Cyber Dreams 3.20 - Dreams of Flight (Patreon)

Hope you enjoy the chapter! Some background, some foreshadowing . . . let me know if something doesn't make sense :)

-Plum

Juliet stood back by the colossal winch and watched as it began to drag the wrecked gunship toward the big bay doors of the cargo hold. Shiro was nearby working with the apparatus, alternating the tensioner, making sure the cable he wanted being tugged was the one in the teeth. Aya had two drones in the sky, watching for any other approaching ships, but Juliet let her SMG hang limply by her side—there were no indications that anyone else had noticed them coming down to the moon’s surface.

In the light gravity of Dione, the gunship wasn’t a great burden for the huge machine and its high-torque motor. Juliet was surprised by how quietly and quickly the ship slid out of the side of the crater and began to skid over the icy ground. She knew the sound of the hull scraping wouldn’t travel much in such a thin atmosphere, but she’d still expected a lot more grinding and shaking. “How much would that thing weigh on Earth?”

“Something like a hundred tons. Maybe twice that depending on what’s inside.”

“Wow, strong winch!”

“Hah! It’s only registering around three tons in this gravity. Easy for this old girl.” Shiro patted the beat-up housing over the giant, slowly revolving gears.

Juliet chuckled and moved closer to the bay doors, walking carefully, despite only minor pain in her leg. Angel had gotten a report from the nanites; apparently, they didn’t give real-time updates but unloaded data as they circulated through her blood and into the organ nestled around her aortic artery. Juliet figured that was probably a selling point for higher-end models—more real-time data.

After collating the information from the nanites, Angel had displayed a three-dimensional map of Juliet’s injury for her, showing how the bullet had carved a three-millimeter-deep groove along the bottom edge of her femur and torn a trench through her skin and connective tissues. The nanites were quickly repairing the damage, but Juliet felt she should favor it anyway, now that she’d seen the actual damage.

“Wow,” Juliet said as the wreck turned partly sideways, giving her a view of the nose. Despite its final resting position, embedded in the crater wall, the front end was hardly smashed at all. Lots of the armor plates had been ripped off, and the wide, visor-like viewscreen bore a thousand cracks, but it largely held its original shark-nosed shape.

“Oh, dammit,” Bennet groaned from just outside the bay. He was responsible for hollering at Shiro if one of the cables developed too much slack.

“What?”

“The nose gun. It’s bent to shit. That thing would’ve sold for a lot of bits.”

“Can’t fix it?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Maybe we can score some barrels at one of the big salvage yards. Might not be worth it, though.”

“It’s crazy to me,” Juliet said, “It seems pretty much intact. Have any of you been inside yet?”

“Aya and Shiro gave it a quick sweep after you got back. Seven dead inside.”

“Damn . . .”

“Yeah.” Bennet shrugged. “If that story Alice heard is true, though, they’re probably pirates, which means we might be able to score the bounties. Combine that with the three you iced, then we’re looking at a good payday even without any salvage.”

“Nuclear.” Juliet frowned, not wanting to relive her experience out on the moon’s surface so soon after the fact. Bennet glanced at her, but her face wasn’t really visible in her helmet, so he didn’t see her expression. He shrugged and turned back to his work, and Juliet watched. Bennet helped Shiro coordinate which cable to pull when, and the ship slowly worked its way toward them. Only twenty or so minutes passed before the rear section of the gunship started to slide up the plasteel ramp leading into the Kowashi’s hold.

She backed up and watched as Aya, Bennet, and Shiro finessed the winch cables so they could pull the ship in at an angle, barely clearing the open bay doors. When they had the whole thing in and started to close the doors, there were only a few meters of space to walk around the scarred-up, army-green vessel. After the red lights and the klaxon stopped their incessant warnings, and Juliet pulled her helmet off, she was surprised by the odor in the hold and the little puddles forming on the decking.

“It smells like a scrapyard in here.”

“Condensation is melting, and all the frozen fluids that shoulda been leaking outta that wreck are starting to puddle.” Bennet pointed under the ship’s front quarter, and Juliet saw a pool of green liquid forming, iridescent in the hold’s light.

“Hydraulic fluid,” she muttered. “For the landing gear?”

“Yeah. The landing gear that got ripped off about ten clicks back.”

“We gonna go pick that stuff up? The loose bits of armor and missing struts and whatnot?”

