Cyber Dreams 3.9 - Muscle (Patreon)

Please share your thoughts!

Juliet sat on the edge of her bunk—more of a gel-lined lounge chair than a bed—and looked around the quarters Alice had assigned to her. There was a faded poster on the gray-brown plasteel wall near the door, depicting a man in an EVA suit, a term Angel had filled her in on meaning extra-vehicular activity. The space-suited man was reaching for a tether while drifting into space, a smirk on his face visible through his dome-like helmet. The caption under the image read, “Just go with it.”

“Is that, like, supposed to be dark humor or something?” Juliet snorted,  deciding she kind of liked the poster. Other than that bit of decor and her bunk, she had a built-in chest of plasteel drawers, a small sink, and a mirror that functioned as a medicine cabinet. Bennet had shown her the showers and bathrooms down the corridor before leaving her to prepare for the launch.

“Be sure to recline in your sleep pod when they announce the launch,” Angel said, startling Juliet out of her musings about what kind of work she’d be required to do during the voyage. “The gel is designed to distribute the G forces and regulate blood pressure. Two Gs isn’t bad, but prolonged exposure to high Gs without supporting infrastructure can cause problems, such as . . .”

“It’s fine, Angel. I’ll be sure to climb in when it’s time.”

As if on queue, Alice’s voice crackled through the ship’s intercom, but her words weren’t what Juliet had been expecting, “Lucky? Time to earn your first paycheck—Shiro needs you at the airlock. I’m patching you in to our ship network, so you can add us to your AUI.”

Juliet watched as a HUD appeared on her AUI that listed the four other crew members of the Kaminari Kowashi, Shiro Murakami, Alice Murakami, Bennet Lang, and Aya Matsui. It wasn’t as detailed as the HUD the watchdog at Grave had provided about the members of her Zeta protocol unit, but it had their heart rates and made for easy, quick contacts through a ship channel. As soon as the names populated, Juliet said, into the new channel, “On my way.” Then she subvocalized, “Angel, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. What sorts of job requirements are there for an operator acting in this capacity?”

“SOA operators assigned as security for a small crew ship like this are meant to fulfill many different roles—personal security, contract negotiation, intimidation, reconnaissance, and retrieval, just to name a few—all of that plus their usual ship duties which are often quite diverse.”

“Okay, well, listen to what happens, and please do some research about how I should handle it,” Juliet replied, opening the door to her quarters and hurrying down the metallic hallway toward the lift. Crew quarters were near the top of the ship, just under the bridge level, and she needed to make it to the middle section where the airlock and docking collar were. She spoke into the ship channel as she hurried along, “Any heads up? I need my guns?” She already had her guns, but she was hoping to fish some information out of the rest of the crew.

“Definitely,” was all Alice said.

Juliet sighed and stepped into the lift, touching the button with the big number four on it, then waited the fifteen seconds while it clunked to life and haltingly lowered her down. She knew there were stairs or a ladder somewhere nearby that might have made the trip faster, but she didn’t know the ship well enough to skip the lift yet. “Angel, please build me a map HUD for this ship.”

“Already done,” Angel replied, and then, beneath her crew HUD, she saw the new map and watched as it populated with dots representing the crew and herself.

“Nice.” As the lift opened, she followed Angel’s dotted line toward the airlock. Juliet grabbed hold of her MP5, lifted it to a ready position, and smiled as the crosshairs and ammo counter populated her AUI. The counter read 30/30, and she knew she had high-grain, armor-piercing rounds loaded and ready to go. Her boots clunked on the metallic floor of the grimy, scarred-up passageways as she hurried toward the airlock. She had time to wonder if cleaning would be one of her shipboard duties before she came into sight of the airlock.

Shiro stood inside the square airlock before the round door leading back into the station, and he waved at her as she approached. “C’mon, we gotta go take care of something before we can get underway.”

Juliet frowned, hurrying her steps, and when she was a little closer, she said, “What is it?”

