Cyber Dreams 3.39 - Worth Killing For

Here's today's installment. I'll be watching the comments :)

Have a nice weekend. Oh, I almost forgot to mention - I'm taking a trip to visit family. I'm bringing my laptop, so work will continue, but my posts might come later in the day for a couple of weeks.

Thanks!

-Plum

“What do you mean ‘valuable,’” Juliet asked aloud, meeting Aya’s gaze and winking.

“This drive is loaded with images of packaged vials labeled Jovian Mist, a controlled narcotic in most Sol System jurisdictions. It includes images of people handling the packages, maps of pickup and drop-off locations, and a database of known vendors, from the street level to major distribution managers. Juliet, it even has satellite footage of an underground factory on Europa with a description stating it’s the main manufacturing plant for the substance.”

“A blackmail cache?”

“I would argue that was the purpose of this drive, yes. Blackmail or ‘insurance’ for someone operating in the distribution chain of the drug.”

“And it’s valuable for those reasons. I don’t know if we should get mixed up in this sort of thing. I doubt those mercs were the only ones who would think this data is worth killing for.” Juliet said, still looking at Aya, who was eagerly listening to her one-sided conversation.

“We need to figure out who that ‘broker’ was. He may be the one who planted this drive. He might have been the only one who knew about it,” Angel replied.

“What’s going on?” Aya asked, her voice rising with impatience.

“This data is dangerous,” Juliet said, “and maybe valuable. Could we sell it to the authorities? Think there would be a reward? If it weren’t in our hands, we’d be out of danger, right?”

“Potentially,” Angel replied, “Perhaps that’s a job for Shiro or Alice—they have connections here.”

“What is it?” Aya practically wailed.

“Okay, okay,” Juliet replied, then explained what Angel had found on the drive.

“That sounds sketchy. Scary, even.” Aya frowned, shaking her head and scooting her stool away from the synth as though the data could somehow contaminate her.

“Well, yeah, some mercs just boarded the ship and tried to kill us all for it. If nothing else, we need to get rid of it. I wonder if the synth knows who put it in there and if we need to worry about anyone else coming for it.”

“Should we fire him up?” Aya tapped the synth’s chrome foot.

“Wait,” Juliet said, pointing to her data cable. “There was a third port, right?”

“Right!” Aya said, reaching for the cable. She paused and looked at Juliet, “Okay to remove?”

“It’s fine,” Angel answered in Juliet’s ear. Juliet nodded, and Aya switched the cable to the third port.

“This one is also encrypted,” Angel announced.

“Encrypted,” Juliet sighed.

“Wanna mess with it later?” Aya asked, looking her up and down. “You should sleep.”

“No. I want to see what’s here so Shiro and Alice can take action if they need to. Hey, while my PAI is working on the encryption, why don’t you see if you can identify any of the faces on that other drive? The encryption’s gone.”

“Oh! Good idea.” Aya pulled a slim, palm-sized deck from the pocket of her overalls and unspooled a length of data cable, plugging it in next to Juliet’s. She hummed softly to herself while she worked, which Juliet found endearing and soothing, and soon her eyelids grew very heavy again, the excitement of learning what was on the encrypted drive fading, overtaken by her exhaustion and the soporific effect of the beer.

A clatter from Bennet’s workshop startled her awake, and she realized she’d been centimeters from sliding off the stool. She yawned hugely and looked toward the doorway to see Bennet walking in with a pair of toolboxes. “Hey, let’s see if we can fix that hand up a little.”

Juliet yawned again and looked at the offline synth, tracing the data cables running out of its head to see Aya sitting on the floor, staring, glassy-eyed, at her data deck. “Hey, Bennet,” she murmured, then, “How long you been working on that, Aya?”

“Twenty minutes. I’ve already got four names. All with bounties.”

“Well?” Bennet asked, setting his toolboxes on the counter with a clang.

“Uh, yeah, sorry, Bennet. I’m kinda out of it.” Juliet rested her damaged hand on the workbench. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing yet. Gonna see what we’re dealing with. Your PAI sent me the schematics for this thing.”