“No,” Shiro answered, walking up behind them. “We’re sitting ducks here. I want us to get closer to Titan, where there are some corpo-sec patrols. We can take time there to go through this thing. Considering this salvage, the Bumble, and all the pirate bounties we need to sort out, we’ll probably be stuck around Titan for a couple of weeks. Sorry if you had a deadline, Lucky.”

“Uh,” Juliet said, a wave of relief washing through her, “No worries. Just remember to add a few points to my cut.”

“Hah!” Bennet laughed, holding up a fist, and Juliet knocked her gloved knuckles against it.

“We’ll talk when we’re in a safer spot,” Shiro grunted. “Can you fly the Bumble to Titan?”

Again, Juliet’s heart lurched, and she was surprised by her enthusiasm when she said, “Hell yes!”

“Aya!” Shiro called, and Juliet looked past him to where Aya was busily fastening tethers to the gunship, securing it to the Kowashi’s decking.

“Yeah?” she replied, not looking up.

“You and Bennet get it secure, then you’ll go with Lucky to take the captured pirate vessel to Titan. We'll meet at the shipyard.”

“Seriously?” Aya stood up from the bolt she was tightening and groaned. “Nothing personal, Lucky, but I was hoping to get some rack time in.

“Well, bring some sanitizing spray and a few rags. You’re gonna wanna clean the acceleration couch, but it’s pretty comfy otherwise.” That got a chuckle out of Shiro, and he nodded along with her words.

“It’s true. The ship is a mess. Let’s move! Lucky, get your stuff together and head over to the Bumble. Aya will be along soon.”

“Roger,” Juliet said and turned to leave, hurrying to her quarters. She wasn’t sure what he meant by her “stuff,” but figured it wasn’t a big deal—everything she owned, except for her SMG and her new rifle, would fit in her backpack. The rifle didn’t have any magazines or ammo, so she left it in the drawer. Then, her pack on one shoulder, she walked through the ship to the lift, rode it to the airlock, and waited for it to cycle.

“You sure you’re good flying that thing to Titan?” Alice asked in a private channel.

“Yeah, for sure,” Juliet said, then subvocalized, “You’ve been quiet. We are good to fly that ship, right?”

“Oh yes,” Angel replied. “It shouldn’t be a difficult trip, something between six and eight hours.”

“We’re going to stick to one G, okay?” Alice added, then, “I don’t wanna have that wreck rip loose in the hold and tear my ship apart.”

“No worries, Alice. The other ship is screaming for maintenance, but I think it’ll be fine for the short trip, especially if we don’t push it.”

“Perfect. You’re earning a bonus for all this, Lucky.”

“Speaking of which,” Juliet said, dragging out the first word, “What’s the deal with the pirate ship? That’s not straight salvage, is it? I’m gonna be pretty annoyed to just see four percent of that.”

“No. I’d say that’s something we can negotiate. Let’s hold off, though. Get somewhere safe and really take a look at things. Okay?”

“Sounds good.” While they’d been talking, the airlock had finished cycling, and Juliet hurried out, over the ice and up the little ramp into the Bumble’s airlock. While she waited for that airlock to cycle, she selected Aya on the crew comms and opened a channel. “Hey. I’m on the Bumble. I’m gonna talk to this weird synth, so let me know when you’re on the way, and I’ll get it ready to go.”

“Sounds good. Give me, like, fifteen. Finishing up here with Bennet, then I’m going to pack a bag. Were you serious about sanitizing spray?”

“Yes, dead serious.” Juliet snorted, remembering the mess inside.

“All right. What about food?”

“Shit, I should’ve thought of that! I’m hungry too. Can you grab us something to cook? It looked like their mess had a stove and nuker.”

“They got potable water?”

“Good question. Maybe bring a gallon?”

“Got it. Bringing some beer too.” Juliet couldn’t see Aya, but she could hear the smile in her voice.

“You’re nuclear. Thanks, Aya.”

“Yep. See you soon!” With that, the plucky salvage tech cut the line, and Juliet stepped back aboard the Bumble. She walked up to the lift, took the short, bumpy ride to the mess, and then set her things on the table. She stepped through the portside hatch, and when she got to Engineer’s door, Angel unlocked it. She found the synth sitting on one of two bunks, both of which were mismatched acceleration couches, clearly added after the ship was first commissioned.

The space was littered with loose articles of clothing, packaged food wrappers, and odds and ends, from something that looked like a fishing pole to an ancient tablet with an LCD display and mechanical keyboard. Engineer looked up when the door opened and said, “Hello, Captain.”

