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Maico was led through the SilkyDoll by Jet, casually showing her around while corroborating most of what the others had said. Jet led her up aboard the KnightWing, via a ladder up through a hatch in the bottom of the ship.
It struck her, that she didn’t remember disembarking hours earlier. One moment, she was speaking with Jet, the next she was talking with the doctor. Maybe this was the worst time to be doing this?
The thought died when Jet led her back into the hardsuit bay. Cramped, with just enough space for a hardsuit to stand upright. There were four lockers containing the suits mounted to the rear bulkhead. Three were sealed, one was open. Saber Blue’s hardsuit stood split open and ready for boarding.
It was an elegant thing. Strongly feminine in a way that would’ve excited any Senshi. The armour seemed to be specifically moulded to emphasise the figure of the wearer, while radiating a taught and controlled lethality. It seemed to invite a caressing touch. Shining metal actuators exposed hinted at the raw power it was capable of outputting.
Jet didn’t object to her picking up the helmet. It was cold in her hands, and surprisingly heavy. She turned it over in her hands, inspecting the inside. Cool, gel padding finished in red vinyl, with a few stray strands of blonde hair still left behind.
Little metal buttons were set back into the helmet crown, spaced regularly.
“Are those part of the voomer core?”
A momentary look of surprise flashed across Jet’s visage.
“Well,” Jet broke eye contact “Sort of,”
Her next move was obvious.
“Sort of? You did design the hardsuits, didn’t you?”
Jet’s smile turned brittle, “It’s complex. What makes you think I didn’t?”
“It doesn’t fit your style,” Maico stated, with absolute certainty. “The mind behind them was as different as the mind behind this spacecraft, was as different as the mind behind those choppers,”
Jet’s expression was flat, “I did build the originals,” she pointed out, a small snarl of irritation creeping into her voice.
“And I’m reliably informed that these are pretty different machines from state of the Stingray Project art,”
“And you want to know who built them?”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the recognition for manufacturing them, if anything.” Maico nudged.
“They’re a Shelby Cobra, if they’re anything,” The Voomer core is my own idea,”
And she was boasting about it.
“What is it?”
“An accident. That I figured out how to replicate and control. The full tech details are on the Stingray ML,” she chuckled darkly, “It’s not actually a secret.”
“How does it work?”
“You’re better off reading about it on the project, that explains it best,” demurred Jet. A beat. “Except for anything posted by Stengovich. He’s a self-important gobshite,”
“Kotono told me that...” blank, her mind answered. She flicked back through handwritten notes, hurrying to find some way to finish that sentence. She thought she heard Jet mutter a Japanese curse under her breath, must’ve been her imagination. “Kotono told me that you chose each of the Sabers, because they match the originals. Because she synchronises with a template of the original Sabers through the suit,”
Jet sucked in a long draw of air, and for a few brief seconds the puppet seemed to inert. It stood, staring, waiting for some command to come through. Maico blinked, taken aback by the sudden descent into the uncanny valley. It was a mannequin, one Maico felt compelled to try poke.
Then Jet turned right back on again, as if nothing happened. Maico snatched her hand back.
“It’s about achieving a Gestalt.” The puppet began “Everything about the Knight Sabers has to be more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s hard to explain quick...... “ she offered a shamed smile while holding the back of her head. “The voomer core allows us to do that, between the wearer and the hardsuit. They’re each tuned to each other, and tune each other even more as they’re used.”
Maico’s head swam again. “And that means?”
“The Knight Sabers are 4 women in hardsuits, who’re far more capable than just 4 women in hardsuits.”
Maico declined to point out that Jet was more capable than just a woman. This may be why Jet fights with her puppet, she noted in her pad. Compare what Jet had just said, with something someone had once told her about tuning engines for the Armstrong Day classic, how building the best racecraft wasn’t just a case of putting the most powerful parts together, and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.
“How much more capable?”
“The motoroids are in the rear bay,”
Jet wasn’t even subtle about bulldozing around the question. She pointed towards a pressure hatch mounted in the aft bulkhead, behind which was a passage barely large enough to crawl through.
Maico didn’t object. She didn’t object to crawling through a maintenance passage when it would’ve been easier to go out and around. Jet was brushing against the passage walls. The passage walls seemed to be crushing down on Maico’s skull.
And her clothes were getting dirty. Her elbows were getting scratched. And it smelled..... weird. Like burnt metal. Jet popped a hatch with a punch that drummed against the metal walls. Maico grimaced.
Jet slipped out easily enough, finding space for herself to slot in beside 4 oversized motorcycles hogging the space all to themselves. She did her best to help Maico clamber ungracefully out. Jet’s hair brushed against the low ceiling. Maico glanced down to see she was standing on the bay doors. Sparks of light peeped through.
The machines hung by their frames from some sort of rotary carousel. The top and bottom machines were turned on their sides to fit. A discarded socket set was left beside the Red motorslave, on the bottom. It’s cannon was missing.
It was immediately obvious to Maico they were local-builds. They matched the local style.
And Jet seemed far happier to talk about the things. Jet seemed especially proud of the dual-rotor contra-rotating lift fans. Proud enough to be a total bore about them. Maico’s brain switched off for most of it. Dull, fannish babbling, a little too proud of herself. A spark who was having fun showing off the fruits of her work. Maico found herself having to hurry her up before she fell asleep.
Jet led her forward again ,back through the crawlspace and hardsuit bay, then through the living area towards the cockpit. A cluster of assorted circuit boards had been left behind on the bunk Maico’d woken up on. The dedication plate still hung above the bed.
“STA, Structural Test Article?” she questioned.
Jet didn’t answer with more than a soft smile.
