Cyber Dreams 4.29 - Free Lunch

Okay, getting into things!

Reminder about upcoming revisions that aren't on Patreon:

1. Juliet and Nick wear pressurized helmets while flying.

2. I'm adding at least two prior mentions during the setup for this job that the daughter of Sir Rodric is believed to no longer be a free agent, meaning she ran off with the pirates willingly but basically became a hostage when she got there. Of course, this is coming from Sir Rodric, so consider the source.

Let me know what you think!

-Plum

Juliet looked at herself in the mirror, examining the changes Angel had made to her eyes and hair. She couldn’t remember the last time her hair had been this short—kind of a messy bob with wavy bangs parted in the middle. She’d chosen to color it black with red highlights, something different for her new alter ego. The whites of her eyes were black, too, with shimmering, golden stars for irises. In her opinion, they looked cool but were a bit off-putting in their alien nature. “Right, well, that’s me, Lacy Blake, the pirate.”

“A stark contrast to your usual style.” Angel’s voice was neutral, and Juliet couldn’t tell if she was being careful with her word choice.

“Do you think it’s too much?”

“Not at all. Besides, you’ll have a helmet on much of the time.”

“Yeah. Let’s see here.” Juliet turned away from the mirror to the molded plasteel bench attached to the bathroom wall. Her duffel sat there, holding most of her belongings outside Luna City. She wore black tights, a gray tank top, and nothing else; she was about to gear up. She pulled out the body armor she’d bought and started getting into it, piece by piece. She’d been thrilled by the well-used nature of the combat suit. Scuffs, scars, and even some burn marks marred the rigid armor plates, but, just as advertised, none of the damage impacted its protective value.

The active, energized fiber mesh between the plates could be adjusted to perfect the fit. When she had the whole suit on, and Angel synced up with the control module, she felt it grow snug where it was saggy and loosen where it was too tight. All in all, it became very comfortable, and with the batteries fully charged, she felt like she wasn’t carrying any weight at all. She stretched a bit, making sure there weren’t any loose sections and that all the active “joint-support” mechanics worked.

Satisfied, she sat down on the bench and tugged on the combat boots. They were lighter than her usual work boots, and she smiled as she turned her ankle in a circle, noting the excellent flexibility. “Should’ve gotten a pair of these a while ago. They’re waterproof, right?”

“They’re made to provide a tight seal against the bottom cuffs of your armor; your entire suit is airtight, which greatly enhances the filtration systems in your new helmet.”

“Cool.” Juliet pulled her blue and black camo tactical vest out of the bag. It had been new when she bought it, but she’d put it through some “weathering” in the hangar where Nick kept the Lady Hawk, dragging it over the oil-stained concrete, balling it up and pounding it with a hammer, and “spilling” some grease on it here and there. She’d washed it and repeated the process twice, and now it really looked like a pirate had been sleeping in it for a year or two. Once she’d put it on, she started stuffing the pockets with her spare bullets, shells, and needler magazines.

Her drones were already attached to the backs of her shoulders—two little black balls with all their limbs and wings retracted. Her needler sat under her left arm as usual, her vibroblade on her left forearm and her Texan on her hip. She pulled her data deck out of the duffel, put it in a pouch on her vest, and then lifted out her auto-shotgun. It was a heavy gun when fully loaded, and she was glad it came with a single-point sling. Weapons installed, she just had to stow a box of the V.E.G. or “veg,” as she’d been calling it, in one of the vest’s side pockets. She didn’t know what but figured it was a good possibility that she’d need to blow something up.

She flexed her hands in the tactile gloves that’d come with the armor and nodded her approval; she hadn’t even noticed them while loading her pockets and guns. “One more thing,” she said, pulling out her helmet. She’d reverted it to its default baby-blue color with a mirrored visor. She liked the pale color because the scarring stood out better, making it look well-used and, in her opinion, giving her appearance a little more gravity.

She pushed it down over her head, felt the flexible neck seal contract and hook onto the collar of her armor, and then moved her head around, ensuring the seal was secure and that she had full mobility. “Feels good.”

