Cyber Dreams - 6.48 Mechanized Vendetta
They’d only walked for a couple of minutes, taking corridors different from those Juliet had passed through on her rampage, when Jensen began to stir, groaning and limply flailing his arms. Juliet carefully lowered him to the decking and cupped his cheek with her uninjured hand, gently patting his hot flesh. “You there? Jensen? Walker?” His eyes fluttered, but they looked bleary and unfocused, and his only vocalization was another groan. Still, he seemed to be coming back to himself and flailed and kicked when Juliet tried to drag him further.
“Let me help,” Honey said, and Juliet caught her eyeing her injured hand.
“I’m fine.”
“Come on, J. I know you’re angry or disappointed or whatever. Just let me help.” Honey moved around behind Jensen and put her arms under his, grunting as she pressed with her legs, hoisting him up.
Emma stood off to the side, eyeing Jensen and Honey nervously. “What happened to him?”
“I had to pull his PAI while he was conscious, and let’s just say it didn’t want to come out.”
“Juliet!” Emma gasped. “You can give a person brain damage doing that!”
Juliet sighed. “I didn’t do it for fun, Emma.” She watched as Honey ducked under Jensen’s left arm and started walking. Surprisingly, he ambulated along with her after just a little encouragement, and soon they were moving ahead again. Juliet and Emma followed several paces behind. “I didn’t want to hurt him, Em,” Juliet said more softly. “Let’s just say his PAI was corrupted, and it had to come out.”
“Fair enough. I haven’t had one since Helios had me arrested. Pretty weird at first, but I’ve gotten used to it.”
“I, uh, went without one for a little while recently, too.” Juliet slowed as she saw Honey summoning an elevator at the end of the corridor. She looked at Emma and found her eyes drawn to the tattoo on her throat. “That’s new.”
“To you, maybe.” Emma reached up and touched her neck, perhaps a little self-consciously. She glanced down at Juliet’s hand, then ran her eyes over her armor. “Did that happen here?”
Juliet lifted her hand, frowning at the two stubs. “Yeah.” She patted her chest plate. “Saved the digits, though. I bet they can be saved, but if not, I know someone who can make me some new ones.” She narrowed her eyes, recognizing Emma’s change of topic, but then the elevator beeped, and Honey dragged Jensen into it. “Come on.” She hurried into the car, Emma right behind her, and Honey tapped in an access code, sending the elevator surging downward.
“This’ll take us close to one of the exploration bays. Clara’s priming a shuttle for you as we speak.”
“Exploration?”
Honey grinned. “Ark Industries made this ship, you know? It was designed for deep space exploration, even before the ‘warp’ drive was a thing. When we get to the new planet, we’ll need to have lots of teams going down to explore and survey. Don’t worry about the shuttle; we have some massive industrial fabrication equipment on board, so we can build a new one. In the meantime, there’s something like sixty other ones we can use.”
“Seriously?” Juliet shook her head, once again trying to grasp the ship’s scale. It had felt enormous when she was beside it, at the airlock, but it was still hard to wrap her head around. She eyed Honey, her irritation beginning to mount again. “What’s with the sword? I thought you didn’t like monoblades.”
“Well, where we’re going, there won’t be any street samurais trying to call me out for it. Besides, I didn’t exactly ask for it. Alexander won it in an auction. Can a girl say no to a five-million-bit engagement present?”
Juliet’s mind reeled at the idea of a man trapped in the body of a pre-pubescent girl asking Honey to marry him. She shook it off. “Honey, I wish you’d done things differently. I wish you’d talked to me.”
“Come on, J. We can’t rehash all that. I agree things haven’t been . . . ideal. I know you think I’m vapid or whatever, but you never met Alexander before—” The elevator dinged, and Honey shook her head, rapidly blinking her eyes as she stepped out. “Come on. It’s not far.” She tugged Jensen along, and he walked almost unaided but still looked dazed and out of it. He didn’t speak.
“I’m starting to worry I did give him brain damage,” she subvocalized.
“I don’t think so, Juliet. I think he’s in a sort of catatonic state while his mind re-establishes pathways disrupted by the parasitic entity.” Angel emphasized “parasitic,” and Juliet grinned at the venom in her tone. Of course, her amusement was short-lived when her eyes fell on her friend, helping Jensen move down the corridor ahead of them. Would her “Angel symbiote” remain benign? Would it eventually seek dominance in her mind? Despite Honey’s reassurances, Juliet knew the later versions of the chip were not the same as Angel. She wanted to warn her friend, to shake her and insist she come with her on the shuttle.
