10.

 

Winston, Billy Joe and Ms. Iverson put on Bumblebees. It was never smart to cross between containers without a flight harness, for even moving at dead slow speed, a surprise crosswind could tear a person clean off. A reality of which Winston was keenly aware. Every pilot has their own close call story to tell, so better to be safe rather than sorry. The flight harness wouldn’t keep them from going ‘Dutchman’, but would provide a chance, no matter how slim, to return to safety. Otherwise, they would just fall forever until dehydration, starvation or exposure killed them. Of course, they also could hit something else floating out there, hard.

They went through the engineering passage on their way to the container access airlock. Too much yellow and orange, Winston thought, and grimaced at the warnings on the reactor monitors. The grav drive was going to need a serious overhaul once they were done.

“I see the loading crew didn’t have time to seal the containers’ secondary access, thanks to Xiao’s waroids,” Winston said as the door opened, revealing the green light on the container’s inspection door. “Probably didn’t even put seals on the cargo doors either.”

“We can fix that, Hoss,” Billy Joe offered.

Winston managed to keep from sighing, but couldn’t stop from rolling his eyes. “We aren’t helping the criminals any more than we were hired to do. Just leave it.”

The grav couplers kept a yard-wide gap of empty space between tug and containers to prevent bumping. This made stepping between them a little risky, but more scary than dangerous. The fareing around the tug’s couplers was designed to provide a relatively calm eddy of air at sub mach speeds, allowing for such transit between containers if warranted while in motion. He and Billy Joe turned on their deadman beacons that would make sure the Sierra Madre stayed put, just in case they were blown overboard by a wind gust while doing the inspection. Winston offered his hand to Ms. Iverson, which she took as the three crossed the gap.

Cargo had been loosely loaded, held in place with airbags and load straps, allowing for snug passage between. The automated loading lights flickered on giving off a cool blue-white light. Billy Joe elongated an arm to peel off the packing tape plastered over one of the cameras.

“My Xiao!” breathed Ms. Iverson as she saw the wrapped pallets.

The container was twenty-five yards long, five tall and five wide. All sorts of strange tracking codes were stenciled on the neatly packed cargo. Winston squeezed through the tight gap in the dunnage and went to the manifest pocket on the door. Billy Joe, unable to fit into the same narrow space, stretched out his nanite skirt, and crawled above the crates. He settled down in the gap by the door, joining Winston. Ms. Iverson struggled a bit more. Her bust and bottom were not shaped for squeezing through such tight quarters, causing her armor plates to catch. Winston pulled off a packing list from the document box bolted to the door.

“Yep, they didn’t have time to seal the doors,” Billy Joe observed.”

Winston ignored his partner. “Do you know what these codes mean?” he asked, holding out the manifest sheet.

With a grunt and a snap of rubber, she popped out from between the stacks and looked at the paper. “It’s military codes. I can take a guess, about the product, but it’s best to look and be sure. Billy Joe, dear, would you mind opening up one of those crates?”

The indu looked a question to Winston who shrugged after a moment’s thought. “We’re in all the way. Mr. Tollman said it won’t matter if we keep our mouths shut.”

“If everything shows up, you may as well,” Ms. Iverson added. “The raid is our cover story as to why we opened stuff. Besides, I’m feeling curious.”

Billy Joe’s utility sand arms oozed into the shape of forklift clamps and moved some of the crates to the small space in front of the doors. His last questioning look was met with her anxious nod. Billy Joe reformed his hands into their humanoid appearance and popped the latches open with sharp snaps and clatters.

Inside they found grids of fist sized orbs with spoon-like levers and pins attached to the top. Ms. Iverson looked up from the packing list. “Flywheel grenades!”

“Flywheel grenades?” Billy Joe said, picking one up and turning it over in his hands.

“What the behng are those?” Winston asked.

“Ohh… you are kidding! You don’t know?” Ms. Iverson said with a hint of glee. “These are the safest incendiary grenades in existence. Very naughty and dangerous when charged up,”

“So they’re not live explosives?” Winston asked.

Ms. Iverson shook her head. With an amused snort she took the egg-like weapon out of Billy Joe’s hand and held it up like a teacher to a little child.