“She did?” Juliet asked softly.

“I did,” Angel replied. “You’re pushing yourself too hard, but I understand why you don’t want to leave this matter with the synth unresolved. I thought that if I sent the schematics for your hand to Bennet, it might spur him to hurry here and work on it. Why don’t you ask for a more comfortable chair? There’s no reason you should be awake at the moment.”

Juliet started to subvocalize a response, “There aren’t any nearby . . .”

“Lucky, did you weld this finger on?” Bennet asked, interrupting her. He’d leaned close and was looking at the bottom joint of her pointer finger.

“Only partially. Just heat it up and pull it off with pliers—nothing’s connected inside.”

“Okay . . .” he dragged the word out, shaking his head. “Revising my estimate on how difficult this repair is going to be.”

“You have the fabrication printer,” Aya said, then turned to Juliet and added, “He can make small parts easily enough.”

“Well, not with the same kinds of alloys the hand was manufactured with . . .”

“It doesn’t matter, Bennet.” Juliet held the back of her hand to her mouth, trying to stifle yet another yawn, and offered him a sleepy smile. “I’m getting a new arm when we get back to Luna. If you can get it working, at least temporarily, that would be awesome.”

“I got you, Lucky. Don’t even think about it.” He pulled a hand-held torch out of one of the tool kits, and as he sparked it to life, Aya jumped up, leaving her deck on the floor where she’d been reclining.

“No problem, Lucky. Be right back!” she said, then hurried out the door.

“Where’s she going?” Juliet asked. Bennet shrugged, but Angel answered her.

“I asked her to find you a chair you could sleep in.”

“Oh, Angel . . .” Juliet sighed but stopped her initial impulse to complain. Instead, she said, “Thank you.” Only a minute or so later, Aya wheeled in an ancient-looking desk chair with puffy cushioning that bore the marks of many duct tape-inspired repairs.

“We keep this in the wiring corridor. Always nice to be able to wheel around and save your back when running new lines. Come on, Lucky, sit down in it; you can lean way back.”

“Yeah, do you wanna tell her about the time you forgot to strap it down?” Bennet chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

“Thanks, Aya. That’s sweet.” Juliet slid off the stool and sat in the chair, sighing heavily as she sank into it. Then she leaned back and almost immediately closed her eyes.

“Uh, here,” Bennet said, “Put your hand on the stool.”

“Right.” Juliet did so. A few seconds later, she felt him turning her wrist, examining her hand. She heard his screwdriver whirring, felt the pressure on her palm, and knew he was removing the tactile pads from her palm and fingers. It was kind of relaxing, feeling him manipulate her fingers, listening to the driver, and trying to guess what he was working on. She fell asleep almost immediately.

#

Juliet stood on a bare concrete floor, glossy and smooth, clearly well traversed. Even before she looked around, she was instantly overcome by a sense of vast space. It wasn’t dark, so as she let her gaze travel up from the floor toward the walls, she saw that she was in a cavernous building that made her think of some kind of aircraft hangar. “No, not a building,” she revised, scanning the far wall with her augmented vision, some fifty meters away. It was concrete, also, but only where it wasn’t natural stone. She turned left and right, seeing similar construction—concrete mixed with natural stone.

“Where am I?” she wondered briefly, trying to fight with her brain to stop looking around and remember where she was or, failing that, where she should be. What was the last thing she remembered? Panic almost overtook her as the answer wouldn’t come to her, then an image floated through her mind: soft brown eyes, curly black hair, and a big smile with brilliant white teeth. “Honey,” Juliet laughed. She’d been looking for Honey! Where? The moon! “No . . .” she shook her head, trying to follow the train of thought, but something caught her eye in the enormous hangar-cave. Her eyebrows creased in concentration as she stared at a pile of plasteel crates around twenty meters away to the left. “Were those there before?”

