Cats Cradle Chapter 9
Naoko Sato pulled her car door shut behind her, while simultaneously starting the engine with her other hand. There had been no time to pack. Just run....
Nehalennia was blown. VSW was blown. Her revenge was blown. Quattro would most likely be captured or killed. Her data, her plans would go to Great Justice. They’d develop countermeasures. They’d intensify the hunt for her. Everything had gone to hell again and here she was, running away again with nothing but the contents of a car boot to keep her going. Furby was still in her office. The Furby she’d had since she was young.
The engine stuttered to life. She slammed the fencar into gear. The gearbox started to whine as the magnetic generators came on line and she felt that a momentary wave of dizziness come over her as the car’s gravitational field established itself. The cabin switched over to internal life support with a thunk and a gaseous hiss, while the instruments did their usual disco-dance.
Time to run... again. It was a bitter reminder of how she felt that day when that bitch took everything from her. She made a point to run a search on Cally Auron. Another name on the vengeance list.
The car rose slowly up off the launchpad for a few moments as she tickled the throttle. The bay doors started to open. The atmosphere rushed out, punching them both clear off their hinges.
Fuck this world and everyone in it. They always take what I have.
Riding that thought, Naoko stomped on the gas and shot out into the void.
The final missile’s proximity detonator triggered.
A cloud of high speed shrapnel burst out, scything through the starboard engine pod and heatshield. Metal shards slashed through current carrying coils, instantly melting as Megaamps began to arc through them. Blue electric fire burned at temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, melting the coils before blowing the conductive metal apart, contorting it into magnetic tangles.
In the engine room, Andy had just enough time to feel the impact before the circuit breakers snapped open with a bang, opening the circuit and blowing out the arc in the breaker with a blast of nitrogen gas.
It was all over inside a quarter of a second, before the force of the blast had even begun to throw the Nova into a spin. White hot gas still spewed out of the smashed engine, leaving a glowing trail of gas and embers.
On the bridge, Hotaru was near thrown from her seat by the force of the impact,saved only by a too slack harness which crunched at her shoulder. She cried out in pain as alarms started to ring out across the bridge, panels switching to a dangerous red.
“The starboard nacelle has sustained a direct impact. We are venting drive plasma,” Desmond announced.
His steady voice was lost amongst the din of alarms and warnings.
“Shut down port! Shut down port!” Mari was yelling.
Carrie had leant right over, hauling all the control yoke, jamming the rudder pedals in as far as they could possibly go. With the starboard engine giving little or no thrust, and the port still running effectively at full throttle, the Nova wanted nothing more than to snap around in a wild spin.
“Got it, got it,” she grunted back through gritted teeth. “I can hold it,”
She reached over and pulled the engine throttle right back to the neutral position. The Nova snapped over, being pushed now by her own maneuvering thrusters.
“Hold it!” Mari barked.
“Don’t fight me. Don’t fight me,” Carrie snapped back at her.
“Starboard thrust, null it, null it out,”
Maneuvering jets machinegunned, shaking the ship’s frame. She bucked and rolled and creaked and groaned, threatening to just burst apart. Desmond was calling out something about attitude control and gimbal lock. Instruments on the pilots panels pegged themselves in the danger zones.
Miranda was trying to focus on the information coming through her earpiece, voices calling out damage and injury reports.
“I’ve got injuries all over the ship!”
The ship lurched once more as a damaged fuel tank burst open, spewing fuel gas like an extra thruster. Hotaru was thrown over, her skull making contact with a handrail. There was a red flash and she was gone, knocked clean unconscious by the cracking blow to her temple. That was all she knew of what happened to her.
Carrie hung on to the yoke. “We’re starting to roll. We’re rolling over right,”
Mari hung on to her panel. “Pitch and Roll! We’re pitching up. I’ll kill pitch, you kill the roll.”