Several times, she almost called out to her, almost insisted she stop and talk, but, as they wended their way through the empty corridors, the right words failed to find purchase on her tongue. Then her sister spoke, and Juliet felt the compulsion to intervene in Honey’s life fade. “Juliet, if you really came here and fought and lost your damn fingers to save me, I . . .” Juliet looked at her, arching an eyebrow. She might not have seen Emma in years, but she knew her too well to believe she was at a loss for words. Emma seemed to make a decision and forged ahead. “I guess I should say thanks. I don’t know how I got involved in this mess! Why would they want me?”
“You don’t owe me any thanks, Em. They took you because of me. I’ve been a terrible sister. I shouldn’t have judged you the way I did when you got into trouble with Helios. I should have protected you when WBD came after me. I should—”
“That’s the shuttle bay,” Honey called, pausing to wait for Juliet and Emma.
Juliet glanced at Honey and saw that she and Jensen stood a few meters from a large orange bulkhead door. She stopped, leaving some space between them, and turned to Emma, taking her free hand in hers. She looked her sister in the eyes, gently squeezing her fingers. “I’m sorry, Em. I promise we’ll talk, like, for real talk, when we get out of this. I’m so sorry about every—”
“It’s about Dad,” Emma said abruptly, interrupting Juliet’s attempt to accept the guilt of their failed relationship. Her confusion must have been apparent because Emma chuckled softly and let go of Juliet’s fingers to point to her tattoo. “The skeleton hands. They’re Dad’s. The broken heart is meant to represent how I felt, how mom felt—how our world fell apart when he died.” Juliet frowned, confusion jamming the words up somewhere between her brain and mouth. She could hardly remember their father; he’d died when she was just a toddler. Their mom and he hadn’t even been married, hadn’t been living together. That was right, wasn’t it? For the first time in a while, she doubted the certainty of her childhood memories.
“I…I didn’t know—”
“Yo, J. Shuttle’s waiting,” Honey called again.
Juliet squeezed Emma’s shoulder. “Come on, Em. We’ll talk more when we’re somewhere safe.” Her sister nodded, and they started walking. Honey turned and continued, still entwined with Jensen, toward the large, orange, plasteel bulkhead door. As she approached, green LEDs flashed, and the doors swished open. Even from a dozen meters back, Juliet could see the space beyond held a row of shuttles, not just one, and each was parked before massive exterior bay doors. Honey and Jensen stepped through the door and immediately angled toward one of the shuttles. Juliet could see vapor drifting toward the cavernous ceiling from its drive cones. Honey hadn’t lied; it was primed and ready to go.
For the first time, Juliet let herself begin to believe that Honey wouldn’t betray her. She felt a wave of relief wash over her as she stepped through the bulkhead door, and it swished shut behind her. She put her arm over her sister’s shoulders and steered her toward the shuttle. It was a decent-sized vessel with a tubular hull, short, angular wings, and a swooped nose cone that reminded Juliet of high-speed airplanes she’d seen in advertisements back in her old life. The body was dark blue, and the underside of the wings, the tail fin, and the nosecone were all brilliant, near-neon orange.
“Fancy,” Emma remarked, and then a shadow holding blazing white-blue lights fell from one of the high rafters, impacting the decking in front of Honey and Jensen with a metallic thud that echoed through the hangar. Juliet’s mind felt frozen as she tried to make sense of the incongruous sight. Then the blazing lights flared out, zwanged through the air, and Jensen screamed as his legs were cut off at the knees. Honey might have tried to catch him, to keep him from falling into a rapidly expanding pool of arterial blood, but the other brilliant light was piercing her chest, holding her in place as her own ragged wail began to ululate, echoing in a sickening counterpoint to Jensen’s repeated cries of pain and shock.
“Juliet!” Angel screamed, and finally, the madness of the scene snapped into place, and Juliet figured out what she was seeing. A man or synth or some kind of mecha loomed over Honey and Jensen. He was easily two meters tall, had four spider-like metallic legs, and two powerful, armor-plated arms. He gripped meter-long plasma blades in either fist. Juliet frowned, some corner of her mind balking at the impracticality of such weapons—where was the power coming from?
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She shoved Emma toward the door. “Run!” Emma staggered forward, the canister swinging wildly in her grip as she stumbled toward the door. Juliet whirled, drew her monoblade, and charged at the metallic monstrosity. She’d taken a single step when he began to talk, and she recognized the voice emanating from his speaker grille of a mouth—Montclair.
“You stupid little bitches. You thought to delete my files? You thought to cut me out of the network? I’m his right-hand man!”
