide ship began to look smaller and smaller in the shadow of the hulking ship skeleton. It approached a big, dark void on the “underside” of the derelict, flew into it, and, as Juliet followed, they entered a massive hollow section where steady, red LED lighting strips guided them into makeshift docks built out of the ship's skeleton. Juliet saw dozens of interceptors docked in the big cave-like hollow and quite a few larger vessels, some as big as the cargo transport she was piloting. Even they looked tiny in the hollowed-out void of the ancient dreadnought.

“The guide ship has transmitted docking instructions. The space they’ve given us is barely large enough to accommodate this ship’s hull. Shall I handle the minute adjustments?” Angel’s question wasn’t unusual; most pilots would take some help from automated AI scripts for docking, especially in tight quarters or with other ships—matching trajectory, velocity, and spin wasn’t always trivial. Juliet didn’t take offense.

“Yes, please.” As she nudged the ship toward the docking collar, clearly built-up and welded onto the derelict frame where once upon a time, crew passages and living spaces used to exist, she felt Angel take control of the maneuvering thrusters, carefully, precisely, bringing the ship’s starboard docking collar against the dock’s. With a gentle rumble through the hull, she felt it clamp on, and then she killed the drive and breathed out a sigh. “Okay, time to see if we have a kill squad waiting for us on the other side of the airlock.”

“I’m holding the airlock securely shut until you’re ready.”

“Good. I know we’re going to ‘bluff’ about having a deadman’s switch on the reactor, but I wouldn’t mind actually blowing this ship if they try to kill me. Can you do it?”

“Yes! I wasn’t aware that you were simply bluffing. I’ve rewritten the software safety protocols on the reactor, and I can easily cause a meltdown, as you and Nick mentioned.”

“Oh.” Juliet frowned, wondering where the communication breakdown had occurred. Had she just assumed Angel understood her impression of the plan as she’d discussed it with Nick? “Yeah, from context, I was pretty sure Nick didn’t know how to rig such a thing and was just planning to use it as a threat. I guess it’s good to know the option is real. Thanks, Angel.”

While they spoke, Juliet hurried from the bridge and through the dim corridors of the ship toward the airlock. As she went, she refused to let herself look away from the many dried blood smears on the floor where bodies had been dragged. She wanted to keep that crime fresh in her mind, a reminder of what her end goal was. She didn’t want just to rescue Antigone Barrington and deliver her. She needed to bring the crew of this ship some justice and remove Sir Rodric as a threat to her and Nick in the process. “And Larry and his little girl.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m just reminding myself that this mission isn’t only about rescuing some diva, rich girl from her own mess.” Juliet saw an alert on her AUI indicating that someone had requested access to the airlock. “They’re waiting, huh?”

“Yes. I hope you don’t have to threaten them with a reactor meltdown; I think it will make your stay here combative and hinder your rescue attempts.”

“Well, it’s a last resort. Let’s see how they behave first.” As she approached the airlock, her armored boots encased in magnetic soles click-clomping on the metal floor, Juliet tried to calm herself, tried to focus her mind, and get back into her role of the stone-cold killer.

“I’m receiving several ping requests and attempts to establish a comm channel. Shall I accept? I’ll keep it walled off; you won’t have to worry about daemons.”

“Okay. I guess it’s time for Lacy to communicate a little more.” As she spoke, Juliet saw the new channel pop up on her AUI with the label “Allie.” Almost immediately, it lit up, and she heard the pirate’s voice in her ears.

“I figured since you can speak when you want to, we might as well have an open channel. It’ll make things less . . . stressful as we get you up to speed on how things work around here.”

Juliet thought about her response, letting the silence hang awkwardly for a moment, and decided to keep up her verbal reticence. “Okay.”

“Listen, you understand you’re a guest here for now, yeah? Don’t do anything stupid or violent, and make sure you keep cool. If you can manage all that, we’ll get along fine. Your partner has indicated that he might be interested in working with the Vengeance, and if you’re of a similar mind, you need to understand that you’re on massive probation. One wrong step, and we’ll space you. Are we clear?”

“Clear.” Juliet did her best to make her voice rough and hoarse, for some reason having decided that Lacy not only didn’t enjoy speaking but found it difficult.

“Good. Now open the airlock for our boarding team. They’re going to scour that ship a little better and get that cargo off. I’ve given them my map of the layout, so just stay out of their way.” Juliet had been expecting that. Nick had already made the arrangement with Allie while they traveled to the Junk Belt. Rather than respond, she pressed her hand to the airlock bio-lock and opened it. She still wore her helmet and still had her shotgun hanging from its sling in front of her.

When the door slid open, there were five men and women standing in the airlock, all of them armed, some wearing armor, and most with noticeable cybernetic enhancements, from chromed-out power arms to bulging, infected-looking optical implants to a guy with something that looked like a grenade launcher attached to his shoulder. Much of their gear was mismatched, but they looked ready to use those guns. In fact, the three men in the front lifted their rifles, pointing them at Juliet as they stepped out of the airlock. “Permission to board?” one of them sneered.

