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Dartz Wrote:Well, we'll see how this ends.
Rob, I hope you don't mind me putting a few Stellvian's on Frigga.... since they're mentioned as being regular customers of Survival Shot, why not have Maico pick a busy day, when the future crew of Ultima are aboard for their early training. And Anika and Miyuri in the same room.... No problems whatsoever - I like seeing characters added by one writer show up in another writer's stories.
(Oh, and this has nothing to do with the story, and doesn't even need to be mentioned in the story, but I thought folks might like to know. The Rinna Kazamatsuri is painted in a colour scheme reminiscent of, but not identical to, that of a standard-issue Space Shuttle.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
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Another long one.
Jet's been using a puppet for six years at this stage.... walking around with one or both and holding two conversations should be attainable with practice. More complex things are tougher, and she still slips up from time to time.
Trying to introduce the stone as an abandoned industrial complex (Like the enrichement center really).... with a few people living in it, so it feels big and vast and very empty. There's a lot that isn't used, and nothing to do with it. It's also supposed to be pretty unremarkable as far as asteroid mines go. I'd assume there'd be plenty using a similar design.
And I need to have some character moments.... Maico needs footage of all residents.
And this is pretty much exactly what Ford built, minus the cannon
Quote:The engine roared through open pipes, wind howling and lapping over the top edge of the windshield. High intensity lights illuminated a hundred metres of tunnel with a cool blue light. Black voids hid behind rises on the tunnel floor and wall. It seemed the speeding Warthog could just drop down and dissapear forever into one.
Maico clung on for dear life.
They weren’t even going that fast, but something about being buckled in to an unwaved tank of a car that was a little unnerving.
“Yeah.... “ Ford carried on with her story. “So we came second because our engine burns oxygen. Still, it was an honorable second for something put together to lug broken down gear through rough-cut tunnels,”
It rode over a bump. It seemed to Maico that those big fat tyres and two tonnes of battlesteel flattened them out entirely rather than rode over them.
“It’s nice,” she sputtered out, shivering.
“Sorry there’s no heater,” said Ford, completely failing to comprehend why she was shivering like jelly in an earthquake. “It broke yesterday,”
No ‘wavium. No slapstick effect. No safety foam. No inertial dampers. Just six hundred burning horsepower, two tonnes of metal and plastic, a solid rock wall looming out of the gloom, screeching tyres, a fabric harness, a transparent carbon windshield and her face.
“What if there’s something in the tunnel?”
“I can stop in the distance I can see.” Ford assured her. “I’m not a lunatic driver like some other people on this rock. And if she’s down here, she’ll avoid us.”
“Jet? Isn’t she aboard the Rinna Kazamatsuri?”
“Yepperoni,” Ford nodded, “And she’s supposed to up in the control room too,”
Maico glanced over at her, then at her files on Jet. Her face was a mask of confusion lost in a maze of puzzlement, hidden behind a light application of mortal unease.
“How?”
“The beautiful redhead you met earlier is Jet’s puppet body,” said Ford, quickly.
Maico blinked. “Jet’s an AI?”
That rumour was true?
“Well,” Ford shrugged.... “ask her, she knows what it is. She’s got cyberparts that let her run a puppet body the same way AI’s do.”
“Oh. But of course...” Maico said again, “Excuse me,”
She hurridly noted some of her thoughts down. This changed a few things. It opened the door to a few new possibilities, some of which made no sense whatsoever.
She’d stopped being afraid of the drive.
“What brings you out here?” Ford asked her.
Okay, play this cool.
“I’m chasing up some information on the Knight Sabers. I think Jet might know something,”
“Oh,” Ford shrugged her shoulders, returning her full attention to the road, “Well it’s her fandom, not mine so I can’t help you there,”
“Can you tell me about Jet’s body? The puppet,”
“It’s no secret,” said Ford, unbothered. “It’s A.C. built, about six years ago. Jet got it for a party she was invited to on Genaros, and kept it because it was a handy thing to have. It’s got no exotic features or anything weird. Anything else is private,” There was a giggle under her smirk.
“I mean, what can she do with it?” Maico pressed.
Ford gave her an odd look out the side of her eyes. “Just stuff. Normal people stuff.”
“But of course,” Maico said, again. Being evasive. Why?
Ford gave her an odd look. Yes, I do say that a lot, thank you very much. And I’m sure you have your own personality quirks too, Ms. Sierra. She made a few notes on her headset and....
A hard tyre-squealing turn derailed her train of thought, sending it spinning down the tunnel as the Warthog jerked left underneath her, pinning her to the frame momentarily.
“Got to love that cutting brake!”, Ford whooped.,
“Warn me before you do that!” Maico snapped at her.
“Sorry...” she said wearing a cheery smile that clearly wasn’t. The engine barked and snarled and seemed to shake the walls around them, picking up speed fast. “We’re almost there anyway. And we’re ahead of the cargo lift. I just have to drop the two exocomps off at the shop and we’ll head on up,”
Three minutes later, they stopped for a moment outside a hatchway. Ford had to get out to open it, giving Maico a chance to explore the truck a little. A small part of her felt the rising urge to just scoot over across the centre console, make the little red needle on the blue-green tachometer dance, ease out on the clutch and roar off away on her own.
Ford Sierra. Not just a gearhead, but a petrolhead, Maico mused.
The light outside was painfully bright for a moment. Ford hopped back aboard, crawling the truck outside, before jumping off the close the hatch again. Maico could see that they’d come out metres away from another hatchway.
1 CARGO LIFT: MAIN BAY. 20 TON
It opened by sliding down. Anika bolted out, running hard, followed by the human cargo inside to spilling out, led by a dark-haired, slim Japanese woman in leg warmers and a sky-blue dress stolen straight out of the 1980’s. She had an exocomp with her, painted a bright fire-engine red.
“Follow the red exocomp,” she ordered, her voice sharp and clear over the murmur of the crowd. “We’re down in the workshops. The elevator to the accommodation block is straight across the floor. Don’t get separated or you’ll get lost.”
Someone in the crowd complained about poor layout and long lift rides. There were murmurs of assent.
“We’re sorry about that, but try to understand that Frigga isn’t designed to be a hotel,” said the anachronistic leader. “Your apartments will be assigned when we get up there.”
Thirty people in deep-blue Stellvia Security uniforms moved out, following their team leaders. They were wearing dark shoulder patches of Ultima station. Mixed in with them were a few from other branches; Maico picked out quite a few from Administration and Medical too.
She snapped a few shots of them.
The gamers among them made themselves known by gawking at the Warthog.
“Yeah. It’s real.” Ford bragged. “Big block!”
“Can we have a go?,” a voice asked from the crowd. A hand went up from one of the administrators.
“If you don’t mind personally signing the invoice we send to Noah Scott for a replacement when you wreck it, then yeah,”
“Deal!” came the answer.
Ford seemed almost surprised for a moment. “Give your name to Kotono then. I’ll get to you later then.” she promised with a smirk. “Anyone willing to take that kind of responsibility deserve their shot,” she told Maico, aside.
The dark hair woman... obviously Kotono.... was laughing as she took his name. Noticing Maico, she waved at her with a big, toothy grin on her face.
Maico obliged, snapping her photograph. “Nice to be recognised,” she sighed. Contentment was warm and soothing in her empty belly. And Ryan will be able to take a model off it.
“Kotono!” Ford called out.
“Yeah!”
“There’s still no power to apartments above number 90 yet,”
“Now you tell me!” Kotono snapped back at her
“Not my fault.” Ford held up her hands “Complain to Jet,”
Kotono pushed a button on her headset to open a new channel.
“TITANIC mode 2 emergency shutdown test in ten minutes,” a boys voice announced through a speaker mounted over the elevator door. “Power and communications may fail in certain compartments.”
“Because TITANIC can use live ordinance, we have to test it’s abort modes before we begin a major exercise.“ Ford told her, before Maico asked. “Customer safety is our highest priority here at Survival Shot,”
She was looking right down Maico’s camera as she said that.
“But of course...”
It was another short drive through lit corridors. Designed to accomodate mining machinery needing service, they had little trouble with the warthog. It was all industrial. Blue and white half-and-half painted walls.... still on the original coat.... a bare concrete floor, chipped and potholed in places enough to let the steel liner underneath become visible.
There were some repairs.
It felt like an old abandoned factory, even with the lights on. It was just a little bit creepy in a way she couldn’t place. A little post-apocalyptic. The air was subtly un-fresh, dry and feeling somehow ancient.
They stopped outside Ford’s personal workshop, where Maico had to wait again while Ford offloaded both broken down exocomps. A little guilty, she offered to help, but Ford waved her off. It didn’t take too long.
“TITANIC mode 2 emergency shutdown test in one minute,” the boy repeated his announcement, attenuated and echo’d through a maze of concrete-fasciad walls. “One minute to shutdown,”
“What is TITANIC?” Maico asked, really just sating her own curiousty. “I heard Anika mention it,”
“It’s our computer system. It runs just about everything around here, including coordinating the drones for the exercises, and exocomps doing maintenance, and mapping other sectors and....” she stopped, furrowing her brow. “... well it might be easier to list what it doesn’t run.”
Three exocomps hummed by, heading down a side passage.
“It’s perfectly safe anyway,” Ford assured her. “It’s non-sentient. Just something that got bodged together to keep the lights on,”
They stopped outside another hatchway, getting off the truck and leaving it parked up. Ford opened it with a high squeal from hinges pleading for oil. It swung wide open, clanging against something outside, sending a deep shudder through the floors and walls as if it had struck some cymbal on God’s drumkit.
Maico felt her stomach tighten as a draft of cold, stony air rushed in to embrace her.
Ford stepped out with a curt, “Follow me, it’s a shortcut,”
“TITANIC emergency shutdown in progress,”
She stepped out, and into a waist high railing made of thin steel tubbing... cold and chilling and sending a icey bolt of fear right through her body. She yelped out in fright, seeing nothing but black beneath her... a small shaft of light emanating from the door behind.
