Cyber Dreams 3.18 - Low-G Throwdown (Patreon)

Okay, please let me know if something doesn't make sense :) I hope you enjoy the ride!

-Plum

Juliet’s exit from her improvised hiding spot was almost disastrous; she was so hyped up, so full of adrenaline that she nearly launched herself into the air rather than simply hopping out of her exoskeleton. The gravity on Dione was such that even a small jump had the potential to send her floating for many seconds, covering a lot more ground than she wanted. She caught herself at the last minute, reaching out with her plasteel hand to drag it along one of the faded orange bars that ran the length of the rig’s canopy, slowing her movement and allowing her to get her feet back onto the icy ground.

Angel had cleared her AUI of distractions, leaving only crosshairs, an ammo counter, and two red arrows pointing to the last known locations of the presumed pirate shooters. Juliet carefully panned toward the closest arrow, indicated as such by its more rapid blinking. She couldn’t help but notice that her view, despite the many cameras being used to create it, was slightly obscured by a tiny layer of ice at the edges and that her suit was not nearly as good at insulating her as it had been inside the rig—Dione was cold.

Carefully keeping her center of gravity low, she continued to pan until the flashing red arrow was at the center of her vision, but she didn’t see the pirate. Frozen ridges obscured her view, but as she began to work her way toward the spot, she finally glimpsed something. A flash of color in the pale white expanse, something green moving between two icy clumps.

Juliet tried to capitalize on what she’d seen, moving in a sidestepping arc off the ridge onto the flat icy field where the ship had landed. She wanted to get around the obstruction to get a clear line of sight at the pirate. She kept herself low, crouch-walking to the left, her gun up and ready, and then Angel startled her with a softly spoken warning, “I’m watching through the cameras in the back of your helmet, and you are in full view of that ship's sensor array.”

“No backing out now,” Juliet breathed into her helmet, glad she didn’t have to rely on the foggy little rectangle of glass for her vision. She took one last sidestep, and then the obstructing ice was out of her way, and she saw a figure in a green, bulky EVA suit fiddling with a big rifle, trying to adjust the attached tripod. Juliet was so jittery with nerves and excitement that when she saw the gun, she didn’t hesitate. She lined up her crosshairs and pressed her trigger, firing a burst of high-powered, armor-piercing, nine-millimeter projectiles into the pirate’s center of mass.

Juliet wasn’t ready for the effects of firing an automatic weapon, regardless of its relatively small caliber, on a moon as tiny as Dione. First of all, the near silence of the cartridges surprised her; to her ears, enhanced though they were, it sounded like a series of distant clicks. Those minor sounds didn’t track with the way the shots felt. As the gun bucked in her hand, Juliet found herself flying off the ground, drifting backward through the thin air toward the pirate’s vessel.

In her AUI, Angel grayed out the nearest red arrow, and as she slowly drifted backward and down, Juliet attempted to right herself to turn toward the other arrow. Thankfully, Angel was smarter than the average PAI, and she began to fire Juliet’s maneuvering jets, pushing her back toward the ground and helping her to get her feet underneath her. By the time her boots lightly crunched onto the ice, though, she was only a few meters from the yellow ship, and she didn’t have any visuals on the second pirate.

“Help me out, Angel! Where is he?” she panted, finding herself far more exhausted than she felt she should be; was it the strange mobility? The air? Juliet glanced at her readouts and saw her battery was down to seventy-nine percent, but her air supplies were still up in the eighties. “Seventy-nine already?”

“I detected movement. There!” Angel said, revising her arrow to point further to Juliet’s left. It looked like the second pirate was moving around the front of the ship, still clinging to the ridgeline for cover. Juliet carefully crab-walked over to a landing strut on the near side of the ship. The yellow paint of the strut was scratched up, and deep scores ran along the underside of the hull—it had seen better days. Still, it was a good-sized vessel, in Juliet’s opinion. Up close, she felt like she was standing in the shadow of one of the enormous yellow dump trucks she’d seen being used in the open pit mines near Tucson.

She hugged the landing strut, trying to peer around, looking for the second pirate, her SMG ready, her ammo count reading 25/30. The landing gear support was hinged with big hydraulics lurking up in the cavity above, and when Juliet leaned against it, it had been still at first. At that moment, though, she felt a faint vibration run through it and paused in her scan of the white, glittering ridgeline, wondering what was happening with the ship.