Juliet ignored him and didn’t lift her gun. She watched him, implacable and silent behind her mirrored visor, and when his taunt failed to get a rise out of her, he walked past. Three of the others followed after him, hurrying down the corridor, leaving one slender man behind. He wore a faded, torn, and patched gray jumper with the logo AstroLabs Inc. over his left breast pocket. Around his waist was a gun belt with an ancient-looking .45 semi-automatic holstered at his hip. “Ahem. Hello there. I’m a synthetic person, and the fine folk of Hereford’s Vengeance have given me the designation Trashcan. I’ve been instructed to acquaint you with the unrestricted sections of the base.”

Juliet gave the man—synth—a doubletake, surprised by his pronouncement. At first glance, he didn’t look like a synth, but then, his jumper covered most of his body. His face and expressions were very lifelike, but that wasn’t such a big deal; her arm was incredibly life-like, too. It probably helped that the synth-skin was alive. “Nice to meet you, Trashcan. Um, forgive me, but is that name okay with you?”

“I would like to interject and say that it’s certainly not okay with me!” Angel didn’t sound happy.

“Well, ma’am, I know the word isn’t meant to be complimentary, but I’m happy for my continued existence and position of respected duty and limited trust here among the Vengeance. For that reason, I accept my moniker with pride!” As he spoke, Trashcan stood up straight, almost like a military attention stance. He had short blond hair, smoothed back with some sort of gel, and though his face was smeared and smudged with grease and grime, he was pleasant enough looking with a friendly smile and well-worn laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

“All right. Lead the way.”

“Pardon, but as we walk through the docking corridor, I’ll fill you in on a few rules.” He turned and began to lead the way out of the ship, taking slow, measured steps.

“No problem.”

“One, you’ll be scanned for hardware that might broadcast a signal strong enough to get past the jammers protecting the base. Two, you may keep your weapons, but any violence must be verified as self-defense or performed to cease another person’s hostility. If such verification cannot be obtained from witnesses or surveillance equipment, you will be summarily executed.” He paused to look at Juliet, clearly awaiting a reaction.

“Okay.”

“Three, you are on strict probation and are not permitted to traverse non-public sections of the base. The Five have made this quite easy by marking off-limits sections with warning beacons, and also, in the event you lack the intelligence to understand or ability to receive warning beacons, they’ve painted the floors at the entrances to such sections red.” Juliet definitely detected some snark in Trashcan’s tone.

“Trashcan, can I call you TC?”

“TC is a nickname that a few others have used in reference to me. I don’t mind it.” He paused before the docking corridor’s airlock door and turned toward her. “Do you have any questions?”

“Yeah, am I free to leave whenever I want?”

“No, I’m afraid you’ll need clearance from our port authority.”

“You have a port authority? How many people live on this ship?”

“That’s classified information, Lacy. Do you mind if I call you Lacy? I’ll tell you there are probably more people here than you imagined. We have a port authority because there are many docking areas and many ships that call this base home. We must maintain some authority, or there would be collisions and fights over berths.”

“You can call me Lacy.” Juliet folded her arms over her chest, her shotgun hanging below them. “How hard is it to get clearance?”

“Not hard! If you aren’t grounded by the Five, you’ll get clearance rapidly.”

“The Five? Can you explain them to me?”

“The infamous Five? You haven’t heard of Hereford’s Pirate Council? There’s Captain John Hereford, Captain Ura Glasseye, Captain Roy Tornado, Captain Shinzo Hara, and Captain Mary Moon. They make all the operating decisions for the Vengeance pirates, and they’re revered by those who call this base home. Why the Five have kept us safe from corporate raids, military gambits, deceitful bounty hunters, devious . . .”

“I get it, TC. We love the Five. Okay, where can I get some grub?” Juliet figured a central dining area would be an ideal place to gather some intel.”

“There’s a mercantile district adjacent to this port cavity. You’ll find brokers of all sorts, including those selling meals.”

“Really? So they’ve made a sort of town on this old wreck? The interior is airtight?”

“Naturally! The external presentation of the Hereford’s Vengeance base is for subterfuge alone.” He leaned close and held a hand to the side of his mouth, whispering hoarsely, “You might be surprised at what this old derelict can do.” As he took his hand down, he winked in an exaggerated, deliberate attempt to convey that a secret was being divulged.

“And my partner?”

“You’re free to communicate with him. Our jammers prevent wireless transmission outside the base, but within, you should be fine.” He turned back toward the door, lifting his hand to the keypad. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, remember to stand still in the red box until the light turns green.” With that, TC punched in a code, and the door whirred open. He stepped through, and Juliet followed, finding herself in a massive, rectangular space that looked like something out of an old sci-fi vid. She imagined the room was about fifty meters by a hundred with a solid, if patchwork, plasteel floor. The walls and ceiling, though, were full of holes, exposed cables hanging here and there, many of them apparently live with electricity, trailing sparks and crackling as they shifted and swung in the air. Luckily, they were high above anyone’s head—the ceiling had to be another hundred meters up, and Juliet could see catwalks and doorways lining the tall walls.

