Cyber Dreams 3.8 - Kaminari Kowashi (Patreon)

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-Plum

“Bennet, I’ll tie you to the reactor next time we’re in port,” Shiro groaned.

“Well, if you’re going to threaten me, pick something better than that! I love the reactor room,” Bennet chuckled.

“Look,” Juliet said, trying to capitalize on Bennet’s poor negotiation skills, “You guys want to get going, well, so do I. I’m not lying about my credentials. If you want me to fight someone or do some welding to prove it, just say so, but I’m telling you—I’m what you need, Captain.”

“A minute,” Shiro said, slowly sipping his beer, his eyes going glassy. Juliet followed suit, lifting her glass, but before she could take a drink, Bennet clicked his pint against hers.

“Cheers,” he said, then lifted his glass to his lips and drained the entire pint in one long, absurd pull.

“Cheers,” Juliet said, taking a much smaller sip and then setting her glass down.

“My wife, Alice, is sending you a contract to look over,” Shiro said, his gaze refocusing on Juliet.

“Okay, one sec,” Juliet replied, noting that Angel had put a blinking file icon on her AUI. “Open it,” she subvocalized.

“It’s an SOA contract, but the payment schedule is unusual,” Angel replied, opening the lengthy document for her to read. It was fairly standard, but Angel had highlighted a few oddities for Juliet. The Kaminari Kowashi was the contracting party, and Juliet figured the ship was a legal entity like a business. Her compensation was listed as two percent of the net proceeds from whatever they salvaged on their mission. Any payment she was due would be forfeited if she abandoned the crew before it returned safely to the Luna City docks. Finally, she would be responsible for assisting with engineering and salvage duties while the security needs were “light.”

“Can you give me an estimate of the salvage value?” she asked, refocusing on Murakami’s face.

“That’s hard. Depends on if we’re first to the site. Depends on what kind of deal we can make with the salvage yards.”

“Ballpark it,” Juliet said, starting to feel a little taken advantage of. That thought gave her enough pause that she subvocalized, “Angel, black out my vision for a few seconds.” As things went dark, Juliet tried to focus on her memory of Shiro’s face, his eyes, and his cranky expression.

“If we can get to the site at all, we’ll pull a minimum of fifty k worth of hull plates off it; those are usually left for the last scavengers. If we’re early or first, it could be closer to a couple of million bits worth of components.” As he finished speaking, Juliet began to “hear” his thoughts, but then it was drowned out by a chorus of garbled voices.

Damn, she’s looking fine today.

Oh, why won’t he just kiss me already?

Just a beer, all I want is a beer. What’s taking so long?

Do I have to go back? I don’t want to get back into that cramped, shitty ship.

What time was I supposed to . . .

“Angel!” Juliet subvocalized, “Turn my eyes back on!”

As her vision bloomed back into life, Juliet saw Shiro looking at her with narrowed eyes, and Bennet was getting out of his seat, apparently intent on returning to the bar. Angel said, “Your lattice was rapidly heating—it seems to be cooling now.”

“Uh, that’s a pretty big spread, Captain.” Juliet tried to cover her awkward behavior by rubbing at her temples.

“The nature of salvage—always a bit of a gamble.”

“Uh-huh,” Juliet said, then subvocalized, “Angel, amend the contract to five percent of net proceeds, sign it, and send it back.” She sipped her beer and sat quietly for a minute, watching Shiro’s face. He didn’t react, and she wondered if his wife, wherever she was, was consulting him at all about the contract process.

“It’s been returned, amended to four percent,” Angel announced.

“Fair enough.” She nodded to Shiro and added, “Okay, contract’s good. Wanna show me the ship?” She felt a bead of sweat rolling down her forehead, and when she scooted her chair back, a brief wave of dizziness washed over her. Juliet covered well, though, gripping the tabletop with her plasteel hand. When it faded, she saw Shiro standing up, waving toward the bar where Bennet was already starting to wend his way through the crowd, holding a full pint.