“Behind you, Juliet!” Angel said, and Juliet, acting on adrenaline and instinct, launched herself forward, trying to rotate her torso at the same time to see behind her. A blinding pain stabbed through her left knee, and, at the same time, as her view came around, she saw another figure in a heavy-duty green EVA suit by the ship’s boarding ramp.

The third pirate had fired a rifle at her and probably would have fired follow-up shots, but whoever they were, they weren’t any more experienced shooting in the light gravity than Juliet was. They were windmilling one of their arms, trying to regain their balance as the rifle’s muzzle drifted upward, and they slid back over the ice.

As the pain bloomed in Juliet’s leg, and she flew through the space under the ship, she brought her SMG up and squeezed the trigger, barely cognizant of the crosshairs in her AUI, trusting her instincts to get the barrel on target. The burst she fired was much heavier than the earlier one; in her pain and surprise, she clamped down with her plasteel finger, peppering the third pirate with half a dozen rounds and sending the rest of the magazine into the sky over their shoulder into the air—she hadn’t been ready for the muzzle climb.

While that was happening, Juliet’s EVA suit had triggered a failsafe; pockets of expanding foam exploded, filling the suit’s leg with stiff, airtight material, stopping her bleeding and saving her from air and pressure loss. Angel leaped into action, firing her suit’s maneuvering air jets, halting her lateral leap through the air, and bringing her upright, just outside the ship's shadow. Juliet tried to take a step, but her left leg being stiff as a board, combined with her disorientation, caused her to stumble, which may have saved her life—a series of little explosions on the ice nearby signaled the second pirate’s arrival.

Suddenly the pain in her leg fell away, and Angel said, “Your nanites are working on your injury. You have to move, Juliet! He’s tracking you with his muzzle!” Angel didn’t wait for Juliet to respond but fired the jets on the back of her suit, scooting her over the surface away from the exploding ice.

Juliet grimaced, shaking her head. “Get it together,” she grunted. “Come on! Switch the mag, and find your target. You’re not dying on this damn moon!” Trusting Angel to keep her moving, Juliet ejected her magazine, held tight to the gun with her left hand, and ripped a fresh mag from her chest, jamming it home. Plasteel hand steady, she racked a round, then panned her vision, trying to find the target of Angel’s red arrow.

It was harder than she’d hoped, panning her vision and trying to spot a target while being jerked left and right, forward and backward with air jets. She might have complained, but she was fairly certain she wasn’t dead because of the erratic movements—there was a method to Angel’s madness. Juliet finally laid eyes on the second pirate, still near the ridgeline, standing up straight, tracking her with his gun, firing shot after shot. She knew if there was more atmosphere, she’d hear the bullets zinging inches from her body as Angel maneuvered her around.

“When he reloads, charge him!” Juliet hissed.

“Understood.”

Juliet surrendered herself to Angel’s dodging algorithm, trying to keep her limbs close and her core tight, trying to make herself a smaller target and to keep unnecessary movements to zero. When she felt the jerking stop and a solid pressure at the back of her suit, she knew it was time—Angel was driving her right toward the pirate. She lifted the SMG, saw the pirate jerking back and forth on his rifle’s bolt, and fired three quick bursts into him.

The bullets did what they were advertised for, ripping through his EVA suit. Just like Juliet’s, the pirate’s suit tried to save him, pumping the compromised cavities with foam, but she’d hit him solidly, and the damage was done—he and his rifle fell backward toward the icy surface in the slow motion of extremely light gravity.

“Juliet,” Angel said, her voice filled with strain and concern, “We’re not going to make it back to the ship. Your oxygen is at twenty-four percent, and your battery is at sixteen.”

“Help me get to that pirate ship’s ramp.” Juliet panted. She hopped gently, with her good leg, making quick progress toward the beat-up yellow ship’s ramp, and Angel kept her upright and on target with tiny bursts from the suit’s maneuvering jets. When she clambered up the ramp to the closed airlock door, her battery was at eleven percent, and her air supplies were down to nineteen. “And it’s locked. Nuclear.” The access panel flashed red as she repeatedly smashed the open button with her gloved thumb.

“I can likely bypass the security, but how will we connect? There’s no wireless access open.” Juliet could hear the panic in Angel’s voice. She wanted to panic, also. She wanted to run screaming toward the Kowashi, praying that she’d make it into the airlock before radiation or suffocation killed her, but she knew Angel wouldn’t have told her they couldn’t make it if there were any chance. Instead, she took a breath and tried to stay steady.