“Don’t worry,” Ford chuckled. “Grav plating is in the gantry itself. If you fall off, you fall onto Friggan gravity, which is a lot gentler.”
Ford was holding a maglight.
Behind her, the outside wall of the workshop. She could just about make out the hard edges of bridges and girders in the gloom. Support trusses flew towards a wall lost in the black.
“We’re going to climb up the outside. Maintenance access.”
“We’re in another hole like the landing bay,” Maico gasped.
“Yeah... that’s it. Just like the landing bay. They filled this one with prefab buildings and covered it over up top. You wouldn’t know it from inside.”
The hatch slammed shut behind her like a tomb’s lid. It boomed in the cavern. Maico couldn’t estimate fathom how deep it was. It might’ve been infinite.
It might’ve been possible to fall over the edge and never be found. It might be possible she’d get pushed.
Only Ford’s flashlight lit their way up the steps.
Footfalls on steel echoed and resonated around them, coming thundering back off distant walls seconds later. It was all very Aperture Science. Maico could feel the hair on the back of her neck bristle, her heart doing it’s best to jump right out her mouth.
Something was following her in the shadows, she was certain. She was being silly.
They crossed a roof, chains rattling beneath her hands. Steel was cold and most, with a slight weathered fuzz to it. Far above, something was creaking. A catwalk reached out into the blackness. A meter wide, with thin steel railings Maico dearly wished she could just cling on to and never let go.
It intersected with a cage lift running inside a truss beam, reaching up into the gloom. She glanced behind, and could see no trace of the tunnels she’d left. A nip of fear bit her on the neck, a rising lump catching in her throat.
Hairy caterpillars were gnawing away inside her stomach.
“We should’ve stayed inside,” she said, a quiver rising through her voice.
“This is faster,” Ford stated.
“Vanish ‘faster’. I don’t want to fall down there”
She pointed a finger down the void. All the way down.
“Don’t worry. Once you pass the railing you’re on Frigga’s natural gravity. With full atmosphere in here you can glide down to a gentle landing in under ten minutes.” She grinned wide, “I’ve done it. It’s great fun, You almost float”
Maico’s whole body bristled at the idea. They all float down here, Maico. Something in the back of her mind warned her.... it was the sort of darkness that could hide anything.
“Just don’t land on your face and you’ll be fine,”
The reporter whimpered a little, before following Ford into the lift. A cage door slammed shut behind her, hissing and rattling. The lift launched with a jolt, Maico grabbing out for a smooth steel handrail.
Truss-beams flashed through the beam from Ford’s flashlight. Distant glimmers winked out of the black where the light reflected back off bare metal.
Keep your mind off it, Maico. Try a question... any question.
“You both worked with the Roughriders for three years, right?” she managed to get out.
Wind roar deepened as the lift continued to accelerate upwards.
“Yup,” Ford confirmed. “We had to to pay for this place somehow, which left us in a pretty uncomfortable place since we were scheduled to start a week after news of the A-team incident broke,”
“Do you think that incident may have been the genesis of the Knight Sabers?”
“Dunno, really. Ask them.”
I think I am asking them, Maico didn’t say. “If the Roughrider’s reputation was taking a hit, maybe someone thought they could fit into that space?”
“Ben got annoyed and made a bad call. Everyone’s done it. I’ve done it. And if anything, it was the UBA who made their hay while that particular sun was shining.”
“Did Jet train and equip the A-team afterwards?”
“Yeah,” Ford answered, cautiously. She knew exactly where this was going, that much was obvious.
“Would they be typical of her training style?”
“Yeah,” Ford repeated after a few moments, “And she trains people the same way here. And the Panzer Kunst train people the same way on Grunthal, if this is going where I think it’s going.”
“Well, can you blame me?” Maico smiled at her, cheekily.
Ford turned to face her, her expression dead serious and set in stone.
“Well I’ll tell you exactly what Jet’ll tell you. We don’t give out our training details to anyone.”
“So they were trained here,” Maico probed.
“I never said that,” Ford stated. Right into her camera. “Look, we’re nearly there. Let’s keep going on up and get back inside,”
Her voice warmed up just a little. It sounded like an offer. It might’ve been her asking for a way out. Maico glanced out into the darkness. The hulk of something that might’ve been a crane was veiled away in the black, at arms reach or maybe meters away.
“How did you afford such this place?”
“Was worthless, really. Three hundred grand. Even all this construction,” she knocked on the cage wall, “..would’ve cost too much to scrap, so it was left here, and sold to someone who had a use for it all.”
“It still seems like a pretty good deal to get all this, for the price of a mundane house,”
“it’s all legit,” Ford assured her, with a sour gleam in her eye. “Straight up.”
“I wasn’t implying otherwise...” Not intentionally really.
“The amount of dipshits who do pisses me off,”
“I just heard you had a little help in the auction house....”
“And there was nothing illegal about that. We met Sylia there, and asked her to help us out by discouraging the competition, that’s all,”
Confirmed! Sylia Stingray is a friend. Maico felt ready to explode inside. There it was on camera.
“How big is this place anyway?” she shifted the subject.
“We’re about a mile up now. This pit’s about as wide as Grovers Corners, and a little deeper,” Ford explained, obviously glad for the change. “They dug where the ore was and there’s eight of these around the rock. Four on the surface where they dig open-cast style, and four sub-surface where they hollowed everything out. One became the landing bay, this became the accommodation block, another is Survival Shot, and the rest are empty until we get more money and ideas.”
The lift jolted to a halt. If Maico’d had any lunch, it would’ve just kept going straight out her mouth.
“And here we are,” she beamed.
The cage door opened, and Maico didn’t want to cross another catwalk. She sucked it up and followed. Coming to another steel wall with a hatch in it. Maico winced at how bright it was, a cold rush of air pushing her into the light.
“Watch out!” a voice shrieked by. Maico felt the draft of whoever it was passing, chased by the scent of strawberries
Blinking, she caught momentary sight of a flame-haired figure running full pelt past her.
“Anika...” she mouthed. “Faster my butt! Anika beat us up here,”
“And she was running hell for leather to do it,” said Ford, pointedly.
Maico bit her lip and kept following.
“TITANIC shutdown complete and stable. Commencing restart sequence,” the same boy’s voice announced.
“This way,” Ford indicated with a nod.
All the corridors looked alike. They felt like solid stone under her feet. The same half blue, half white concrete walls. A painted mural of smiling children playing in arcadian fields had faded and flaked. A child’s face was chipped away.
NEW BIRMINGHAM. FOUNDER’S DAY 2015.
It was a sharp reminder that people had once lived in these gaunt passageways. Families, children. It was all very Pripyat. A trio of exocomps stopped and appeared to stare at her, while sharing a wordless discussion between themselves. Tool-ends chattered and clicked, camera’s zooming in to inspect the pink-haired newcomer and her head-mounted hardware.
Ford shoo’d them on back to wherever the hell they were supposed to be.
“Useful things, but Hell’s Bells are they a pain sometimes,”
Another long corridor, this one clearly cut straight through the rock and guarded by a foot-thick door. A chevroned yellow sign warned that it was liable to close without warning.
Another pair of exocomps scooted by, taking an inconspicuously conspicuous look at her.
Followed by another pair going in the opposite direction, doing the exact same thing a few seconds later.
“Where those the...”
“Same ones.” Ford finished for her. “They’ve found out about you and they’re curious. Very few outsiders are allowed outside, so they want to know why you’re so special,”
“Are they sentient?”
“Sentient, yeah, barely. Sapient, no. Like dogs; really, really stupid dogs. They’re part of TITANIC so they’ve got something of a thing going through that.”
Another door. Utterly unremarkable except for a small brass plaque mounted on it.
REACTOR CONTROL
Ford tapped it open with the toe of her boot,
“Guest’s here!” she called out.
Maico followed her into a room that seemed to be 1989’s idea of what 2022 would look like, rather than the genuine article. It was dark, lit only by the ambient light coming off of hundreds of annunciator lights switching between neutral yellow, alarming reds, or cool green and blue tones.
It had that deliberately ‘futuristic’ feel to it, while being instantly dated by a wall filled with individual guages, glowing tactile switches and curved display screens that couldn’t possibly by CRT’s, but sure looked like them. Anyone sitting in front of one had the text written on it projected across their faces.The rear wall was given over to what seemed like three maps of the base, switches and individual lights. A few Stellvian’s surrounded a dark-haired boy who was showing them how the local hardware worked. Two others in their ‘Administration uniforms were hesitantly poking at things.
Switches thunked and keyboards clattered, and displays came out in text and vector lines. How...old. It was the bridge of what people thought starships of the future would look like, rather than how they actually turned out.
She recognised Miyuri Akisato standing in the centre of all things immediately, looking distinctly uneasy in what appeared to be a brand new uniform. Jet Jaguar seemed to loom over her, neon reflections wrapping around her armour.
“Maico, you made it,” she grinned warmly at her. “Just take a seat anywhere and give me a few minutes,”
“Maico?” Miyuri chirruped, glancing over at the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,”
“I’ve been promoted,” Miyuri announced. Reflections of a hundred little LED’s across her glasses were no match for the light of joy that came on behind her eyes. “New station commander for Ultima when it opens. We’re doing crew training here,”
“Ooh, congratulations! If I’d known I would’ve brought a card or something.”
“Thanks,” Miyuri blushed, just a little. “It’s no problem. And you haven’t answered my question,”
Maico’s camera caught Ford whispering something into Jet’s ear. Maico herself didn’t spot it.
“I’m following up a story,” she explained, being deliberately ambiguous
“Well, you’re just in time to bear witness to my command debut,”
“Speaking of which,” Jet interjected, as gently as she could manage, “I think it’s about time we handed over. Give everyone some time to get used to using our gear.”
“Uh,” Miyuri gave her assent with a quick nod. “Since we’re not scheduled to begin for another two hours, that would be a good idea.”
