Cyber Dreams 4.12 - A Ghost

Happy Friday, all. I hope you enjoy this chapter - it was kind of fun to write. Let me know what you think!

-Plum

“How long ‘til we ship out?” Juliet had a comfortable buzz, was on her second beer, and found herself feeling more relaxed, her smiles coming easier in the club as she listened to Nick talk about his ship, his time flying with Alice and life in general around Jupiter.

“Got an escort job starting tomorrow. We’ll shadow a ram scoop rig and keep it safe while it fills up in the outer atmosphere. When they’re done, we’ll escort ‘em to Callisto.”

“I . . .” Juliet’s mind buzzed with the many questions that simple sentence stirred. “Sorry.” She blushed, nodding toward the beer in her hand. “I think my tongue’s a little slow compared to my brain right now. Anyway, why a ram scoop around Jupiter? I know they do it, but isn’t it mostly hydrogen and helium? I mean, I know those are valuable, but, like, aren’t there easier ways to get those gases?”

“Oh, I guess so, but plenty of big corps have been scooping that atmosphere for decades now. Plenty of people speculate about Jovinium.” He shrugged, sipped his drink, and narrowed his eyes when Juliet’s face reflected her confusion. “Haven’t heard those theories?”

“No . . .”

“There’s nothing official on the public sat net about any element called Jovinium,” Angel offered, trying to help Juliet clear up her confusion.

“I mean, they’re conspiracy theories, but you made a good point—there are easier ways to get hydrogen and helium. Us grunts who work the ships often wonder what the big corps like Mass Gas are doing with all these big ships full of air they’re pulling out of the planet’s upper atmosphere. Sure, they sell the hydrogen and helium on the market, but . . . well, plenty of people better at math than me say the numbers don’t add up. They’re getting something more out of those tanks. Hence the Jovinium theories.”

“Huh.” Juliet sipped her beer.

“Intriguing!” Angel’s voice rose excitedly as she continued, “I’m going to do some digging about this! Isn’t it fascinating to imagine there’s an element out there that certain corps have discovered but are keeping a secret? What do you think the applications might be?”

“I don’t know . . .” Juliet let her voice trail off and shrugged, fine with Nick thinking she was talking to him.

“Yeah, I know. Crazy. I just fly my ship, shoot down pirates, and keep to myself.”

“So, like, where do you live? I mean, between jobs? You have a place here?”

“On Io Station? Hell no. I’m not shelling out two k a month for a plasteel closet. I’ve got a place down on Callisto, though. Sometimes I think I’m throwing money away, considering I’m only there about one in every ten days. At least it’s not a rental.” He shrugged and sipped his drink.

“Nice place?”

“Decent. It’s in one of the newer domes, one of the big agricultural ones. I’ve got a full acre, and all I have to do to keep the land commission happy is let a guy pay me to harvest the genned walnut trees I’ve got growing there.”

“He pays you?”

“Pretty sweet deal, eh?” He shrugged again and made a funny, dismissive sound with his lips. “It’s not enough to cover the mortgage, but it’s something.”

“It’s cool to think you own land on a moon, a moon of Jupiter no less!” Juliet held up her beer, and Nick clicked his glass against it.

“Cheers,” he chuckled.

“So? Where are you staying until we ship out? I don’t know if you caught the hint, but I’m trying to figure out where I’m sleeping tonight.”

“Ah! Right, right. I’m bunking in my ship, and, yeah, there’s a cot for you there, too. Well, an acceleration bunk in a room the size of a closet. I mean, there’re hotels here too, but the rooms won’t be much bigger, and you’ll have to deal with . . .”

“Nah, that’s perfect. A bunk in a closet will suit me fine.”

“You ready to head out, then?” He tossed back the rest of his drink—the third one Juliet had seen him finish. As Juliet nodded and pushed her half-empty bottle away, he stood up, tucking his little data deck into the back pocket of his jeans. “We’re only about a ten-minute walk from my berth.”

Juliet followed him through the crowded, noisy, smelly club, and when they stepped out into the dark, neon-lit alley, the air almost felt cool and fresh, despite its recycled nature. “Hang on,” she called as Nick started walking toward the corner, bypassing the small group of would-be clubgoers. When he looked back at her, she gestured to the lockers. “Gotta get my stuff.”