“Portmaster won’t release our clamps. I owe him some docking fees, but the bits were supposed to come out of our salvage claim. Assholes at the yard didn’t forward the docking fees, even though they deducted them from our pay. Gonna need to go talk to Ling, and he usually has some muscle. That’s why you’re coming.”

Juliet frowned, tapping her nails against the stock of her MP5, and contemplated telling Shiro that when it came to operator jobs, she wasn’t really muscle. She knew better, though; they weren’t off the moon yet, en route to Saturn, and she didn’t want to mess things up by acting like she couldn’t do what she’d advertised—security. “Angel,” she subvocalized, “any advice on how I’m supposed to play this part?”

“You have known some good operators that fit into the ‘muscle’ role, Juliet. Can you not imagine how Ghoul or Mags might handle this situation?”

Juliet grinned at the idea, picturing Ghoul with her chromed, sharpened teeth, her spiky hair, and her gravelly voice. Ghoul would handle this type of situation with ease. Nodding to herself, she decided that’s what she’d do; she’d channel her inner Ghoul. That decided, she tried to get her game face on, continuing to frown, deepening it into a scowl, and taking up a position behind Shiro, her submachine gun held crossways in front of her. She gripped the stock but kept her finger off the trigger—she’d been with enough experts to know nothing screamed noob more than an operator with no trigger discipline.

The airlock hissed, the lights flashed to green, and Shiro pulled open the exterior door. He glanced over his shoulder at Juliet and nodded. “It’s not far. We’ve been dealing with Ling for a few years now, but this is the first time he’s shorted us this much. He’s not responding to my pings, so we’ll pay him a quick visit.”

“Roger,” Juliet said, falling into the little habits she’d picked up from Charlie Unit.

Shiro walked quickly, but his legs were shorter than Juliet’s, and she kept pace easily. They hustled through the crowded industrial area of the shipyard, eventually coming to a plasteel building built up around a pair of docking collars. As they pushed their way through toward the big open bay doors, Shiro remarked, “Most of the scrap they buy from people like us gets shipped right out—down to Earth or off to Mars.”

The warehouse-like structure was busy; Juliet saw big forklifts, pallets of shredded, baled plasteel, and hand trucks loaded with all sorts of metals, plastics, wires, and even parts of engines. It reminded her a lot of her old job back in Tucson. In the distance, the arcs of cutting torches flashed in the dimly lit interior, and Juliet could smell the tell-tale scent of burnt metal and plastic. No one challenged or greeted them, and soon Shiro was banging his fist against a little office door in the far wall of the building.

The windows in the wall next to the door had blinds pulled, but Juliet saw one of them flip up and then down. “Someone’s in there,” she said. “Angel, thermals, please.” As her vision faded to grays, and she saw the bright bloom of Shiro’s body heat in front of her, Juliet ran her eyes over the windows and the closed door. She saw three distinct figures, one lurking by the door, one standing by the windows, and one in a seated position further back. “Three,” she said.

Shiro pounded on the door again and shouted, “Ling! We need to talk.”

“Fuck off!” a deep voice hollered from behind the door.

“That’s not Ling.” Shiro jiggled the handle, then looked at the biometric lock panel next to it. “Can you get past this? Or break the door?” He looked pointedly at Juliet’s plasteel hand.

“Yeah.” Juliet stepped forward, letting her gun drop, hanging from its sling. She pushed the sleeve of her jacket up on her left arm and pulled out her data cable, plugging it into the port on the lock panel.

“I’ll need a minute or two,” Angel said.

“Working on the lock. Give me a couple,” Juliet said, turning to scan the warehouse. She saw the bright red-orange outlines of people moving about doing their jobs, but none were approaching the little office.

“Didn’t know you could do that kind of work,” Shiro said, nodding appreciatively.

“Well, when I pop this and open the door, stand behind me, all right?”

“Hey, I can hold my own in a dustup.”

“The fact that you called a potential shootout a ‘dustup’ tells me my first instinct was right—please stand behind me.” Juliet grinned, imagining her words coming out of Ghoul’s mouth.

