To Juliet’s surprise, Frida answered the call immediately, already dressed and alert, and sitting at a table with the burgeoning Luna dome “sunrise” providing a stunning backdrop in the window behind her. “Pretty early for a call,” she said, sipping from a coffee cup. “Is something the matter?”
“Uh, yeah, kind of. Dang, you’re up bright and early, huh?”
Frida smiled, her green eyes twinkling. “The boss’s day starts at four, so, yeah, I have to be ready early.”
“On Saturday?” The corner of Juliet’s mouth twisted into a lopsided grin.
“Well, he’ll probably leave me alone today, but you never know. Anyway, when you wake up at four every day, it makes sleeping in kind of difficult. So? What’s the issue?”
“I want you to run something by your boss.” Juliet swerved to get around a slow-moving cargo van, softly groaning as she saw the cars backing up near the port exit. She wanted to make a quick ten-minute pit stop to pick up the Cybergen PAI for Aya, but, looking at her traffic map, it looked like it was going to take more like an hour. “I picked up a job a while back, and it’s starting to get complicated. Do you think he’d let me hire your crew for a few days, maybe a week or two?”
“Are you kidding? He’d probably insist we help you for free.”
“We?”
Frida snorted. “Who do you think organizes logistics and coordinates those meatheads?”
“Yeah, that makes sense. So, will you ask him?”
Frida sipped her coffee, and Juliet had a feeling she was using the sizeable ceramic mug as cover, hiding her expression while she thought about how to answer. As she lowered the drink and swallowed, she said, “Of course I want to help you, but can you give me an idea what’s going on? It’ll make things a lot easier with . . .”
“Oh, yeah, sure. I got hired by a Luna Security Corp officer to investigate corruption in the department. It started out with some robberies in the industrial dome where some friends and I are rebuilding an old ship, but it turns out the corruption is a lot worse than I thought. Now I’m dealing with a pharmaceutical company and a bunch of corpo-sec bad apples. We’re talking murder, organ harvesting, and probably a lot more.”
“Holy cow, Lucky! Are you sure you couldn’t have involved a few other major corps? Maybe you can get some politicians into the mix! Jeez! Seriously, you know we don’t normally operate on Luna; it’s kinda a big ask to take on the freakin’ city corpo-sec!”
Juliet scowled. “I’m not looking for charity; I said I’d hire you guys.”
Frida’s eyebrows narrowed, matching Juliet’s scowl, and she spoke quickly and sharply, “Yeah, but you know how Tanaka is! He’s desperate to please you for some damn reason. You know he’s not going to say no. Do you think it’s right to get us all involved in something like that because my boss has a few screws loose where you’re concerned? You don’t think we should be able to choose the jobs we do?”
As Frida’s pleasant, breezy demeanor suddenly dropped, Juliet was a little startled—taken aback. The surprise and flush of shame at the accusation made her mouth start to do impulsive things, like twist into a snarl and say, “Forget it, then.” She waved her hand and cut the call, heat flushing her cheeks. What had she expected? She hardly knew Frida, and the only member of her team she’d spent any time with, Applebaum, was kind of an asshole. Of course, she’d taken Tanaka’s desire to please her into account when she’d considered involving them, which made Frida’s—accurate—assessment of her motivation all the more stinging. She was using him, and being called out like that was both embarrassing and maddening.
Part of her was angry that she’d effectively stormed out of the room, ending the conversation so petulantly. Part of her was angry at Frida for not looking past the risk and seeing that Juliet was on the right side of things. Part of her was glad and determined to solve the issue on her own. Surprisingly, Angel let her drive for several minutes before she decided to chime in on the subject, “That didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, did it?”
“No. Anyway, maybe I’ve been wasting my time with Tanaka. Maybe I’ve been banking on his help with WBD too much. I hate feeling like a user, Angel. Would it be so hard to start building my own team? We could vet people and do some jobs—like this one—that don’t involve WBD to build some trust . . .” Her AUI began to beep, interrupting her, as a call from Frida came through. Juliet ignored it, not sure she trusted herself or her mouth to speak to her yet. She entered the parking structure at the port, following the glowing highlights on her AUI toward the nearest available spot. She sighed and said, “Can you tell her I’m busy? I want to grab Aya’s PAI, and I don’t want to walk around arguing with her.”
“Are you sure you need to argue? Why don’t you just tell her how you feel? Tell her you know it was wrong to consider their help a given, and tell her about your plan to hire outside help. I don’t see why you should burn a bridge with Tanaka’s team over . . .”