“J-Juliet,” Honey gargled, foamy blood spraying from her lips. Juliet was already there, flying through the air, her monoblade streaking toward Montclair’s robotic shoulder—she meant to slice him in half diagonally. He moved, though, with speed that had even her boosted senses reeling. He launched himself up and back, his plasma blade ripping upward, cutting a long, smoking trench through Honey’s chest. It tore free near her shoulder as he flew back, landing five meters away with uncanny grace on his four spider legs. Juliet stood over Jensen and Honey, her monoblade’s hologram flickering balefully as she watched him twirl his two plasma swords.
“Ah, the original bitch.” A grating laugh echoed out of his mouth-speaker. “What do you think of my new body? I gave up on trying to fit in with the sheep. Why should I? Am I not the shepherd? Am I not the butcher?” He laughed again, and then his four legs pounded their shiny metal tips into the decking as he charged at her like a bull. Juliet should have been focused on evading his attacks, but paramount in her mind was to draw him away from Honey and Jensen—even as a dark whisper hissed doubts about their chances of survival with such horrific injuries.
Juliet banished the thoughts, took a stutter-step with her right leg, planted her cybernetic left foot, and powered herself into a forward dive. Montclair’s plasma sword came so close to slicing her foot that she swore she could feel the heat through her boot. As she hit the decking and rolled over one shoulder, coming up in a crouch, she whirled, arcing her sword into a reverse slash, aiming for where her rearview cam feed had shown Montclair’s spider leg just a fraction of a second before. As fast as she was, the leg was already lifting as Montclair adjusted to follow her movement.
Even so, she caught the pointed tip of the leg with her sword’s edge and snicked through it like a machete through a rose stem. Her eyes slid past the still-writhing forms of Honey and Jensen in their gory mess, and then Juliet was in the fight as Montclair brought his plasma swords into range, hacking at her in a frenzy of slashes and cleaves. Juliet had fought against multiple opponents in sims, against dual-wielding simulated sword masters, and, of course, against Tanaka while he used a long blade in one hand and a short blade in the other. She was good at it, especially when dialed in and with Angel helping—good enough to confound and infuriate Tanaka.
That said, Montclair was like a lightning-charged cyclone of hot plasma as he roared and hacked, his dark gray robotic body moving with grace, precision, and untiring ferocity. Juliet couldn’t parry. She had to feint, duck, and dodge. She had to use every muscle in her body to make those blades slide harmlessly through the air instead of her armored flesh. Her armor was good for protecting her from the heat of those near hits—nothing else. Her plates might momentarily stall that hot plasma from obliterating her flesh, but it wouldn’t matter. Montclair’s attacks would slide over the plates and ruin her wherever they found seams. Of those, there were many.
Montclair had no fear of parrying; Juliet’s monoblade wouldn’t harm the plasma swords. In a head-to-head comparison, the plasma sword was a brute-force weapon that used an obscene amount of power. It wasn’t practical in any sort of protracted fight. A plasma knife wasn’t much better, but a narrow, short plasma blade was sustainable for a few minutes using only portable batteries. Juliet didn’t know how Montclair could power two sword-length plasma blades—not unless he had some kind of reactor built into his robotic body.
Despite that knowledge in the back of her mind, despite the deadly aspect of their dance, Juliet couldn’t help feeling some kind of weird exhilaration as she rose to the challenge. Montclair’s robotic screeching became frustrated and angry as he hacked and stomped, his blades zwanging and zwomming through the air. As those blades crackled through the air, Juliet saw that his steps had a definite hitch. She could tell he was compensating for his truncated leg—he held it up, bent at the fore-joint more often than not, simply using his three good legs for locomotion.
As the fight dragged on, and Juliet continued to operate at maximum speed boost, she wondered how long she could keep it up. She surely couldn’t match Montclair, not in a fully robotic body with a seemingly unlimited power source. Even if she could, any chance of saving Honey, Jensen, or both diminished with each passing second. Then there was Emma; as Juliet and Montclair wove through their deadly dance, she’d twice seen a highlighted outline—Angel was scanning her surroundings as they fought—of her sister behind a stack of cargo containers. For whatever reason, Emma hadn’t fled through the door.
Montclair stopped his constant mind-numbing screeching so abruptly that it almost threw Juliet off as she wove between another pair of overhead cleaves. He laughed as he disengaged, pounding backward on his three good legs. Juliet welcomed the break and didn’t pursue him. “You’re sturdy. You’ve got a limit, however. I can see the heat in those fancy batteries. You’re draining, bitch! I’ll have you in time, and then I’ll cut you down to just a torso and make you watch while I dissect that sister of yours.”