“Well, Frigga’s yours so. Give the order,”
Miyuri smirked at Maico, then swallowed what was obviously a lump in her throat, “Alright, stations people,” she said, keeping her tone flat and mild.
The operators bustled away from the boy, taking seats that would normally be left vacant.
Jet spoke.”...we should be able to handle that. I’m in the control room so I can send the data down personally.” She stopped, a self effacing grin creeping across her face. “Sorry, wrong one,”
Ford groaned.
“Mackie, forward our orbital data to the Rinna Kazmatsuri, including the gravity survey. They’ll be departing to orbit in a half hour,”
The boy sighed, “And you’re not riding on Anika for being late. I don’t get paid enough for this.”
“I don’t pay you at all,” Jet shot back.
“Exactly!” he cried out. “In clear violation of article 13 as decided at Alphacon. Artificial Intelligences are entitled to equal renumeration for their work and labour. This is an atrocity!” he thumped the panel. “This is a crime,” he thumped it again. “This is slavery!”
“And we don’t charge you for food, board, biomass, power lodgings....this little projects of yours, oh and I pay for your maintenance too” Jet reminded him in deadpan tones. “So all told I think you’ve got a cushy deal going on,”
The Stellvians were staring in bewilderment, not sure if they should laugh or not.
“Careful Mackie,” Ford warned through a chuckle “You remember what happened last time?”
The boy glared sourly “Fine!” he huffed, plonking himself back on the chair, machine-gun typing something out.
“He’s just being a brat for the camera because most of the Stellvians are men,” Ford told Maico, quietly. “And Jet’ll let him get away with it,”
“But of course...”
That was awkward. Miyuri was giggling nervously. There were whispers among the operators, a shared joke drawing hushed giggles and a frustrated tut from Ford who’d obviously heard something she wasn’t expected to.
The one they looked at was Jet. Who was obviously not quite all there right at that moment. She was concentrating hard on something else.
The hatchway clanged open again.
“SorryI’mlateeveryone!” a voice breezed in, tumbling over itself.. A scent of strawberries and chocolate chased her in. “I had to mix them by hand,”
“Mix what?” Miyuri asked. There was hope in her eyes.
“Chocolate Brownies for everyone!” Anika announced. She had herself dressed in a snappy-looking uniform, a cross between a Senshi fuku and what might’ve been a Space Patrol jacket with a valkyrie patch on the shoulder. Something about it was devastatingly cute on her with a wonderful pink braid across the chest..
“About time,” Mackie huffed.
He was gone out the hatchway like a lightning bolt, leaving his chair spinning. He stole one on the way out for good measure.
“Oh I really shouldn’t...”
Miyuri still did. She snatched a few for herself, while Anika doled out the fair share to anyone elso who wanted some. She found herself becoming instantly popular. Maico was ready to eat the entire bag. All by herself, she was that hungry. She got two.
The rest, she dropped on a spare table for general enjoyment. Within arm’s reach of herself, naturally.
“Maico, if you want to talk,” Jet said, between mouthfuls, “I have about an hour or two free right now,”
That right there was the plan. Tire her out, and get it over with while she was tired.
“I’d like to get some rest first,” she answered, forcing a long yawn “And get something real to eat,” Her gut took that opportunity to gurgle and snarl. It wasn’t a lie.
“Alright. If you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll show you to your apartment. There’s should be food and stuff down there, if you can cook. We’ll talk when the exercise is finished.”
There was something about her speech... it sounded a little like she was talking while driving. Most of her attention was obviously elsewhere.
“Thanks,” Maico smiled softly at her.
She passed the time filming Miyuri handling the departure of the Rinna Kazamatsuri, with Anika steadily guiding her through Friggan procedures while the others got used to a very different user interface . It was boring, but someone would buy it. Maybe Frigga would themselves, if they wanted to use it for advertising.
Or not, if her suspicions were right.
-----
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
The bane of all asteroid settlements... not enough Fen and LOTS of space to fill. If you are not careful, they will feel empty for a LONG time...
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Graahhh. Yuku ate post.
Frigga's beyond empty. At it's height easily 500 people could've lives there, now it's between 6 and 20 depending on the season. It's a decade old fifty-story block of flats. And only the top floor and penthouse are now inhabited. It's a real problem. Nobody wants to live there because nobody lives there. Jet can't hire pilots for the Havocs because nobody wants to live on Frigga all alone.
Big contracts like Stellvia and the Galactic Empire improve things a little.... they bring sparks of life every now and then.
Also, edited the previous posting a little.
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Short one. 4 am update.
Miyuri gets a little bit more screentime than I planned. Not everybody loves Jet.... and it's not really an invalid opinion either.
And I originally typed out the whole Dossier. It's stuck in GDoCs somewhere.
Quote:Well rested, well fed and well clean, Maico reviewed some of her tapes. A short woman with sharp-looking eyes shielded behind rough bangs of straw-blonde hair was giving a safety briefing in replica FESWAT gear.
“...you call up for a medic immediately. You fake a call when you’re losing, and I personally beat the snot out of you and send you to the firing squad,”.
If you break one of my rules, you will pay the price. Do something dangerous and I am not afraid end the exercise then and there, and I will still charge you for the full booked time slot and I am not Friggan kidding on that. You break one of my rules and you can explain to your bosses why they paid for three hours, and only got twenty minutes. I have done it before.
I used to be a troubleshooter for Great Justice, so you know I’m a hardass.”
“Daryl Haur. Senshi... obviously, even if she didn’t dress according to the stereotype, that body language was unmistakable. And former troubleshooter.” Maico told her camera, then quickly fired off a Freedom of Information request to Arisia to see what turned up.
Too quick, her headset chirped with an incoming message. Ryan had responded.
“I thought you should know a bit about what your facing on Frigga.
Jet is a fine, wonderful cheery person to be around. Good natured. Earnest innocent blue eyes. Cheery Smiles. Happy, pleasant and safe. She’ll be warm and cozy and comforting. Very human. Right up until you put her in danger for an extended period of time, and then you get this.
jjag_bloody_boskone.png
That was taken at Boskone Prime. Guess what? That isn’t her blood. And those blue innocent eyes, well that’s the same shade of blue as the deepest, coldest, hardest ice at the bottom of a glacier.
Don’t forget that she’s a warrior first. Everything else comes second. She’s dedicated her life to finding new and interesting ways to turn people into modern art masterpieces with her bare hands. She’s someone who’s dedicated hours of practice and study to the honing of her martial skills every day for the last eight or nine years.
And she hides that great big dirty battleaxe behind a cheery, easy smile and a soft demeanour.
I’ve attached a few reports, including one about a raid she led on 2462 Nehallenia and her own about Jusenkyou. There’s a video of her pulling off something called a Hertza Nadel for Catgirl industries research project that tanked when they couldn’t figure out how to reproduce the effect. There’s also a long dossier if you want some real detail.
But, to summarise, she’s cold and ruthless when she wants to be, with a lot more raw power at her disposal than you’ll sense, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her. She’s definitely not the shiny happy Ranma in steel she wants you to think she is.
-Ryan
Maico felt her blood run just a little bit cold as she read through the detailed version. Even steamed towels wrapped around her body lost all their soothing warmth.
She was alone.
In a tomb-like apartment. On a desolate station.
And someone pounding on the door. Maico shrieked, making for Friggan orbit. Her heart went straight through the roof.
“Come in!” she managed to say between gasps.
Miyuri Akisato pushed the door open, looking like a whole new person when out of uniform. “My apartment was just a few doors down, so I thought I’d drop by,” she said.
“Come in, come in please,” Maico practically begged. “It’s pretty lonely here,”
“I know,” Miyuri breathed. “I think it’s a quirk of the place.” The door snikked shut behind her as she stepped inside. “That mural is creepy,”
“So, how’d the exercise go?” Maico enquired.
Miyuri’s crestfallen expression told her everything she needed to know. “Not good,” Akisato confirmed, taking a seat on an old couch opposite a pale area on the wall where there’d once been a television of some sort.
“That bad?”
Miyuri took a deep breath, “Well. I lost the station. Everyone was either killed or captured, so yes, that bad,” She closed her eyes, taking a few seconds to centre herself, “I suppose it’s better it happened here where I can learn from it, than on Ultima itself when,”
“What happened?”
The best thing to offer was a sympathetic ear. Her camera system was still on the table.
“Well, I had a good plan at the start but,”... she twiddled her fingers just a little, “I made a mistake, and It all fell apart halfway through trying to fix it, and Jet was just plain ruthless explaining how bad I got it wrong.” She took a deep breath, “But I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“I made a bet with Kagome that I could beat her record. And since today was only a warmup to get everyone used to Friggan systems...,” she smiled. Tomorrow was another day
“Well, good luck,” Maico wished.
“Sow how’s the story going?”
“Good, good.” Maico avoided being specific. Miyuri didn’t appear to be satisfied with just that, sitting there, patiently waiting more. “I’m chasing down the Knight Sabers,” she explained, her voice barely above a whisper. “I think Jet might be involved with them.... either leading them or training them,”
Miyuri went quiet. “Oh.... “ she glanced out the window at the magnificent desolation beyond, and the orbiting Rinna Kazamatsuri. “And you’re certain?”
Maico nodded, with a hungry wolf’s grin on her face. “They fight like she does. They use hardware she’s designed. I know who Saber White is, and she’s a friend of Jet’s. I know Jet trained the A-Team for the Roughriders, and the Sabers use similar tactics, and the have a Roughriders spacecraft...” she gathered momentum like a freight train.
“And who’s Saber White?”
“Sylia Stingray, From Marsbase Sara”
Miyuri blinked. “Who?”
“She’s a Fendane. She owns Stingray Motor Engineering. Which she bought from Jet Jaguar.”
