Juliet had never chased another motor vehicle before. The idea that her speeding was in the service of a greater good removed any semblance of inhibition, and she cranked the throttle on her bike, leaning forward so her chest rested on the vibrating plasteel shroud that covered her battery bank. Her AUI kept her informed of her speed, and as she approached 300 KPH, a little voice in the back of her head started to jibber inanely about risks while another voice began to laugh at the thrill. Juliet tuned them out and focused on the distant lights of the corpo-sec cruiser and the swooping drones that kept pace with it. Angel estimated she was 900 meters behind but closing.
“What will you do when you catch up?”
“Good question, Angel. My pistol’s locked in the compartment under my butt.” The car veered to the right, and the lights disappeared. Juliet glanced at her mini-map and saw an offramp ahead—the same one she’d be taking to return to the hangar. “They’re going to try to ditch the drones in there. Doesn’t Luna Security have choppers or fluttercraft?”
“None that can safely traverse the highway domes. It won’t be easy to lose those drones, but they may try to pull into a garage or . . . hangar.” Angel said the last word as though it was just dawning on her that they were rapidly approaching the industrial part of town where hangars and garages were abundant.
“Kill my lights—I’ll drive with my night vision.”
“They’re automatic. Give me a minute to override.”
“We don’t have a minute,” Juliet said as the offramp loomed. She downshifted, letting the braking, regenerative gears do the work while keeping her speed just north of unsafe. She was halfway down the ramp when the lights on her bike cut out, and she was plunged into darkness—there weren’t many streetlights in the industrial dome. Angel managed her optics, though, and Juliet could see plain as day as she rolled into the intersection at the base of the ramp. She swiveled her head left and right, trying to catch a clue as to where the criminals had gone. Flickering lights down the street to her right signaled the presence of drones, and Juliet twisted the throttle, throwing the bike's rear end into a circle burnout so she could turn more sharply.
She rocketed down the street toward the drones and saw the smashed rolling bay door on a building with a colorful stack of boxes painted on the big, white concrete wall. Beneath the boxes were the words SHIFTON CARGO TRANSPORT. Juliet released the throttle and let inertia roll her bike into the parking lot. She pulled up to the left of the bay door and hopped off. While Angel remotely opened her seat compartment, she peered through the crumpled door into the building. The cruiser was there, lights still blinking, smashed into a pallet of cardboard boxes. The car’s doors were open, and it was clear that no one was still inside.
“They’re on foot,” Juliet subvocalized as she returned to her bike, reached into the cargo compartment, and pulled out her pistol. She wasn’t dressed for this sort of situation, but her boots and leather jacket were better than heels and a faux fur. She silently congratulated herself on her fashion tastes. She kept her helmet on as she ducked through the rolling door, pushing it slightly to make room—the cruiser had knocked it off its rails, but it still hung from the mechanical drum above the bay opening.
“That helmet’s not designed to stop bullets.”
“Better than nothing,” Juliet whispered, creeping toward the cruiser and peering through the windows to ensure no one hid within. “Where’s the corpo-sec backup?”
“Likely still working through the jam where these men were discovered. The drones didn’t pursue the car into the building because of that bay door. They’re likely circling the building, though.”
“Can you send a message in? Tell them not to shoot me if they show up?”
“Done. I’ve explained that you’re an SOA operative who took an interest in the corpo-sec hostage’s safety. That should buy you some goodwill.”
Juliet, crouching low, Texan gripped in her right hand, hurried forward to the next pallet of boxes bordering a broad, central pathway. A forklift sat, silent and dark, in the center of the aisle, and thousands of containers and pallets towered on the left and right. It seemed like someone could be hiding anywhere. “Filter out those drone sounds and up my gain.” As Angel did what she asked, the buzz and whine of drones faded away, and soon, she was hearing the weird sounds a building makes, amplified by her audio implants. Juliet leaned against the pallet, hiding in its shadow, waiting and listening, scanning as much of the warehouse as possible with her optics.
Her first clue came after only a few seconds—a muffled exclamation of pain from the far northeastern corner of the warehouse. A man yelped briefly before the crack of something heavy hitting bone cut him off. Juliet padded forward, weaving between pallets and stacked boxes, aiming for the corner of the structure. “What are they going to do?” she subvocalized. “They have to know the drones are surrounding the building. Will they try to slip out into another one?”
