Cyber Dreams 4.13 - Flight Mission

Here's today's chapter! Enjoy - Do me a favor and help me decide if the date I picked for the mission card makes sense. I know I could go back and meticulously try to calculate things (I still might,) but I figure if we're in the ballpark, it's probably good, right? I know she was doing the Grave job around Novemberish in 2107, right? Maybe June for this job is too far? Witness one of my weaknesses - remembering numbers and dates.

-Plum

When Juliet woke the next day, it was to the sound of rattling plasteel panels and the vibration of thrusters shifting her center of gravity around. Nick was maneuvering the little ship. It was little, but not as small as she’d imagined. She figured it was about half the size of the Takamoto gunship—still bigger than any car she’d ever seen, with room to walk around, albeit hunched over, between a tiny storage bay with a small table, a fridge, and some cupboards, two tiny sleeping closets, and the cockpit, again, with two seats. As for accessing the drives or the powerplant, some parts were reachable through interior access panels, but any major work had to be done from the outside.

“Any messages?” she yawned, stretching as much as she could in the narrow bunk.

“Nick says to join him in the cockpit when you wake. Are you feeling better?” Angel was concerned because Juliet had been very withdrawn the night before, crawling into the acceleration couch and, inexplicably, as far as Angel could tell, crying into her little gel-filled pillow.

“I am, but I still feel it, that horror and loss. Angel, thanks to that guy, Tono, I have a memory worse than almost anything from my real life. I know, objectively, that it wasn’t me, but my feelings don’t know it. I’m struggling to put it behind me.”

“I’m sorry you’re going through that. Do you feel like talking about what you saw yet?” Juliet could tell Angel was being careful, trying to walk on eggshells. She’d snapped at her the night before, unwilling to detail what she’d experienced through her weird, deep connection to Tono’s memory.

“I . . . first of all, I’m sorry I was short with you last night. I think it’s still too fresh. Let’s put it off for now.”

“Do you want to have a session with Dr. Ming?”

“No, Angel, not right now. Thank you, really, but you don’t have to be worried. I feel better than last night.” Juliet heaved herself up, sitting on the side of the couch, then dug into her pack; it was right next to the bunk because less than a meter of empty floor space separated her from the sliding door. “No showers, right?”

“Not even Sani-spray.”

“Sheesh. How long are we going to be out?”

“According to Nick’s flight plan, two and a half days.”

“Guess we’ll be pretty ripe.” Juliet was only wearing a tank top and underwear, and she left them on as she began to pull her flight suit on. It was one piece of material, including rubbery, gel-filled soles that conformed to the contours of her feet. After she shrugged her arms into the sleeves, she pulled the long, air-tight zipper up from her crotch to her neck. The suit was compatible with a wide array of closed-air systems and helmets, but she hadn’t purchased one; Alice said it wouldn't be necessary for the kind of flying she and Nick were doing. “Does it look okay?”

“A perfect fit and the blue tones look good with your hair.”

“Nuclear,” Juliet sighed, shaking her head. “Speaking of my hair, can you shorten it, or do I need to cut it?”

“No! Don’t cut it! The extrusion process takes much longer if we don’t let the synthetic follicles manage the biomaterials. I can adjust the length, in either direction, by about an inch per hour, to a certain point. If we run out of biomaterials, growth will take about ten times that long.”

“Okay, well, I guess leave it alone for now. If I have to start wearing a helmet all the time, though, we might go shorter.”

“Got it.”

Juliet stood and grabbed her little toiletries bag, making her way to the ship’s tiny head, essentially another closet attached to the storage bay. It had a toilet, a sink, and a small, mirrored medicine cabinet. Juliet stared at herself for a long minute, solidifying the fact that she was, in fact, Juliet and not a hormonal, young Tono. Her silvery eyes shone palely beneath her dark brows, and she bared her teeth, leaning close, looking for staining or, worse, something caught between them; she hadn’t brushed the night before. Seeing nothing amiss, she bent to the little tap and got to work, scrubbing her teeth, using the exercise as a metaphor for washing away the residual emotions from her deep dive into Tono’s mind.

