Cyber Dreams 4.30 - Books Being Judged

Here's today's chapter! Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for your support :)

-Plum

Juliet gripped her acceleration couch with white knuckles as Nick flew circles around the second AI-driven interceptor, rapidly ripping it apart with the Sharp Lady’s front turret. The rotating, eighteen-millimeter autocannon buzzed like a chainsaw that rattled up through the hull as it streaked fiery tracer rounds out at the little ship. He’d already annihilated the first drone-like escort with a pair of smart missiles, and now the second was drifting away, ablaze, various components detonating in brilliant blooms of color as it came apart.

Nick steadied the ship as he turned away from the dying interceptor, bringing it parallel to the bathtub-shaped cargo ship. Juliet sucked in a much-needed breath, relieved that the rapid maneuvering part of the mission was, hopefully, behind them. “Attention, cargo vessel Humpback, this is your one and only friendly request to shut down your drives and prepare for boarding,” Nick spoke into comms using a terrible attempt at an English accent, and Juliet couldn’t help erupting with a short laugh.

“What was that?”

“What? You don’t like it?”

“No, stop!” She laughed again. “Unless you want to get us killed the minute you speak to the real pirates.”

Nick smiled and kept up the terrible accent, “This isn’t how pirates talk?”

“Stop it!” Juliet pointed to the viewscreen. “Their drives are off, and they're holding a steady course. Let’s hurry and dock before our company arrives.”

“Right, okay. Get yourself to the airlock. Good luck.”

“You too, Nicky. Er, I mean Simon.”

“God, I hate my name! What kind of pirate calls himself Simon? Lacy, though, that’s a perfect fit for that baby blue helmet . . .”

“You want me to slap you around a little? Feels like a pirate should have some bruises . . .”

“No!” Nick tapped his visor release, sending it up into his helmet, and then reached for his vape. Juliet made herself scarce, carefully extricating herself from the acceleration couch and working toward the aft airlock.

“Are you ready?” Angel asked, and Juliet grunted in the affirmative. She was ready, so long as Larry or his client hadn’t double-crossed them or messed up something on their end. The plan was simple, though mainly because the hard parts had been done by a client with bottomless pockets. She was supposed to find five corpses on the cargo vessel, supposedly unidentified bodies “purchased” from a city morgue. They should be in one of the cargo vessel’s three airlocks, hopefully not the one Nick was going to dock with. All Juliet had to do was space them, then claim she killed the crew—something they were all hoping would buy her some street cred with the pirates. That done, she had to have Angel delete the ship’s AI along with any internal camera footage that could make a liar of her.

She could feel the ship carefully maneuvering into position. Nick would match the cargo vessel’s speed and heading, then spin down the drives and use the maneuvering thrusters to position the Sharp Lady and plant her rear airlock against the other ship’s pairing collar. When she reached the inner airlock door, Juliet stepped through and closed it, ready. Only a few minutes passed before she felt the vibration and heard the bumps reverberate through the hull as Nick finished the maneuver.

“Good to go, Lacy!”

“See you soon, I hope.” Juliet punched the sequence to equalize the air pressure and open the outer airlock door. Air hissed, and then her door opened to reveal a closed, scarred-up, white and yellow door—the cargo ship’s outer door. “They haven’t opened up yet.”

“Right, I’m currently trying to threaten the pilot AI into cooperating. Just a minute.”

“Just use the phrase Larry gave you!” Supposedly, the AI had a backdoor that would cause it to surrender completely. All Nick had to do was say, “Open, or we’ll pull off and target your reactor.”

“It’s done; door should be opening. I just wanted to make sure there was some realistic back and forth before I said the magic words.” True to his words, the door latch thunked open, and the round door recessed and then rolled to the side, giving Juliet access. She stepped into a much larger airlock and walked up to the inner door, staring into the camera with her mirrored visor. Ten tense seconds went by, and then the door’s LEDs flashed green, and it slid open. Juliet strode into the hallway, following a map on her AUI provided by Larry.

“What the hell, Nick,” she breathed, noting the smears of blood on the corridor walls and floor. It was definitely blood; she’d seen enough of it to know.