The pair fought with the controls, thrusters firing. In the bay, Cortana’s straps snapped and lashed, denting the hull. The Stargazer slid forward, crashing into the shuttlebay doors, popping two out of the three latches, before sliding back against the internal bulkhead, smashing equipment lockers and permanently severing her own connections to the Nova’s systems. Luka in the computer room hit the server racks, before being pelted with a shower of datapads and paper manuals.
The ship kicked back, welds popping under the damaged wing, panels blowing off the heatshield exposing the wing structure underneath. Debris, superheated engine parts and gas-ice spewed out behind the spacecraft.
Linda was thrown first against the ceiling, then down on top of the batteries’ cover, then back up again. There was a crunch of shattering bone and a scream of agony.
Carrie struggled with the yoke, “I’ve got her. I’ve got her.”
Focus on the HUD. Focus on the gyros. Focus on the instruments and not on what her inner ear was telling her. She could feel herself being flung around like loose change in a washing machine. Tumbling, spiral, bouncing. The stars out the windows were a whirl of light.
Mari was yelling “Fire you pigs,”
A thruster cluster had malfunctioned.
After a full minute of fighting, the ship came back under control, returning to steady flight. After the wildness of the last sixty seconds, it seemed positively strange to be moving steadily forward. Alarms were still sounding off; they began to die away slowly as they pushed buttons to finally acknowledge them.
“Main Bus B undervolt. Main Bus A undervolt. Starboard Three breaker trip. Starboard Four breaker trip,” Carrie read out. “Port engine one hot shutdown. Port engine two hot shutdown. Thruster pack two fuel warning. Starboard fuel low pressure...” she paused. “Might be easier to get a list of things that are still working,”
Mari turned back, “Hotaru, anything still come....” The rest of that sentence just died in her throat when she saw Hotaru slumped in her harness, blood matting the hair on the right side of her head. “Miranda, get the medkit! Fuck!”
She brushed the sweat off her face using the cuff of her uniform, before fumbling with the catch on her belt. “And tell me where the hell we’ve ended up out here. I don’t want to survive the missile hit before flying up shit creek without a thruster.”
“I still have a fix on Nehalennia, the sun and our marker stars.” Desmond announced. “We’ve passed the asteroid,”
Miranda fumbled with her belt straps, stumbling over the deckplates. The medkit was mounted beside an overhead porthole, strapped to the roof. It was enough for basic injuries. Right. Airway, breathing, circulation.... Hotaru seemed to be sitting up right. Airway clear. Breathing very shallow. Pulse was there, but barely.
“Dear sweet Serenity,” she breathed.
Her pupils were fully dilated. Nothing happened when she shone a light in them. Clear fluid trickled out of her ear, mingling with the blood. Thick, red blood pulsing out of the side of her head. Blood was smeared on the handrail where her skull had cracked against it.
“it’s a head injury,” she called back. “Bad one. Oh holy.... oh... It’s ….. “ Her tongue just tied itself into knots. It was obviously lethal, it was obviously going to be lethal very soon. Her skull had buckled in.
“Wave injector.” Mari ordered. “Now! Before she’s too far gone!”
Like all doors on Nehalennia, since the computer system had crashed, the lab door had fail-safed to unlocked. It kept people being trapped by system failures and power outages. Ford readied her gun; chambering a round, then clicking the safety off.
She planned to go in ready to shoot.
Cathy didn’t need to be told to get the door, she had trained. Kick it open, get out of the way. Let Ford shoot first, disable Quattro fast. Whatever happened, Quattro had to go down, and down quickly.
Cathy knew from personal experience just how scary-fast that madgirl could be. She had to be some sort of biomod.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
Fords gaze was firm. “I have an idea.”
Cathy nodded to Ford. ‘Ready?’
Ford looked back and grinned. ‘Of course’.
Neither of them said a word. It was communication at a glance. Ford held her pistol at the ready, Cathy brought her foot round in a broad arc, making contact with the door.
It burst open.
How the hell did they get here so fast?
That thought sparked through Quattros mind in an instant as she whirled around to face the unknown intruder, drawing her stun-gun with her free hand. There’s should’ve been at least ten minutes left before anyone made it down this far.