“You arm them with an electric generator. They can trickle or flash charge like a capacitor. Trillions of nano flywheels inside store the energy and spin very fast for a long time. As long as those flywheels keep spinning, there’s no worries. You could even use them for a battery and drain the charge off in a controlled manner.”

“But,” she said with a growing mischievous smile, “when you arm the trigger, the flywheels have a nasty trick. They convert all that energy into an explosion. It’s like using a length of rebar to stop a spoked wheel. The motion converts into heat per the first law of thermodynamics, the flywheels overheat, break apart and… kablam!” She delicately acted out the explosion with her fingers. “Superheated nanoscopic shrapnel expands into a huge cloud of plasma. It penetrates solids almost as good as radiation. Anything inside the blast-cloud fries in milliseconds. Cooks you like a potato in a microwave.”

Winston’s lip curled in disgust at the thought, and he flipped through the rest of the manifest. “That’s all that seems to be in this container.”

“It’s like a warlord Christmas in here,” Billy Joe grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest into a single fused mass as only nanite sand could do.

Ms. Iverson seemed unable to contain her giddiness.

“Let’s check out the rest!” she squealed gleefully.

“Great. I’m just jolly ol’ Satan Claus,” Winston muttered.

“What is with her, Hoss?” Billy Joe whispered, leaning in.

“I dunno, Bubby, either she’s some sort of schizoid about this stuff or she’s making plans of her own,” Winston said softly, as Holly went on ahead.

With no other option but to press on, he glumly followed with Billy Joe right behind. The trio passed through to the next container and found more grenades, mortars and other heavy weapon ammo. No wonder they wanted armored hazmat containers. In the third, they found ammo boxes full of musket balls with markings Winston had never seen before.

“What are these, Ms. Iverson?” he asked, holding it up.

“Call me Holly. This Ms. Iverson stuff is too formal for my tastes,” she said while rummaging through some packing.

“If you insist. What are these, Holly?” Winston said again, holding up the sphere between his index finger and thumb like a marble.

She came over and took a quick look at the intricate hairline patterns cut into its surface.

“That’s a Geometric Expansion Munition, or GEMball. Just like the ones that exploded Mr. Tollman,” she shrugged.

Winston almost dropped the round in shock, and put it back in the box with the greatest of care.

“It takes a lot more than dropping it to crack one open. A little safety precaution. But these,” she said looking in another crate, “are the really nasty ones. They’re nicknamed ‘blenders’, because they torque as they expand. Turns just about everything in their radius into a smoothie. We can be glad that Xiao’s death squad didn’t use ‘em.”

“Why would anyone make such things?” Winston gulped.

“People need killing from time to time. In this case,” she tossed the round up, bumped it off her inner elbow and caught it again. “It’s better killing through geometry.”

After three more containers packed with ammo and four packed full of various types of long arms and heavy man-portable energy weapons, the last container carried some very different crates. They were strange, long, armored crates, almost like coffins stacked on end, packed tight. All of them carried hazmat warnings like you saw on industrial nano-fabricators, that made the hair on the back of Winston’s neck stand up.

“What? What is this? Holly? Why am I seeing disassembler warnings? Are these disintegration charges?” Winston’s eyes were practically bugging out.

Billy Joe reached around till he found the container’s data sheet and pulled it off, handing it to Holly. It was a dense grid of numbers and cargo codes. “What’re we hauling?”

“Yeah, gimme a second,” she griped. Unhitching the buckles on her generous tactical rig, she untangled herself from a load strap her breastplate hooked. Once free, Holly came around and grabbed the sheet, and scanned.

“Q Staves!” she breathed bringing her hands to her mouth in awe. “By the thousands!”

“Holly, assume I’ve never been in the military and don’t know what the purg a ‘Q Staff’ is,” Winston huffed.

“It stands for Quartermaster Staff, dip-cheis. You can make instant supply dumps with one of these,” Holly gushed. “Look. They’re about two yards tall with a pill shaped scanner and nanofabrication seed at the top. It makes a scan of the local area for feedstock quality, which may be several hundred yards in radius. Anything in that sphere, living or dead, can be broken down and converted into the pre-programmed stockpile manifest. Then it fortifies and organizes the location into a supply dump with berm and camouflage. We’re talking a lot of war materiel, too. Guns, ammo, everything! Even food and basic medical supplies. One of these can supply an entire platoon for a month!”