Miyuri put a finger to her lips, thinking. “Oh. I’ve never met her,”
“Nobody has. But here’s the thing. Sylia Stingray is also definitely an AI, and I’ve confirmed links between her and Jet Jaguar too, so that puts Jet right at the centre of this. ”
Miyuri looked just a little uncomfortable, as if the couch she was sitting on had suddenly turned to stone beneath her.
“That makes sense.” she said
“Miyuri, can I ask you a serious question for a moment?”
Her tone was grave.
“Please do...”
“You spent most of the day with Jet, how good was she at using her puppet body, and her real body at the same time?”
Miyuri’s eyes sank to the floor for a second as she mulled it over.
“I think you want to ask me, ‘ Do I think she could fight with a puppet’?”
Maico nodded her head once.
“She was monitoring systems with her real self in the control room, while running around adjusting systems down in the generator room at the same time.” She glanced away at the camera. It was clearly off. “So I think she could,” Miyuri concluded, keeping her voice quiet. “She’s not a multi-tasker, not a full one .... but it isn’t really multiple tasks is it? It’s an extra set of eyes to monitor in person, and occasionally adjust things on the fly if needed. She has the sensory bandwidth to do it. If she can do that, I think fighting with a puppet would just be a matter of practice.”
“Thanks.” said Maico, “Thanks a lot. That gives me some new ideas for tomorrow,”
“Tomorrow?”
She grinned, ear to ear. “I have my own battle to fight,”
“Well, Good luck, Maico,”
-----
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VF: Multitasking? Even us un-modded folks can do it. It depends on what you need the puppets to do, and what you can put into subroutines. Here, let me show you. *Puts on a headset and three blank humanoid telepresences raise familiar old-school puppets*
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Well, what Jet wants to do ranges from lounging around experiencing sensations on her skin..... to full bore combat, with her real self remaining aboard the KnightWing to oversee the battle with it's sensor pods.
Okay. This was hard. And a revised ending for the previous scene, because I realised Maico didn't actually know about the Halcyon node yet.
Quote:“She was monitoring systems with her real self in the control room, while running around adjusting systems down in the generator room at the same time.” She glanced away at the camera. It was clearly off. “So I think she could,” Miyuri concluded, keeping her voice quiet. “She’s not a multi-tasker, not a full one .... but it isn’t really multiple tasks is it? It’s an extra set of eyes to monitor in person, and occasionally adjust things on the fly if needed. She has the sensory bandwidth to do it. If she can do that, I think fighting with a puppet would just be a matter of practice.”
“Thanks.” said Maico, “And one more?”
Miyuri nodded.
“What is StellviaCorp’s relationship with Jet Jaguar?”
“The official line is that Survival Shot provides a valuable and worthwhile service. We at Stellvia Corporation look forward to maintaining our ongoing business relationship to the mutual benefit of both parties, provided Survival Shot continues to meet the high standard they have already set.”
“And unofficially?”
Miyuri gave a wan smile, before making certain Maico’s camera was actually off. “So long as this is off the record,”
“We’re just friends having a conversation then,” Maico assured her.
“Jet and Mister Scott first met over a comm-link in 2015. They met in person at Bubblecon that year, after the race. They’re from different sides of the fandom, but.... they do business on friendly terms. Ford Sierra still remembers the kaboomite incident, so she’s a little more wary of us. Frigga as a whole are wary of us...” she paused for a moment, adjusting her glasses. “...they were hesitant to accept the Halcyon node.”
Halcyon node? That says a lot.
“It’s understandable really, they’re a small business just trying to find their feet and if we’re not careful we could easily push them over the edge. We know they’re worried about being too reliant on us for business, even if they don’t say it. It’s better for Fenspace if they remain independent, and better for us, when they do finally find their feet, we’re still on good terms.”
Maico closed her eyes for a second, a soft smile spreading across her face. Nice switch, Miyuri.
“Thanks a lot.” she said with a soft voice “That gives me some new ideas for tomorrow,” It really did.
“Tomorrow?”
She grinned, ear to ear. “I have my own battle to fight,”
“Well, Good luck, Maico,”
-----
Maico had begun to understand why Ford used that warthog to get around Frigga. Relying on the cargo lifts was taking an age. Time enough for one last read through her notes. Time enough to get through Ryan’s dossier on Jet.
Silica rock walls rushed past, momentarily lit up by the lift’s lights. The railings surrounding her had originally been painted yellow, but hard worn through to bare metal in many places by thousands of hands.
The air around her parched her mouth dry. The smell of ozone, ancient dry stone, greece and steel made her eyes water. Guidewheels thundered along their tracks, cable winches howling as they pulled the carriage up the shaft. The whole carriage shuddered and rattle as one of the guidewheels crashed over a buckle in the rail.
Her heart was pounding.
She was entering the lion’s den, and she was about to ask her if she ate the gazelle.
“I don’t know what Jet’s going to do. She seems pretty normal in person. She doesn’t seem so....ruthless. And then I think about that picture. All that blood isn’t hers, and unless she had a fight with a grove of blood oranges..... it had to have come from somewhere,”
“She’s killed people because ‘not killing them would’ve taken too long’ and while I know that’s probably taken out of context, and there’s probably a genuine reason why it was necessary.“ I’m not Constance Gardner, she reminded herself. “I still have to wonder at the sort of person who’s able to make that call. What would they be willing to do to protect a secret?”
She had a quick thought, “And she’d know Stellvians know I’m here. Jet’s a cheater, she takes every advantage.... I think she’s more likely to lie to me. She’s probably going to lie. The trick will be catching her in it. Even if I don’t get the truth, confirming that she’s lied to me would be a hell of a story on it’s own. ”
Stencilled numbers on the wall told her she still had 500 metres to go before she reached the surface. She prepped her plan of attack. When the lift finally did reach the top, it finished in what appeared to be a large garden shed, smelling faintly of sawdust, sunlight filtering through the gaps in the boards. She pushed it the door open with a squeak from a rusting hinge and stepped into an incongruous slice of middle America.
A two story wood-panelled American house sat in the centre of shaggy lawn, a quad-bike parked at the front door. The scent of fresh cut grass reached her nostrils at the same time as the low thrumming sound of a diesel lawnmower grazing away. It seemed to be autonomous.
A single sickly tree stood in pock-marked slowly filling with grass, flanked by a pair of huge stainless steel ventilation shafts capable of swallowing a horse whole. They must’ve used trees to clean the air, and then ripped them out for the valuable biomass. A soft breeze blew towards the vents, confirming her suspicions.
The sun was rising through the glass of the dome like a magnesium flare, arcing slowly overhead, chased by the trailing spark of the Rinna Kazamatsuri.
A woman was practicing in a bright gymnast’s leotard on the lawn, trailing streaming ribbons behind her arms. Saber Green, thought Maico, feeling a little guddy thrill run through her body. She satisfied her suspicion by snapping a quick video of her moving through a backflip.
Maico recognised her as Kotono Ito, from earlier.
“Hi,” she said.
Kotono stopped on her feet, breathing deep.
“Maico Tange, right?”
“I’m up here to meet with Jet,”
“She’s inside,” Kotono pointed towards the house with her thumb.
“Gymnastics?” Maico question.
“Stardancing, actually,” Kotono explained with a smile. She had a very slender, athletic figure, with her dark hair tied back off her face. “It’s just the low gravity sections are being used right now, so I have to stick to normal Gee,”
“Ah,” Maico thought. She furrowed her brow. “You were at Jeanne’s dance last year?”
“No,” Kotono shook her head slowly, wearing a disappointed smile. “I missed out on the qualifiers, thanks a broken ankle,” said Kotono, sighing lightly. “I was planning on doing it this year too, but something else came up,”
“Oh. Jet won’t give you the time off?” Maico giggled.
“Something like that.” she said, flatly. Kotono looked away out through the glass of the dome, and the jet black wall of space beyond. “It takes work to get a new business going, but it’ll be worth it,” Her smile turned avaricious, “Each of us has a fair share,”
“But of course...”
An exocomp whirred by, swooping around for a glance at the newcomer before scooting into the ventilation shaft and hiding.
“Are they watching me?” Maico asked, with a quiver in her voice. “They seem to follow me everywhere.”
It hovered there, barely keeping it’s sensors over the lip of the duct. Maico glared at the thing.
“Jet’s got this weird thing going on between Catgirl industries. I think she might secretly want to be one or something,” explained Kotono, an alto chuckle rising out of her mouth. She hid it behind her hand in the Japanese fashion. “That’s half the reason why we have so many of them,”
“I hope they don’t bite.”, said Maico, her voice shrinking down a little.
Kotono’s eyebrow rose. Maico snickered through her nostrils, a smile spreading across her face.
The stardancer slowly shook her head. “Crazy things sometimes,”
“If you don’t mind, could you tell me what sort of person Jet is, in your own opinion?”
“It’s alright,” said Kotono. She closed her eyes, thinking it over. One single breath caused her chest to rise, highlighting how well endowed she wasn’t. “She’s Great Justice, with everything that implies. She still calls them Boskonians, how old is that?” she laughed, a little nervously. “She’s not a businesswoman, she prefers practical work to theory, but she’s not a bad person to work with and she pays us more than well enough to make it worth our while staying on this rusting old stone.” she forced an exasperated sigh, “Even if it does make it hard to get a stable relationship since nobody wants to move out here.... oh well,”
“Thank you,” said the reporter giving a gentle bow.
Kotono went back to her practice, Maico watching for a few minutes for no other reason than to delay her meeting with Jet a few minutes longer. That image from Boskone Prime still stuck in her mind.
“And how many Senshi have I met who’ve been in action? how many of them would’ve looked the same?”
She forced her fears down and crossed the driveway, gravel crunching under her feet. A plaque mounted to the steps leading up to the door told her the house and it’s surroundings were part of the original launch from Alabama, how the Mayor’s residence had originally been the hub around which the miner’s had arranged their own waved RV’s and trailers as spokes.
The house itself was intimidatingly big, the door large enough to be used for the ‘huge’ bathrooms in Kandor. There was something obscene about it, when her apartment on Luna was so tiny. She knocked once.