“What?”

“Looks like a massacre took place here.”

“I’m sure it’s just staged to look realistic.”

“I hope so.” Juliet followed the corridor to a lift, noting that the style of the ship’s interior reminded her a lot of the Kowashi. It was similarly well-used, but it hadn’t been so lovingly maintained. Every corridor had some missing or broken lights. She saw many missing access panels, and a low, grinding vibration was ever-present, making her wonder how much life was left in the ship’s major components. At nearly every junction, she found more smears of blood and, thinking she should add to the picture being painted, she fired a few rounds from her shotgun into the plasteel floor and wall panels, careful to check with Angel first so she didn’t blow a hole in any critical conduits.

She took the lift to the bridge, saw the blood on three of the five acceleration couches, and felt a kind of sinking sensation in her gut—this seemed too real to her. Still, she plugged Angel into the data port on the pilot’s station, and while Angel did her work, she reloaded her shotgun magazine. “I don’t have a good feeling about this blood.”

“Well, did you find the bodies?” Nick replied.

“No . . .”

“They’re in the port docking airlock,” Angel interjected. “I have them on camera.” She put a vid feed window on Juliet’s AUI, showing a grainy, blurry image of a pile of corpses wearing bloody jumpsuits. She didn’t like how a large pool of blood had gathered under them, thickly coagulating on the plasteel floor.

“Those don’t look like morgue bodies.” Juliet gripped her shotgun tightly, adding another worry to the stack she was carrying around. Had that asshole, Sir Rodric, massacred some people on this ship just to stage a realistic pirate attack?

“Look, Lucky,” Nick said over comms, “this rich client hired some real professionals to set up this ship. Odds are they dressed the bodies and added fresh blood all over the place. Don’t start freaking out over there, all right?”

“I’m done with the AI and have control of the cameras. I’ll delete all the data as we go.” Again, Angel broke into their conversation.

“Okay,” Juliet said, figuring both Angel and Nick would accept the answer. She turned and started following the map to the port airlock and, despite Nick’s reassurance, felt a gnawing unease in her gut. “I don’t really want to see these bodies up close. You can’t just space them remotely?”

“I could, but, as you saw, the camera image is grainy and low res, and I thought you might want to have a closer look. In case . . .”

“In case something fishy is going on, and I want some evidence later?”

“Perhaps.”

“I guess . . .” Juliet frowned as she noticed she was walking hard, taking long strides and stomping as she hurried through the ship. “I guess if these people were murdered so this megalomaniac could expedite his little rescue mission, then I owe them to at least make a record of it.” She slowed down as she came to the blood-smeared airlock door. She peered through the thick window and saw the pile of bodies atop the pool of mostly dried blood. “Seven, not five.”

“Yes, I noted that.”

“God, I wish I had olfactory implants. Add that to my list, will you? Like, priority one.” Juliet took a massive breath, thoroughly filling her lungs, and then she held it, pushing the button to open the inner airlock door. It cycled open, and she hurried into the airlock, trying hard not to step in the thick, tacky blood. Still holding her breath, she carefully turned every body so she could record their faces—five men and two women. She saw blood around bullet holes on their jumpers, and even before Angel confirmed anything, she knew the story about getting bodies from the morgue was bullshit. After she’d seen them all and, thus, made a record of them, she backed out of the airlock and hit the button to close the doors.

“The client lied,” Angel announced. “Those people have public records, and they are all employees of Orion Shipping, LLC.”

“Let me guess. That’s the company that owns this freighter.”

“Correct. I’d also like to note that the security footage from the ship’s cameras was wiped three days ago.”

“So, this evil bastard just sent some of his private mercs onto this ship, killed the crew, and threw them in the airlock for me to dispose of?”

“There’s more. It seems that Dun & Briggs, a Callisto-based holding company, is a major shareholder in Orion Shipping. Sir Rodric is on the board.”

“He did this to his own ship, his own crew? Angel, can you disable this airlock? I don’t want these bodies going anywhere.”