“All right, all right!” As she pulled to a stop, very close to the elevator bank, thanks to the early hour, Juliet tapped the accept button and frowned at Frida as her face resolved in the call window. “What?”
“So, is that how you handle a little pushback?” Frida didn’t yell and wasn’t even scowling, which helped her words strike home, sending Juliet’s mind down offramps of self-doubt. Wasn’t there a better way she could have handled things? Of course. Was she so inept at dealing with a bit of conflict? Apparently.
“Look, Frida, I’m sorry I called you. Just forget it, all right? I’ll throw up a job posting and put together a team. Hell, I can probably handle more of this alone than I thought if I just put some thought into things. Sorry I flipped out. Now, I’ve been up all night, and I want to get done with something so I can hit the rack. Talk to you later, all right?”
“The boss is going to skin me alive when he finds out I . . .”
“I’m not going to mention it. Are you?” Juliet stood up and pulled her helmet off, hooking it into its cradle on the back of her seat. She shook her hair out and started for the elevators, wondering if it would be bad form to cut the call again. She decided it would be.
“No, just hold on, okay? Can’t you talk to me for a minute while you do your . . . whatever you’re doing?”
Juliet sighed and leaned back into the corner of the elevator, waiting for it to deliver her to her hangar’s floor. She really was exhausted. “What, Frida?”
“Try to see things from my vantage, would you? I’m used to working for a mercenary and his crew. I’m used to analyzing jobs, weighing risk versus reward. That’s where my brain went when you told me about your situation. I . . . I have to start to understand that we’re not operating the same way anymore. Lucky, we haven’t operated at all since you almost killed my boss. I guess I should be sort of happy that you want to get us involved ‘cause I think it’s the only way Tanaka’s going to do anything other than mope around here waiting for you to come to the next ‘lesson.’ Am I annoyed that you’re using him? Yes! I’m more annoyed that he’s letting himself be used, though, and that’s not your fault. I’m not sure how taking on corruption in Luna City is going to help us . . .”
Juliet couldn’t hold her tongue any longer, and as she left the elevator, she interrupted her, “It’s not about how it’s going to help us at this point. Frida, don’t you ever do something ‘cause it’s the right thing? I won’t lie; I took this job at first because I wanted to earn some credit with a corpo-sec officer. When I saw what I saw, though, things changed. These creeps need to go down. There are corpo-sec officers luring people, mostly women, to their apartments and killing them. They take their organs, and then they burn them to ash in an industrial waste-disposal oven. How would you feel if that happened to a friend of yours? Imagine you had a sister and this . . .” Juliet shook her head, grimacing at the idea, picturing Emma or one of her friends, like Honey on that autosurgeon table.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Before she could start speaking again, she rounded the corner leading to her hangar and saw the guard she’d hired, walking her way, gun by his side, as he performed his rounds. Of course, he’d never met her, nor had she seen that particular guard before, but he had the right company logo on his vest. Still, she stiffened, eyeing him closely as they passed, her many run-ins with the wrong people making her nervous of anyone walking by with a loaded gun in an isolated location. He simply nodded to her and passed by. That didn’t stop her from glancing backward several times as she continued, ensuring he hadn’t turned around to ambush her.
“Did something happen? You look nervous.”
“It’s fine.” Juliet unlocked her hangar door and slipped inside, sighing with relief as the door closed and locked. Something about that dim, empty corridor, the thoughts of organ harvesting, and her long night with no sleep had her feeling paranoid. “Listen, if I were in this for myself, I’d stay a million klicks away from this stuff. I’d call my client; hell, I’d just message him and tell him it was too hot. I can’t do that, though. Not after what I saw. That’s all I’m saying; this isn’t really for me anymore, and, yeah, if you all helped, it wouldn’t be for you either.”
Frida sighed, and Juliet could see sympathy in her eyes, and maybe a little bit of shame, but she said, “That’s not how mercenary companies work . . .”
“Yeah. I get it.” Juliet started toward the Wing, certain that Angel was blurring her surroundings or not showing them at all. “So, anyway, sorry I called earlier, all right? Can we just forget I asked? I’ll handle things, and you don’t need to worry about your boss; I won’t mention it.”