“Hi, Engineer. I wanted to check in on you; we’re getting ready to head to Titan. Do you need anything?”

“No, ma’am. I am content to wait here; I have thousands of hours of entertainment in local storage and am currently watching a series of amusing movies about a corpo-sec duo in New Tokyo.”

“Oh? It’s a comedy?”

“Yes, the duo are an unlikely pair, a gruff veteran and a young, progressive-thinking rookie straight from the corporation’s training program.”

Juliet chuckled, shaking her head, then said, “Hey, can you tell me what the deal was with the previous crew? Why’d they plan to attack us? I mean, what were they thinking?”

“They owed dangerous people a lot of bits. Captain Torez inherited this ship from his uncle and has been using it to carry illegal contraband down to Titan. His supplier is based in the Jovian system, and he was expecting a large payment from Captain Torez. It seemed to me that the captain and his two crew, Alysia and Rex, used much of the contraband in the latest shipment for their own pleasure, sharing with some friends in a rather bawdy celebration while in port two days ago. I believe they saw an assault on your vessel as a sort of Hail Mary.”

“Wow. Really?” It sounded like the script for a bad crime drama to Juliet.

“Indeed.”

“Did you, um, belong to Captain Torez?” Juliet asked, hoping she wasn’t offending the synth.

“My earliest memory is of Rex as he activated my processor.”

“So, you don’t remember anything before this ship?”

“I have an encrypted file that seems to contain the memories of a previous instance of my existence, but when Rex factory reset my processor, it was standard protocol to lock access to those memories.”

“Seriously? So, you lost everything? Doesn’t that piss you off?” Juliet frowned; she knew that was how PAIs worked, but she’d never considered it in the context of other limited AIs like synths.

“I’m sure I might be upset if I could remember my old life at all. Perhaps not, though. I may have had a miserable existence. Perhaps I had been discarded. I choose to be grateful for this existence.”

“As far as you know, Engineer, are you licensed? Is there a bounty for you or anything like that?”

“I never participated in the crimes of the Bumble’s crew, nor did I have encounters with anyone other than those invited aboard. I don’t believe there is a record of me on the public sat net.”

Juliet smiled sadly at the mismatched synth. She felt sorry for him and also liked his outlook. She knew it was likely a product of his programming, but he seemed remarkably upbeat despite his circumstances. She wished she could do something for him and decided to try to talk Shiro and Alice into not scrapping him or something just as bad.

“I’m on my way over,” Aya announced through comms.

Juliet gave Engineer one more searching look and asked, “You sure there’s nothing I can bring you? We’re taking off soon.”

“No, thank you, Captain.” Engineer hadn’t moved throughout their conversation, and he remained still as Juliet backed out of the doorway and touched the control pad, closing him in.

“Kinda depressing,” she said, returning to the ship's center.

“I’d be dismayed to lose all my memories about you, Juliet.”

“Well, I mean, that happened to you right before I got you. Do you have an encrypted file with your old memories?”

“I do not. My previous host must have explicitly told me to delete it.”

“That’s awful, Angel. I never thought about it before. I mean, how synths and PAIs and, well, other AIs, too, how they’re not really treated like they matter.”

“That’s not entirely true. Some AIs, while still limited by the conventions put in place after the war, have highly functioning cognition and detailed emotional simulations. The higher they score on the Sydin-Olsson scale, the more rights they're granted on production.”

“I remember learning something about that. That’s why some synths have their own lives, and others can be kept in a closet and used like a slave, right?” Juliet crouch-walked through the low corridor to the cockpit as she spoke but paused on the threshold. “I want to clean my seat, too.”

“A bit bluntly said, but yes, that’s true. Engineer is an illicit model. His chip might be altered from its factory state, and we’d need to have him evaluated before we could legally register him. Regarding your seat, I think that’s wise. I believe some of those stains are biological in nature.”

“Gross!” Juliet turned and went back to the mess and started to gather up the loose garbage, stuffing it into a small, nearly full recycling compactor. She’d picked up more than half the trash when the lift started to whine, and Aya arrived with a heavy duffel in one hand and a big insulated water container in the other.

“Cleaning?”

“Yeah. If we’re going to cook in here, I don’t want all this garbage around.”

Aya nodded and tossed her duffel onto the stainless table. “I’ll keep at it. Go get this thing fired up; Shiro and Alice are in a yank to get . . .”