As Juliet’s vision throbbed red with each beat of her heart, he dove forward, hacking wildly with his two blades. She backed up, ducking, weaving, feinting, and then he shot out his damaged leg, aiming to drive it right through her throat. Reflexively, Juliet hacked through it, taking off a full meter and both joints. As the appendage clanged and slid over the decking, Montclair went wild, losing all rhythm as he chopped the air with those awful, buzzing plasma swords.
Tanaka had taught Juliet well about avoiding wild, undisciplined sword strokes. The key was to maintain your discipline and read your opponent. A sword fighter who lost his or her composure telegraphed their movements more. They over-reached and often set themselves off-balance, doing half the work for their opponent. Juliet knew her job was to maintain some distance and look for those openings. Now was her chance to capitalize, not to flee in the face of Montclair’s wild onslaught.
In her mind, she could hear Tanaka’s calm, measured voice as he’d spoken to her during simulations. “Economy of movement. That’s right. Just let the blade shave the air along your flesh; to an onlooker, you should seem to be hit as it slides by. Always breathe. Always keep your rhythm, not theirs. Never theirs. Watch their center of gravity and wait for the right moment—not the moment before or after. When it’s perfect, when you know you can slide your blade in and out, like oil through water, you strike!” As she heard his voice echo in her mind, Juliet lashed out and struck.
Her sword caught Montclair’s left fist, and her blade slid through all four of his fingers, his thumb, his palm, and the plasma sword hilt. Several things happened at once. The blade winked out, and Montclair’s screech rose to new heights. His fingers fell to the decking, clanging against the plasteel, and, as Juliet pulled her sword back to herself, Montclair’s other blade passed through it. Juliet cringed as she whipped it away. She whirled her sword—glowing orange-red at the center—through the air, trying to cool it, trying to see if it was destroyed.
Montclair was apoplectic. His curses and insults strung together so rapidly that they became an inarticulate stream of high-pitched vowels and consonants. Still, he came at Juliet, whirling his remaining plasma sword like a white-hot propeller blade as he charged. Juliet glided to the side, taking a wide, lunging step with her cybernetic leg, and, as the plasma blade came close enough to her shoulder to bubble and melt the polymer plate coating, she hacked her sword into his left rear leg. Tanaka’s wonderful monoblade shattered on impact. Hundreds of slivers of glittering metal showered down onto the decking almost musically.
Juliet screamed her frustration, anger, and guilt—how could she break that weapon? Then, she was on the defensive, ducking, weaving, and dodging as Montclair came after her. He was still fast, still large and powerful with an absurd reach, but he wasn’t as good with one blade as he had been with two. Juliet found it easy to avoid his blows, but she knew, just as before, that clocks were ticking.
She was feeling the strain of moving at high speeds for too long. Her vision was constantly blurring or darkening at the edges, and she knew Angel was fighting to keep her body and mind functioning. Her breathing wasn’t strained, not with her cybernetic lungs, but she could feel a certain shaky rawness to her movements—the microbes in her fuel cells were draining her body of glucose and other resources in their fight to produce energy. Clearly, when Athena and Angel had said she’d have power for “longer than was safe for her mind,” they hadn’t anticipated a fight with a cyborg Montclair.
As she retreated, Juliet snatched her Texan from its holster and unloaded it on Montclair, firing three rounds at his center of mass. He folded his arms and slowed his advance, and Juliet felt some hope bloom in her chest. She lifted the sights and pumped the last four rounds at his face. She heard the bullets hit and saw Montclair flinch back, throwing his arms over his face. She also heard the echoing zwangs as some of the rounds ricocheted. When the gun was empty, she slammed it into her holster and waited to see what damage she’d wrought.
Montclair’s chuckle didn’t inspire confidence, and as he lowered his arms, the sword still blazing in his undamaged hand, she saw that her bullets had carved divots in his metallic flesh, but nothing more. “All out of toys? Ready to feel your body carved away, inch by inch?”
Juliet opened her mouth to cuss, but then, with a ragged cough, Honey grunted, “J!” and something clattered over the decking, sliding toward her. Juliet’s attention was on Montclair, but she saw his glowing red eyes track the object and saw him tense his legs to spring. That was all she needed to know. Juliet dove to the side, sliding to where Angel had highlighted the object—Honey’s scabbarded sword. As she hit the deck, sliding toward the weapon, she saw she’d be too late. Montclair’s plasma blade was ripping through the air, less than a meter from the sword, about to cut it in half.