A few minutes later, crouching low, she climbed into the crowded little cockpit of the Lady Hawk. Nick sat in the pilot’s seat, and when he heard her, he gestured to the empty acceleration couch to his right and about half a meter further back. “Morning. Grab a seat and get jacked in.” Juliet nodded and stepped over the center-mounted flight stick, sinking down into the gel of the acceleration couch. It was tighter, with higher sides than the ones in the Kowashi, but she fit all right, and the gel came to life right away, actively contouring her body.

She pulled her data jack out of her arm and strung it up to the little console, and then her AUI lit up with dozens of little graphical dials and readouts. A lot of the readouts were different from what she’d seen on the Bumble and the Kowashi, but she knew what most of them were after spending a few dozen hours in the sim with Angel’s instruction. She saw the route Nick had plotted, where they’d meet the gas rig, where they were escorting it, and then, when it was full, the path they were meant to take to Callisto.

“So, pirates really operate out here, huh? What’s in it for them attacking a big gas scooper?”

“Oh, yeah. Believe it. They usually disable the bigger ships and then demand a ransom not to blow ‘em up. A few crews operate big enough ships to scrap and salvage even the giant gas guzzlers, though.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, it’s a real industry out here.”

“Why don’t the corpos clear ‘em out? I mean, some of them have pretty big navies, don’t they?” Juliet continued to familiarize herself with the Lady Hawk’s readouts and controls while they chatted. She saw the status readings for the guns, saw the ammo counts, and realized Nick was flying a Ranger with a stock loadout—two thirty-millimeter cannons.

“They try, but the pirates are hard to pin down, and if you don’t hit ‘em with overwhelming force, you’re going to suffer some very expensive losses. Corpos tend to just rely on escorts, using their own pilots or, when they can’t cover all their ships, hiring jockeys like me.” He punched in a few commands on the weird, old, mechanical keyboard on his console—it looked like an aftermarket addition—then said, “Can you tell me what the hell was going on with you and Tono last night? Alice made it sound like you’d never been out toward Jupiter before.”

“Well, Nick, Alice doesn’t know everything about me. She’s right, though; I’ve never been out this way. I do talk to a lot of people, though, and I learned about a guy on Callisto who’s looking for his missing daughter. I was looking into him, thinking of taking on a new job, you know? Well, turns out some of the people he’s already hired think Tono might be responsible for his daughter’s disappearance. It’s kind of a freak coincidence, but I happened to hear about it. I had no idea who Tono was at the time, but I guess I made a lucky jump when I connected the dots.” Juliet shrugged, even though Nick wasn’t looking at her.

She’d rehearsed the line of bullshit while she’d been brushing her teeth. It sounded ridiculous, the weird, farfetched story, but what was Nick supposed to think? That she’d read Tono’s mind? The simple fact was that the truth was harder to believe than the wild coincidence she’d just described. Nick seemed to draw the same conclusion as he fished his vape out of his pocket and took a drag. When he exhaled, he nodded and said, “Guess that was my lucky night. Shit, is that why they call you Lucky?”

“Something like that.” She glanced at the flight path. “Twenty minutes to rendezvous?”

“Yep. Pick up the big, fat bird, then follow her to Jupiter’s upper atmos.”

“We the only escort?”

“That’s right, sugar. Why do you think I get paid the big money?”

“Sugar?” Juliet raised an eyebrow.

“Ugh, sorry. Sometimes I fly with partners, you know, other interceptors, and we talk a lot of shit on comms. I didn’t mean anything by it . . .”

“I’ve heard worse. Just as long as you take me seriously where flying’s concerned, all right?”

“Yeah, ‘course. I mean, some of the best pilots I’ve known were hot chicks, Alice included.”

“Jeez! You were digging yourself out of one hole, and now you double down? ‘Hot chicks?’ Come on, Nick.” Juliet shook her head, equal parts amused and irritated. He hadn’t acted that way at all in the club, and she wondered if he was one of those guys whose personality altered significantly behind the wheel or, in this case, the flight stick.