In a fraction of a second she saw Cally and that catgirl Teela. Stupid Naoko. Well, they didn’t have long to live, did they? Another moment, and her body would’ve caught up with her mind.
Teela spilled in, ducking low and out of Cally's way. Quattro stared right at the courier, staring right back at her with her pistol already aimed, ready to shoot. The copy in the cradle was just beginning to catch up with what was going on. The copy started to scream.
Faster than any human would ever be able to, she brought her stun-gun to bare on Cally.
Callys pistol fired first.
It can’t possible kill me, Quattro thought, taking reassurance in her design specs. It was only a nine-millimetre.
Trapped in her prison, Cathy... copy Cathy... saw it all. She saw the door burst open hard enough to hit the wall with a metallic clang, before spring back to a half-closed position. She saw herself come rushing through the door, Ford chasing behind with pistol drawn.
Cathy screamed, There wasn’t anything else she could do. She wanted to yell out a warning, to let them know that Quattro wasn’t just a madgirl but something far more sinister. She wanted to help. She wanted to break free and go for that smug bitches throat with claws and teeth.
But there she was. There she was, looking right at herself, running through the door. It couldn’t be anything else. It couldn’t be a trick. It couldn’t be anything but reality.
It took Ford a moment to get a bead on Quattro. It took Quattro a moment to draw her stunner, and spin round to face Ford.
She saw the gunshot, a sharp flash following a hard crack. She saw the stunner kick out of that bitches hand.
Cathy.... copy Cathy... started to sob.
It hit her in the hand.
Quattro felt the bullet bite through her fingers before bursting apart on the metal underneath. Reflexively, she snapped her hand back from the shock of it. An instant later, she tried to grasp at the stun gun, tried to pump the trigger.
The gun was falling. She grasped at it, but nothing happened. No touch, no feedback, just a sudden warning that three of her fingers were now missing.
A moment after that, the pain hit.
Quattro yelped, and spun around, shielding herself with her silver cape.
Ford felt a quick moment of elation as she saw the gun spring from Quattro’s hand. Her aunt Irene would be proud. Shooting a gun out of a persons hand was a myth, but shooting a persons hand almost invariably caused them to drop the gun they were holding.
Shooting off three fingers just made certain of it.
Quattro yelped with the pain, grabbing reflexively at her wounded hand.
Ford expected more blood, frankly. Perplexed for a heartbeat, it took her only a moment to notice the metal shining beneath torn skin.
A moment later, her mind caught up. If Quattro was a cyber like Jet... this was going to go bad real quick. Quattro had to go down fast.
Cathy had one advantage over Ford; she’d been in the lab before. It’d been dark, but the place still had a ghoulish familiarity to it. Shapes which had been little more than shadows were clearly visible, and no less incomprehensible. That catgirl, Vivio, was staring at her like she’d seen a ghost, in the middle of having a panic attack.
The door hammered against the wall, Cathy catching it as she slipped past it. The only thought running through her mind was to get out of Ford’s line of fire fast. Keep out of Ford’s line of fire.
Fords shot slapped painfully in her ear, but she forced herself to ignore it. Every moment of wasted time could be deadly. She pushed in. Get into the room.
She saw an opened crate which would make good cover and threw herself behind it. A stun-gun skittered against the wall nearby and she grabbed for it, taking it for herself. She hunkered down, scanning the room.
The catgirl in the tube was screaming at her. Ford shot Quattro again. Gunshots drilled through Cathys eardrums. Quattro seemed to curl up under her cape, sparks splashing off the silver material.
More shooting didn’t seem to useful at the moment. Cathy decided to make a run for the catgirl.
It took Ford only a few moments to realise her shots didn’t have much of an effect. That cape before was far more than just bullet resistant.
“Give it up!” she yelled. It was half a bluff, but it’d be enough. She still had near a full load.
The madgirl sneered at her from beneath her cape, before slowly slipping out. Golden eyes stared straight through her. There was something deeply unsettling about that gaze.