“Well I’ll be dipped. That’s why the disassembler warning,” Billy Joe drawled unhappily.

“You can have Q Staves that make drones and waroids, armored vehicles and more. I’ve seen a leaked test video of one of these making an entire fighter wing.”

“How… how fast? I mean, how many weeks does it take to do this?” Winston was incredulous. Nanofabrication might be fast in a controlled setting, but in the wild? With so many variables? Impossible.

“Hours.” Holly said. “Xiao has been known to use waroid versions of these as weapons. He drops one into a rebel camp in weapon mode, and it goes to work. Once the nanofabricators are released, there is almost no stopping it till they’re done. Any enemy in range starts dissolving in seconds as they’re broken down and converted into nanofeedstock. The first production run takes maybe five minutes. It makes drones designed to protect the bigger, later assets. When they’re finished, they attack the enemy who weren’t turned into war materiel.”

“Sounds like a horror movie.” Winston’s mind whirled, looking at the crates like he was seeing thousands upon thousands of dangerous alien eggs, poised to destroy all life.

Holly shrugged. “I guess. If you’re on Xiao’s bad side.”

The three stood there for a long moment, looking at the crates. Winston’s face was a tense rictus. Visions of a dissolving school danced in his mind. Boys and girls being transformed into waroids, drones, guns or even food played out in his imagination. The thought of Emmy being disassembled made him smack his lips in an effort to control his nausea. He looked at Holly’s face.

Her eyes gleamed with greedy joy.

“Do you know the street value of one of these cases is? Let alone all of them? Boy, I knew our employer was rich and powerful, but this gives me a whole new appreciation for him.”

“Nope!” Winston finally shouted. “Everyone out. We’re cutting this loose. I won’t haul such a… a… an abomination!” He yanked the packing list from Holly’s hand, stuck it back on the case and began pushing her and Billy Joe toward the door.

“What?” Holly’s face scrunched up with irritation as Winston rudely laid hands on her.

“Out, out, out!” Winston ordered. Billy Joe allowed himself to be pushed forward without protest, but clearly confused.

“I will not be responsible for a gray goo disaster or any of these things killing innocents, let alone dissolving whole skylands or moons!”

Holly spun around, deftly twisting Winston’s arm, locking it behind his back, his fingers twisted back enough to touch his neck. He let out a strangled shout, but still struggled to break free.

“Hey, Flyboy! Listen up,” she ordered. Winston ignored her and used his extra weight and almost broke out of her hold.

“Nahq, you’re wriggly!” she said as his sweaty wrist slipped in her rubber covered fingers. The two grappled and slid through each other’s grasp in the tight confines between the crates.

Losing her grip, Holly swept Winston’s legs out from under him. He dropped face down with a bang. She quickly straddled his pelvis, sitting on his lower back with her full weight. Billy Joe made a move to free the thrashing Winston from under her, but before his outstretched arms could reach Holly, she scruffed Winston and pinned his head to the floor with her pistol. He let out a surprised yelp of pain as she ground his cheek into the dirty metal. “Get back, lumper!” she shouted, “or I’m scrambling his brains!”

Billy Joe backed off, hands up in compliance.

Winston continued to struggle.

“Calm the behng down!” Holly ordered.

The pressure of the muzzle became intense to the edge of crushing Winston’s temple. A ring of icy fire bloomed and he was sure the pistol would push through his skull. He let out a frustrated cry and froze hands out, fingers splayed in surrender.

“Now,” Holly growled, gave a loud sniff, and cleared her throat. “Let me explain something to you for the last time. Like me, you’re in for the duration of this game, got that… Winston?” She put extra menace on his name. “You think you’re all tough right now. Think you got nothing to lose? Nothing that can be taken from you? You’re wrong. I know you better than you think.”

“Miss Holly, he don’t mean nothing,” Billy Joe pleaded. She glared back at him, and he got the hint, and mimed zipping his lips.

