Juliet flicked through the menu on the Lady’s piloting UI, locking down all the systems, putting the reactor into self-maintenance mode, and basically getting the ship ready to sit in the hangar she’d rented for as long as needed. She’d purchased two hangar spaces, not too far from each other, but not right next door, and not under the same name. The Lady was registered to her SOA ID#, and so was the hangar she was in. The Furies’ Wing was registered to a nonexistent citizen of Titan and kept in a hangar purchased by a shell corporation with only an anonymous Sol-bit vault listed as an asset.
As she walked through the ship, making sure everything was locked down and that she’d packed all her gear into her duffel, Juliet was struck by memories of Nick and their time together aboard the little ship. She’d only known him for a couple of months, but she’d grown closer to him than most of the other people in her life. “At least my old life,” she quietly amended. She felt close to the crew of the Kowashi, too, which made her consider the idea that being stuck in a small, metallic shell in the vastness of space forced people to make connections with their fellow inmates. Would she feel so close to those people if they’d worked together in a city, spending time in an office or factory and then going home to their separate lives at the ends of their shifts?
Before she could go further down that road, Angel interrupted her thoughts, “Do you want me to message Alice or anyone else to let them know you’ve arrived?”
“Not yet. I think we need to settle a little business first; as far as I know, only one of my potential enemies knows about ‘Lucky’ and her connection to Luna, and I’m not eager to expose my connections to the crew of the Kowashi to that guy.”
“Rutger Tanaka?”
“Exactly.” Juliet stepped through the exterior hatch and turned to rest her palm on the access panel, locking it down. “Do me a favor and summarize what you know about his current situation—where he is, Frida, and the rest of his team.”
“I still have access to Frida, Applebaum, and Hawkins. Frida connected with Hawkins when she arrived on Luna; at that time, I reinfected her with my snooping daemons.” While Angel spoke, Juliet slung her heavy duffel onto an empty workbench that lined one wall of the Lady’s hangar. She pulled out a shop stool and sat down, listening. “Tanaka has two other full-time employees, but they’re all off-moon in various locations—he gave them leave when Frida filled him in about her encounter with you. Applebaum and Hawkins are both on standby with orders to ‘stay sharp and spend time at the range.’ Frida has been working out of Tanaka’s new offices, which double as his Luna residence.”
“And did you ever get your daemons into his PAI?”
“I’m afraid not; he’s old-school cagey and operates on post-AI war protocols. He doesn’t accept wireless data files or shared comm connections, and the only data he’s accessed since Frida returned has been visually on an air-gapped terminal.”
“So, you’re not going to get into his head before I meet with him.”
“That depends on a number of circumstances and the amount of time we have to prepare . . .”
“I’m going to meet with him now.”
“Juliet!”
“Angel, I can’t have this hanging over my head. I don’t want to spend months trying to get a bug into his head by feeding him images through his air-gapped terminal or whatever. I don’t want to try to social engineer him into going into a chop doc we’ve compromised or something else equally involved. We’ve got eyes on him through Frida, and you basically own his team here on Luna. More importantly, to my silly human mind, I have a feeling he doesn’t want to kill me.”
“You have a feeling?” Angel didn’t precisely sound derisive, but she didn’t sound happy, either.
“Look, I just want to deal with this so I can go back to work with Bennet and not worry about some old-school killer slipping in like a ghost and taking out all my friends. Let’s deal with him, whatever it takes, okay?”
“What about the sword?”
“Ah, you’re on the right track now. I figure we can retrieve it from my quarters on the gunship pretty easily. You can tell when Bennet or Aya are working, right? We’ll just wait for them to call it a day, slip in, grab the sword, and back out again.”
“And Tanaka? Should we schedule the meeting?”
Juliet laughed and stood up, shaking her head. “You’re sweet, Angel, but too innocent. Think about it—we’ve got Tanaka’s location and direct access to his ‘right-hand woman’s’ PAI. Why would we give them time to set up a trap? We’ll get the sword, set up where we can observe his new offices, then reach out to Frida.” While she spoke, she began to go through her bag, trying to decide what to wear. Part of her wanted to forego putting on the FlexPlate armor and her baby-blue helmet, but another thought it would be stupid. She was much faster now, probably as fast as Tanaka, but the armor would give her another edge. She’d be much more resilient and a good deal stronger wearing it.