“What? All right, all right.” He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m messing around; relax. Trying to get a feel for you, ‘kay? I mean, time goes a lot faster out here if you can bullshit with your copilot.”

“We can bullshit, but, like I said, take me seriously.”

“Roger, Sarge.” His response got a smile out of Juliet—something about his tone and the words brought to mind Houston and Charlie Unit, and, as long as she didn’t let her mind wander far enough to dwell on how things ended with them, she liked to think about those guys.

“You do any time in a military unit?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, drumming his hands on the sides of his acceleration couch. Juliet wondered what music he was listening to. “Back in the day. I met Alice around Venus, where we both flew for the civil defense force.”

“That’s right.” Juliet flipped through the ship’s console commands on her AUI, looking for his audio channel. She patched herself in, and suddenly her implants were pounding with bass-heavy electronica. “She told me that. Damn, I like this beat!”

“Hell yeah! I knew we’d get along.” He looked back at her and grinned, then he reached forward and grabbed his stick with one hand and the throttle with the other. “Ready to see what this lady can do?”

“Hit it!” Juliet yelled, even though their implants were perfectly capable of filtering their voices through the music.

“You asked for it!” Nick laughed, and then he pushed the throttle forward, and Juliet’s stomach tried to find its way out through her throat. She felt the couch working to compensate for the Gs, but it wasn’t enough, and she had to clench her abdomen, lock her neck muscles, and suck in tiny, consecutive breaths, fighting to keep the black tunnel walls in her vision from closing in. Angel helped, of course, regulating the pressure in her implants, directing her nanites, and stimulating her leg muscles to help her keep blood flowing. Meanwhile, Nick started to do barrel rolls and loops.

Juliet was torn between enjoying the thrilling fluctuating G forces, watching out the vid screen, studying the AUI, and watching Nick—she wanted to see how he was doing what he did, wanted to understand the nuances that allowed him to transition from maneuver to maneuver, pushing tremendous Gs while still maintaining control of the ship and avoiding blacking out. He didn’t have a flight suit any fancier than hers; his body wasn’t jacked into the acceleration couch—how was he so in control? Juliet could barely keep the darkness at bay, could barely control her eyes, let alone her hands.

She wasn’t sure how long he kept that throttle pegged, how long he kept rolling and looping the ship; the seconds bled into minutes which bled into each other as the thrill faded and Juliet’s world became one long straining workout, a constant struggle to keep from passing out. Finally, he relented, though, and slowly inched the throttle back, gradually dropping them back down to a single G, and when he turned to regard her, he wore a huge smile. “Shit, girl. I thought you’d be out by now! We held nine Gs for a few seconds there.”

“You . . .” Juliet gasped, grunting as her abdominal muscles started to cramp. Nick stared at her as she silently battled with the uncontrolled contraction. Angel and her nanites must have come to the rescue because her abs suddenly released, and she took in a long, shaky breath. “You were trying to make me pass out?”

“Just seeing what you’re made of. Nothing personal, but I gotta know what kinda shit you can tolerate out here. What’d you think, anyway?” His grin was absurd, and Juliet had the feeling he wanted her to compliment the ship’s—and his—capabilities. She decided to play it cool. “Not too bad, I guess. For a ship this size.”

“Seriously?”

While he stared at her slack-jawed, Angel spoke up, “Juliet, he was being quite reckless with your safety. If you had a little less physical tolerance and no nanites to help repair microbursts in your blood vessels, he could have caused you serious harm, especially with the vertical G-forces he was pulling!”

“So, tell me something, Nick. Can I be honest with you, or will you use everything I say against me? I mean, like, when it comes to giving or not giving a good report to Alice?”

“I’ll make you a deal.” He paused and reached up to pull his vape off a magnetic mount above his head on the edge of the viewscreen. After a long drag, he continued, “I won’t judge you until the final evaluation. Everything you tell me or do up to that point will be between you and me.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, go ahead, open up.”

Juliet stared at him for a second, and then she did just that, she opened up and tried to hear his thoughts.