“Perhaps. I’ve been scanning the available databases and message boards on the pub net, and it seems there are rumors of access tunnels out here. Nothing as extensive as Old Atlas on Titan, but . . .”
“So, they might be trying to get underground.” Juliet grimaced, annoyed that she’d been rushing when she grabbed her pistol and hadn’t taken her gun belt—she only had the seven bullets in the cylinder. She continued, moving more quickly, trusting in her soft boot soles to keep her steps quiet and counting on the criminals to be hurrying, not laying an ambush. When she reached the far eastern wall of the warehouse, she peered left, around the corner of yet another stack of boxes. Forty meters ahead, in the northern wall, was a door that hung ajar with a broken latch. “They pried that open.”
“Probably the business offices and, likely, where they’ll find access to the maintenance tunnels if there are any. Luna Security has responded to your message—they are four minutes away and have endorsed your intervention. They’ve sent you an SOA contract.”
Juliet smiled grimly, hurrying toward the door, her Texan aimed forward. “That’s more like it. Just call me Deputy Lucky.” She paused by the door, shoulder to the wall, one eye peering through the crack. She waited, forcing herself to be patient while she watched and listened to the dark corridor beyond. She was just about to step through when one of the doors about ten meters down the hallway burst open, and one of the suit-wearing criminals stepped into view, striding straight for the door across the hall. He was the big one, with the crimson skull irises. “Not in there,” he growled, presumably to his partner through a comm line.
Juliet watched him approach the office door, his left side fully exposed to her. She had a quick debate with herself—should she grab this opportunity to take him out, or should she wait and watch, hoping for a better chance at getting them both? “A bird in the hand . . .” she breathed softly, then, quick as a blink, pointed the Texan through the slightly open door and fired a single round right into the guy’s armpit as he twisted the door latch. The Texan roared like muted thunder in her audio implants.
Her shot was perfect. The polymer .357 bullet probably would have done just fine without her hitting him in the armpit, but as it was, it exploded into his torso, likely wreaking havoc with his lungs, arteries, and, potentially, his heart. He collapsed to his right side, coughing a gout of blood as he tried to bring his machine gun to bear on the doorway where Juliet lurked. He squeezed off a single shot, the bullet punching through the door as Juliet flinched back and took cover behind the wall again. No more shots rang out, so she peeked through the opening again, only to see the man sprawled out on his back, unmoving.
Juliet advanced through the tiny front office, straight for the hallway where her victim lay. When she reached the opening, she took cover at the corner and waited, wondering if his partner would show his face to check on him. She pulled the hammer back on the Texan, ready to fire at the slightest provocation, and tried to stay patient, tried to breathe. Rather than leave things to her senses, she also listened with her lattice, willing her perception to widen, opening herself to the idea of grabbing any thoughts she could. She was immediately rewarded for her efforts, picking up a series of broken thoughts:
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Need to drop this dead weight, ‘specially if that was the end of Evers . . . Who the fuck . . . Danny said corpo-sec was minutes out! Dammit, dammit, dammit. Just there . . . just at the end . . .Maintenance door. I’m sure that’s it. Oof . . . heavy. Insurance, insurance, insurance . . .
Juliet hurried down the hall, something telling her, some instinct or feeling, that the guy she heard was in that direction. When she reached a T-junction, she hugged the right-hand corner and peered around. A glimpse of a gun pointing her way from five meters down the hall sent adrenaline into her system, and, like a switch being thrown, Angel sped up her synapses. Juliet jerked her head back as the gun barked, and all she suffered was a spray of shredded drywall against her visor. “Drop the gun if you want to live!” she yelled.
“Fuck off, corpo-pig!”
“Danny sold you out, dumbass! I’m not corpo-sec.” Juliet knew, from experience, how real the fear of betrayal was when you were up against the corps, and she hoped her knowledge of Danny’s name would be enough to send the guy into a spiral of doubt. “No way out! The underground’s sealed up, and you’re surrounded. Only hope to live is that you haven’t killed that corpo-rat yet. Have you?”
“He’s alive, but you’re gonna merc me as soon as I let him go!”
“If I wanted you dead, I’d send a bomb your way on my drone!” Juliet had to confess she kind of loved bluffing. “Come on, last chance. Lay down your gun and take a knee. I’m an independent operator. If I have you tied up before the corpo-rats come inside, they probably won’t shoot you—not if I’m here taking footage.”