Juliet wasn’t stupid; she knew she was tough, but, as much as she wished it didn’t matter, she had a woman’s frame and muscularity. If Tanaka managed to close with her and turn the fight into a grappling match, she wasn’t sure she could compete with him physically. “Well, other than my ‘good’ arm,” she chuckled.
“Hmm?”
“Just thinking that Tanaka’s a man, and he’s no slouch. I should probably wear the FlexPlate.”
“Your new reflex augments will make it hard for him to close the distance. He was very fast, but I think you will be a close match for his speed. More than that, I believe you can maintain that speed longer than most people without damaging yourself. Your neural and cellular adaptiveness is almost without peer, and with me managing the synaptic speed boost, your brain is far safer than someone with a mass-market speed upgrade.”
“Yeah, but if he does close the distance, gets ahold of my wrist or my neck . . . I think I’ll wear the armor.”
“If he’s armed himself with a new monoblade, your armor will be of no use.”
Juliet smirked as she unbuckled her gun belt and loosened the strap on her thigh. “If he’s trying to have a sword fight, he’s going to be disappointed.” She set the heavy belt on the workbench with a thud as if to punctuate her statement. “If he pulls a blade, I’m going to start shooting, and you’re going to make sure I don’t miss.”
“My pleasure.”
Juliet tapped through her AUI, selecting a soundtrack—something upbeat, an electronic dance mix, and began the lengthy process of gearing up. The FlexPlate was tight and bulky with all the plates attached, but once she got it on and activated the batteries, the mesh tightened and loosened in all the right places. The armor felt almost weightless when fully charged. When Juliet’s helmet latched into place, and she was comfortably behind its armored visor, she felt that weird anonymous courage that always seemed to come over her when she knew other people couldn’t see her face.
She buckled the Texan back on her hip, looped the tie around her thigh, and, as if to illustrate the dexterity of her armored gloves, drew the gun, twirled it, and slipped it back in the holster quick as a blink of the eye. She looked at her duffel, frowned, and reached inside to pull out her data deck. She didn’t want to load herself down with gear but figured the deck might come in handy. She hung the lanyard over her neck, letting the flat, square-shaped plastic device rest against her armored chest.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Not bringing more guns?”
“Nah, I make enough of a scene as it is. If it looks like I can’t handle things with my vibroblade and my Texan, then I’ll back off and wait for a better opportunity.” Juliet left the hangar, locked it up, and, still listening to her soundtrack, walked through the port to customs. Memories of her first time coming to Luna flashed through her mind, and she chuckled at how much things had changed. She remembered how nervous she’d been approaching the checkpoint, how she’d worried WBD might have gotten ahead of her somehow. She remembered having to lock her guns away and how she’d waited in line with all the tourists, sweating bullets as she walked through the scanner.
Things were a little different this time. She didn’t have to go through commercial passenger customs. She was in the section of the port reserved for ship crews who rented berths. Still, when she walked up to the scanners, despite the smaller queue, those memories came rushing back, and she felt a little sweat start to bead up around the gel helmet liner on her forehead. Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she nervously closed and opened her hands.
As she stepped into the big plastic, full-body scanner, she put her feet on the yellow marks and her hands on the ones above her head. She stood there, nervous, annoyed at being nervous, and her augmented ears picked up all sorts of pings and alerts. She heard the hushed conversation of the two port security officers at their terminal. “Jesus, look at the hardware on this chick.”
“SOA license checks out. She’s got a Luna small arms license attachment. Is that armor active? I’m having a hard time reading through it. Filter out that signature. Ah, there we go. Shit, man, she’s fully wired. Ears, eyes, nose, lungs, cybernetic arm, looks like a data jack in the other.”
The other guy spoke up, “Yep, some kinda fancy job on her tendons and muscles, can’t tell what kinda aug it is . . .”