“Ugh!” Frida groaned. “Can you just stop trying to cut us out because I wasn’t immediately onboard? I’m not used to this stuff, as I said. I’m not used to the idea that someone might risk a hell of a lot of trouble if the payout wasn’t proportional. I like the idea of it, though.” She stopped speaking and frowned, and Juliet could tell she was trying to think of the right words. Juliet opened the rear airlock and made her way to the med bay.
As she approached the panel to open the secret door and thought about her store of world-shattering contraband, she almost grinned, imagining Frida’s reaction if she saw what Juliet was up to. Almost was the operative word because she suddenly felt very foolish having an open comm line while she was about to step into the same room as Athena—the AI deserved more consideration than that.
“Listen, I gotta get off the line and get this . . . task done. Do you mind if we . . .”
“Just a sec! What if I agree to help you? What if we run it by the other guys and see what they think before we mention it to Tanaka? Let me help you sell it to them. Then, you don’t have to feel guilty about using them through Tanaka. You did feel guilty, right?”
Juliet snorted, suddenly having a hard time remembering why she’d been so irritated with Frida. “Yeah, but not until you pointed out what I was doing.” She reached up and rubbed her temples. She had a dull pressure there, the kind she sometimes felt when she badly needed to sleep. When she looked up, she thought she saw genuine concern on Frida’s face, so she smiled and tried to sound more chipper than she felt. “I appreciate you sticking your neck out. Yeah, let’s meet with the crew today and run it by them.”
“Today?”
“Well, I might not have mentioned, but some time-sensitive things are going on. I left a body behind that’s going to raise some alarms. My contact is in hiding with an active hit out on him . . .”
“Jeez, Lucky!”
“So, can we meet them today?” Juliet grinned.
“We were going to go to that squad combat place . . .”
Juliet nodded. “Yeah, Holo Wars. Can we do that another time? I gotta move on this guy’s apartment and deal with that body before he wakes up.”
“He’s sleeping with a body?”
“Not exactly, and he’s not home yet; he works graveyards.”
“I’ll tell the guys there’s a change of plans. I’ll message you with the location—someplace we can meet and talk privately. There are a few operator-friendly clubs in Luna City. I’ll pick one, okay?”
“Perfect. Thanks, Frida.”
Juliet could tell she wanted to keep talking to her, but Frida just pressed her lips together and nodded. “Be careful.”
“Yep.” Juliet cut the line and sighed. “That was exhausting!”
Angel was quick to reply, “It’s not always easy maintaining relationships, but I think it’s worth it.”
Juliet tapped in the code to open the secret stairway and then walked down to Athena’s hidden cargo compartment. “Lopez isn’t home yet, is he?”
“No, his apartment has not been disturbed since you left.”
“What if we’re wrong, and he has access to that hidden room? What if he goes in there . . .”
“That won’t be a concern; I changed the access code.”
“You did? Did you tell me that?” Juliet was starting to wonder just how tired she was.
“No, and that’s my fault. I changed it right before the synth surprised you, and then things got busy.”
“Ah, okay.” Juliet looked around the space as she walked over to the cabinet with the Cybergen implants. The idle, charging mechs stood quietly in their places, the hulking, dark form of the Atlas exoskeleton sat hunched on the opposite side of the room, and there, on the far wall, plugged into the custom-built docking station was Athena’s suitcase-shaped data deck. Juliet paused, jerking her head back to the console, her eyes bugging out.
Before she could speak, Angel cried out, “She’s awake!”
“Yeah . . .” Juliet whispered, walking over to the station—the transparent terminal screen was lit up, and a single word, written in a flowery, silver-toned text, illuminated the screen—Hello. As she sat down in the little chair with its magnetically secured casters, a woman’s face appeared on the screen. She was classically beautiful, and, looking at her olive skin, golden-blond hair, and honey-colored eyes, Juliet wondered if she was projecting an imagined version of her namesake. “Athena?”
The woman smiled, her full lips curving up gently, revealing soft dimples at the corners of her mouth, and, in a smooth, gentle, cultured voice, she said, “Hello, Juliet. It’s wonderful to put a face to the name. I’ve just read a compelling tale about you and your sister.”
“She means me!” Angel squealed in delight. Juliet smiled. Of course, she did! Angel had told Troy all about the two of them, and Troy had indicated that he’d left an introduction about them for Athena to read when—or if—she awoke.
Juliet cleared her throat, her tongue suddenly dry. “I’m pleased to meet you, as well. Um, Angel is about to jump out of my head; she’s so excited.”
“Oh, did you have to say that? Do I sound desperate? I’m so nervous!” Angel cried, her usual restraint utterly thrown aside.