“Done. Also, I’m trying to rebuild the deleted data. I don’t think enough new camera footage has been recorded to overwrite all the drive sectors. I have the file, and I’ll put Fido on the job when he’s done on the Sharp Lady. He’s already found and deleted three snoopers, by the way.”

“Tell him he’s a good boy.” Juliet turned and stomped toward the central access corridor on the ship. “Guide me to the hold. I guess it should look like I’ve been fawning over the loot when the pirates show up.”

“Do you have a plan regarding the bodies?”

“Yeah, I’m going to shove them down Sir Rodric’s throat.”

“I know you’re being figurative, but . . . how?”

“I’m still thinking about it. Let’s see what Fido can turn up. Hmm . . .” She activated her crew comms. “Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“New plan. When you bargain with the pirates, offer them a cut of the cargo, start at fifty percent as we’d planned, but tell them you also want this ship. If you have to, bargain down our percentage of the cargo to get them to agree.”

“Why do I want . . .”

“You don’t. I do. It’s evidence and leverage that we’re going to need later.”

“If you say so, by the way, my name’s Simon.”

“Right.” As she approached the big, orange-painted cargo doors, they slid open, revealing a cargo hold twice as wide as the Kowashi’s and at least three times as deep. It was stacked with dozens of pallets of crates, each labeled with the logo for Callisto Vineyards with a secondary label that said Jovian Rhapsody Sirrah. “Holy shit. Sir Rodric might be an evil bastard, but he didn’t skimp when it came to delivering the goods.”

“If the labels on those boxes are accurate, this is more than four million Sol-bits worth of cargo.”

“Do you think he’d screw us over by loading fake cargo?”

“His vineyard has several products. These particular bottles retail for one hundred eighty-five Sol-bits. He also sells a vintage with a twenty-six Sol-bit value. He might have relabeled some of his cheaper bottles if he knew he was setting up a decoy.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be very pirate-like of me not to sample the goods.” Juliet walked to the nearest pallet, sliding her vibroblade free of its sheath. She sliced one of the pallet straps, then hefted a case down onto the concrete. With her strong hand, she gripped the wooden top of the case and yanked, pulling it open as the nails squealed in protest. “Fancy packing—nails and wood.”

“Wine connoisseurs are notoriously rooted in tradition.”

Juliet pulled out one of the dark green bottles and, holding it tightly with her tactile glove, drove her vibroblade down into the cork. Once it was deeply inserted, she turned it off and carefully turned it, rotating the cork up and out. She put her knife away, opened her visor, and sniffed the bottle. “Wine. At least he didn’t fill them with water or something.” She took a sip and swallowed it down. “Shit, that’s smooth. I think this really is the good stuff.”

“Hopefully, he didn’t poison the wine so he could wipe out the pirates.”

Juliet choked on her second swig, then, when she’d finally swallowed it down and stopped sputtering, said, “You might have said that before I drank any!”

“Hopefully, your nanites will save you . . .”

“I’m not poisoned.” She set the bottle down atop the crate, then pulled down another to sit on. Again, she opened her comm channel with Nick. “Any sign of ‘em?”

“Not yet.”

Juliet closed the comms and sat there, stewing. She was furious that she was associated with an evil bastard like Sir Rodric. More, her mind spun in a million directions, trying to figure out how he’d try to double-cross her, Nick, and Larry. She had a feeling in her gut that it was coming; there’d be a “house-cleaning” after this job was done if she let it happen. She wouldn’t do that, though. She’d have to hang on to all her cards and figure out how to play them. The number one ace would be the daughter, so Juliet knew she had to get her out alive. She subvocalized, “Sometimes I think I should have just tried to figure a way to get at Sir Rodric and skipped this job.”

“He’s a powerful man with sophisticated and multi-layered security . . .”

“What about the bug he put in Larry? Couldn’t you have used it to piggyback?”

“I highly doubt that information is going directly to Sir Rodric. More likely, a third-party security firm handles that sort of thing for him. We could have traced it to them and then worked to infiltrate their operation. I’m not sure that would be less difficult or dangerous than handling these pirates, though.”