A flash of color distracted her, and she jerked her head further to the left and saw a man, his entire body built from gleaming chrome, standing in the shadows near the distant concrete wall. What was the color she’d seen? She stared at him, willing her augmented eyes to zoom in, and then she saw it again—he opened his eyes, and they gleamed with red light. There was something malevolent about them, and Juliet recoiled instinctively, taking a step back. With a click and a clank, the chrome man began to step toward her. Juliet felt cold panic run icy fingers down her spine, and she turned to run, nearly tripping herself.

She could hear him pursuing her, click-clank, click-clank, click-clank, his steps rapidly growing louder and closer, and then something happened in her chest, something like fire igniting her heart, and the cavernous, concrete space broke apart in a shower of white and gray motes.

#

“. . . the hell, Lucky?” Bennet cried as Juliet thrashed away, nearly smacking him in the face with her arm as she threw herself out of the chair. Her data cable ripped out of the synth’s data port, and she painfully crashed down, banging her knees and an elbow on the hard floor.

“Ugh!” she groaned, “What happened?” Her heart was racing, her ears were thundering with the rush of her blood, and she felt like she’d run a marathon as she gasped for breath, sweat pouring down her brow to drip on the plasteel. Her mouth tasted of copper, and as her stomach twitched and convulsed, she struggled not to gag, not to throw up the beer and protein bars she’d consumed.

“I believe you were having a true-dream,” Angel replied. “I had to wake you; the lattice was becoming dangerously hot.”

“Oh my God,” Juliet groaned, flopping down, off her sore elbow and knees to lay flat on the floor.

“Were you having a nightmare?” Bennet asked, stooping to pick up several tools he’d dropped when Juliet had thrashed awake.

“Sort of.” Juliet’s eyes fell on her hand, saw she had a working pointer finger but that several of the exterior plasteel cover plates were missing, and said, “Hey, you got it working?”

“Yeah, of course. I had to fabricate a couple of actuation rods and a lubricant tube. Had to straighten a few bent pieces, but it wasn’t that bad. I mean, the parts I put in aren’t as good as the originals, but they should hold up for a good long while.” He held out a hand, helping Juliet to stand, “I was just buttoning you up. Need to put a few pieces back on and then all the tactile pads. Aya found the one that came off your middle finger, by the way. When I mentioned it was missing, she went and hunted through your blood puddles to find it.”

“Sheesh, poor girl,” Juliet chuckled, sitting back down in her chair. She held out her hand so Bennet could get back to work. “Where is she?”

“Cleaning. Said she didn’t want you to feel like you had to help when you woke up. I think she’s like, I don’t know, smitten isn’t the right word, but let’s just say she’s very damn impressed by you.”

“Oh, brother.” Juliet sighed and said, “That’s just ‘cause she doesn’t know me well enough to see what a screw-up I am.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got that part covered.” Bennet smirked as Juliet scowled at him. “What? Were you fishing for a compliment?”

“Just finish up there, buddy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Angel, how the hell did you wake me up? I feel like I just ran a five-mile sprint.”

“Part of that is your body’s exhaustion—you only slept for forty-two minutes. The other part is that I had to release a potent mixture of hormones into your system, a large percentage of which was adrenaline.”

“Well,” Juliet continued to subvocalize, “it worked. Guess we know your theory was correct.”

“What were you dreaming about, Juliet?” Angel asked.

“It was weird; I was in a big, cavernous space, but my brain kept thinking of it as a hangar for some reason. It felt like it was underground. Angel, a man, or a synth was chasing me in there. His entire body was chromed.” She suddenly remembered her data cable and said, “Shit! What happened with the data port?”

“This encrypted drive only had one thing on it. An image of a plasteel hatch amidst a pile of boulders. The file name looks like X and Y axes—coordinates.”

“Can you figure out where the hatch is from those coordinates?” Juliet asked aloud, causing Bennet to look up from his work. “My PAI cracked the second drive. It just has an image of a hatch with coordinates.”

“I can certainly pinpoint the location if you can tell me which planet, moon, or large asteroid the coordinates reference.” Juliet swore she heard some snark in Angel’s voice.

“Well, did you try Titan?”

“Yes. If the hatch is on Titan, it’s a thousand kilometers from New Atlas, and I cannot find any satellite photos of the location online.”