“Goddammit, bootlicker!” he growled, but Juliet heard his rifle clatter on the ground. “Come on then. I’m down.” Juliet peered around the corner, just barely poking her helmet around, and sure enough, he was down on his knees, hands on his head, and his gun three meters away.
She stepped around the corner, Texan leveled at his face. “Bootlicker, huh? I don’t think so, dummy. I wouldn’t have chased you if your even dumber friend hadn’t decided to light up all those pedestrians, if you hadn’t snatched up a hostage. This is on you.”
“What the shit? Are you wearing a dress?” He started to move, but the second his hands lifted off his head, Juliet rattled her Texan and wagged the finger of her left hand at him.
“Don’t be dumb. I might be in a dress, but I’m a lot faster than you, and I don’t miss.” She pointed to the laminate tiles in front of him. “Lay down on your face, hands behind your back.” He was kind of a handsome guy—strong jaw, dark brows, piercing, shiny silver eyes, and well-groomed, from his beard to his hair to his neat fingernails. When he grimaced, it looked kind of good on him, and Juliet had the weird, stray thought that someone who looked like that shouldn’t be involved in something like this. It was an absurd, stupid thought, but it made her wonder about her preconceived notions about society—something that seemed to happen more and more the further she got from her old life.
As she stepped around him and moved to place a knee on his back, grasping his wrist, he struggled a little, straining against her pull. She tapped the Texan’s barrel against his head, right above his ear. “Don’t make me put a big hole in you, buddy.” When he settled down, she reached around him with her free hand and loosened his tie. “I don’t have any shrink-cords on me.”
While she worked at tying his hands up behind his back, the guy grunted, “What’s in it for you, anyway? You ain’t gonna undo what Evers did to those people in their cars.”
“What’s in it for me? I guess just knowing I haven’t lost my soul yet. Knowing I’ll still step up when I see something wrong. Now tell me where the corpo-sec officer is and what was in that duffel bag. Is it here?”
“He’s through that door right there. He ain’t dead. The bag . . .” he paused, and Juliet could tell he was furiously thinking. “The bag’s full of nano wafers. The best TanTan can make. They’re worth a few million bits. If you keep it outta Luna Security’s hands, I’ll put you in touch with my fence. He’ll keep a cut for me, but it’ll make you rich.”
Juliet opened the door and looked at the swollen-faced, fitfully breathing corpo-sec officer and the bulky black duffel beside him. She’d heard of TanTan Corp. They were well-known for making some of the best processors for everything from PAIs to data servers. Juliet briefly considered the guy’s offer. If she were quick and clever, she might slip away before Luna Security showed up. Failing that, she might hide the bag somewhere . . . She shook her head. “Nah, sorry, chum, but I’ve got my hands full right now. If they’re looking for you, they know what you stole, and they’re going to turn this place upside down looking for it. I’m not wearing my sewer-exploring clothes, so I won’t be trying to slip away through the underground.”
“Not to mention, we have a contract with them, and you’d have to burn your SOA license again if you did that.” Angel’s words further settled Juliet’s mind, and she knelt by the unconscious officer, feeling his pulse. It was thready but there.
“You better hope he doesn’t die.”
“What’s the difference? As you said, Evers sealed our fate when he went nuts, blasting all those cars. Dumbass! Dammit, I should’ve stopped working with that guy after he got that implant . . .”
“What implant?”
“A cold circuit.”
Juliet was about to ask what a cold circuit was, but Angel helped her out, “That’s a slang term for a Morality Override Interface or MOI. It’s an implant that modulates stimulation in the prefrontal cortex, training someone to ignore moral impulses. It was designed, with much controversy, for use in military applications, helping soldiers who struggled to commit acts of aggression.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Juliet stepped back into the hallway, groaning in disbelief. “He purposefully put something in his head to make him ‘cold?’ Why the hell?”
Before he could answer, Angel said, “Luna Security is here. They’re entering the warehouse, and I’ve given them your location and ensured they know you have subdued the fugitives.”
“Guess he got called a coward a few times too many.” Juliet had the impression that he shrugged, but face down, with his hands behind his back, it looked more like a twitch.