And waited.
The whole wooden door shook, like something on the other side was trying to crash through it, before pulling open. Maico jumped back a step, expecting it to fall out on top of her. Jet was standing in the door, propping it open with one hand with a welcoming smile on her face,
She was dressed... for want of a better word... in some sort of blue and yellow crash padding. It bulked her armoured frame out even more, a pair of big-wheeled rollerblades adding a few centimetres to her height.
“Maico, come inside, please,” she beckoned, rolling back a little to allow her inside.
She could look up and see the underside of Jet’s arm, and a pair of gas-dampers that whispered as she moved. It hinted at power, and made her insides tighten up as she slipped her feet out of her shoes.
“Thank you,” she said, doing her damnedest to keep her fear hidden.
“We’ll talk in the bike room. It’s private back there”
“But of course,”
She followed Jet along what had once been polished wooden floors, but which had now begun to age gracefully. It was all sparsely furnished, with a few obvious scars where valuable fittings had been ripped out, then smoothed over with filler. The sound of fake gunfire emanated from what she guessed was the living room, the door ajar.
A glance through the gap between door an frame allowed her to see the television. Ford Sierra was lounged across the couch, wearing a greasy Cubs t-shirt and blue shorts.
“So, what do you think of my proposal for my entry project for Nekomini?”
“It’ll be good if you can finish it,” Ford said, with a sardonic snort. “Or even start it.”
“I swear I’ll finish this one,” he reassured her. And he meant it. Oh boy did he mean it. And he’d obviously meant it the hundred other times he’d said those words. Maico could tell the boy was one of those kind of people. An ideas person, but never able to follow through.
“Just change the name. Tactical Information Transfer Syncroniser, and Arm Slave System? Probably a little bit too subtle.”
“Just in here,” said Jet, nudging another door open with the back of her hand. The cyber rolled inside, followed uneasily by Maico, who paused in the doorway for one moment.
“But of course...” she just about managed to say. The music in the room next door was rising to a crescendo as the gunfight reached its climax.
Centerpiece to the room was the original Highway Star. Still with beercan heatshields on the grips. Still with the Bonneville-400 markings proudly displayed, and a TSAB-safe sticker from when it’d been imported into the US. The paint was still desert-worn, and some of the stickers were peeling. It was still in much the same condition it was on that day she’d first met Jet and Ford, who both seemed completely overwhelmed at being the centre of Fenspace attention for all of fifteen minutes.
Hold that picture of Jet in your mind, and then you’ll have no trouble dealing with her. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Slightly gawky smile on her face, a little like she was ashamed of herself. Ford was more animate, Ford seemed to enjoy it more.
And framed on the wall over the motorcycle was a paper copy of the article Maico’d written up, along with a number of other mundane magazines.
“You saved that?” the journalist said, a little surprised.
That slightly awkward smile returned, “Of course. It was our fifteen minutes of fame. And it was the coolest thing we ever did.”
There were shelves devoted to a pretty hefty figurine collection. The Panzer Kunst Gruppe were well represented among a few Gundams, a lot of power-armours and a whole collection of spacecraft. Maico picked up a few other BNF’s gathered among them, three of Jet herself, and more than a few Highway Star models.
There was a collection of Ford cars.
And another Caster Gun replica, without the ornamentation. Just bare polished metal, wtih Live Long and Prosper engraved onto the barrel.
“Yup that’s real,” Jet assured her, wearing an almost boastful smirk. Maico swore she was swelling up. “Ford and me... mostly Ford... put together three of them, and gave two to our friends. They all shoot. “ she laughed, “They’re also next to useless in a real fight.”
With the subtext being that once, just once, it’d had been an invaluable chekovs gun.
“I saw the one in Benjamin Rhode’s office,”
Jet gave her a surprised look, her eyebrows rising up. “Oh. You were talking to him?”
“But of course. I have to chase up all leads on the Knight Sabers. And they use an unnofficial BAT spacecraft,”
Jet winced, just a little bit. Maico saw her whole body twitch. She tried to cover it with a smile/
“Well, we’ll sit down and get started. If you’d like a cup of tea or anything?”
“Tea, what kinds?”
“Broadleaf, and Breakfast,”
“Broadleaf?” Maico stuttured, “ But that’s illegal,”
Jet smirked at her, a sly gleam in her eyes. “Only in a few places. One of the advantages of owning your own rock is that you get to set the laws.”
Maico was glaring at her, her lips forming into a sour pout.
“It helps me sleep when I want to,” Jet added an afterthought explanation. “And I like the taste.”
But it can generate a dependency, Maico reminded herself, and nobody likes the taste. It was something she discretely noted, hoping Jet wouldn’t spot her doing it.
“I’ll have some breakfast tea,” the reported spoke quietly. “With milk and one sugar if you have them, or a substitute,”
Jet left her sitting on a couch, alone in a room full of memorabilia. ”This isn’t a private place at all,” she told her headset, keeping her voice to a low whisper, “Not with the noise coming through the walls from the movie. She brought me in here to intimidate me, to distract me,”
Jet’s medals and awards were displayed in a glass cabinet, conspicuously lit. That only proved it in her mind. Maico reminded herself that she didn’t get where she was by allowing herself to be intimidated by a BNF’s bluster. A small firearms collection did well enough at doing that, along with Bounty’s paid in full. There were some big names in there.
Her foot started tapping on the floor. Jet sure was taking her time. Gunfire boomed next door, sub-woofers shaking the walls as a chorus of trumpets reached a crescendo. Muffled conversation reverberated around inside. Two men, then a boy and a woman snarking on something.
She thought she might’ve heard something clattering around in another room.
And still she was left alone.
Take a deep breath. Try to remain calm.
It’s just another psychological warfare tactic.
The lights went off outside as the sun fell below the horizon. Flourescent lights tink-tinked into life, humming above her head. The bike gave a creak. The frame of the house made a ghostly groan.
And the door exploded open.
Maico yelped. She nearly hit the ceiling. Her heart tried to burst straight out of her chest.
“Sorry. Hands full,” Jet said, in a mockery of an apology. She wasn’t sorry at all. She edged in through the door with two steaming mugs in her hands, one of which she offered to the reporter.
Maico cupped it in both hands, warm and soothing. Her body was shaking. The cup was solid milled steel with an insulating coating, and obviously designed for stronger hands, “Thank you,” she said, forcing her voice to remain even.
Jet sat down on an armchair opposite her. It creaked and complained as Jet crossed her legs, wheels on her feet whining as they spun up. The brake chirped and stopped it dead.
“I’m ready when you are,” the cyber said, before taking a gulp from her own mug.
An odour somewhere between garlic and fried ginger scratched at Maico’s nostrils. Broadleaf bacteria, dry-broiled, boiled, brewed and stewed. Then sweetened to taste.
Disgusting, thought Maico. She tried to put that to the back of her mind. Stomp it down. She adjusted her camera system, before calling up her notes to her headset. She had another sip from a mug of tea that was too hot and a little bitter, but just soothing when its warmth hit the pit of her belly.
“Alright Jet,” she said, taking a deep breath. “First of all, what is your relationship with Noah Scott?”
“Stellvia is an important customer of ours,” she stated. “Mr. Scott. We met in person at Bubblecon a few years back. We know who we each are, and we do business on friendly terms. We really have a few shared friends, and that’s about it,”
“I see. You do business on friendly enough terms, that a Halcyon node was installed here?”
Jet gave an almost rueful smile. “Frigga’s comm’s are old. The node was installed by mutual agreement. Partly because Stellvia is a regular customer, and partly because of all the space we have, we’ve been designated an emergency evacuation point for a number of nearby settlements, and our own comm’s failed under the simulated load of an evacuation.”
“But of course. Now, can you confirm for me. For the start of 2017, to the end of 2019, you served with the Roughriders,”
“I was a contractor,” she stated, her voice cool and flat. “With Ford. We were both honourably discharged when our contracts finished,”
“And what did you do for them?”
“Training mostly. I led some field missions, and indulged some of my hobbies on Fides.” A smile crept across her face as she finished.
Maico nodded gently. That part of her notes confirmed. “Did you train The Roughriders A-Team?”
“Yes, that was part of my contract with them. I trained them, and for a time led and supervised them in the field.”
Jet took another gulp from her mug. That smell made Maico’s nostril’s twitch. She felt her stomach twist just a little.
She tried not to show it. “And this is why they use Crisis-style technology, and Panzer Kunst tactics?”
“I stuck with what I knew.” the cyber gave an open-armed shrug. Dampers hissed. “Because I know it well,”
“But of course.” She took a sip from her own cup. “Do you give similar training here?”
“Yep. That was our initial business plan for supporting the school, that I’d train power armoured troops. It didn’t work out and Survival Shot was the result.... it kept the bailiffs from Baileys away.”
That smile was getting just a little cheeky.
“But you still do it?
“Oh Yeah. We actively bid for training contracts, and Survival Shot is now part of the bid. There’s also three fulltime martial arts students here. You’re welcome to sit in and watch our session later tomorrow.”
She made the offer with a saleswoman’s smile. That could be good footage to compare. “Would you say the A-team are typical of the training you provide here then?
“Yeah.” Jet took another drink.
Alright, time for the first real poke. Maico shielded her nose for a second in her own mug. Satisfied the smell would be gone, she placed her mug on her knee, bracing it with her arm.
“The Knight Sabers use similar tactics and Panzer Kunst techniques to the A-team. Where they trained here?”
Jet didn’t flinch. Her smiled deadened a little, and she kept looking straight down Maico’s camera.
“We don’t release that information publicly.” in an even tone “There’re plenty of people who’d prefer it isn’t known that they trained here. Customer privacy is important to us.”
“So they are customers?” Maico pushed, putting just a little more force into her voice.
Jet’s expression softened, “I can’t confirm or deny it. Either way.”