“Right, well,” Shiro moved back a couple of steps, but he pointed to the pistol, holstered on the belt he wore around his coveralls, “I know how to handle myself in a gunfight, too.”

“Noted,” Juliet said.

“I’m nearly there,” Angel said, but then added, “Remember, Juliet, you’re operating in Luna City, and though the spaceport doesn’t require a firearms license, a shootout will prompt an investigation. You should try to avoid escalating to that level of violence.”

“Yes, Angel,” Juliet sighed, then winked at Shiro and said, “My PAI is lecturing me.”

“Hah.” He shook his head, rubbing at the stubble along his jawline. The panel beeped, and the door clicked. Juliet retracted her data cable, then readied her MP5.

“One,” Juliet mouthed the word, then, “Two, three.” With her left hand, she quickly jerked the door open. The first thing she noticed was the body sprawled on the plasteel floor and the heavyset man leaning over, his backside to Juliet, rifling through its pockets. Juliet stepped forward, glanced to her left, and saw a slender woman holding a vibroblade to the throat of a man sitting behind a desk. She didn’t wait for introductions but took another step and kicked the first man hard in the butt.

The man was quite overweight, and he toppled gracelessly, his forehead smashing into a bottled water dispenser. He groaned at the impact, flailing his arms in an attempt to scrabble back to his feet. Juliet pushed her heavy workboot into the small of his back, shoving him back down. Shiro came in behind her and slammed the door closed, so Juliet lifted her MP5, leveling it at the woman with the knife and, trying to imagine how Ghoul would handle things, said, “I’ll put your brains all over that wall if you move more than a centimeter.”

“I told you not to call for help,” the woman hissed at the wide-eyed, grease-stained, filthy little man sitting in the desk chair.

“I didn’t! Mura, why are you here?”

“You owe me money, Ling, and you’re not picking up my calls.”

“I’ll cut his throat!” the woman sneered, and Juliet finally got a good look at her. Rail-thin, long, stringy hair that might once have been a shade of red, but currently, it was more black, streaked with something that resembled bearing grease. She had a bad optics job, clearly artificial eyes, the scleras gray and the pupils mottled green, but her body wasn’t taking to them—pus-filled, swollen flesh circled the off-color orbs. The hand holding the vibroblade shook, and Juliet shivered at the woman’s filthy, jagged nails.

“You want to die today?” Juliet asked, grunting as she drove her boot against the man’s latest attempt to surge to his feet.

“Please desist from attempts to steal my inventory. Authorities will be notified!” the dispenser announced as the bulky thug’s head smashed into it again.

“Shiro, get this she-devil off my neck, and we can work something out,” Ling wheezed, careful to avoid moving more than a millimeter as the blade buzzed in the woman’s jittery grasp.

Juliet eyed the woman, eyed the knife, and contemplated shooting her—she was one bad jitter away from slicing through Ling’s jugular. If Juliet shot her, though, the woman might drop the vibrating blade, and he’d be in just as much trouble. Shiro started to edge around her, but Juliet jerked out her left hand, holding him back. “Lady, get that knife off his throat. I’m giving you to the count of three.” At first, she didn’t know where the ultimatum came from—she was painting herself into a corner, but as she thought about it, she figured it was something Ghoul would do.

“You think so? How about I kill this loser and you, too, huh?”

“With those shakes? I doubt you’d be able to hold that knife steady enough to cut me. Lady, I have a suppressed MP5 here with a hair trigger. I’ll have ten rounds in you before you take one step, and guess what? I’ll be off-world before it matters. Test me, bitch.” Juliet worked hard to put some gravel in her voice, and, as the big, overweight man, whose face she’d yet to see, tried to surge to his feet again, she stomped hard on the base of his spine and growled, “I’m going to shoot you if you don’t stop trying to get up.”

“Oof!” he grunted as his face slapped into the plasteel floor, his pasty, too-fleshy arms sprawling out beside him as he gave up.