“Is something wrong?” Juliet asked, still awkwardly holding her palms on the yellow hand symbols above her head.
“Lift your visor.”
Juliet should’ve thought of that. They’d want to scan her retinas. She tapped her visor release and, as it slid into her helmet, smiled into the scanner array, revealing her glittering green and gold irises. “That okay?”
“You’re not packing any heavy ordnance in that cybernetic limb, are you?”
“No.” Juliet sighed, annoyed. They were just harassing her at this point; their scanners would have alerted them to dangerous amounts of explosive materials. “Am I good?”
“In a hurry? Maybe we should get a look under that armor . . .”
Juliet closed her mouth, but the anger building up must have been evident in her eyes. “She’s good,” a new voice said, and Juliet glanced to her right to see a third security officer, an older man with sergeant’s stripes on his collar. He was scrutinizing Juliet’s scan on the terminal over the first two men’s shoulders. “Come on, boys, we gotta get this line moving.”
“Move along,” the first voice said through the speaker, and Juliet didn’t linger for them to change their minds. She hurried to the customs window and suddenly felt stupid for thinking she’d changed so much since her first arrival on Luna. She might have more experience and a lot more gear, but she was still subject to the whims of corporations and their rules and regulations. She could still find herself delayed or locked away because some thugs with a bit of authority decided she’d been too smart-mouthed while they invaded her privacy.
The woman at the customs counter was more pleasant, and Juliet was through in just a few seconds. When she walked away from the lines and the scanners, she tapped the button to lower her visor and suddenly felt much better. She focused on her breathing and tried to remind herself that she was just one of thousands of people going through that screening on any given day. It was a process, an annoying, painful one, but just a process. She climbed aboard a nearby tram and rode it to the station that bordered one of the industrial access roads where Angel already had a cab waiting for her.
“Greetings, passenger. Please share your license for the firearm . . . received. Thank you and enjoy your ride. ETA to your destination address is seventeen minutes.”
“I really hate how locked down Luna is.”
“It certainly feels different after being in the Jovian System for a couple of months, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. I know it’s just my perception—not everyone walks around in combat armor with guns and whatnot. I suppose people just living their lives in the city never have to deal with this stuff, or only when they travel off-moon. Still, I never felt so scrutinized on Callisto.”
“Nor New Atlas.”
Juliet smiled and stared out the window, remembering her arrival on New Atlas. She’d come in on a captured pirate ship with a handful of bodies—people she’d killed—stacked up in the airlock. Not only hadn’t she gotten in any trouble, but the port authority had paid her some bounties. “Yeah, I guess Luna doesn’t have that Wild West feel, you know?”
“I was going to say the same thing!” Angel laughed, and Juliet’s mood further improved. She loved it when Angel laughed. They rode in silence the rest of the way. Juliet enjoyed traveling on the exterior highways around the Luna domes. They provided a fun view of the lunar landscape and, occasionally, breathtaking views of the domes, especially the central Luna City dome. It looked like a massive snow globe filled with shining silver and glass buildings that reflected the sun’s light. From a distance, you couldn’t see the dirt or grime. You couldn’t smell the waste and decay. From a distance, it was easy to forget that people lived there, easy to imagine it was a city filled with angels or gods.
“I’ve connected with the gunship’s wireless port.”
“We’re close enough?” Juliet jerked herself out of her imagined city full of white-winged mythical people and realized they were quickly approaching the big industrial hangars where Bennet had rented space for the gunship.
“Yes. It doesn’t seem that Bennet or Aya are currently working in the hangar. By the way, the gunship’s sensor and comm array has been fully restored. It’s quite robust! I see open connections to the Kowashi and the local sat net. Hmm, the Kowashi is currently in port, and I’m seeing Alice, Shiro, and Aya aboard. I’m still not sure where Bennet is, but it doesn’t seem he’s here.”
“All right. Let’s make this quick.” Juliet hurried out of the cab and over the sidewalk to the locked pedestrian door on the side of the hangar. “Can you stop them seeing an alert when I open this door?”
“There shouldn’t be an alert if your access is still the same.”