“Your ride’s here. Stay calm.” Juliet lowered her gun, holding it by her hip, and waited. Less than a minute later, she heard the stomp of boots, and then two Luna Security officers stormed around the corner, bulky SMGs leveled at her and her prisoner.
“Freeze! Get on the ground!”
Juliet didn’t have a pocket that would hold the Texan, so she kept it in her hand, but she held her free hand up, shaking her visored head. “I’m under contract with you. My PAI will send the authentication.”
“Get on the ground!” the second one barked, jamming his gun at her.
“Calm down.” Juliet nodded toward the doorway on her right. “You’re wasting time, and your buddy needs an ambulance.”
“She’s good,” the first officer said, straightening up. He stepped over to Juliet’s prisoner, pulling a shrink-cord from his belt. “We saw you iced the other one, huh?”
“He was the violent one.” For some reason, Juliet wanted to try to earn her prisoner some goodwill. “This guy turned himself over, no problem.”
“Uh-huh. He can tell it to the judge. Maybe you can be a character witness.” He squatted to apply the shrink-cord while his partner went through the doorway to check on the injured corpo-sec officer.
She heard him speak from the other room, “Hostiles are down. Payload’s secure. Send the trauma team through.”
Realizing she wasn’t needed any longer, Juliet started to walk past the guy on the ground, heading for the corner. However, something wouldn’t let her turn her back on the corpo-sec officers, and she walked kind of sideways, watching them as she moved. She wondered how precarious her existence was at that moment. If she’d laid down her gun and proned herself out on the floor when they’d ordered it, would they have realized who she was and let her up, or would they have killed her and stolen the wafers? The idea that corpo-sec were just as often corrupt as not wasn’t an urban legend.
“Where are you going?” the first officer asked as she reached the corner.
“I’m done here.”
“You need to make a report.”
“I’ll send it in. Like I said, I have a contract.” She could see he wanted to argue, but he couldn’t—Angel had legitimized her just enough that he couldn’t easily abuse his authority with her. Too many other layers of their organization knew who she was and that she was there. There was a record of her pursuit and capture of the criminals.
“I’ll be sure to mention the wafers in my report.” As she turned the corner, the officer’s mirrored visor followed her, and she could imagine his scowl. “Those guys were itching to shoot someone,” she subvocalized.
“They may have had designs on the contraband. It seems strange that they held the trauma team back so far. They still aren’t through the warehouse.”
“Yeah, especially when we already reported the capture.” As she left the office area and began crossing through the warehouse, Juliet could hear the stomping feet of the emergency response unit and took a different aisle, not wanting to run into them. She tucked her pistol into her jacket pocket, grip first, barrel hanging out. She figured she shouldn’t give the other officers a reason to blast her. When she held her elbow close to her side, you couldn’t see the gun at all. “It’s a scary world, Angel. Can’t trust anybody.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No. I wasn’t being literal. I have some people I can trust, starting with you.” Juliet sighed as she stepped into the bright lights of the corpo-sec vehicles and the trauma ambulance. Angel was projecting her ID so no one threatened to kill her, but she felt the stares of the half-dozen uniformed responders. Amazingly, her bike was still there, unbothered, waiting for her. She was putting away her pistol when a grizzled, older corpo-sec officer with sergeant stripes approached her.
“Lucky! I was hoping I could put a face to the name and license number before you take off.”
“All the same to you, Sergeant, I’d rather not take my helmet off. I’m late.”
“Huh, shame. I was hoping to get your statement in person.”
“Sorry. I was trying to get somewhere when this all happened. You mind?” Juliet swung her leg over her bike and gestured, indicating he was in her way.
“No problem. I’ll get out of your way, but I’ll need a local address. Brass is going to have a lot of questions about this one—seven dead civilians back on the freeway, and three of ‘em are high-net-worth individuals, if you know what I mean.”
“I . . .” Juliet wracked her brain for a suitable lie. “I’m staying in my ship. I’ll have my PAI send you the hangar information.” Juliet subvocalized, “The Lady Hawk, not the gunship.”
“Roger,” Angel said, flashing a wink emoji on her AUI.
“Perfect. I’m Sergeant Hines; I’ll be in touch.”
“Beautiful,” Juliet said, her bike rumbling to life, throwing indigo underglow lights onto the dark pavement.
As Juliet rolled away, goosing the throttle a lot more than she probably should have with all those Luna Security personnel standing around, he called after her, “Nice bike!”