“Hands behind your head.” Ford ordered, “Nice and slow. Clasp them together.”
The madgirl was still staring contemptuously at her. Ford stiffened her stance, keeping her sights lined up at a point just above the bridge of Quattro’s nose. Her finger was tense on the trigger. She was ready to shoot.
Fluids trickled from Quattro’s broken fingers, forming pinkish rivulets snaking down her arm. Bare metal was exposed, beneath an obvious shroud of synthetic flesh. A cyber? An AI?
Quattro’s eyes flickered for a moment, and the madgirl smirked at her.
“You two are all alone here, and I shot your rescue party down. There’s no help coming.”
“Bullshit,” Ford spat back. “That’s why the whole base looks like an anthill that’s been knocked over, right?”
“They’re cowards.” Quattro assured her. “Nothing more. Humans are such weak and pathetic little creatures like ants. No matter how many you kill, more will just keep being born. If you were going to shoot me dead, you would’ve done it by now,”
Ford snarled. “What makes you so sure I won’t?”
“You’re not a murderer, even though you tried to kill me. You’re not one of the five OF-Eight troubleshooters, so you likely don’t have authorisation. In fact, I don’t think you’re even Great Justice... or you would’ve announced yourself. You’re something else....hmmm?”
Ford tried to keep stonefaced.
“If I was to guess, I’d say a bounty hunter. Which means, if you shoot me dead, you’re the one who goes to prison.” Quattro giggled, “Because, as you can see, I’m unarmed, and I don’t have a bounty on my head,”
Ford glared. “Cathy,” she called out. “You’d say it was self-defence, right?”
The catgirl looked back from the tube door with a smirk, “Of course.”
“Well,” said Ford. “That settles that. So, you’re going to stay right where you are, and when I tell you to, you’re going to walk with us. And if you make so much as a twitch in the wrong direction, I will shoot you down like a dog,”
Quattro gave no answer.
A distant rumble of thunder rocked the station. A moment later, the lights flickered once, then went out. Darkness fell, broken only by stray lights coming off the surrounding hardware. It took Ford a moment to realise she couldn’t see a damned thing.
The next thing she was aware of was a brick wall smashing into her cyber arm, before she was thrown hard enough against the wall to knock the wind clean out of her.
Cathy was busy with the door when the lights went out, stabbing at the plastic tape with a knife in the hopes it’d come loose. Vivio inside was banging on the plastic, claws gouging into it. It was a crazed maze of shallow scratches already.
What the hell was this stuff?
When the lights went out, it took her eyes only a moment to adjust. She heard Ford hit the wall with a heavy ‘oof’.
Have to free you later, Vivio. She spun round, readying her PPK. She scanned for Quattro.... a hunched shape loomed out of the gloom towards her. Instinctively, she fired once with a bang and a flash, dodging out of it’s way at the same time..
Something thumped her hard in the side, hard enough to sent a shock of pain run across her ribs, and she stumbled to the side. Panting with the pain, she stepped back.
“You can’t get away,” Quattro teased. “And I don’t have time to play nice!”
Quattro lunged again. Cathy was amazed at how it felt to just side-step and trip her up. Thank god for all this exhausting hours at Venus.
The battery backed emergency lights kicked in a moment later.
Copied Cathy watched the fight. She saw Quattro stumble hard against the wall, before recovering with a vicious snarl. She looked strong enough to rip a person’s arms clean off their body, but there was no control. Just brute, untrained force and speed.
Cathy rolled out of the way of the third attack. The catgirl found herself willing herself to stay ahead of that bitch. She didn’t want to watch herself die.
Ford slowly hauled herself back to her feet, swearing as something fell off her arm. The metal glinted in the light. A few artificial warnings intruded on her mind, letting her know just how bad the damage was. A blow like that to her other arm would’ve broken it.
The fingers of her real hand still clasped tightly around the grip of her pistol.
“I still have the gun!” she yelled.