“We’ve needed to have this little talk since your tantrum on Mont Moncalme. Tollman was the nice cop. I’m not. He was in charge then, and he had a lot of tolerance for high-horse moralizing idiots because you don’t understand how power in the Dream really works. Your right to say ‘no’ ended the instant you showed up in Duke’s Payzhur’s airspace. Now, you’re going to be a man of your word and see this through. If you do a good job, and keep your trap shut, we’ll all go our separate ways, and you’ll get paid.”

“Then go ahead and kill me,” Winston growled through gritted teeth.

“False bravado won’t cut it with me, family man,” she mocked, shaking her head. “I’ve got a micro-expression app scanning your face all the time. You think you want death, but you’re just another coward. Otherwise, why would you be hiding in your little fantasy world.” She paused, letting the words burn into Winston’s psyche.

For emphasis, she turned up her limbic manipulator to color her voice. “But you are right on one point. I do need you for the moment. We could have done this the easy way, with money and kept it strictly business. Do the deed, drop and go, then forget we ever saw each other. But that ruffled your self-righteousness. So I offered you the fun way. We could have had some laughs, behnged a lot and you’d have had something to brag about to your pals. Would have been a memorable little five day trip for you, but you had your Xiao nahqing goofyass waifu fetish gumming up that option. Gave you delusions you’re all noble and cheis.”

After a long contemplative pause, Winston felt the shift of his captor’s weight as she leaned down, her lips brushing his ear. Hot breath reminding him that she was a woman of flesh and blood. Holly whispered as tender as a rose petal, her limbic manipulator at full blast, “All for a simulation of a wife and daughter that can’t love you.”

Those words, with the brutal might of her subsonic vocal augmentation behind them, obliterated the fortress of denial that Winston had constructed against the truth. Valerie and Emmy weren’t alive. They were just digital ghosts to numb his survivor guilt. His eyes burned as tears were pressed out by the weight of her words. His hand spasmed an erratic tattoo on the deck with his fingernails. The carefully nurtured lie to control twelve years of anguish was now impossible to maintain. Winston struggled to resurrect the delusion again, but the truth, like a rampaging kaiju enraged by years of repression, rose from the sea of his subconscious and slaughtered Valerie and Emmy in front of his mind’s eye again, and again, and again. No matter what he tried to tell himself, they were dead.

A low shuddering moan escaped his lips.

“So, let's talk about threats. Killing you creates more hassle than what I want right now. Therefore, If you fail to do your job or behng with this mission I’m going to motivate you with pain. That includes destroying what you love most sitting in your sleeper.”

A cold sweat burst from his pores. “No!” Winston choked out.

“That’s right, Flyboy. And if that still doesn’t get you to obey, I will hurt you so bad you’ll beg to die. You got the picture now?” She flexed her fingers on the back of his neck. The pain was exquisite, and his left arm went numb and felt like it burst into flame at the same time. He mewled like an animal in a trap.

The weight of true powerlessness crushed Winston’s will into powder. But then in the silence of surrender, a new sensation, born. From that helplessness, sired by primordial anger, something fresh trickled out of his heart. An understanding grew into an icy flood. It drowned his despair in a rush, washing away the detritus of his destroyed ego and all that was soft and frail, exposing something new. A paradigm shift which was hard and dangerous. His agonized whimpers died away. In the quiet that followed, Winston found some long-elusive peace to survive.

“Okay, you win,” he said, his eyes now dead, resentful marbles.

“How about you, big boy?” Holly said looking to Billy Joe.

“I’m all for getting empty and getting loooooong gone,” Billy Joe chirped, clearly happy to make it out of this mess alive.

“Good,” Holly said, satisfied. “Winston, I’m going to let you up in a second. You understand the real stakes, now. Right?”

“I do,” Winston said. His voice had become a chilling revenant.

“I want to get paid, too. From here on out, let’s make this as an uneventful ride as possible, all right?”

The pressure came off the side of Winston’s skull, and Holly’s rose up from his pelvis. His lower back was grateful at the removal of her weight. Slowly, he stood up and stared at this dangerous woman. Electric green eyes analyzed his expressions as she waited for him to speak. Did he see a flash of surprise as she read his face?

“Let’s get this job done then,” Winston agreed, wiping dirt from his face. He began to squeeze between the rows of cargo, going back to the cab and paused to look at the other two. “Y’all coming?”