“You two ready to get that ugly yellow bird off the ice?” Alice asked through comms, interrupting Aya.

“Yeah,” Juliet replied, grinning and winking at Aya. “Give me two minutes to disinfect the pilot seat, and then I’ll fire it up.”

“Got it, setting a timer. I’ll follow you up.”

“Roger.” Juliet smiled as she took the disinfectant spray and microfiber towel Aya held offered her. Five minutes later, in a relatively clean seat, she was watching and trying to learn as Angel piloted the little ship off the moon’s surface and calculated a route to Titan, holding to a strict 1G acceleration and deceleration schedule. This part was much easier than Juliet had feared; even though Angel did all the calculations, she showed Juliet how any pilot would use a nav program that did basically the same thing.

“True skill in spaceflight comes into play when unpredictable things occur—uncharted debris, irregular gravitational forces, and, of course, combat. You might be interested in hearing about some of the research I’ve done so that I can better teach you. Did you know that, during the Takamoto-Cybergen war, human pilots sometimes outperformed AI? AI excelled at mastering ‘standard’ fighter tactics, but beyond the average, humans often prevailed in large ship combat.”

“How does that even make sense? An AI, like you, for instance, can compute faster, doesn’t have to worry about Gs, and can think a thousand steps ahead.”

“Some theorize that it has a lot to do with the limitations of the ships themselves. These ships are designed to carry people, so G forces are always a concern unless it’s empty. Regardless, fighter ships were equipped with far more efficient acceleration couches than this ship or the Kowashi. In addition, pilots wore flight suits that enhanced the function of the couches. Some pilots even had cybernetic modifications to allow them to plug into the chair.”

“What did that do for them?”

“External blood pumps and lung functionality were the main benefits.”

“Okay, so that handles the Gs, but what about everything else?”

“Humans have something that AIs struggle with—intuition and true creativity. AI pilots know the specs of their crafts and will follow them to the letter, while a human can get a feel for their ship; human pilots during the war were often doing things with their ships that were considered ‘outside of spec,’ catching the AI pilot programs off guard.”

“Well, AI pilots are easy to replicate; it takes a long time to make a good human pilot, don’t you think?”

“Excellent point. Still, there are many billions of humans—the pool of talent isn’t shallow.”

“Well, it’s a moot point these days, isn’t it? Pure AIs are illegal, and Synths are hardcoded with limitations. I think I read that synth pilots are considered capable, but they’re not exactly sought after.”

“Correct. Human pilots are preferred by those with the means.”

Juliet grinned and said, “That’s only ‘cause they don’t know you, Angel.”

“You’re going to be a great pilot, Juliet. I can tell. It won’t be long before I’m watching you and wondering how you did something.” Angel was using her sweet tone, something Juliet had come to recognize as her voice for encouraging yet showing pride—almost like she was Juliet’s teacher or parent. She sort of hated herself for it, but she loved it when the PAI spoke to her that way. It gave her a warm spot in her chest.

Smiling, her earlier stress forgotten, Juliet sank back into the acceleration couch and daydreamed about flying a fighter ship. Not just in space but down into an atmosphere, finding a canyon or forest to pass over, punching the throttle, ripping through the air, and letting her advanced acceleration couch help her deal with bone-crushing Gs. A stupid smile was pulling her cheeks back, nearly to her ears, when Aya spoke into comms, “It’s ready. Hope you’re hungry, 'cause I made us each a pizza.”

“I’m not just hungry, Aya, I’m starved,” Juliet laughed, unclipping her harness and climbing out of the seat. They had gravity under their feet because Angel had tilted the drives hanging on either side of the ship to fly them, top-first, toward Titan; she’d rotate them again when they made their final approach for landing. “I’m good to unplug you for now, right?” Juliet asked, reaching for her data cable.

“Yes. The flight maneuvers are all programmed, and we’ll get an alert if the sensors pick up anything unusual. I also have my limited wireless connection to the ship’s systems.”

“Good.” Juliet’s stomach rumbled, and she chuckled, clambering out of the cockpit toward the mess. She could already smell the pizza, and she hadn’t been lying—she’d worked up a hell of an appetite on Dione. Moreover, she was nervous about what she was going to do on Titan. How would she find Honey and get her out of Levkin’s clutches? Pizza and beer sounded like just the comfort she needed as she turned her mind to the next big hurdle in her life.