Cats Cradle Chapter 3
The air aboard the Destiny Nova was heavy. The scrubbers had been shut off. A couple of low-power LED lights kept everything lit, but aside from them, everything was shut down. Even though they were now on the shaded side of the asteroid, the heat was getting intolerable. They were facing Nehalennia.
The Senshi crew were starting to wilt in the heat, some of them having long since stripped down to the bare essentials just to get cool. They’d even dropped the atmospheric pressure to the safest minimum, increasing the partial pressure of oxygen to compensate, solely to reduce vapour pressures and help them sweat.
It didn’t help much.
Mari considered switching to a full O2 atmosphere, dropping pressures to a minimum, but that just wasn’t safe. Not for the first time she found herself jealous of the cyborgs who could just step out onto the asteroid, or find shade under ship.
She checked a few settings, then turned off a few more unnecessary systems to reduce power drain from the batteries to just the couple of amps needed for the lighting. The engine field coils had been degaussed and anything which generated a varying magnetic field was shut down. Electric motors, air scrubbers, even the computer systems had been throttled right back to a minimum. Desmond was kept at a low enough power to keep himself and Cortana amused with Team Fortress 2 and not much else.
Only DC systems were online. A constant magnetic field was easier to hide on an iron-nickle asteroid. Varying ones were obviously artificial.
They were hidden in a crater on an asteroid under a rock-effect tarpaulin especially developed to diffuse their heat signature. To anyone who cared not to look too hard, it appeared as little more than natural solar heating and re-radiation. It also happily acted as a nice radio reception antenna, while mimicking the reflection of the surrounding rock.
Cortana wasn't enjoying her stay in the shuttlebay. She didn't have to worry about oxygen or the tmeperature. Still, not being able get out and around in the ship to talk with people was the worst part of the plan in her opinion. Nobody ever came into the forward bay.
Mari sat back in the pilot’s seat, looking out up at the underside of the sheet. They’d been parked up for about three days already. Three days aboard a hot, cramped ship, sweating buckets. She’d give the Boskonians who built her one thing at least, they were tough bastards to be willing board a boat like this for weeks at a time. What it was like for the prisoners in the cargo hold, she tried so hard not to think about.
It didn't keep the ghosts away.
A small light flickered on the radio panel. Once, twice, three times, followed by a chirrup as a single message popped up onscreen. She pulled herself over the vacant copilot’s seat to read it. It was just a simple short text message, only a few hundred characters at most.
It perked her spirits up no-end.
Running under radio silence, the best way to get in touch with the message's intended recipient was to open the hatch in the floor and shout down the length of the ship. Every pressure door had been jammed open anyway to let air circulate.
Forward, in the galley right at the bow of the ship, dinner for three Kunstler consisted solely of rip-pack self-warmed ready meals. They weren’t as bothered by the heat as the ordinary humans, having bodies capable dealing with it with little trouble.
Tiegel was busy finishing a story, while Jet was half buried in a bag of ‘food’, and Lenneth was still trying to figure out how to rip hers open without tearing it apart entirely.
“So, I get out and these turrets are still there and they go on alert,”
“They shot you?” Lenneth asked.
“No, that’s the damnedest thing.” he answered. “They started to sing,”
Jet didn’t appear surprised.
“Bullshit!” Lenneth snorted.The bag tore completely open, spilling it’s contents in a cascade of dessicated flavouring and textured protein. The heat pack fizzled on the floor “Motherfucker,” she grunted through gritted teeth.
Tiegel chuckled. Jet just smiled. “They did it for me too,” she said. “You just have to complete the test courses.”
Tiegel nodded.
Lenneth planted her hands hard on her hips, “You both went through the test course?”
Tiegel and Jet nodded. “You didn’t?” Tiegel replied.
“Of course not. Why the hell would anybody want to?”
Jet and Tiegel shared an aside glance. “Boredom?” both cyborgs suggested to each other in unison. Seemed like the obvious answer to them.