“I’m going to kill you both,” Quattro promised. “I don’t have time to do this cleanly,”
Quattro lunged at Ford. Ford shot her again. The madgirl stumbled a little, catching the bullet somewhere in her chest. Quattro swung wild with her arm, trying to take the bounty hunter’s head from her shoulders.
Ford had little trouble dodging.
“She’s crap!” Cathy called over. “All strength. No training.”
But still bloody dangerous if she connected with anything.
“I’ll show you!” the madgirl screamed.
She was built by Agatha Clay. She was built to beat the best. Beyond human reaction. Beyond human intelligence. Beyond human strength and speed. She was the best. Better than all of this vermin.
Cathy sprang back out of the way, landing delicately.
Ford shot Quattro again. grazing the back of her leg. It did little more than rip open more of the artificial flesh. Quattro stumbled, before catching herself. It bit like a mite.
“Give up, you cannot win this” Ford yelled.
Quattro ran between both Ford and Cathy. Maybe they’d shoot themselves.
Ford held her fire. No use risking it. Cathy put another round into the madgirls back with the PPK.
Jet ran like hell through the corridors of Nehallennia. She ran faster than any human, flat linear electric actuators powering her along at speeds an athlete might only be able to dream off. Jet ran so hard her feet were cracking the floor, throwing up spalling shards of rock.
Her footsteps made a sound like a rapid-fire hammer beating on solid steel, ringing off the walls
A pair of IR camera’s mounted to her helmet allowed her to see near perfectly, despite the gloom. Cybernetic hardware merged both digital image, Jets natural vision and a computer generated HUD into one image.
Patterns of hot and cold light revealed hidden details behind walls and underneath floor; details which washed through Jets mind, quickly acknowledged and unconsciously filled away.
The information flow through her mind was well beyond what was possible for a human being. It was still nothing compared to a full-speed tunnel run at rush-hour. She was rigged for speed. Reactions designed for Mach one flight and honed dodging trucks and buildings at speed allowed Jet to move faster than any security system could keep up.
The trick to taking right turns fast was to not slow down. That wasted time braking, then getting back up to speed. Instead, Jet launched herself towards the wall at the last second, aiming for what she could see was a strong point in the wall.
Hitting with her foot, she sprang back off it with a flash of her engines and a spray of rubble, shooting forward down the next corridor, barely losing speed. The technique was jokingly referred to as ‘Gran Turismo’.
She met a zwilnik running in a wild panic, lost and crying out for her friends. Unnarmed, no threat. Jet had gone past her before she even realised Jet was there, blades glinting in the red light. A faceless, armoured death tearing passed her riding a wax-and-steel-smelling draft.
The zwilnik fainted when she realised she was unharmed.
A few distant gunshots cackled in the distance, chased by a muffled explosion.
“Engel one, Engel four. Target Gamma secure.” Jash voice crackled in her ear. The metallic rock was playing havok with the comms.
“Four, One, acknowledged,” she barked back.
Jet wasn’t panting. Jet wasn’t even breathing. Life support systems were running on direct injection to meet the demand of her biological parts. Her power cells were pushing out maximum power. Her heart was thundering, trying to keep up with the demands of her biology, trying to keep her hardware from overheating.
Hardware generated estimates put her as less than a minute away from Quattros lab. The exact instantaneous figure was 56.5345 seconds. This was Jet going full bore.
She came to a T-junction. Her route map told her she had to make the turn-off. Ambush, her instincts warned, fractions of a second before she committed. No going around. No slowing down. Every lost second was a second extra for Quattro to escape.
She hugged the wall, in tight to the turn, before springing across to the far side, aiming for a point which would give her a straight shot down the next corridor. She launched herself into the air, engines spooling up on their starter motors.
She saw the barricade, before those behind the barricade saw her. One, two, three four and five, armed with shotguns and light pistols. She picked each one out in a heartbeat. There was no way through them without fighting them, no avoiding the encounter.
They seemed determined to make a fight of it.
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