It was a tiny living area for such a big spacecraft, with space for two people to sleep, somewhere to cook food, a small shower/WC, some storage lockers and room for very little else. Forward, was some sort of comm’s and radar station.... a cocoon of hardware surrounding a single chair. It was all sort of kludged in, a haphazard arrangement of gear from various sources made to fit in the space by whatever means necessary. It looked more high tech than it probably was.
The fire control console beside it, on the other hand, was pretty much stock. Nothing appearred to have been modified, unlike the cockpit proper. A whole section of it had clearly been cut out, then replaced with new instrumentation she couldn’t identify at a glance.
The co-pilot’s seat was trailing cables, with extra monitors set into the roof above it. The pilot’s seat was watched over by a figurine of Yoko Littner. Jet sat her puppet down in the co-pilot’s chair, grumbling a little as it was clearly moulded for a more armoured form.
“Take a seat,” she invited, indicating towards the Pilot’s chair with an open hand.
Maico shuffled in, closing her eyes as she fought off another dizzy wave.
“So.” Jet clapped her hands together, “That’s everything. Any questions?”
Maico flipped through a notepad of shorthand - an old skill she was glad she’d maintained - then set it on the instrument panel beside a paper take-off checklist. She closed her eyes again, supporting herself against the seat back. The Lancer was rolling on a gentle sea, pitching on a light swell.
Her stomach was starting to match. Pitching and rolling and gurgling and snarling, a bitter slug crawling up the back of her throat. Her mouth was watering and she cold feel her face moistening with a cold sweat.
One last question.
“Are you alright?” Jet derailed her train of thought. It went careening off the tracks.
She rubbed at her eye with the palm of her own hand. “But of course,” Maico managed to say. “Now, where was I?”
Her mind drew a blank. It was gone like last night’s dreams. Evaporated away like a Venusian lake.
“Maybe, why?” suggested Jet.
“I know the answer to that,” Maico said, glancing at her own notes to be certain.
“Oh?”
Maico placed the notepad on her lap, “I’ve read reports on you, including some technical things on the Cyber’s list. You’re a Knight Saber, aren’t you? You built the original hardsuit using such a strong strain of wavium that it did.... what it did to you. It had such a strong idea of what the Knight Sabers are, that it quirked, and that idea transferred on to you. The hardsuit has to be a Knight Saber, and so do you,”
Jet seemed to be thinking it over. She glanced out the forward window at the bulkhead beyond,
“You’ve spent how long....”
“Seven years,” Jet interjected.
“...planning this,” Maico continued. “And I think you’re looking for comfort in something familiar, even if it’s not actually real. A sanctuary of sorts from something, a sort of escapism,”
The puppet interface didn’t do a very good job of hiding Jet’s surprise, “Escapism?”
“You’ve even re-defined yourself as needed, to fit in and be a part of this little group. You gave yourself the role of Sylia Stingray, the same as you gave roles to the other three. And I think I might know why.”
Jet patiently waited.
Maico forced her voice to stay mild, as unthreatening as she could manage. She had the sense that she might’ve been stepping on a landmine “You wanted to get away from the Boskone War, so you fled to what you felt was the safest option... the one thing you were waved to be,”
Jet jumped out of her seat. It seemed to crack, Jet’s palms slapping against the instrument panel as she pushed it herself uprgiht. A sudden shock of fear bolted through Maico’s body, “We’re done here,”
There was a cold certainty to her voice. That same glacier ice had returned to her eyes.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Maico pushed. It was and she knew it. And Jet with a puppet body, seemed to be a toothless tiger, quite content to just stomp off. Jet didn’t even turn around, preferring to storm off with an intensity that had to be a show. It had to be a bluff. She felt her skin bristle, “Either something happened to you, or maybe you just want to distance from things you do or did. Post tr....”
Jet spun on her heel, snapping around through one-eighty with a stomp that still managed to shake the spacecraft’s frame. “Oh you’re fucking kidding me!” she spat.
The cyber-puppet stood there, bracing herself with one hand on the partition bulkhead. She was glaring down at her, wide-eyed and just a little wild. Her mental handbrake had slipped and she’d rolled down the hill just a little bit.
“Nothing happened. Nothing that didn’t happen to anybody else. And sure as hell nothing that isn’t already on the public record. There’s nothing wrong with me. Sure as hell nothing I can’t handle, and nothing I need people probing into, so just drop it!”
There was a bark in Jet’s voice that seemed to ring off the tin-can metal of the spacecraft’s structure.
“If you’re doing this because....”
“I said I’m done!” Jet snapped her down, hard. A bulkhead door slammed shut behind her, sealing Maico alone in the cockpit. She heard Jet disembark down the stairs, and watched out the window as she crossed the landing bay, back towards the hatch that led out to the main landing bay.
Maico realised she was shaking, right up from the pit of her stomach. Her whole body was shaking.
Doing the right thing is one thing, but..... The thought died on its feet. She sat there, alone in the cockpit, trying to wrap her head around just what had happened. Jet’s whole mood just flip-flopped.... it wasn’t even a moodswing, it was a complete inversion of her mental state. Flip the table over and send the chess pieces flying.
What if that had been Jet herself, and not just a puppet? Maico wondered. What if Jet looses her temper like that on someone else? A creeping unease crawled across her body, and she began to wonder about the other things Ryan had warned her about.
Jet was, by profession, someone who spent hours a day practicing lethal martial arts.
Maybe this is why the Knight Sabers operate independently?
She deflated.
Why couldn’t I have caught that on camera?
“Jet gets annoyed, then storms out of the interview.” just didn’t have the same visceral impact in print, as video.
She sat there for a lot longer than she intended to, scribbling, revising and editing
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?