“Right. Even then, it wouldn’t be a sure thing. The daughter, Antigone, is still the best bet for getting close. I keep second-guessing myself!”

“Stay steady, Juliet. Think of what Jensen or White would do in this situation. Well, not what they’d do, but how they’d act. You’ve got to stay frosty and keep a tally. This man, Sir Rodric, is starting to rack up a debt with you.”

“Damn right, Angel.” Juliet was trying to think of something else to say, some way they could start to plan for the eventuality when she had Antigone in hand when Nick’s voice cut through on the comms.

“Get ready! We got three ships burning this way out of the junk belt.” The “junk belt” was a huge band of scrap and derelict, stripped-down ships left behind from a massive conflict near the tail-end of the Takamoto-Cybergen war in the “Hilda” asteroid group, whatever that was. It was where Athena was supposedly last seen. Her mainframe was rumored to have been on one of the asteroids. Apparently, nearly eight thousand ships were lost in the conflict, most of them AI-driven, but plenty with crews. The whole idea gave Juliet the creeps. It made her think of something like a space graveyard full of ghosts, both the human and machine kind.

“How soon?”

“Well, I know I said get ready, but I guess you have some time to kill—they should be here in about ninety minutes. Can you make it look like you were having trouble getting things settled over there?”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem.” Juliet shuddered, thinking of all the blood and the bodies piled up in the airlock.

“I’m gonna hail them, try to make a deal before they get here. I’ll just tell ‘em we’ll set the reactor on the cargo ship to blow and bail out if they won’t talk nice.”

“Now you’re sounding like a pirate!” Juliet chuckled, picked up her wine bottle, and left the cargo bay. She meandered the long, quiet hallways, working her way toward the bridge. Her earlier thoughts about ghosts started to get to her, and she kept feeling shivers at the nape of her neck, as though someone was watching her. Every time she passed a blood smear, she felt that queasy knot in her stomach, and she couldn’t help picturing the faces of the crew who’d worked the ship.

“Some of those people were young, Angel. I mean the crew of this ship. Some were younger than me!”

“That’s true. If what we think happened here really happened, we must think of a way to bring them justice.”

“Yeah, I agree.” Juliet flopped down in the pilot’s acceleration couch when she reached the bridge. “Fido done over there yet?”

“Yes. I’m using the local net to transfer him here.”

“Let me know as soon as he finds something.” She reclined for a while, staring at the ceiling, kicking her feet up onto the control panel. Eventually, her anxious mind got the better of her, and she said, “Let me see that pic of the girl again. I mean our target, Antigone.”

“Here you go.” Angel displayed the image in a large window on her AUI and labeled it Antigone Barrington. Sir Rodric’s daughter was an attractive woman. She had curly, shoulder-length auburn hair, striking blue eyes, and smooth, lightly tanned skin. She wore a lot of makeup—powder-blue around the eyes, rosy cheeks, and glossy pink lips. Her smile was big and genuine, like she’d never been disappointed by anything in her entire life. She looked like she’d never had to look over her shoulder or worry for a single second. Juliet felt herself starting to hate the woman before she’d even met her.

“I have good news!” Angel interrupted Juliet’s stewing. “Fido has found the section of the drive where the deleted footage was written. It hasn’t been overwritten, and he’s already begun reconstructing it.”

“Oh, good. Don’t mind me; I was just sitting here thinking about how I’d like to slap this pretty girl who’s never had a care in the world.”

“Don’t lose your empathy, Juliet! Think about why that young woman might have run away from her father. Perhaps she can’t stomach him, either. Look into those eyes—does the smile run as deep as it seems?” Juliet stared at the image some more, really looked into those eyes, and tried to imagine a soul in torment behind them. Was it possible? Were those fine lines between her brows from scowling? Was she putting on a show, forcing this pleasant face for a photo on her father’s publicity page?

“Damn, Angel. You’re getting good at this whole humanity thing. Thanks for reminding me not to judge a book by its cover.”

“An apt idiom for today’s events—plenty of books will be judged by plenty of people.”