People were all over the place, pushing cargo carts, using power tools on exposed machinery and conduits, or simply loitering about, watching the people coming out of the weirdly chaotic docking tunnels. Juliet’s tunnel was on the ground, but she could see others to her left and right, and some were meters off the ground like they’d been squeezed in wherever possible. All that took a backseat when she noticed the massive auto-turrets lined up on the far end of the space, one of them aimed squarely at her. She almost jumped for cover, but then she saw she was standing in a red square and that a small light, recessed into the plasteel floor, was blinking red.

“Don’t move, ma’am,” TC warned again, also standing quite still. “We’re being scanned for transmission hardware. Make sure your PAI accepts the connection request.”

“Angel . . .”

“They want to scan my database and the storage in your data port for, well, essentially for what they’d consider malware—rootkits, spy daemons, beacon worms, network sniffers, etc. Don’t worry, Juliet, I have confidence that I’ll be able to keep our secrets well walled-off.”

“If you’re sure . . .”

“If Grave couldn’t get past me with the watchdog installation, there’s no way a scan from these pirates will be a problem.”

“Okay.” Juliet stood there, nervously watching that auto-cannon’s huge barrels, wondering what kind of ordinance it fired. They wouldn’t shoot massive cannon rounds in here, would they? Wouldn’t it wreck the whole port? No, she figured it was loaded with anti-personnel rounds—something that would turn her body into a fine, red paste but only scratch and dent the plasteel. After more than two long, sweat-inducing minutes under the scrutiny of the pirates’ scanner, the red light finally flickered to green.

“Congratulations, Lacy! You’ve been cleared.” TC turned and bowed formally. “Welcome to the base! Always abide by the golden rule: A pirate’s life is best, and corpo scum should be shot on sight.”

“That’s not the golden . . .” Juliet sighed and decided it wasn’t worth it. “Can you show me where to go to get to the, uh, mercantile district?”

“Follow me, please.” With that, TC turned on his heel and began to march toward the distant auto-cannons and the automated doors behind them. Juliet walked behind him, shotgun sideways, hands resting on its frame, trying to broadcast a lack of hostility. Still, she cut an imposing figure, and many of the people in the docking junction gave her long looks as she clicked her way through the space. She’d made it almost to the door when it dawned on her that her magnets weren’t engaging, that there was gravity.

“Holy shit, TC, does this old derelict have a gravity generator?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified information.” He turned and winked obnoxiously at her.

“Angel, is that possible?”

“This ship likely predates the end of the Cybergen-Takamoto war. It’s certainly possible that one of the true AIs involved in the conflict helped one faction or another to equip their larger ships with gravity generation systems. The surprising part is that it would still be intact after all these years, what with the fortune-seeking salvagers who’ve picked the Junk Belt clean over the decades.”

“I guess it’s as big or bigger than that cruise liner we were on.”

“Significantly larger. The pirates’ jamming devices on the cargo ship prevented me from making detailed scans but judging from visuals alone, I’d estimate this ship to be more than two kilometers long from bow to stern. It’s likely almost half that wide and tall. Juliet, if this is one of the old Cybergen dreadnoughts, it could have had a crew numbering in the tens of thousands.”

“Wow.” Juliet followed TC through a few winding, branching corridors in various states of repair, from a skeletal framework that felt like it was about to collapse to nearly pristine stretches where the lights were steady and bright. Still, her helmet indicated that the air quality and pressure were constant, and she began to wonder if she should take it off. Remembering her role, though, she kept it on. It wasn’t like she was the only one wearing a helmet in the place. They passed people in all manner of dress, from shirtless, greasy technicians working on conduit lines to a short man wearing a full battle exo-suit, jogging purposefully in the direction of the docks.

When they entered the “mercantile district,” Juliet had to, again, reassess her expectations for what the pirate base would be like. Actual storefronts were set up in a big open area with a living atrium at the center. Everything was dirty and used-looking, but the patchwork Diamatex, plastiglass, and plain-old glass panels surrounding the atrium allowed the false sunlight through, exposing the green of the foliage. That, combined with the neon lighting on the storefronts, gave the whole thing a sort of surreal, movie-set quality.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it felt almost like a scene out of a VR game. People lingered around talking in groups, playing holo games on tables, eating street food, and carrying their purchases to and fro. It was like an underground, secret pirate mall, and Juliet couldn’t wrap her head around it. She supposed if you were wanted in every polite jurisdiction, you had to make a place to live, a place to be human, where the laws of the corpos couldn’t touch you. Juliet’s opinion of the pirates and their society changed a little as she took in the space and the hundreds of people living their lives, including children playing on a dingy, refurbished jungle gym.

“This is mercantile district four,” TC announced, waving his hand toward the cavernous chamber and the storefronts surrounding the weird little atrium.

“How many are there? On the base, I mean?”

“Five in total, but this is the largest.”

“Angel,” Juliet subvocalized, “can you contact Nick and tell him where to meet us? I think this is going to be a bigger job than I thought.”