“Ah, right.” She saw him walk a dozen meters or so away from the club entrance and pull out his vape, leaning against one of the plasteel walls. He was mostly obscured by shadows there, but the amber LED flared brightly in the dim light as he took a drag, and Juliet turned back to the lockers. She pressed her thumb against one, and as it opened, she heard a new voice say, “Nicky Boy. Been a while.” She pulled her helmet and backpack out, then pressed her thumb to the other locker.

“Tono.” Nick’s voice was hard to hear above the rattle of music coming out of the club, the people talking in line, and the bouncer scolding someone about “too much metal,” but Angel tuned it in for her, and she continued to listen as she repacked her belongings.

“Been dodging me?”

“Why would I do that?” Nick’s voice seemed calm, cool even, but she thought she detected some tension.

“Maybe because you owe me something like a hundred large?”

“You’re kidding, right? Your pilot ditched me. I’m supposed to be able to read people’s minds now?”

“You let my pilot get melted over Himalia.”

“Ask yourself why your pilot was on Himalia when I was paid to escort him to Callisto.” Juliet heard a definite edge in Nick’s voice now, and she hurriedly stuffed the last of her clothes into her pack and yanked the zipper shut. She shrugged into the straps, then, rather than running it through her belt loops, she hung her gun belt over her shoulder like a bandolier and rested her hand on the needler’s grip. She hurried out of the little locker alcove, past the club entrance, and down the alley toward Nick and whoever was talking to him.

“I’d say it’s ‘cause you’re lazy or you got distracted by a nice piece of ass. Whatever the reason, my pilot was hung out to dry, and I’m out my share in his ship title.” The speaker hadn’t yet raised his voice, but Juliet could hear danger in his tone, an underlying promise of violence.

“I’m not doing this again. I sent you my report. I explained he flaked—nowhere to be found when I reported to the hangar. You’ve got a right to be pissed, but not at me. Now get out of my face.” As he said the last, Juliet came up beside him, and she saw it wasn’t just “Tono” he was speaking to. Two men faced Nick, blocking progress further down the alley. One, Tono, if Juliet was guessing, was slight and wore a silky, form-fitting gray turtleneck. Three thick gold chains hung from his neck, and their luster was reflected in his gold-capped smile. Next to him was a different sort of man—bulky and nearly half-chrome.

Tono’s hired muscle had arms and legs prominently displayed, jutting thickly out of his one-piece black denim jumper. They were powerful looking, shiny with articulated metallic plating, and Juliet guessed he could probably punch or kick through a concrete block with those things. His face was largely flesh and blood, though his eyes glared balefully beneath a heavy brow with smoldering red LED irises. His head was devoid of hair, and the crown was, somewhat unsurprisingly, chrome. “Is there a problem, Nick?” She edged to the side, moving so that Tono was between her and his chrome monster.

“Nah . . .”

“Yes. A rather large one,” Tono interrupted. He gave Juliet a cursory glance, his smooth-skinned face betraying no emotion.

“Tono, if you think I’m responsible for your dipshit pilot, you need to take it up with the commission. . .”

“Wrench.” As Tono said the word—name, it turned out—the chrome gorilla snapped out one of his bulky appendages, fast as a rattler striking a hare, wrapping his long, articulated chrome fingers around Nick’s neck. Juliet saw it happening, Angel even sped up her mental processing, so it wasn’t too fast for her to track, but her response to it wasn’t decisive enough to alter the course of events. She waffled between yanking out her needler or trying to take a step closer to punch her augmented arm out to deflect the grabbing hand. Of course, the idea was flawed from the beginning; the rest of her body, her legs included, weren’t fast enough to do anything in the milliseconds it took that chrome arm to reach Nick, but the wasted time thinking of and discarding the idea was enough to burn her chance to intervene.

Nick gasped and windmilled his arms, surprised and knocked off balance by the thug’s grab, and Julliet yanked her gun out and pointed it at Tono. “Let him go.”

“If you shoot me, Wrench will pop Nick’s head from his shoulders.”

“I can’t . . .” Nick started to say, but his voice choked off as his face turned red and his mouth opened in a slow, strangled wheeze; Wrench had applied some pressure.

“I’ll shoot Wrench first, then.” Juliet put her crosshairs between Wrench’s eyes.

“I hope you have some serious armor-piercing needles in that little toy. Wrench has a Resilite treated skull.”

“Resilite . . .” Juliet breathed, frowning.