I mean, I’m not gonna send Alice some nutjob or loose cannon. I’m good at keeping secrets, though, right? Shit, I hardly ever talk shit about my friends behind their backs. Well, unless I drink too much. Crap, have I already talked about Alice behind her back with her? Would I trust me if I were her? I’m not a bad guy, am I? Okay, bottom line: if she can fly, she can fly. Damn, those eyes are nice, though, and what about those legs? Oh, come on, old man, get your head straight! Alice will have your balls if you . . .

Juliet tuned him out with a physical effort that included jerking her eyes up to the AUI and trying to multiply some numbers she read there. It worked, and the music took center stage in her awareness again. She drummed her fingers on the arms of the acceleration couch, then looked back at Nick, who was still staring at her, waiting for her to “open up.” She cleared her throat and said, “Sorry, I was just making a note to add this to one of my playlists.”

“Oh, yeah? Shit, if you think it’s good now, wait ‘til we crank these beats while we’re in a dogfight.”

“Sounds nuclear.” Juliet smiled. “So, tell me, how long did it take you to be able to function so well during high Gs? I mean, do you have mods? How’d you keep such good control during that?”

“Practice, practice, practice. I know you’ve flown some big birds and probably some sims, but nothing gets you ready for the Gs more than . . . the Gs. Gotta get in the cockpit and put yourself through it on the regular. Is that what you were worried about? Alice already told me you weren’t actively flying, so I knew you’d be a little soft. Still, you held on, and that’s what it’s about. It’s all gravy now, Lucky.”

“Oh, cool.”

“There are some mods you can get, though. I don’t have any, mind you, but they’re out there. I don’t wanna talk to you like you’re a kid; you’re aware of this stuff, right? I mean, you wouldn’t be trying to be a pilot if you weren’t already interested . . .”

“Yeah, I know, Nick, thanks. I mean, we’re talking everything from a reinforced skeletal structure to Active-flex arteries and vessels to supplemental blood pumps to . . .”

“Right, right. All that crazy shit. That stuff helps, but nothing can replace skill. Keep that in mind.” He reached up and stuck his vape to the magnet again, then, as he made a slight course adjustment, asked, “You want me to set these flights up as SOA jobs? I don’t mind—worked with a few operators in my day, and they always get all excited to be earning some rep for flying . . .”

“Yes! That would be shiny!”

“Like chrome?” Nick chuckled, completing the popular phrase.

“Glassy, smooth, sun-blazed chrome, Nick,” Juliet laughed.

“Right on, well, sending you the job listing.”

“I’ve received a new SOA job card,” Angel announced, and then she put the minimized file on her AUI. Juliet zoomed in and read the “job” Nick had set up for her.

Posting #

J0987

Requested Role:

Interceptor Pilot

Rep Level:

D-S+

Job Description:

Co-pilot role on the Lady Hawk.  Escort gas harvesting ship for Greater Gas Corporation in the Jovian planet system. Escort from Io Station locale to Jupiter and then to Callisto main docks.

Compensation:

Professional Service Trade

Scavenge Rights:

Shared

Location:

Jovian System

Date:

June 12, 2108

“Professional service trade?” Juliet raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. You scare away thugs looking to rob me, and I’ll teach you how to fly like a boss.” Nick turned and winked at her, then, almost impulsively, reached up for his vape again.

“Do I get any compensation for inhaling all those fruity vape gasses?”

“Fruity? This one’s vanilla!”

Juliet made a gagging noise then, laughing, said, “Anyway, thanks for helping me get some rep while I’m out here with you.”

“A pleasure, milady.” Nick sucked on his vape. Then he gestured to the vid screen. “See that bright spot ahead? That’s the GG-702, our damsel in distress. We’ll be keeping her safe today and tomorrow.”

Juliet looked at the bright spot and watched as it grew larger. The glow resolved into drive plumes as the ship began to take shape. From their current distance, it still looked tiny, but Juliet knew better. The two tanks that comprised most of its hull could hold more than three hundred thousand tons of liquified gas. “Well, Angel,” she subvocalized, “we’re in it now. I hope Nick is as good as he says he is.”