When he saw Shiro and Juliet moving toward the open bay door, he shrugged and drained the pint, then turned and slammed it back on the bar. Shiro paused outside, and Juliet stood beside him, waiting for Bennet to make his way out of the bar. Watching him shoulder through the crowd, Juliet again admired his toughness; he wasn’t a huge man, but it was clear that he was built like a block of cement under those grease-stained gray overalls.

“Heading out already?” he said when he walked up, not a hint of a slur to his words.

“Yeah, if you’re going to press me into hiring the first merc who applies, we might as well capitalize and get moving.” Shiro turned and started walking quickly away, and Juliet and Bennet locked eyes for a second. He smiled and shrugged, and she shrugged back; she might not be the best candidate, but she’d gotten the job, so she wouldn’t take offense at Shiro’s assessment.

They followed Shiro deeper and deeper into the spaceport, and the clean, lightly populated area where Juliet had debarked the shuttle from Phoenix faded to a dim memory as they pressed through crowds of people waiting for passenger liners or cargo ships. Some of the gathered travelers looked like ordinary people going on a trip, and some looked like desperate refugees. After they passed the crowds of “passenger freight,” as Bennet colorfully described them, they moved into the more industrial docking section.

The docking collars in this area were a lot larger and further apart, and though they had to contend with crowds, they were lighter, and it became more a matter of avoiding freight trucks and forklifts. “Almost there,” Shiro called after nearly twenty minutes, a time in which Juliet began to truly appreciate the size of the Luna spaceport—judging by the distant horizons before and behind them, they’d only traversed a small percentage of it.

“Over here,” Bennet called, turning toward the plasteel base of the dome where a round, windowed port hung. “Let’s give her a look at the Kowashi.”

“Aye,” Shiro said, altering course toward the viewport. “Want to see your home for the next month or so?”

“Sure,” Juliet said, following behind. When she stepped up to the “glass,” she touched the fingers of her left hand to it. It was cold, almost uncomfortably so, and when she clicked her nails against it, it felt a lot like metal. “Is this what the dome is made of?”

“Yeah. Diamatex,” Bennet said. “Nanites shit it out when you supply ‘em with the right materials.”

“Huh,” Juliet said, leaning closer to the transparent surface and looking outside. A nearly square, building-sized ship sat out there on the nearest plasteel landing pad. It wasn’t pretty, but its ugly, squat appearance and asymmetrical shape were oddly pleasing to Juliet. It looked tough and weathered, and capable. She could see the drive cones hanging out between the enormous landing struts, and they looked powerful. Several articulating arms were folded near the front of the big ship, and she wondered if they were used to grasp salvage or wield gigantic plasma torches.

“Beauty, ain’t she?” Bennet asked, and Juliet glanced toward Murakami, noting the pride on his face.

“Yeah,” she said earnestly, “she really is.” The vessel might once have been a uniform color, but different sections of it were different colors, all variants of blue, black, yellow, or gray. “What’s with the paint job?”

“Well,” Bennet said, “when you have to repair hull plating, depending on the manufacturer or the dry-dock, they come in different colors.”

“Waste of money to paint whole ship,” Shiro shrugged and turned toward the closed, circular door that led to the docking tube.

As he walked away, Juliet said, “Well, like, couldn’t you just paint the new shielding materials as you put them on?”

“Eh, I’m with Shiro. Paint don’t mean shit out in the black for a workhorse like the Kowashi.” He started walking, looked back at Juliet, still staring out the window, and said, “C’mon, I’ll show you around the ship.”

“What’s it mean?” Juliet asked, following after Bennet, “The ship’s name?”

It was Shiro who answered, having typed in his access code and waiting for the door to cycle open. “Kaminari Kowashi means, roughly, Thunder Breaker. My father named it.”

“Huh,” Juliet nodded, “cool name for a salvage vessel, I guess.” She ducked into the circular docking tunnel, following Shiro and Bennet. They soon came to another doorway, this one dark, grayish-brown plasteel, and Shiro held his hand to a biometric panel on the side of it. A moment later, with a loud hiss, an explosion of foggy air, and a faint grinding sound, the door swung open on automated hinges, allowing passage into a dimly lit, square airlock. Bennet and Shiro stepped through, and Juliet followed.