That’s all you’re going to get, Maico. Change subject. Link Jet Jaguar to Sylia Stingray. Take another sip. Adjust headset. Jet’s staring at me, waiting.
“Do you know Sylia Stingray, of Marsbase Sara?
“Yes.” Jet nodded, her voice a little milder “I sold that shell corporation to her, which she built up.”
Maico carried on. “Would you call Sylia Stingray a friend?
Jet drank another gulp. How much more of that stuff did she have? “No, we’re more acquaintances than friends really. I don’t know her that well”
Maico fixed her gaze, trying to stare right through her eyes. “And yet you know her well enough to ask her for some help in an auction house? When buying Frigga, she discouraged a Foglio spark from bidding against you?”
The cyber straightened up a little. “How’d you find out about that?”
Maico felk a smrik draw across her own lips, “I found the blog post. It was a bit.... colourful.”
Jet glanced away for a moment. Obviously, she knew it well enough to be just a little embarrassed. Or she was trying hard not to laugh out loud.
“Well. She was there to pick up some CNC machinery for her business. We met outside and I asked for her help, so she sat beside him and quietly discouraged him once bidding approached our budget.”
“Have you met Sylia Stingray since then?”
“I have, occasionally. When she appears at conventions.”
Now, time to drop the bombshell. Maico felt a giddy thrill shudder through her body.
“Did you know Sylia Stingray is Saber White?”
If Jet could’ve facevaulted straight out of her chair, Maico swore she would’ve. She’d been utterly blindsided by it.
She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it for a moment, before finally getting her thoughts in order. “How’d you figure that out?”
“I had a friend pull a 3D model of her from video footage I took of my interview with her and compare it with Saber White’s hardsuit. They’re a dead match. Sylia Stingray is inside that suit.”
And she could feel herself beginning to boast about how she pulled one over on the cyber. Jet swallowed another mouthful.
“ ….Well, she’s playing according to her own fandom then.” she demurred, looking away again.
Maico pushed on. “Did you know she was an AI?
“I suspected as much, yeah.” Jet answered, a little too quickly.
“Did you ever train Sylia Stingray?”
“We don’t comment on who we have, or haven’t trained.” Her voice was flat as a stone wall.
Maico kept going. A little more pressure. She kept her voice as calm as she could manage. “I have video of her using the Hertza Haeon in a hardsuit. How could Saber White have learned that move?”
Jet’s demeanour began to cool. “There are other Kunstler out there, who moved on from the Gruppe to new things.”
“Yet, she shows signs of being trained by you. A source on record informs me that this is your style.” And know for the final kicker “And I know she can’t have copied you purely from video.”
Her arms folded across her chest, dampers whispering threats about the power they constrained. Her voice came out cool, and crystal clear.
“I trained a lot of people in the Engel Gruppe in the same way, some of whom moved on to other things. I can name four people who could’ve taught her that move. They could’ve picked up elements of my style, the same way I picked up elements of my own trainer’s style,”
“Did you tell her where she could go for this training?”
“No.” the cyber stated. A single concrete syllable “ And if I did, I would’ve sent her to Grunthal, not another Kunstler who has moved on.”
Maico was trying hard not to grin. She was trying hard not to think about how strong Jet actually was inside all her padding. She drank from her own mug before continuing. Time to give Jet a little bit of an out.
“I have evidence to suggest that Sylia Stingray is actually a remote puppet body, a secret identity. I can’t prove it for certain, but is it possible you might have trained her, without realising it was her that you trained? Have you ever trained anyone who used a remote puppet?“
She took a moment to think, cupping a soft chin in hard metal fingers.
“It would’ve been a hell of a job to keep her true identity secret for long enough to learn enough to be able to perform the Hertza Haeon right, but I won’t deny that whoever it was might’ve been able to pull it off”
“And, what effect would using a remote puppet like have on a Kunstler?”
There it was. Exactly what Ryan had told her about, a real glacier blue in her eyes. She was well aware there this was going.
“Lag mostly,” she answered, her voice calm and relaxed “It’d slow them down, but otherwise it’d be just a change of hardware and that’s something we can adapt to.”
Maico pushed on. “Would you be able to fight using a remote puppet?”
The cyber inhaled through her nostrils. Maico realised, that was the first time she’d actually heard Jet breath.
“Yes.” admitted Jet tentatively. Now a but, followed by a bunch of reasons why she couldn’t. “But in order to fight that well, I wouldn’t be able to do much more than sit around with my real body. I’d have to focus almost entirely on the interface. I’d also have to get pretty close in order to reduce the transmission lag, so I’d be stranded there for the whole battle,”
“I watched what you were doing earlier today,” said Maico. She felt herself beginning to try stare down the cyber, to try and melt the ice in her eyes.
“Yeah, that’s basically the limit of what I can do.” A thin smile spread across her lips “I was holding two conversations at once, and I still flubbed it once or twice.”
“Jet. Are you Sylia Stingray?”
She seemed to think for a long time.
“What makes you think that?” she said, keeping the tone of her voice even.
“I know it is someone who has at least Noah Scott, a Panzer Kunstler, and Benjamin Rhodes as aquaintances. I haven’t been able to link Sylia with either Benjamin, or Noah. She’s a complete ghost, nobody knows her at all but you. And I know you have links to both Noah and Ben. I know you would be capable of building the hardsuits.
Maico inhaled. Jet stared, patiently waiting.
“I know you could acquire some of the more advanced technology used by them. You’ve already trained another group in similar tactics I know Sylia is an AI, likely a puppet, so anyone could be behind her. And you’ve just admitted that you could fight through a puppet body. I think the conclusion is obvious.”
She allowed herself a little smug smile, before finishing off the remains in her mug. Jet would either have to admit it, or she would have to lie. And a lie could be discovered. And discovering the lie, would be a story in itself.
“Maico.” Jet began in a very quiet, soft voice. “Do you know why comic book superheroes use codenames?”
“Yes,” she said, a little taken aback by the sudden change in tack. “It’s so the villain won’t know who they are, and come after them at home.”
“That’s only half of it,” Jet said. She still seemed calm. Maico thought she heard her inhale, but it was really just the gas dampers as she recrossed her legs. “Villains don’t play nice. They don’t make things as easy as only going for the hero when he’s ready for them. They’ll go after the hero’s family, the hero’s friends, because that’s a far easier way to make a good hero suffer.”
“So, either you are Sylia Stingray, or you know who is?” Maico questioned, quietly, deliberately being a little ambiguous about the question.
Jet stared. "There're some secrets that absolutely have to be kept. Suffice it to say, I know enough about the Sabers to know that their identities have to be kept a secret.”
“The cover-up is always worse than the truth, Jet.” the reporter warned.
“There is no cover up, Maico Tange.” the cyber stated, her tone firming up. “I’ve done nothing wrong. And trust me, if I had, we wouldn’t be talking here right now,”
Maico felt herself wince. “Was that a threat?” She conjured up all her righteous fury behind that.
Jet seemed to start a little, before an embarrassed smile creeped across her face. “I really didn’t mean it like that. Big hitters like me, with a lot of physical power, we get watched a lot more than your average Fan. If the Patrol, or Great Justice of SHIELD or whatever thought something untoward was happening here, it would’ve been newsworthy long before you got wind of it.”
Maico sighed a little. “So, you do know, but won’t tell me.” It was hard to miss the undertow of anger in her voice. The answers were sitting right in front of her. And refused to come.
“They haven’t done anything that warrants them being exposed. The only reason to expose their identities right now would be to satisfy people’s curiousity, and that’s not good enough for me.” a subtle hint of anger simmered below the surface creeping into her voice as a hardening edge. “Exposing their identities will put innocent people at risk. The villains won’t go after the Knight Sabers, they’ll go after their families, their friends and acquaintances. ”
She waited a moment, just long enough for Maico to form the next sentence in her mind.
“If the Knight Sabers cross the line, then I’ll tell what I know.” Jet concluded.
“So where is the line then?” Maico asked her “Did they cross it when they first started attacking the UBA on their own initiative? If not then, when do they cross it? When they assassinate someone?”
She was demanding an answer. Some sign. Everything was right in front of her and it just wouldn’t budge. It sat there smugly drinking broadleaf tea. Jet’s eyes seemed to narrow just a little.
“If you’re still wondering whether they’ve crossed the line or not, they haven’t. You’ll know when they’ve gone too far.” Jet downed the last of her mug in one go.
“You know this is a story in itself,” Maico warned her, “Jet Jaguar knows who the Knight Sabers are, but refuses to speak. You know what’ll happen if I run with that? If I show the evidence I have,”
And that was a threat. You’d be better of telling the full story, Jet, rather than letting me run with a half-truth that may lead to people jump to conclusions you won’t be able to shake. A little bit of a dirty tactic, she had to admit to herself, but given that she was facing someone happy to use dirty tactics herself, it seemed fair.
“I don’t mind.” Jet responded, unfazed. She looked right down the camera. “i don’t mind people linking me to the Sabers,” her gaze switched to something on the wall behind Maico. “I can take that. It’s the Sabers themselves I’m trying to protect.”
And not from the Space Patrol.
“Well if that’s everything you have to say,” Maico offered her one last chance.
“It is,” Jet closed the door.
Maico took a long, deep breath, allowing a cold relief to flood her body,”Well, I’ll edit this and show you my rough draft for your approval sometime over the next week,”
Jet gave a nod, planting both of her feet on the floor. “Hopefully, you got my good side.”
Maico made it obvious she’d turned her camera’s off. “Well, thank you Jet,” she said with a cheery smile, “That’ll be everything I need,”
She did. It was all on her camera. Everything she needed.
Finished version. And Maico now has everything she needs to solve the Saber Case. She just needs to get home to Port Luna.... somewhere with better bandwidth than Frigga....
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Jet is right, not even the typical bad guys of Fenspace would go after her just to get the Sabers. Doing so would be very stupid and most likely lethal.