“Angel, can you disable my suit’s emergency safety . . . things. I mean, can you keep it from blowing up with foam if I cut it?”

“Yes, but that would be suicidal.”

“I’m going to cut the sleeve and pull out my data cable, then you can turn it back on. It should only take me a second or two.”

“That . . . could work!”

“Okay. Clock’s ticking. Are you ready?” Juliet asked, letting the SMG fall to her hip, hanging on its sling, and pulling her vibroblade from the sleeve taped to her left arm.

“Ready! I’m prepping your nanites to address radiation and cold damage. Juliet, pull the fabric of your suit taut on your arm and tuck it against your side. We should limit the venting as much as possible.”

“Right.” Juliet did as Angel suggested, and then she visualized herself slicing the suit, dropping the blade, stuffing her fingers in through the cut, flipping back her data port’s access panel, and yanking out her data cord. She ran through it again, trying to steady her breathing, and then she went for it. When she cut the suit, two things happened that she wasn’t ready for—steam vented out, and sharp pain erupted in her forearm. “God, it’s cold!” she cried, dropping the vibroblade to rattle on the ramp by her feet.

The pain was almost immediately blocked by her nanites—Angel must have had them ready as she’d promised. Juliet’s plasteel fingers nimbly dug into her suit, but they met resistance when she tried to pull back the cover for her data jack. “It’s frozen,” she grunted, then gave it a good jerk, shattering the layer of ice that had formed as the air in her sleeve had vented. A second later, she’d yanked out a meter of data cable, and Angel had enabled her suit’s safety features—her left sleeve puffed up with foam, and her arm was jerked out, straight as a scarecrow’s.

As Juliet plugged her data cable into the airlock’s console, she looked at her battery level, saw it was down to 6%, and, for the first time outside the heat of combat, started to believe she was really going to die. She was losing power fast, and once it was gone, she’d be blasted with radiation that her little budget nanite farm wouldn’t be able to handle.

“Hold on, Juliet. I’m working . . . this ship’s security protocols are ancient. I don’t believe these pirates have been very worried about maintenance.”

“Good,” Juliet hissed, realizing her teeth were chattering. The suit was struggling with the cold now that it had been breached twice and was low on air and power. She clinked her helmet against the metallic door, closed her eyes, and let her mind drift. On the off chance that Angel got her into this ship before she died, she wanted to know if anyone was within. She tried to open herself, tried to listen, but nothing came to her. “Either,” she started to say but paused, trying to remember what she’d been going to say. “Either no one’s home or I can’t hear ‘em.” She smiled, proud to have completed the thought.

A minute or two into her desperate wait for Angel to work her magic, Juliet leaned over and retrieved her vibroblade, still buzzing valiantly. She turned it off and tucked it back into its sheath, and that was when the door clicked and hissed and started to slide open. Juliet looked at her HUD readout and saw that her air reserves were at seven percent and her battery was at two. She stumbled into the little, rectangular airlock, then punched the cycle button. “Tell me when I can pull my helmet off,” Juliet said, standing stiff-legged and stiff-armed near the inner door.

“I have access to the ship’s systems. There are no camera feeds in the crew compartments, but the ship’s AI has records of ID pings with its passengers. I believe you killed the entire crew.”

“Well . . .” Juliet didn’t know how to respond to that statement. She leaned against the door and tried to take small breaths. Her suit’s battery ticked down to one percent, and then the red, flashing light in the airlock ceased its frantic warning, and Angel told her the air was safe. Frantic, still half-thinking she was about to die, Juliet popped the clasp on her helmet, pulled it up, and sighed as warm air bathed her face. “Holy shit.”

“We’re alive!” Angel announced.

“Yep.” Juliet touched the button to open the inner door, and it immediately slid to the side—Angel must have unlocked everything. She gripped her submachine gun, stepped into the cramped accessway she figured must lead from the airlock into the crew compartment, and cautiously advanced.

“Do you have any idea the layout of this ship?”

“It’s not nearly as large as the Kowashi. The standard layout has the crew mess just beyond this short corridor, then there are bunks to port, showers to starboard, and the bridge just beyond the mess.”

“And engineering access?”

“A small service corridor aft of the mess.”

“Aren’t we aft of the mess?”

“We are aft and below the mess. There’s a lift at the end of this corridor.” Angel highlighted a control panel about three meters ahead of her, and, on second glance, Juliet saw the platform on the ground and the opening above. She started forward, and when she hobbled onto the platform, Angel asked, “Shall I take us up?”