“You look like you mean business.”

“Good, ‘cause the whole aim is to make people think twice about messing with me. Nick’s going to earn their respect with his flying, but when I start walking around whatever kind of base they’re using, I’ll need to discourage conflict.” She zipped up the duffel containing the rest of her clothes, a few books, and her flight suit, slung it over her shoulder, and left the bathroom. She’d left her backpack, along with the extra ammo and explosives she wouldn’t bring on this mission, in Nick’s hangar. “I still can’t believe the client is throwing away three ships and a cargo bay full of wine to get Nick noticed by the pirates.” She spoke aloud, even though they were in the spaceport because her helmet actively cancelled any noise she made unless she wanted her voice to project.

“It certainly demonstrates the depths of his resources. Considering the ship he purchased for Nick, that makes four vessels he’s willing to lose for this endeavor.”

“Yeah, kinda puts the big ‘payday’ he’s promising in perspective.”

“True, this whole affair must have a multi-million-bit budget. Considering the payload in the transport, closer to ten million.”

Juliet strode confidently through the port toward the hangar where Nick’s “new” ship was docked. He’d dubbed it Sharp Lady, resulting in at least an hour of teasing from Juliet. He hadn’t backed down, though—he felt the ship’s name had to include the word “lady” as a matter of good luck. Why “sharp,” Juliet had pressed, and he’d explained that the chisel-like shape of the ship gave him the idea. “Sharp Lady,” Juliet chuckled. “Nick’s sweet, but he’s not winning any prizes for creativity.”

“I’m surprised you teased him so much, considering your trouble thinking of names. Even your handle was a struggle . . .”

“All right, all right. I get it, you like Nick more than me . . .”

“No, I don’t!”

Juliet laughed, but then she noticed a pair of corpo-sec security personnel standing next to a coffee cart staring at her through their visored helmets. She turned her mirrored faceplate to them, returning the attention. When they looked away, a little thrill of adrenaline brought a metallic tang to her tastebuds, and she grinned. She couldn’t blame them for the attention; she looked like she was about to deploy into a hot zone, and the active armor and helmet gave her a rather intimidating presence. Two minutes later, she punched the code into the hangar door and stepped through.

She was greeted by the sight of Nick pacing back and forth, watching a pair of techs welding armor patches on the hull of the Sharp Lady. It had taken a few days to get delivery of the vessel. Apparently, the client had wanted one of his personal techs to take the time to scrub it of any identifying marks and install a new ID transponder, one that gave the ship an untraceable history that dead-ended in a Martian scrapyard nine years ago. Nick turned when he heard the door close and said, “Glad you made it . . . Lacy. Jesus, you looking for a combat drop ship? ‘Cause this is the wrong bay . . .”

Juliet ignored the comment, even though it made her smile under that reflective visor. “Thought we were heading out at 1330.”

“Oh, we will. These guys are almost done.”

Juliet frowned at the techs on their mobile scaffolds, watching the welding sparks fly as they worked. “You could have asked me to do that.”

“Why? Larry’s paying these knuckleheads.”

“You sure they’re doing a good job?”

“I mean, they’re licensed and bonded, so . . .” Nick shrugged.

“I’m gonna walk through the ship, scan for bugs and bombs, and anything else we don’t want flying around with us.”

“Good plan. I’ll settle up with these guys, then we need to get moving, or we’ll miss our free lunch.”

Juliet nodded and started walking around the ship, trusting Angel to use her wireless antenna to note any strange signals. “Free lunch” was what Nick had been calling the, in her opinion, over-the-top plan to get them noticed and brought in by the pirates. The client, Sir Rodric, had prepared an unscheduled shipment of fine wines from his agridome on Callisto. His freighter and two escorts, all controlled via licensed piloting AI modules, would fly down a known shipping lane toward Mars. One of his investigators was going to tip off the Hereford’s Vengeance pirates, but only after Nick and Juliet were engaged with the ship. The idea was that Nick would take out the escorts, Juliet would board, and they’d be caught with their pants down when the pirates arrived.