“It’s a carbon-based nano-coating that makes bones extremely durable. While not fully bullet-proof, the coating is highly efficient at distributing kinetic forces . . .”

Angel stopped speaking as Tono laughed, exposing his gold-capped grill, reaching up to brush his curly black hair away from his face as he watched Nick struggle and Juliet scowl. “Never heard of it, huh? Probably best to stick to the kiddie pool for now. Let the big boys talk business. Wrench, let him breathe.”

His dismissal ignited a spark in Juliet, and she had to fight to keep her finger off the trigger, had to battle down the urge to step forward and smash her pistol grip into his forehead. The truth was, she felt like she’d been outplayed; she’d grown so confident lately, sure in the speed of her arm, the aim of her gun, and Angel’s capabilities. Now she was faced with a chromed-out monster that made her look like a helpless kid, and he had his fingers wrapped around Nick’s throat. Could she cut his arm off with a vibroblade? She doubted it; that arm was sturdy, and she had no idea what sort of alloy it was. Maybe if she had the monoblade . . .

While her mind raced, Tono looked to her right and said, “Not your business.” Juliet jerked her head to see the club’s bouncer nod and back away, clearly avoiding eye contact with her. She wasn’t surprised—how often had she seen people choose to avoid trouble rather than do the “right thing?”

“Let her get outta here, Tono.” Nick gasped.

“I give you a chance to breathe, and you waste it on that? I don’t care what this skinny doll does. I care about my money. You ready to sign a new contract?” While Nick gasped for air, maybe buying time, maybe truly unable to breathe, Juliet furiously sought ideas.

“Can you do anything to him?” she subvocalized, wondering if Angel could find some kind of port or exploit in the big man’s cybernetics.

“He’s hardened. Everywhere. I can’t find an open port and, even if you had the capability, I don’t think he’d feel an EMP . . .” Juliet felt her frustration mounting. All her training, all her enhancements, even armed while he was empty-handed, she was powerless. She supposed that wasn’t entirely true. She could kill Tono. She could unload her mag into Wrench and probably put him down. The only problem was that there was a great chance he’d kill Nick before he died. What it boiled down to was that these guys were willing to bet she wouldn’t watch Nick die.

Tono asked Nick something, but Juliet didn’t hear it—a thought had struck her like a lightning bolt. She was frantically searching for an action she could take, considering all of her options, her training, her gun, but she’d completely, almost like it was intentional, ignored her psionics lattice. She stared at Tono and slowly inhaled, willing his thoughts and secrets to come to her.

That’s right, Nicky Boy, time to cave. Your little doll can’t save you.

Juliet shook her head. That wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t care about his surface thoughts. She stared daggers at him, zooming in on his flashy neon-yellow irises, digging with imaginary fingers, pulling at his deeper memories. As she did so, something weird happened; Tono scrunched up his eyebrows and slapped a hand to his head, frowning and blinking rapidly, and Juliet saw a series of images flash through her mind’s eye:

Lexi held her—his—hand, her fingers soft and cool, delicate in his grip. He rested a hand at the top of the wheel, buzzing from the j-mist, from the endorphins of sex, and from the amazing potential ahead. Everything was open. Everything was possible. He looked into her bright, pale rose-colored eyes, watching her white-blonde hair blow in the open window, flicking back and forth under her chin, in front of her face, and then back as she smiled at him and brushed it to the side.

The image shifted:

Blood was everywhere. Broken glass, dirt, and shattered plastic clung to his hands and stabbed under his nails as he scrabbled around in the dark, smoky interior, trying to get ahold of Lexi, trying to pull her out. He finally got his fingers around her wrist and, with all his might, pulled her out, through the upside-down window, over the purple-blue Callisto grass. He sobbed and choked, bloody snot catching in his throat as it grew thick with emotion. She was dead. For sure, she was dead, one arm missing, her neck lolling around like a broken doll’s. What the fuck was he going to tell Carson? He’d kill him . . . no, no, Lexi had to disappear. That’s it. That’s it . . . she ran away with that punk, what was his name? Quentin. That’s it. They ran to Earth.