“Did they kill this guy?” Shiro asked, gesturing to the body half obscured by the big man Juliet was holding down.

“Yes,” Ling said, as more and more sweat began to bead on his face and forehead.

“Three,” Juliet said.

“Hang on, Lucky,” Shiro said, lifting his left hand and making a “calm down” motion. She noticed he had his gun in his other hand, though.

“Two,” Juliet said, ignoring him and still channeling Ghoul. For effect, she pulled the bolt halfway back on her MP5, ensuring a round was in the chamber. The woman glanced from her to Shiro, to Ling, then back to Juliet, licking her lips in a nervous tell. “One,” Juliet said, lifting the gun.

“All right, all right!” the woman cried, standing up and dropping the knife to buzz and bounce along the plasteel floor. “Let me go, c’mon, this guy owes us too!”

“Like hell!” Ling said, scooting his chair a few feet away, the old casters squealing in protest.

“Get her knife, Shiro,” Juliet said, still training the gun on the woman as she shrank into the corner of the office, pressing against the plasteel walls like she could melt away through them. She glanced at Ling and said, “You got any shrink cords?”

“Not here, but let me call my other security; he’s overseeing a shipment.” As he asked for permission, Juliet realized there must be a jammer active, at least a net jammer.

She glanced around and subvocalized, “Where’s the jammer, Angel?”

“The source seems to be on the large man’s belt.”

“Ah,” Juliet said, “cover that woman, Shiro.” As he turned off the vibroblade and trained his pistol on the woman in the corner, Juliet shouldered her MP5 and leaned over to grasp the man’s belt with her plasteel hand. She kept her foot pressed into his back as she gripped the cheap, synthetic leather and tugged.

“Oof!” he groaned again as the belt snapped and slid out from under him. Sure enough, a deck was clipped to it near the broken buckle. It was an old, low-end model with many, many scratches and stains on its one-time mirrored surface. Juliet grasped it in her plasteel hand and bore down, crunching the plastic to bits and killing the jamming field instantly.

She dropped the ruined deck and said, “Go ahead and call your guy.”

Ten minutes later, Ling’s other security officer had bound the two thugs and dragged them out of the office, along with his comrade’s body, to await the Luna Constabulary. Ling was visibly shaken, drenched with sweat, and jittery but delighted to be rescued by Shiro and Juliet. He explained that the woman used to work for him, that he’d fired her for no-shows, and that she and her friend had shown up, pretending to look for work, and then tried to strong-arm him into transferring the balance of his bit vault to her.

“I can’t believe they almost had me! A couple of no-life, moondust-tweaking thugs like that! If Bert wasn’t dead, I’d fire him. Hey, you, blue-eyes, you want a job?” Ling asked, glancing up from his terminal at Juliet.

“I have one.”

“Come on, Ling. Finish the paperwork. I need to get off this rock, and the dockmaster’s waiting for those bits,” Shiro said, giving the deck a nudge. He was standing right beside Ling, watching over his shoulder, as the man went through the allocation paperwork for the scrap the crew of the Kaminari Kowashi had sold him the day before.

“Yeah, yeah. Sheesh! Why didn’t you tell me you needed this processed in a rush? Well, on second thought, I’m glad you didn’t—you might not have come around to pester me, and then I’d have been ruined by those two thugs!”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to reward us?” Shiro asked, eyeing the tablet.

“I’m barely scraping by this month, Murakami!”

“Forget it.” Shiro rubbed at his short, black, gray-speckled hair. He watched as Ling tapped the screen a few more times, then his eyes went glassy as he verified something on his AUI. Juliet was leaning against the wall by the door, her hand still resting on her gun, falling into the “muscle” role more easily than she’d imagined. “Good. See you next trip, Ling. Try to keep the tweakers out of your office, huh?” Shiro slapped Ling on the shoulder, and then he gestured toward the door, “Let’s roll, Lucky. We’re blasting off.”