Shiro walked toward the far door, held his hand to the panel, and a countdown appeared above the door. A woman’s voice said, “Cycling airlock in ten, nine, eight . . .” Juliet heard the door behind her click closed with a hiss, and then her ears popped as the countdown continued.

“Shouldn’t we be at station standard pressure?” she asked over the noise of the announcement and the hissing air.

“We are,” Bennet said, then followed up with, “Mostly. I’ve got a couple kinks in the system I’m trying to work out.” He shrugged, and then the countdown ended, the hissing stopped, and the inner door swung open. Juliet stepped through, careful not to leap through the metallic ceiling in the light gravity outside the dome. Shiro had paused in the wide, industrial hallway outside the door and gestured to Bennet.

“He’ll show you around, introduce you to the others. I gotta deal with the portmaster.” With that, he strode away, boots clicking on the metal flooring, which reminded Juliet that she’d need to get some magnetic boots to wear aboard the ship; if they weren’t under the influence of the drive, she’d be floating around without them.

As if he’d read her mind, Bennet said, “We’ve got a closet full of old gear; we can get some magnets to hook onto your boots. We’ll probably be under acceleration more than half the trip, though, except when we’re cruising at her top speed.”

“The salvage job is near Titan, right?”

“Near enough—what’re a few million klicks in space?” He chuckled, then started down the long hallway, “C’mon, let’s go meet Aya.”

“Aya?” Juliet echoed, following after him. Bennet didn’t slow or explain, and Juliet followed him through a series of dim, brown-gray metallic corridors, down a couple of lifts, and then toward an oversized automated double door. He touched his hand to the bio reader, and it slid open a little haltingly, and Juliet followed him into an enormous space. “This must be the cargo hold,” she said, feeling kind of stupid for stating the obvious.

Judging by what she’d seen of the outside of the ship, she figured the hold must take up half of its mass. It was about thirty meters to a side with a ceiling some twenty meters over their heads. A few pieces of heavy equipment were strapped to the deck here and there, including a couple of welding rigs very much like the one Juliet had spent a big part of her adult life inside. They were a little more robust with some features she could only guess at—were those maneuvering jets?

A woman yelled something that sounded like an expletive from beneath a nearby vehicle that resembled a small olive-green bulldozer equipped with two articulating, pincer-tipped arms instead of a blade. Bennet walked toward the back of it and shouted, “Aya! Come out of there for a minute and meet our new crew.”

“Huh?” the voice sounded from under the machine. Juliet saw her legs and boots sticking out from underneath, and then Bennet grabbed her ankle and gave her a tug, sliding a small woman out over the metal decking. She had short dark hair and wore a silvery visor. Juliet looked at the visor, wondering if it was permanent, but she saw the strap going around the back of the woman’s head and took in the dials and knobs, wondering just what kind of custom functions they performed.

“I said, meet our new crew—Lucky.”

“Hey,” Juliet said, waving.

The woman, Aya, apparently, sat up and kicked at Bennet, who danced back with a chuckle. She reached up and lifted her visor to her forehead and peered at Juliet with pretty, pale yellow eyes. “Lucky?”

“That’s right,” Juliet said, reaching out her plasteel hand.

Aya gave it a friendly slap, then said, “You’re the muscle, huh? Hope you can do some real work, too.”

“I can work those welding rigs pretty well,” Juliet said, nodding to the big, metallic exoskeletons with their built-in torches.

“Oh?” Aya’s flinty voice rose an octave, and she smiled. “Good! Bennet, leave me alone now; I need to fix the clawcat’s hydraulic line.” With that, she pulled down her visor and slid back under the “clawcat.”

“All right, Lucky,” Bennet said, turning back to the cargo bay door, “one more crew member to meet—Alice.”

“Alice . . . that’s Shiro’s wife?”

Bennet chuckled and said, “Yeah, but don’t describe her like that if you want to stay on her good side. She’s the pilot and manages the business side of things. Used to work for Murata Corp, flying interceptor missions around Venus, you know, protecting the carbon harvesters. Racked up a lot of pirate bounties, too. Anyway, she’s pretty cool.” Bennet walked to what he described as the central lift, then punched the top button. “Bridge is up top. After we meet Alice, I’ll show you your quarters, then we can tour the living spaces and engineering. I’ve got a few jobs you can help me with while we’re cruising toward Saturn.”