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Which doesn't stop them going after traffic leaving Frigga. Anika didn't help by flying at low speed, and 'taking the scenic route'
Quote:-------
Ensconced in the back seat of Anika’s Little Cool Rider, Maico typed onto her wrist mounted keypad. Her fingers flew across the keys.
“Ryan, I’ve got them all! I’m certain the Sabers are on Frigga. Jet all but admitted she’s backing them. It all links up.
Jet Jaguar is Sylia Stingray. I’m not sure if we can prove this beyond doubt, but I’m certain. At the very least, we have her as a backer of the group, and maybe the Charlie for this particular bunch of Angels.
There’re four other women living here, one teenage boy, and three cyber trainees. I’ve got video of the women. I’m in the back of a shuttle right now, but I’ll get them to you as soon as I get to Port Luna and some proper interwave. Frigga’s went down overnight, and this shuttle’s not working too.
If the 3D models match up. We have them. We have everything. “
It sent out through the shuttle’s own lightspeed system. It would take a while for the response to get back to her. A half hour, easily. Time enough to sit and stew and fizz and bubble inside. She’d pulled it off. 77 Frigga was rapidly receding behind her. Safe. Away. Free. She had everything.
She nestled herself into sumptuous padding on the seat. A ship that has every single option in the BAT catalogue ticked, but the interwave link had malfunctioned. Suspicious. Or not. They were pretty far out.
The panel in front of her chirped as a new message arrived, a few minutes early.
“Great work. You get any of their hardware, or did you just get the people themselves? What did she say? What exactly did Jet tell you? You know, once we’ve got them, we can get who’s backing them. If Rhodes and Scott are in on it, you bet most of the top of GJ knows it. And you know Jet used to be a troubleshooter so that puts her right in it.
Never confirmed or denied, of course. But come on, really? We have to get everyone behind this. Knight Sabers are secret GJ bag squad; a squad of mercenaries may be dynamite, but that’s kaboomite right there. Especially given their moves against the UBA now become GJ moving against them. ”
Maico had a vulpine grin on her face as she typed up her response.
“Jet hinted that they were backed by GJ, but somehow I doubt there are, not to that extent. Call it a gut feeling. It sounds more like GJ tolerate them - or turn a blind eye to their activities - rather than actually command them. Maybe GJ’s a regular customer?
Jet talked a little about superheroes. She told me she was protecting them specifically, and was quite happy for me to report that. She’s going to get a hell of a shock when she sees the finished version, but I can’t say I’m sorry. She told me she was protecting them because she was afraid that the Boskone would go after the Saber’s families.... “
Send and wait.
“Is the interwave signal picking up yet?” she asked, yawning.
“Afraid not,” Maico answered, a little too cheerfully. “The pulse amplifier coil is fried. We won’t get a useable signal until we’re pretty close,”
“But of course....” she sighed.
Anika was busy doing something up front, punching away at a sensor display. The response time had gone down a little, she noticed.
“That’s bullshit, Maico. They made the choice themselves when they put their armour on and went to war. If they wanted to be protected, they should’ve been public, they should’ve worked with SHIELD or GJ under public scrutiny. You’ve found a GJ black op’s team. You’ve caught them red handed. You’ve got to tell everyone about them and stop this abuse of power.
And just think what this’ll be worth to you. You’ll have your own shuttle when you’re finished. This is the biggest thing since... well since the Soviet announcement earlier this year. Think of the reputation. Think of the money Maico.”
For the first time, she felt a strange unease begin to gnaw deep in the pit of her stomach. She could be certain it wasn’t hunger. Maybe Jet did,”
“Maico,” Anika brought the convoy of her thoughts to a screeching halt. “Could you check your rear sensors for me and confirm something,”
She stared at the instruments, a little bewildered for a moment. “Rear sensor. Rear sensor,” she mouthed as she searched, “Ahah!” Push a little button, and the glass display in front of her switched over to a nifty holographic representation of the space behind.
Her eyes narrowed.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know,” answered Anika, her voice stretching taught. “But it’s on an intercept course,”
“Intercept?”
“In five minutes, we have company.”
She heard the engines power up behind her, gauges on the panel in front reaching towards their limits. A moment later, the interwave system came back online.
“You deliberately disabled it!”
“It’ll take to long to explain,” Anika blurted out. “But that ship’s not supposed to be there,”
So thay had planned something? And now, somehow, it was all falling apart. She wasn’t sure what she should be more terrified about, the fact that the Friggan’s had planned to do something out here, or the fact that someone was coming along on top of what they’d already planned.
The radio crackled on the emergency channel.
“Hey there sweetlings, cut your engines or we blow you apart.”
It was a gravelly drawl, that conjured up images in her mind of some shaggy, burly space pirate with his boots up on the console. Anika whimpered up front. She was panting hard, her gaze rakeing across the instruments.
Maico did what came naturally to her. She turned her cameras on.
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” Anika snarled through clenched teeth. “This is Little Cool Rider hailing anyone in range. We are under attack. We are under attack by an unknown pirate,”
“Last chance, ladies,” the pirate warned. “Stop or be stopped, it’s your choice,”
“They’re kidding, right?” Maico stuttured out. “Right?”
A pealing alarm was her answer. Anika screamed “Missile!”, hauling the little craft around. Maico braced herself against the cockpit frame, feeling her hearty breakfast coming back up to visit. Turbines whined as stars rolled overhead.
A bright flash of light shot by, an electric spark in the dark.
“One!” yelped Anika up front. The Cool Rider’s turn reversed, throwing Maico against the other side of the cockpit. She had the chance to punch out one last text message, just in case.
“WE’RE BEING ATTACKED!1”
“Little Cool Rider, this is the Rinna Kazamatsuri. We have received...”
The second missile detonated right under the port engine.
----
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
It really SUCKS to be caught in your own trap by someone else! 
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Well. Not somuch a trap, as everyone's second favourite battleborg trying to be cunning and subtle enough to handle both Maico and the UBA issue with one slightly ill-conceived stone, then having some baldricks come along and ruin a plan that probably wasn't going to work anyway.
And Anika's going to need her ship repaired.
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Quote:It was hot. Anika beside her radiated heat. Maico’s mouth had gone bone dry, while the woman beside her was panting like she’d run a marathon. Her eyes shot around the cell, the the hatchway wtih it’s oversized lock, a single bed with no sheets, a single head, an overhead light and nothing else. Maico’s camera set was thrown on the bed, offline for now.
I’m trained for this, Maico assured herself. She dug down into parts of her mind long locked away, and set about figuring a way out of her bindings. Plastic zip ties around her wrists could be fatigued loose if she twisted them right.... it was just a matter of effort.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Anika murmured, her voice quivering just a little.
“Then what was?” Maico demanded. “What were you planning?”
Anika looked right at her, her eyes narrowing just a little as if she was trying her damnedest not to cry. “We didn’t hire mercenaries. This is someone else attacking us,”
“But what was your plan?”
Anika gave her a pained look, but remained silent.
“You planned a trap, didn’t you? You planned to trap me out here but someone else sprung the trap before you could”
She heard her voice echo back off the metal walls. Anika shrunk away.
“There was no trap. We just arranged a meeting is all.” Anika’s voice went very small, trying to hide inside her mouth.
“Well this is some meeting!” Maico snapped back at her.
The flame haired girl sat there, still panting. Maico could feel the astonishing heat coming off her breath. She was ready to burst into fire.
“I’m trying to think of something. They should be nearby,”
The door opened at about the same time Maico’s mouth did, cutting her off before she had a chance to speak.
“Well ladies, now that you’ve had a chance to sit and think, maybe you wouldn’t mind clearing up a few things for us,”
It was the same, lazy drawling voice who’d hailed them over the radio, attached to a face that was far cleaner than she expected. A face for radio, but still clean shaven, sharp cheeked, with wider eyes and a soft nose. He wore denim jeans and a light jacket over a simple white t-shirt. For a brief instant, he seemed perfectly harmless with a breezy smile on his face.
“Miss Maico Tange, a pleasant surprise,” his voice oozed, “I hear tell you’ve been looking into things you shouldn’t, and that’s made my employers get a little bit concerned.”
She tasted bile, “The Knight Sabers?”
Their captor’s expression blackened. The cheery light had gone out, and all that remained was a cold, dangerous darkness. “Those cyber sluts killed my men, why the hell would you think I’m working for them?”
Anika gawked. “Belt Alliance?”
The smile came back, a cheerful mockery. “Since you won’t be getting out of here in a position to tell anyone,” he glanced at Maico, “I’m still not going to tell a word.” He gave a throaty laugh at his own private joke. “My employer wanted me to hunt down a shuttle leaving Frigga and kill the crew, that’s all you need to know. Only reason you’re still alive now is that pinko here is wanted in one piece,”
Anika whined through her nose.
“Why me?” Maico demanded.
“Because they think you’ve been investigating them, and they want to know what you know,” The smile grew savage, “But I think you’ve been investigating something they’d be willing to pay a far larger amount for.”
“And what’s that?”
“Don’t play stupid. You thought I’d been hired by the Sabers, so I’m willing to bet that you’ve been chasing them. And if you think you know enough to think they’d chase you down, I think you know enough to be worth selling on,”
I know who they are, Maico thought. A knot twisted deep inside her. She could see Anika glaring at him. She was shivering... physically shivering... breathing quick through her nose.
“So. I’m going to make you a deal. Give me the passcode for your headset and the files on it. I’ll let you go. I’ll give you a spacesuit, two days air and water, and a transponder,”
“No,” whispered Anika beside her.
Jet’s voice seemed to ring in Maico’s mind. Why do superheroes use codenames, Maico? It’s so the villains won’t know who their family is.
“It’s a fair deal,” he said. He sounded like he didn’t really care less. “That information’s worth more than your are to them, and if I don’t get it, I’m going to be after a little added value from you pair.”