As Juliet blinked and stepped back, she had to stare at Nick, Wrench, and Tono for several long moments before she realized where she was. The visions had seemed so real, so vivid, so complete that she’d been Tono for a minute. It was disorienting and strange and not at all pleasant, and she was very glad to be back in her own body, her own mind. The panic and despair, the self-loathing and guilt that Tono had felt when Lexi died—Juliet had felt them all, had lived them, and she still felt the echoes of those emotions. She felt like vomiting, like running away and curling up in bed. She wanted to grieve that girl that she’d never known but somehow had loved and lost . . . and killed.

“Ten flights. That should cover what you owe me, Nick. Let’s get this contract settled, get you set up for your first job, and then we can put this unpleasantry behind us . . .”

“And my expenses in the meantime?” Nick rasped.

Juliet looked at Tono and studied his face, trying to guess how old he was. When she’d entered his memory, she’d gotten the impression he was young, just past the point of being considered a kid. Now he looked like he might be forty. She cleared her throat and asked, “Tono, when’s the last time you spoke to Carson?”

His eyes snapped wide open, and he gave her a double take, stepping back in surprise. “What did you say?”

“I said, when’s the last time you spoke to Carson?”

“Ahem, uh, Carson?” His tan complexion had lost three or four shades, gone pallid and a little green. “You mean Ben Carson?”

“Yeah. On Callisto.” Juliet lowered her gun and took a step closer.

“It’s, uh, been a while. You know Carson?”

“Sure. We were talking the other day. He was reminiscing about Lexi. You remember her, right?”

“Lex . . .” he licked his lips and looked left to right, then actually glanced over his shoulder. “Lexi? He mentioned her?”

“Yeah. He’s been trying to find her, trying to follow up on some rumors about the guy she ran off with. He couldn’t remember exactly who gave him the bullshit story about that, but your name came up. You know, I didn’t put two and two together when I saw you with Nick here, but then my PAI reminded me that I’d heard it. Your name, I mean, and it clicked. I think Carson’s looking for you.”

“For . . .” Again, he licked his lips and visibly swallowed. “For real?”

“Yeah. I’m wondering what he might pay to know where you got off to.”

“But, but how did he find out my new handle?”

“That’s a good question, bud. Those guys he was talking to, they were sure keen to find you, though.”

“Guys?” In a move that almost brought a snort of laughter out of Juliet, he spun in a circle, then faced Juliet. “Wrench, let’s go. We can catch up with Nicky Boy later.” Wrench complied, releasing Nick and stepping back, glowering, red eyes trained on Juliet.

“You want me to pass any words to Carson?” Juliet asked. She tucked her needler back in the holster, yanked her vibroblade out of its sheath, and stepped between Wrench and Nick. The blade hummed and buzzed in her hand, and she flipped it in the air, letting it tumble in a buzzing blur before she snatched it with her augmented arm. It was trivial, really, when Angel sped up her mental processing; the knife hardly seemed to be moving as she snaked her arm out to grasp the hilt with her nimble fingers.

Wrench narrowed his eyes, and she swore he nodded imperceptibly, perhaps a nod of respect. She may or may not be able to punch his ticket with that needler, but a six-inch vibroblade through the eye socket wouldn’t feel very good.

“How about I don’t mess with Nick anymore, and you forget you saw me?” Tono backed up further, and Wrench slowly followed suit.

“I guess that’s cool with me. I wouldn’t say I liked the looks of those guys he hired, anyway. Nasty, nasty-looking fellows.” Juliet shrugged and stretched out her arm, letting the tip of her vibroblade rattle against the plasteel wall of the building to her right. She delicately traced the outline of a heart, carving it into the hard surface. “Poor Lexi . . .” When she looked up, Tono and Wrench were gone, but she had tears in her eyes. She flicked off the blade and tucked it into her sheath.

“What the hell was that about?” Nick asked as he straightened up, rubbing at his raw, red throat.

“Lucky coincidence. I did an op where I heard some shit about that guy. Do me a favor, Nick, will you?”

“Yeah?”

“Let it drop for now. I’m not feeling great, and I want to hit the bunk. Let’s put this station behind us ASAP, all right?” Juliet wasn’t lying. She didn’t feel great; she felt sick. The weird hangover-like residue of Tono's horror and guilt still clung to her, confusing her emotions and sense of self.

“Yeah. No argument. I’ll drop it but let me at least say thanks. Goddamn, I’ve never seen Tono that shade of green—like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Yeah,” Juliet’s voice was soft, almost a sigh, as an image of rose-colored eyes and soft, flowing white hair flashed through her mind, “a ghost.”