“Yeah.” Juliet lifted the SMG, saw she had eighteen rounds left in the magazine, and tried to pretend she wasn’t a sitting duck as the little lift began to lurch, haltingly, upward. When the room above came into view, she saw dim, yellow lighting, a plasteel table built into the wall on her right, and a counter and cabinets to her left. She would have taken in more of the room, but her eyes were drawn to the individual standing before her.

“Please don’t kill me,” he immediately said as Juliet rose into view, and she was so startled she almost did pull the trigger. She’d come to believe the ship was empty, and despite her attempts to be ready, her exhaustion, injuries, and frayed nerves, coupled with Angel’s announcement about ID pings, had lulled her into complacency.

“Don’t move!” she said, a jolt of adrenaline putting a bit of edge into her voice. “Who are you?”

“I’m Engineer. Designated so by the former captain of this vessel.”

“Engineer?” Juliet frowned, hobbling off the lift toward the strange synth, for that’s what she’d decided he was. He looked like he’d been constructed from spare parts. He had pale synth-flesh arms, but the rest of him was wholly metallic. His head was a dull gray, with soft white LEDs for eyes and a speaker grill for a mouth. His torso was a coppery alloy with exposed wires, tubes, and batteries protruding from their housings, and his legs looked like they’d been taken from two different models—one a hundred years old and the other more modern with some muscle weave mixed in with the plasteel.

“That is correct. Are you the new captain of this vessel? I will swear fealty to you so long as you do not execute me. Though I have a simple existence, I wish it to continue.”

“Juliet, I believe this synth was built from discarded remnants.”

“Are there others on this vessel?” Juliet asked.

“No, ma’am. I monitored the crew’s progress on the surface and saw their vital signs terminated. I assume you are the victor in their latest misguided attempt at ‘scoring some bits.’”

“I’ll think about what to do with you, but I won’t kill you. I am going to secure you, though. Is there a room with a lock I can put you in for now?”

“Yes, Captain. I can wait in one of the two crew compartments. I suggest the one with bunks so that you can have access to the captain’s quarters.”

“Lead the way,” Juliet said, gesturing to the left with her gun’s muzzle.

“It’s just here, through this hatchway,” Engineer said, stepping through and then pausing. “To the left is the bunk area where Rex and Alysia slept. The captain’s quarters are to my right.”

“Okay,” Juliet said, motioning with her gun again. Engineer nodded and stepped through the door to the left. “Can you lock it?” Juliet subvocalized.

“Yes. I’ve secured the door and changed the passcode.”

“Hey, can you contact the Kowashi?”

“Yes, I believe this ship’s array can get a signal through the radiation. We’re less than a kilometer away.”

“Tell them I captured the pirate ship, but I’m injured, and I’m trying to take stock of things. Tell them they’re clear to pull that salvage in.” Juliet sighed heavily and poked her head into the captain’s “quarters,” which proved to be a small room with a single, narrow bed, a built-in plasteel dresser, and a tiny attached bathroom with nothing but a toilet inside. Clothes, boxes, and trash littered the space, and Juliet decided she couldn’t deal with it right then. She returned to the mess hall and subvocalized, “I gotta get outta this suit. I can’t move my arm, and I want to see how bad the damage is to my leg.”

“Shiro says to ‘hang tight.’ He’s on his way.”

“Okay, good,” Juliet said, allowing herself to fall onto the single metal bench attached to the table. She glanced around the space, more a tiny kitchen than a mess hall, took in all the stains and trash, and wondered how miserable those pirates must have been to live like this. “How miserable and desperate.”

Juliet closed her eyes and tried to focus on staying awake while she waited for Shiro. She felt so tired! She felt more like she’d run a marathon than had a quick firefight. She knew she’d been hurt, been subject to a lot of adrenaline and whatever her nanites were doing inside her, but it still seemed like she was more tired than she ought to be.

Stretching her neck, sighing when it popped noisily, Juliet tried to focus on the fact that she was this much closer to getting to Titan and helping Honey. She’d crossed a difficult hurdle, but she’d done it. “God, Angel,” she sighed. “That was crazy. We were out there, on the moon, shooting, getting shot, nearly dying, but we did it. We came out on top!”

“We did.” Angel’s voice was firm and resolute, and Juliet smiled. It was good having a partner like her.

“What are we going to do about Engineer?” she asked, shaking her head, bemused.

“Step one,” Angel replied, surprising her, “we should help him choose a better name.”