Something snapped in Juliet. Some desperate urge to hold that weapon and keep it out of the reach of her mechanical nemesis translated through her mind, into the lattice, and out with her other, invisible fingers. She pulled on the sword, and it slid over the decking right into her hand. Montclair’s plasma blade hit the plasteel floor panels, ripping a deep, smoking groove. As he screamed in frustration, Juliet rolled over her shoulder, springing to her feet. She spun to face Montclair, whipping the sword free of its scabbard.
The weapon sang as its edge slid along the polymer blade guard. When it came out, the blade exploded with holographic, golden sparks that buzzed up and down its edge. The buzzing sound modulated, humming menacingly, as Juliet swung the sword in the air, testing its weight. Montclair approached warily, his plasma sword held ready in a high guard position. She didn’t wait for him. Juliet took everything she’d learned in her protracted battle thus far and launched an all-out offensive.
Montclair tried to answer her aggression with his own, which proved his undoing. He couldn’t match Angel’s skill combined with Juliet’s intuition. She knew when to duck, when to weave, and, most importantly, when to strike. Some part of her had memorized Montclair’s patterns of “tells,” and with only one blade, he couldn’t stop her. Almost before it started, it was over as Juliet wove her way around his enormous body and, in a lightning-fast pair of X-shaped slashes, removed his two rear legs at their top joints.
As he fell, Montclair screamed, “This won’t stop me!” Then it was over as Juliet sliced his head from his shoulders and proceeded to hack his body into sections—afraid his processor wasn’t inside his skull. When she severed his arm and the plasma blade finally sputtered out, Juliet saw that Angel had highlighted her sister in her rear-view camera feed, tentatively approaching. Seeing her reminded Juliet about Jensen and Honey, and she turned and jogged over to the two.
“He’s d-done for good this time,” Honey wheezed. “Clara and her sisters deleted his back—” She paused to breathe. “Back-up server. He couldn’t download—l-locked out.”
“Hush.” Juliet knelt by her friend and saw that, according to the stats Angel posted in her AUI, she was going to be all right. Her temp was good. Her blood pressure and heart rate were okay, and her respirations, despite her bisected right lung, seemed steady. “Nanites?” she asked before turning to Jensen with dread in her heart. Again, she was surprised to see that he wasn’t dead. His armored exoskeleton must have pressurized to squeeze off the arteries in his legs, stopping the blood flow. He was unconscious, very pale, and his respirations were ragged and weak, but Juliet felt some hope revive.
“You gotta—” Honey coughed softly, her breath wheezing deep in her throat. “Gotta go, J.”
“Come with me, Honey!”
Her friend tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “Sorry. Let’s meet again, hmm? The future is—” Again, she coughed. “W-wide open.”
Juliet shook her head. “I won’t be able to rest easy knowing Apollyon still exists. I want to see Gentry pay for”—she waved her hand in a wide circle—“everything.”
“Trust me,” Honey wheezed, “I want the same.”
“Athena will figure out where he went. I don’t know how, but I’m sure she can. Don’t be surprised if we really do meet again.”
Honey closed her eyes, and something like peace drifted over her face. For a panicked second, Juliet thought she’d died. Then, her eyes fluttered open, and she hoarsely, haltingly, whispered, “I hope so. Keep the sword, J. I don’t…deserve it. I can’t…move like you. Not even close. Alexander can—” She broke into another coughing fit, this one feeble, her breaths wheezing and shallow. “He can buy me a ring.” She laughed, a soft, wheezing giggle, but it reminded Juliet of the old Honey. “Go on, J. I’ll be a better friend next time.” Then her eyes fell closed again.
As Juliet contemplated removing the chip from Honey’s data port and dragging her unconscious body along with her, Angel said, “I just received a message from Clara. Honey is unconscious, and she doesn’t want to wake her. She says responders are rushing this way and that you should leave to avoid any possibility of further confrontation.”
“Right.” Juliet knew she couldn’t take Honey against her will. How would she feel? How would she react if someone took Angel from her? She looked over her shoulder and saw her sister standing awkwardly, still holding the canister in a death grip. “You okay?”
“What was that? How? How, Juliet? I couldn’t even see you moving half the time!”
Juliet stood, grabbed Jensen’s collar, and dragged him toward the shuttle. He was much lighter without his legs. “I’ll explain on the way. Come on, Em.” She paused, realizing she’d sheathed Honey’s sword in her old scabbard. She gestured toward the scattered remains of Montclair. “Can you pick up my old sword’s hilt and that scabbard I dropped?”