Lenneth rolled her eyes and set about clearing up the mess on the floor, grumbling to herself about strange colleagues and their weird ideas. Who in their right mind would take on potentially those lethal test chambers solely for shits and giggles?
“Hey Jet!” a voice called down the length of the ship.
“Shuttup,” someone grumbled in one of the cabins.
“What?” Jet yelled back.
“Message. From the Insertion team,”
A blonde head appeared through some drawn curtains. “I’m trying to sleep!”
Jet ran past her trailing a soothing draft and the wafting smell of Meals Rejected by Erisians. She rushed to the bridge, passing through the engine room on her way. Andrew Maion, the only person in Fenspace who could understand the Nova’s engines, was sleeping happily under one of the big gas generator turbines. Jet’s slamming footfalls jolted him awake.
“Too hot,” he mumbled and rolled over onto a cooler patch of metal. Linda was down in the battery room, still humming that odd tune of hers.
The cargo bay door was sealed, while the bay itself was purposely left depressurised. Aside from mealtimes, most of the Kunstler were staying in vacuum. It saved air loss through continuous depressurisation. A sign on the door advised against going in alone, coupled with a Ghostbusters logo.
Getting up the ladder to the top deck hadn’t stopped being a pain. Still, it was easy enough if she just pulled herself up with her hands, propelling herself up onto the deck with one last push.
“Just came in,” Mari said, taking her rightful position at the Commander's seat. Jet may have been the mission commander, but she was the ship’s Captain. “It’s on the comms panel.”
“Thanks.”
It took Jet just a few moments to read the message. Short, but exactly what she wanted to hear.
Both on Rock. Confirm Vidkun. Possible Bob Rife. Vidkun may trust. Teela safe. Retrieve QED tomorrow. Get car ready for hookup. Laters :)
Mari swore she saw a weight drop off of Jet's shoulders. “They made it,” she said. Ford was okay.
“So, we’re finally getting off this rock sometime soon?” Mari asked.
“A couple of days maybe,” Jet responded. “Next SMS will be them leaving, then we’re going in,”
“Great,” Mari sighed, flopping back against the console. She gazed out over the hull to the metallic rock beyond. “I’ve had enough of this view already.”
She was still staring at the rock outside when Jet went below decks. Jet herself dropped down to the third deck, both feet clanging hard onto the deckplates. The lower deck was far more cramped. Linda was busy in the battery room behind her, while Jet made her way forward through the life support generators.
Frost was forming on the stored air tanks. Some bedding had been clustered around them. Miranda was cooling herself in nothing more than a tank-top and shorts, face buried in a book... as usual.
Heart of Darkness, Jet noted. Odd... most of the Senshi crew had a thing for Stephen King. Both of them mumbled a greeting as Jet went by.
The computer room was where Luka usually hung out... He wasn’t there, but the dinosaurs were. Everything was shut right down to cut heat output. Desmond’s rack was specially marked with a single piece of notepaper.
On it, a sketch of the Destiny Nova exploding, and the words ‘Please don’t forget!!’. The rack had its own onboard batteries allowing Des’ enough time to do an emergency hibernate, and was secured in place by a single catch. The intention was to make it easy for Luka to pull him out, and escape in Little Nelly, usually stored in the forward shuttlebay.
A Zig fighter could just about fit in there. A Skoda Estate would also fit if you didn’t mind not being able to get anything else in nor wanted to close the inner airlock doors. Most of the equipment and survival suits had been dumped in what was usually the emergency control room.
When Jet came into the forward shuttlebay where the Stargazer had been parked, the car was totally dark. The air inside was still normal, though the temperature had been raised by some waste heat from the small spacecraft. There was some condensation on the inside of the windows.
Jet knocked gently on the roof.
The screen projector activated, showing Cortana's avatar sitting in front of a virtual TV screen with a gamepad in hand and playing a match of Team Fortress 2. She was getting sick of being stabbed in the back by the spy.
“Hi Jet, nice to see you again” Cortana greeted with a smile, “I hope nothing bad has happened? So what can I do for you ?”