“If . . .” Juliet let her mind wander while Bennet got back to work, fastening the tiny screws that held her tactile pads in place. “These criminals are from the Jovian System, right? Maybe it’s one of the moons around Jupiter.”

“There are many moons around Jupiter.”

“Can you analyze the picture? Look at the rocks, the soil, the lighting, even? Try to figure it out that way?”

“Yes, I had a similar thought. I’m working on it, but I’m limited by the information I can find on the public nets. I’ll let you know if I figure out anything definitive.”

“’Kay.” Juliet leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes, breathing slow, even breaths, trying to calm herself after the wild ordeal of having another true-dream and being woken with a burst of adrenaline. “Bennet,” she murmured.

“Yeah?”

“Can you turn Engineer on? I want to talk to him.”

“Uh, you sure that’s wise?” He turned her hand over and began reattaching the plates he’d removed, slipping them under her knuckles and using a little screwdriver to pry them back so they dropped into tiny, hidden notches.

“Yeah. Angel analyzed most of his code, I mean, at least the obvious bits.” When he didn’t move, she opened her eyes and said, “It’s fine, Bennet. If he does something shifty, I’ll shut him down.”

“All right,” he said, standing up and moving around to the back of the bench where Engineer lay. He twisted the synth’s head so he was looking at the back of it. Then, after he fiddled around for a minute, Juliet heard a click, and Engineer’s LED eyes flashed rapidly and then resumed their usual, steady glow.

“Hello, Lucky,” he said, then carefully straightened himself, sitting on the edge of the bench. Bennet walked around him to sit down, resuming his work on Juliet’s hand.

“Hi, Engineer. Do you know where you are?”

“I’m in Mr. Lang’s engineering department. This is where he asked me to shut down properly.”

“Good. So, Engineer, a man came here with some mercenaries. He was looking for you; he tried to kill us all to take you. Any idea who that might have been?”

“Can you share an image of the perpetrator?”

“Shall I send one?” Angel asked.

“Yes,” Juliet said, answering them both.

“The man with the green hat band is Einstein Torez. He’s the brother of my former owner, Captain Torez of the Bumble.”

“Einstein?” Bennet laughed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you remember him modifying your data port? Adding a couple of encrypted drives?”

“I do have memories of Einstein and Captain Torez working on my data port on many occasions. They often connect data cables to me but didn’t say what they were doing.”

“That clears some mysteries up. So, was Einstein working the same drug-running business as your old captain?”

“He managed things in New Atlas.” Engineer’s eyes blinked rapidly for a moment, and he reached up to scratch at his shiny stainless skull in a surprisingly human manner.

“Okay, this is very important, Engineer. Think about it hard before you answer. Is there anyone else that might know what they were doing to your data port? Anyone else who might come looking for what they put there?”

“No, ma’am. They were fastidious in their paranoia. They never accessed me in that manner if anyone else was around.” As Engineer finished speaking, Bennet thumped the back of her hand and stood up from his stool.

“You’re all set, Lucky. Best I can do.” He turned to Engineer and asked, “Hey, synth, is there anyone else that might come looking for you? Your old captain have other brothers or anything?”

“Not that I can think of, sir. He had a long list of enemies, but I can’t imagine any of them would want anything to do with me.”

“Can you tell all that to Shiro, Bennet?” Juliet asked, also standing up. “I need to get some sleep.”

“Hell yeah. No problem. Uh, Engineer. You are hereby confined to this space. Don’t touch anything without clearing with me first.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lang. Thank you for housing me! I will sit upon this bench and continue to enjoy my favorite serial vids until you have a task for me.”

“Night, guys,” Juliet said, shaking her head at Engineer’s words. She paused in the doorway, looked back at the synth, and said, “Hey, Engineer, do you think you’d like a different name?”

“I think I would like a name that didn’t sound like a job title, yes.”

“Well, think about it and let us know. Bennet’s pretty creative if you need some ideas.”

“Hey!” Bennet groaned, but Juliet was already walking down the corridor toward the lift, a smile on her face and her mind already anticipating the cool gel of her acceleration couch.