“Okay, sounds good,” Juliet said, holding onto the side of the elevator as it surged and clunked its way up. The walls of the “lift” were battered and scratched, the plasteel plates on the floor bearing hundreds of scrapes and stains, and she wondered just what kinds of equipment they lugged around the ship, up and down the lift, to make those marks. “How old is this ship?”

“Not sure exactly. I think Shiro’s dad ran it for a few decades before he sold his rights to Shiro. I’ve been with him for twelve years, and he was going a long time before I joined.” Bennet shrugged. Considering those words, Juliet figured the scrapes and stains were just the hallmarks of a salvage ship that’d seen a lot of use for a lot of years. The lift lurched to a halt, the doors opened, and Juliet followed Bennet down a short hallway to another pair of gray-brown doors.

He touched his hand to the bio-lock, it hissed open, and then they were inside the bridge of the Kaminari Kowashi. Big viewports occupied the far wall, and Juliet’s eyes were instantly grabbed by the view of the expansive lunar surface that they provided. She could see the dark black of space contrasting with the gray-white surface of Luna with its weird ridges, dips, and little hills, and she wondered how much of that surface had been altered by the construction of Luna City and its domes and how much had never been touched by humankind.

“Who’s this?” a cheerful voice asked, and Juliet jerked her eyes away from the viewports. She saw a woman, short and wiry, with curly red hair, pale skin, and chromed eyes that reminded Juliet a lot of Angela Chaudhry’s, enough so that she found her heart starting to race at the memories they evoked. Still, she pulled herself together enough to step forward and hold out her hand.

“I’m Lucky. I think you and I were negotiating over my contract earlier.”

“I figured,” Alice said, grasping her hand and quickly shaking it. “I’m glad the boys found someone so fast; we’ve got a hot lead on a fresh wreck, and if we can get hauling ass, we might be first on the scene. I hope you know how to use that thing.” She gestured to Juliet’s MP5 and smiled. She had a fairly thick Australian accent, and Juliet wondered about that; had she been born in Australia, or were there colonies around Venus where people had that accent?

“I do, Alice,” Juliet said, patting the SMG with her left hand. “It’s nice to meet you—that’s exciting about the salvage lead. It’s near Titan?”

“Yep! I’ll give you more information as we get underway. Don’t know you well enough to let this info spill while we’re in port, though. No offense.”

“None taken.” Juliet shrugged.

“Right,” Alice walked over to one of several consoles on small metallic desks in the bridge and said, “Come ‘ere, and I’ll put your bio specs into the ship’s database. You know, so you can open doors.”

“Oh,” Juliet said, walking toward her, “okay.” Alice tapped at the screen, then pointed to a flat bio panel like the ones on the doors and said, “Put your hand there.”

Juliet thought about it for a minute, then, figuring she might want to be holding a gun and opening a door at the same time at some point, she placed her left hand onto the panel. A moment later, it beeped, and a green LED lit up. “You’re all set,” Alice said. “Bennet, can you show her to Claudia’s old room?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“We’re going to get going as soon as Shiro clears things up with the port authority. I’m going to push this old girl as hard as I can for the first burn, so you’ll want to be in your bunk or an acceleration couch here on the bridge—they’re designed to distribute the forces and support your organs and skeletal frame. Don’t worry, we’re just talking two Gs or so.”

“How long?” Bennet asked, a strained note in his voice.

“Just half a day, then we’ll drop to one G.”

“Okay,” he said, visibly relieved. He looked at Juliet and said, “We’ll need to perform maintenance on the drive after that first burn.”

“Sure,” she said, nodding. Hoping her experience with motors and Angel’s know-how could help her avoid looking like a complete idiot. Bennet nodded and moved out of the bridge, back toward the central lift, and she followed, excited, nervous, and relieved that they would be making decent time toward Saturn and, consequently, Honey. “Hang on, Honey,” she subvocalized, “we’re coming.”

“Yes, we are,” Angel replied. “Yes, we are.”