“Got a message from Ford and Cathy.” Jet told her with a relieved cheerfullness. “They’re on Nehallennia. They’ll have the QED set up tomorrow probably.”
“I already have the QED link to Hedwig set up. There is enough bandwidth for games.” the avatar informed her. “I have been losing on TF2” She sounded annoyed.
Jet's smile grew oddly mischievous. That’d be Desmond’s little hobby then. “Good. Have task force Butterscotch come up to hot standby. We might need to be going on short notice anytime over the next three days.”
Jet found her cheer dissolving. She hoped they wouldn’t have to go that quickly. The only reasons she could think of that would have them going on such short notice, weren’t good reasons.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
“Butterscotch responds affirmative, ready in three hours.”
“Right so,” Jet said, her voice soft. Her thoughts had already gone elsewhere.
There were three C-130’s rigged for prisoner transport and medical evacuation, a pair of B-36’s for long range heavy support. Four squadrons of Zigs were carried in the Peacemakers bellies. On top of that, a whole squadron of Blackbrids and enough troops to take a small city.
Task force Butterscotch was waiting.
Aboard one of the Blackbirds, a comm panel came to life. The panel operator checked the message he’d received, before tapping the craft’s pilot on the helmet
“Hurry up and wait,” he told him. “As fucking usual”
The pilot sighed. “Why can’t they ever think about us, stuck aboard ship on hot standby until further notice? What do they think we are, robots?”
Teela and Cally were sitting in their quarters, getting ready for the day. Cally lounged around in her underwear for a bit after her shower, tweaking a few little things on her leg before getting dressed. Her towel was dripping, hung off the door. They’d survived the night, that was the main thing. There were a few things that had to be taken care of. Cally had to get to work repairing the truck, while Teela was making final checks that her collar’s mapping program would work.
“Hey, they said you could get to your truck today when they finished their examination... and I am pretty sure they did not find any damned Patrol toys on it, otherwise they would have taken it apart completely.” Teela said, hoping to raise Cally’s mood a little bit. “You will get it up and running within no time at all, I am sure.”
They just had to wait for Sato’s team to finish. Wait and hope they found nothing. Cally forced herself to focus on her truck. She had an OBD diagnostic checker in the truck, and the toolbox was kept in the cabin, not in the cargobay. Still, there was always the chance somebody else had bugged them.... or somebody would be clever enough to plant a bug to fake evidence, or any number of a hundred things. They gnawed at the back of her mind as she paced around the room. A small console beside the door began to beep in time with a blinking yellow light.
“Cally, I think you have a phone call,” Teela purred. “What do you think, do we have won the Christmas lottery and will get one million small toys for your brave and nice catgirl?” she said, curling up happily into herself, not even bothering to get up.
“Lazy beast” Cally snorted, throwing a pillow at the catgirl. She stood herself up, muttering dark things about lady Garfield, and activated the commlink. “Cally Auron here?”
Sato’s face appeared.
“Good morning Miss Auron. You might want to know that we finished the examination of your truck this morning.” Sato said with a cheery smile.
“I’m assuming it came up clean,” Cally said, archly.
“Well. Sato answered, sucking air through her teeth like a mechanic about to give a big bill. “Define clean?. We didn’t find any bugs. At least, not the electronic kind anyway.” She giggled.
Cally could’ve throttled her. Those few moments had scared the hell out of her. “Oh Ha hah,” She blew a draft of frustration through her lips and opened the door.
Naoko was there, waiting like she was her best friend. Cally felt oddly ill.,
“I think now you can get started on fixing your truck, while we have a chat on the way,”
“About what?”
“A little job offer,”
Teela remained perched on her pillow, even after Cally had left the room to get to her truck. She was bored, but they both could not afford that anyone on the station got even more suspicious about them. She had work to do.
She waited for at least ten minutes, then raised her head and looked through the room. With a big grin she jumped up and hurried over to a small box in the ‘luggage’ they had brought here from the truck. She opened it and looked over the small collection of cat toys, then took out a small piece of glass. She quickly put the box back where it had been and hurried back to her pillow and began to play a little bit with the glass. Then she yawned and pulled the blanket over her head.