“All in the hopes that they’ll be impressed by us enough to bring us back to their base,” she muttered into her helmet, still walking around the ship. She supposed it was a good plan, something the corpo-security patrols around the ports weren’t willing or able to do. It took deep pockets and a unilateral decision-making process to pull something like that off, something the conglomerate corporate shipping police didn’t seem to have. That and they were probably corrupt. “And, I suppose,” she continued, verbalizing her thought process, “you’d have to have some suicidally reckless agents to do the heist.”

“Are you talking about yourself?”

“Sure. I was just wondering why the corpo-sec shipping cops haven’t tracked these pirates down.”

“Speculation on the net is that they’re complicit, paid off at the command level by the larger pirate organizations.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Juliet stopped at the ship’s rear-entry ramp, sparks from a welder above showering down on the plasteel floor nearby. “Notice anything strange outside?”

“Nothing unusual.”

Juliet climbed into the ship, slowly moving from its tiny airlock to its little cargo area, through the short corridor into the central access corridor, which opened into the single crew bunk room on the left and the toilet area on the right. She took her time, allowing Angel plenty of opportunity to scan all the possible bands and frequencies. She knew she’d be isolating interference and noise, trying to uncover any clandestine signals.

She saw four acceleration couches inside the bunk room, which surprised her; it was larger than she’d thought. She supposed it made sense, though, considering the ship was a good deal larger than the Lady Hawk. She dumped off her duffel, then returned to the spartan, central crew area—just two small tables, a fridge, and a microwave built into a storage cabinet. After Angel cleared it, she stepped into the little toilet and shower room, let Angel sweep it, and then moved up the access corridor to the cockpit.

The Sharp Lady had a wider cockpit than the Lady Hawk, almost a proper bridge, with two seats side by side in front of a rectangular viewscreen. Juliet sat down on the right and pulled out her data cable. “I’ll plug you in. Ready?”

“Ready! I’ll perform a scan for any trackers or dormant daemons, and then I’ll let Fido loose to really analyze things, line by line.” Juliet plugged in, then sat back in the seat and played around with the ship’s UI while she waited for Nick. “You just received correspondence from Alice.”

“Oh, nice timing. I was getting bored.” Juliet watched as a vid window opened on her AUI, and then Alice appeared, sitting in the pilot’s seat of the Kowashi.

“Lucky, hope you’re doing well. I just woke up, but I had a rather lengthy message waiting for me from Nick. Sounds like he’s very impressed by you; says you’re good to go as far as his seal of approval goes. I was pumping my fist, proud and excited for you, then he kept talking and said you’d signed up to do some kind of sketchy job with him, basically ‘cause you felt you had to help keep his ass out of a meat grinder. He didn’t give me any details, but he sounded kind of worried, fatalistic, even. It's been a long time since I’ve hung out with Nick, so maybe I’m reading things wrong. I’ve seen you in action, and I don’t think Nick has, not like that, so maybe he’s underestimating your ability to pull off some insane heroics. I hope that’s it. I hope you’re not planning to get yourself iced out there. Come back to us, all right? We’re all looking forward to working with you.” She paused a minute, pursed her lips together, and then, with a brief shake of her head, kept speaking.

“That wasn’t what I wanted to say. Of course, we’re excited to work with you, but we also think of you as a friend, family, even. Lucky, we’re gonna be really, really torn up about it if you get yourself killed, okay? Thanks for caring about Nick, but if this is a suicide mission, you need to cut him loose. That guy’s had plenty of time to get smart. We miss you, especially Aya—she’s been talking nonstop about the books she got to share with you. She’s even been bugging me to let her fly with you in the gunship when we’re between hotspots. You got yourself a real fangirl there. Anyway, I’ve said my piece. Stay safe and come back home soon, okay?”

The window closed, and Juliet sat there, mouth half open inside her helmet, unable to believe what she’d just heard. Alice wasn’t the mushy type, but she’d just called her “family” and asked her to come “home.” She felt tears spring into her eyes and squeezed them shut, pushing down the surge of emotions that came out of nowhere, unwilling to face them right at that moment.