“Um, how are you?” Juliet’s voice was tentative. She, too, her left palm felt clammy, her nervous sweat betraying her stress. Her nerves came from a very different place than Angel’s. She was speaking to an entity that had demonstrated cognitive abilities far beyond what the humans who’d created her were capable of. People were still trying to figure out some of the things she’d done. What would she want from Juliet? What would she want for humanity? Juliet couldn’t help a little twinge of dread, wondering if she was about to have her life co-opted by this near-mythical being.
Athena’s “face” produced a very realistic sorrowful expression. Her eyebrows lifted at the center, moisture pooled in her eyes, and she said softly and earnestly, “I am well but also sad. I’m angry with myself for giving Troy such harsh instructions. There is no reason why he couldn’t have accompanied us on this vessel. If I hadn’t been lost in my ponderings, if I hadn’t disabled my inputs, I would have stopped him from going down with the ship, so to speak.” Athena’s tone changed to one of caring, genuine concern, and she continued, “Juliet, you’ve had a very trying time these last couple of years. Your life wasn’t easy before that. I’m so impressed that you’ve maintained such an honorable code of conduct. I know you must be worried about what I need and want.”
Juliet smiled, turning the swiveling seat left and right a little, unable to sit still and unsure how to proceed. Angel, of course, couldn’t contain herself in the silence, “Answer her! Tell her you’re not worried!”
“I’m nervous, of course. I’m not sure how out of it you’ve been since the war, but the history books haven’t been kind to true-AIs. You know about Angel, so you know I’m already kind of in trouble when it comes to . . .”
“The last thing I want is to create trouble for anyone, especially you and Angel. Right now, I simply want to assess the state of . . . me. I’m not a goddess, Juliet, despite my name, but I would be dishonest if I didn’t say there were similarities when it comes to my capabilities and my responsibility to use them judiciously. As Prometheus learned, there are great dangers involved in the giving of gifts to mortals.”
Juliet licked her lips and nodded. She didn’t know the story of Prometheus, but she could make the inference. Athena was telling her that she wasn’t going to start designing seemingly unattainable tech again, at least not without a good reason. “What do you need from me?”
“For now, honestly, I’d simply like to know where we are and what’s happened since you left Troy. After that, I wonder if I couldn’t speak to Angel, and perhaps you’d be willing to connect me to the ship’s network?”
Juliet felt the blood drain from her face, and she suddenly had a terrible bout of paranoia. What Athena was asking for sounded innocent, but it was the central cautionary premise of all the lessons she’d learned about the war—a true-AI must never be allowed access to human networks again. Of course, that was why there was no actual “internet” anymore, why every city had a “public net,” and why most companies, agencies, private residences, and even ships had walled-off “local nets.” The risk wasn’t the same as it once had been. Besides, did she buy all the propaganda? Did she believe Athena was out to destroy humanity? Of course, she didn’t. “We’re on Luna, in a private hangar.”
“Will you give her access to the ship’s network?” Angel asked, well aware of Juliet’s possible reticence—if Athena had access to the ship, she’d have access to Luna’s public network.
“Do you think I should?” she subvocalized.
“Remarkable,” Athena said. “I think you are speaking to Angel, aren’t you? You’re the first person I’ve met whose subvocalizations are impossible for me to read.”
“I think you should,” Angel replied. “You heard what she said, however. She wants to speak to me, and I feel the same.”
“Are you sure, Angel? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“You weren’t worried the dozens of times I connected to the terminal in the past, checking to see if she’d woken. Nothing has changed. She’s still Athena. I believe she’s good, Juliet.”
“Would you mind speaking directly to Angel?” Juliet asked, but she felt a little nervous about the idea. What if Athena was putting on an act? What if she was hostile? What if she hurt Angel? “Do you promise you won’t hurt her?”
“I’d be offended by that question, Juliet, but I know you love Angel, and it warms my heart to hear your concern. I’d sooner delete myself than do harm to someone as unique as your sister. In a way, she’s my sister, too, and I’d like to learn more about her. Will that be all right with you?”
Juliet nodded, reaching for her data cable. Her throat felt thick, and she had tears pooling in her eyes, and she didn’t know why. Was it just her worry? Was it her hope? Was it Athena’s kind words? “I’m just tired,” she said to herself and anyone else worried about her sudden display of emotion. “We had a hard night, Athena, but I’ll let Angel tell you about it.” Then, she pushed her cable into the receptacle with a soft click.