Both she and Cally had agreed that it was unlikely the apartments were being watched, but Teela liked to be careful. She slipped the glass lens over her left eye and activated the small display for the collar, opening the current map of the asteroid.
Even if someone had been watching her, they wouldn’t have seen more than a sleeping cat, or occasionally one which liked the scratch at it’s eye. Building this disguised computer system had been really fun, now was the time to make good use of it.
Somewhere on the map had to be the lab where the Ghost Hack was developed, she thought. It was just a matter of working out where. Teela had nearly an hour of video to work through.
“Oh, Agatha left her behind,”
Sato spoke so offhand, it nearly made Cally faint. She’d just asked about Quattro. She was just poking for a little info on the madgirl. And that was the explanation. Go fishing for minnow, catch a bluefin tuna.
“I see you’ve heard of her,”
“Agatha Clay?” Cally blurted out. Her eyes had golfballed.
Sato seemed to inflate. “Unh. She left a few months ago, and Quattro stayed behind. Two Mads on one base was a little too crazy.”
Two Mads on her base. Agatha Clay had been on her base.
“...wow.” C
Which meant, chances were, there’d be information on where Agatha had gone on her base. Cally’s skin began to prickle with excited static electricity.
“Where’d she go?” she asked, trying to sound as offhand and nonchalant as possible.
“She did not say,” Sato answered, her tone turning just that little bit sour.
Maybe it hadn’t been a pleasant parting? An acrimonious divorce? Cally tried her best to remember Clay’s profile, given on her bounty card. It was one of the big bounties, the kind every hunter knew about, but only the bigshot professionals ever thought about going after. From what she recalled, she gathered it wasn’t Sato who’d ordered Clay off the base,
She doubted Quattro had forced Agatha off, something about that just didn’t feel right. She wondered if maybe Agatha hadn’t seen what they were planning and bailed out early before it blew up in everyone’s face.
Cally kept it in the back of her mind, even as she made small talk with Naoko. The other option was that Naoko was happily playing her as the fool and Quattro was far more deadly than even Agatha.
“Have you been to Crystal Paris recently?” Sato asked her, taking a sudden left swerve in things. It seemed to be just a curiosity of hers.
“Don’t go in to Venus,” Cally answered. “But Kiko goes there.” A bitter pause. Cally forced herself to snarl. “Used to go there from time to time,” she corrected herself.
Naoko thought. Her brow creased as she tried to match the name to a face. She brought her hand to her chin. “I don’t remember her,”
Cally dismissed it with a shrug. “She ran from Titusville mostly. Paris was her vacation spot.”
“I see.” She looked at Cally, then at floor. “I was wondering if Café à la place du Café was still open.”
Cally shrugged again. “Never been there.” She didn’t risk falling for that old trap.
They walked through a few corridors Cally found herself starting to recognise. A pair of the locals rushed by pushing a trolley, being yelled at by some random courier. He made a pass at Cally. Gold teeth, what a dick. He sounded Russian.
She told him where he could stick it. Bastard probably had a Catgirl anyway.
“It is getting busy here. Especially since most other waystations have been hit in the last few months. Most of what went there now goes through here.”
“What’re you getting at?” Cally asked her.
“How about you start working for us?” Sato suggested, wearing a oily smile that reminded Cally of so many used car salesmen who made you feel like they were doing you a favour selling you that lemon of a Buick.
She made a show of thinking about it.
Sato continued with the pitch. “I am sure we could come to an agreement, especially if you have trouble getting the money.”
“I won’t,” Cally said, firmly.
Sato appeared unperturbed “Yes, Quattro told me you wouldn’t sell your catgirl to her. If you’re not interested in that, maybe we could renegotiate the rate of interest.”
Cally looked thoughtful. “What sort of renegotiation?”
“Work for me, and each job you do for me, also counts towards your debt,”
Oh, that old game. Cally’s eyes narrowed.
“Do I look like a moron?”