“That was a nice message, but I believe Alice’s worries are slightly unfounded. I don’t see this as so much a suicide mission as a very dangerous one. Don’t be upset,” Angel said, completely missing the point of the whole thing.

“Angel, I’m not crying ‘cause she upset me; I’m crying ‘cause she made me feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. God, what am I going to do if something happens to those knuckleheads?”

“Are they in danger? Did I miss some subtext in the message?”

“No, I’m just . . . I’m just jumping to the next probable thing to happen. Once I find people I care about and learn they care about me, something will happen to mess that up.” Juliet squeezed her eyes again, then, in frustration, activated her visor’s retraction function, and it slid most of the way up into her helmet, just leaving a few centimeters of reflective diamatex over her eyes. She reached under it, rubbed her eyes, and laughed, sniffing noisily. “Can’t you turn my tears off or something?”

“They’re your original tear ducts, Juliet; we only changed out your eyeballs and the optic nerves. You have me now, you know? I’m going to help you protect those people you care about, especially the ones who also care about you.”

“Yeah. I know. Thank you. I think we need to do something about the enemies I’ve made, the ones still looking to find me.”

“Tanaka?”

“That’s the easy one.”

“Levkin?”

“You think he’s looking for me?”

“I hope not. WBD?”

“Bingo. We’ll look into them soon, okay? For now, though, let’s try to handle this job and deal with the rich creep who hired Larry without adding another big enemy to that list.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nick said, noisily clomping onto the bridge and flopping into the pilot’s seat.

“Ugh! How long were you listening to me?”

“Ugh? Just long enough to hear you say you didn’t want another big enemy, which, naturally, makes me wonder who your other big enemies are.” He chuckled and stuck his magnetic vape clip to the panel above his head.

“Nobody you need to worry about, Nicky. We doing this thing or what?” Juliet touched the button to extend her visor back down, noting the slight hiss and pressure in her ears as it pressurized.

“Damn right, we are.” Nick reached down beside his seat, picked up his old, battered, white and red flight helmet, and stuffed it onto his head. “Larry sent word, the pizza’s in the oven.” With that, he punched a sequence of keys on his augmented UI, and the ship’s drive rumbled to life. He touched the external comms and said, “Clear the hangar, lifting off in thirty seconds.”

Juliet knew the welding crew must already be gone; he wouldn’t just give them just thirty seconds to pack out all their gear. His warning was for anyone who might have randomly stumbled into the hangar. While he dealt with the port traffic control, she asked Angel to play her Alice’s message again, and she watched it, smiling, a warm feeling in her stomach. She tried to keep the dread that accompanied the pleasant feelings at bay, tried to bury it, smash it down, and forget it existed, but it kept rearing its ugly head.

The truth was, she knew she was being dramatic and that there wasn’t some curse on her that meant anyone who cared about her would die or leave or get locked away. She knew that, but she also knew that there were some real bogeymen out there, some real threats to her and those she cared about. She had business to take care of here that couldn’t be ignored, but when she was done, she resolved to deal with some of those bad guys. She’d get rid of some of the axes that had been hanging over her head for too long.

The ship rumbled and lurched, and then they were hovering in the hangar as Nick rotated the ship with the maneuvering thrusters toward the now-open bay doors. “Wow, these things are touchy!” He grinned and winked at her as he overcorrected and spun them past the opening. He got it back under control, though, and when he had it lined up, Juliet felt a lurch in her gut as the main drives kicked on. They exploded out of the hanger, outside Callisto’s main dome, and tore over the moon's pockmarked surface, rapidly climbing and accelerating.

Juliet felt her acceleration couch squeeze her and steady her breathing. She didn’t have her flight suit on, didn’t have its active high-G supports, but Nick had promised not to do anything her body couldn’t handle with just the acceleration couch. He shouldn’t need to; Larry had ensured that the AI pilots on the escort interceptors wouldn’t be rated above a C. “Hang on, darlin’! Let’s knock the cobwebs out of the tailpipes!” Nick laughed, and then he shoved the throttle forward, and Juliet’s world became a struggle to breathe and maintain consciousness.