Juliet tapped her visor release, and when it slid up, she stared into the scanner on the door panel. It beeped, flashed green, and the door opened. “Perfect.” She hurried inside and stopped short, her mouth falling open as she took in the sight. The gunship had been completely stripped down to the skeleton-like alloy frame. It looked weird but also amazing. She could see that Bennet and Aya had been hard at work. The wire harnesses were neatly bundled and tied down, the tubes and hoses all looked clean, their colors bright—clearly replaced or repainted, and she saw new components everywhere she looked.
“Look at the armor panels,” Angel said, and Juliet’s AUI flashed, highlighting what Angel meant. Drying racks lined the far wall of the hangar, and Juliet could see hundreds of polymer armor panels laid out on them, all painted glossy, brilliant sky-blue.
“God, they’re amazing! Those little devils! They’re actually doing it! I thought at least Bennet would argue about the color . . .”
Juliet almost jumped out of her armor when a sleepy, goofy, wonderful voice asked, “Hey, are you here to rob me? ‘Cause I don’t have much worth stealing.”
Juliet whirled toward the voice, and sure enough, Bennet was there, sitting up from her dream-rig, his sandy brown hair disheveled and a very disoriented, “I just woke up” look on his face.
“Bennet!” she cried, reaching to slide her visor up but realizing she’d never closed it after opening the hangar door with her retina.
“Hey! I thought that might be you. Hard to see if the curves were right with that armor, but . . .”
“Oh, shut up!” Juliet laughed, hurrying over to the rig, still where she’d left it, though surrounded by several new crates and boxes. “What are you doing hiding in that rig? I thought nobody was here.”
“It’s perfect for napping.” He yawned and stretched, then began to clamber out. He’d only managed to get one foot on the floor before Juliet grabbed him into a hug, manhandling him with the added strength of her suit.
“Oof! Hey!” He laughed as she squeezed him, and then he grabbed her back, and it felt like a scrap metal baler had gotten ahold of her.
“Ung!” Juliet grunted and wriggled, and Bennet finally relented, letting her go. “You’re going to break my armor! Jeez!”
“Why you all decked out? Something going down?”
Juliet supposed it was too much to hope that she’d settle things with Tanaka before running into any of her friends. Still, she didn’t want things to escalate, so she tried to placate him a little. “No, nothing is going down, but I have a meeting with someone I wanted to get taken care of before I reconnected with everyone. Can you keep it quiet that I’m on the surface? Alice and Shiro think I’m still on approach.”
“Why?”
Juliet frowned and thought about it for a few seconds, watching Bennet’s big gray eyes narrow in concern. She decided she wouldn’t start things off on her return by lying to her friend. “Because the guy I’m dealing with is dangerous. Not so much to me, but if he knew about my friends here, maybe he could be a problem for them. I just want to settle things with him before I start hanging around with you all.” Bennet’s scowl deepened, and Juliet said, “Listen, I honestly think he and I just need to talk things out. I don’t think anything crazy will happen, but I don’t want to risk it. Okay? Please, just forget you saw me for a few hours.”
Bennet groaned. “Oh, man. You’re back less than a minute, and I’m already faced with a moral dilemma?”
Juliet laughed and reached up to grasp him by the back of his neck, gently squeezing. “I missed you, you big dummy. I’m so glad to see you. Trust me, okay? What time is it? 1530? I’ll buy everyone dinner in a few hours, all right?”
“Okay. I can keep my trap shut for a couple of hours, but that’s it. If you don’t check in by dinner time, I’m calling in the cavalry.”
“Deal.” Juliet looked back over at the shiny skeleton of the gunship. “Is my stuff still in there? I came to pick up my sword.”
“Yeah, it’s still there. Aya’s been stacking boxes of books or something in there, but nothing should be missing.”
Juliet felt her smile widening, and a warm feeling gripped her chest at his words. “Aya! I’m so glad to be back, Bennet.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back, too. Tell me, though; if you’re so sure this meeting is a conversation, why are you dressed like a shock trooper?”
“Well, Bennet, as they say, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Right?”