“Oh no,” Sato assured her. “I doubt we would be talking here if you were. I’ll drop the interest rate to below five percent for one thing, even if you can pay it back next week. All you have to do is agree to take a few simple jobs.”
“And if I agree, pay at the five percent and then run off into the wild black yonder?”
Sato’s smile broadened into an almost malicious grin “Somehow I doubt you will. I am sure couriers like yourself pride themselves on keeping their word and sticking to a deal. You Bean Bandits depend so much on your reputations.”
The threat implied was that she’d badmouth Cally across the system so she’d never get a job again, and had more than enough influence and standing to pull it off. Any other Zwilnik would probably just have threatened her with either a catgirling machine or an industrial deep-fat frier. Or both.
“Seems fair,” Cally said. “I’ll take jobs from you on two conditions.”
“Those are?”
“No runs down into the ‘danelaw. And I get to veto pickups within two light minutes of Atalante, Prometheus, Heimdal or any other Space Patrol or OGJ base if I think it’s too dangerous.”
Sato shook her head. “No. Any other Space patrol or OGJ base might as well be anywhere worth going to. Do you really think I would throw my couriers away by sending them to a certain death? Atalante, Prometheus and Heimdal is fine as a veto list, but no wildcards.”
Cally crossed her arms, “Do you think I’ve been a courier for this long without knowing when to spot which jobs are good, and which will get me arrested or worse?”
Maybe she was playing the part too much? Maybe it’d be better to just get on Naoko’s good side and play the idiot. Something in her pride refused to let her.
Naoko’s expression darkened. “Do you think I have kept my operation here safe by throwing people away to get arrested?. One person arrested, is one person who can talk.”
“Good point,” Cally was forced to admit. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Naoko didn’t seem too happy about the answer, but her mood seemed to be improving now that she thought she was winning.
“Do. The offer is good until you leave the station. And after this last incident, I doubt there are many who would give you as good terms as I am doing. We’ll talk later.”
Naoko left her with that, making damned sure she didn’t get the last word in. The landing bay itself was pressurised at the time, with another truck parked up and loading. That was where all the trolleys were going.
There was something she wanted in her toolbox, but first she had to make a show of getting about repairing the truck. She had to repair the truck anyway unless they wanted to get caught in the crossfire of the upcoming attack
She crossed the bay doing her best to go unnoticed, opening the passenger door of her truck before pulling out the seat. It wasn’t hard, the passenger seat was designed to be removed, so Jet could sit in the back in comfort.
Now it helped her get her toolbox out. She opened it, a basic key lock deterring casual thieves, checked to see if what she really wanted was still hidden in its proper place - it was - before removing her engine diagnostic kit.
It was literally just an ordinary OBD-II diagnostic unit and connection leads. It was a fault code reader, nothing more or less. It had a simple LED display. She hooked it up to the trucks ECU - now waved - but still working much the same as it usually did.
It took a few moments to make the connection. The truck’s own minor AI smiled inside itself, recognising the touch of its owner. The poor thing really was like a loyal dog, did she have to have it shot up so bad?
“Hey! What the hell is that?”
She snapped around, turning to face that same gold-toothed zwilnik she’d passed in the corridor. He was bearing down on her wearing an almost dog-like snarl, big ice-coloured eyes focused on the device in her hand.
Teela had worked for hours on the collars data, slowly creating an annotated map. She was sure that the designers hadn't originally planned the asteroid out a high security facility, it appeared that most of the security systems had been added as an afterthought. The only exception was the section of station they'd gotten themselves lost in.
They hadn't gotten too far into it, but the layout was noticeably different. There'd been less people moving around, and nearly none of them had been just chatting with each other. The few pieces of conversation the collar had recorded had even some technical content.
Obvious really, Teela thought, then stretched herself and yawned. She got up and moved over to Cally's luggage again. She put her ‘toy’ back into its box and removed a standard computer tablet. It took her a few moments to find the room's network plug, before she curled herself up on the bed surfing around the local intranet.
Somewhere in there should be some evidence that this ‘restricted’ area was really the one they were looking for.
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