Anika squeaked and hid ibehind her knees. Maico swore she heard her whimper “Never again,”
“I....” Maico started, and found the words had lodged in the back of her mouth. “I can’t do that,”
He feigned a sigh. “Well, it’ll take use a few days to get to our destination so, I’ll let you think about it. But once we hit that station, you’re fucked. I let you off here, you get picked up.... and nobody need ever know.”
Maico closed her eyes. “No. “ she stated. “I can’t do that,”
He snarled at her again. “Have it your way, but...”
His comm-set chirped, interrupting him. He pulled it from its holster on his belt, flipping open the lid. It seemed to be an old trekkie model.
“Brannigan,” he barked.
“Hey Cap,” a woman’s voice drawled through the speakers “We got a shuttlecraft coming up behind us at a rate of speed. It’s doing fourteen percent easily. Only,” she paused. “only...it don’t have an engine signature like a shuttlecraft”
“Explain,”
“It’s burning big enough to be Peacemaker Cap’n. Radar signatures smaller than a fencar,”
“It’s them!” Anika gasped.
He blinked. “Who?”
“You’re fucked,”she grinned cheerily.
“Well, so are you,”
Maico saw him draw his gun. She tried to yell out some useless, inarticulate warning, but it was drowned out by the crack of a single gunshot chased by a stunned shriek that stabbed at her ear. Anika hit the deck with her eyes staring open, a moistening hole growing dark over the left side of her chest.
“You murdered her!” Maico glared hard at him.
He shrugged. “I do the job, I get paid.” He checked his communicator. “Frizz, you still there? Because that shuttlecraft coming up behind us is going to be real hostile, real soon,”
He could be heard laughing as the door slammed shut behind him.
Maico glanced down at Anika’s lifeless body, glassy eyes still staring at the opposite wall. She felt physically sick. her bindings must’ve popped open with the shock of it, but it wasn’t going to do her much good now that she was bleeding onto the deck. Dead as a doll.
Maico screamed when Anika sat back up.
“What?” enquired the zombie girl, poking at the leak in her chest like a curious child might poke at a scab.
“You’re shot,” Maico pointed at it. There it was. A nice hole in a pretty orange blouse, steadily turning dark with blood.
“I know,” she stated, frowning. “It hit a hydraulic line which fused safely. My processor had a thermal trip caused by a momentary overclocking.”
“You’re a....” Maico suttured. “You’re a....”
“Cybernetic intelligence,” she completed the sentence for her, blushing just a little. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she finished, shyly.
Maico blew through her lips. “Phew... you scared me there for a second,”
Anika just blushed a little.
“Now, we have to get out of here Anika, before he comes back and finishes the job. You’re bindings popped. See if you can undo mine,”
Anika shuffled over. Maico could feel her oil-slick fingers working at the plastic where it had been weakened. She could feel the ship heel over underneath them both as it started to turn.
“The Knight Sabers are going to rescue us,” Maico assured her. “That’s the KnightWing following us,”
“I know,” Maico nodded. “But he might come back to finish the job anyway out of spite. Or they might lose”
With a pop, her hands came free. She pushed herself to her feet only to be thrown immediately down to the deckplates again as the whole floor beneath her suddenly jerked about three metres to the right. She yelped as she came down hard on her arm. Overhead lighting flickered and died, battery backed red emergency lights coming up moments later, throwing a bloody glow over everything.
Anika’s hair shone in the red light.
They both clambered back to their feet. Maico’s first thought was to reach her headset and destroy it. Prevent the information inside from ever getting out. She stumbled again as another hit sent the world spinning. The deck beneath tucked at her back as she slid along, impacting feet first against the door.
Anika crashed into her with an ‘oof!”
Another explosion shook through the deckplates, decompression alarms sounding. She could hear cackling gunfire, mixed with sounds she couldn’t identify. She thought she might have heard a man’s scream cut off.
Scrambling to her feet again, she tumbled over Anika’s prone form, catching herself against the bed’s railing. Anika herself was standing a moment later. Another blast shocked through the deck, causing her ears to pop. The alarms died.
Sounds of battle were quickly getting closer as she struggled against a gravity field that still felt like it was spinning. Her body kept trying to twist away to the left. She braced herself against the bed, taking the headset in her hands.
It took only a second for it to boot, then only a few seconds more for her to trigger the chip destruct.With a puff of blue smoke, the information on the Sabers was beyond anyone’s reach.
“Yatta!”
The door burst open.
Standing silhouetted was the Captain, Brannigan. Anika jumped back out of his way. Maico got a clear look at the stunned bewilderment on his face.
“You’re... alive.”
It gave her a second to charge at him, pushing all her strength into propelling herself forwards. She hit him square in the gut, puffing the air out of his lungs. Being half his weight, but having momentum on her side, she pushed him against the outside bulkhead, dislodging a lightweight fire-extinguisher that hit the deck with a hollow plastic crack.
The air was heavy with the smell of ozone and burning electronics. Someone screamed, and she could hear heavy footsteps banging on metal. Her whole body was fizzling with energy, riding the crest of an adrenaline wave. She wasn’t just reporting the story this time, she was in it and she was winning the fight.
The thought was rudely interrupted by an irresistible boot to the gut that kicked all the air out of lungs and propelled her backwards against the door frame. The back of her skulled cracked off the metal and seemed to ring like a bell.
Her vision blurred. She saw a humanoid mass bend over, picking up the nearest weapon to hand. Slowly, it coalesced into the form of the Captain, wielding that carbon fiber fire extinguisher in his hands.
“Hostages don’t have to be conscious,” he smirked.
Then stumbled. He looked down. Anikla was clinging to his left leg, trying to drag him over. He braced himself with his empty hand, kicking out at her fingers with his free foot. She yelped and snatched them back, freeing him.
He had just enough time to swing the extinguisher through a wide arc, aimed straight for Maico’s head. She felt her arm begin to move, but it was moving far too slow. She saw his leering eyes and grinning white teeth.
She saw behind him, unseen by him, the dark form of a hardsuit approaching rapidly, trailing ribbons behind her wrists.
Maico never got the chance to see the blow that killed him. She was knocked clean out by the blow to her temple.
And on that bombshell, I'm off to a local convention.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Have fun on the convention, it seems the bad guys will really get NO fun out of this little battle.
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That was nicely done Dartz, Maico doesnt have to supress anything now. She's in the position of "I have my suspicions but no proof" as far as the rest of Fenspace is concerned. And the UBA has made itself an enemy who is more than capable of getting the Sabers the information they need to go after more than just the outlying obvious tendrils
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
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If only things would be that easy. Nobody knows this until after she's aboard the KnightWing.
Quote:Maico could feel her head throbbing. Someone had switched her heart and her brain, then given her head a great big shaking, before parking an elephant on her temple.
She tried to move, and felt her thoughts run like liquid. Her whole awareness sloshed around behind her eyeballs. She could hear a voice, speaking in the distance. She locked on to hit, hoping to bootstrap her mind.
“We have her aboard. She took a nasty one to the head, but she should be alright.”
It sounded familiar. A little on the hoarse side. A strange lilt. a woman who spent a lot of time around cigarette smoke.
“It wasn’t us that attacked her. It was a merc ship that’d been sent out there to intercept any shuttle leaving Frigga. It was bad luck really.”
Who’s us? Maico shifted her weight, another pulsing wave washing over her mind
“We’ve got their memory cores. I’m afraid they’ll have to come home with us for the time being. First glance suggests we might have our missing link.”
She forced her eyes open, being greeted by a flat metal bulkhead. She was on a bed... something that barely qualified for a bed... under another with a lattice of carbon springs.
“It’s more proof for our friend. If I thought they knew who the Sabers were, I’d almost call it a frame job with how fast that alert went out, but I think they were just trying to punish Frigga by killing one of us to make a point.”
Us? The Friggans? That does sound like Jet. She did her best to look around without moving, but it didn’t tell her much. She could hear the distant humm of engines, mixed with the whirr of a life support system.
“Well, Anika’s injury would’ve killed her dead if she was human, and she says the merc executed her, but that said, I wouldn’t put it past them if they thought she was after them,”
Anika? That’s definitely Jet then. Jet came to the rescue. She was alive. She was somewhere safe.
Where am I?
“It’ll have to wait until we’ve analysed the whole lot. I’ll forward copies to the usual suspects natch, but we’ve been working on this for months, it’s a pride thing, but I’d like to wrap it up. We’re still going to give her the details too, of course.”
She tried to move again, setting off another wave of dizziness. Her stomach churned in protest, while her body began to float. She started to become aware of the bandages constricting her head.
“Well, she’ll need a few days rest. She got hit pretty hard so she’’ll have a concussion at least. She’ll be our guest. Then, I’ll bring her to a settlement of her choice, or let her leave with the Rinna K.”
She started to remember what had happened, like waking up from a dream. It was there, but the more she thought about it, the less clear it became. It felt like she was grabbing at smoke.
“We’ll take the ‘wing. I’m pretty sure she figured it out anyway. I knew she had us as soon as she mentioned how she got Sylia. And she already had footage of everyone on Frigga by then. So if she’s going to go with the story, we’d best be there in a position to handle it in person. “
Someone was behind her, working away at something. Another presence was moving, eating something. She could smell instant ramen.
“I half hope she does. I’ve got this cool ship and all this hardware and everything I did and I can’t ever show it off. I think it’d be awesome fun, the best of a bad situation. And if she doesn’t, well I think we’ve given a reasonable excuse to let it drop.”
They’re talking about me?
Jet laughed a little. “But I’d still prefer if she didn’t.”
Definitely talking about me. she did her best to listen in. She did her best to get most of what she’d just heard straight in her mind.
“Because she was more important than the secret.”
Jet, talking about her. Talking about rescuing her. Talking about her knowing secrets. Sylia Stingray. Footage of everyone on Frigga. The Knight Sabers.
She had proof.
“I’ll see you then. Bye...”
Maico tried to sit up again, but her body flat out refused to let it. It blocked her attempts with a wall of nausea. She whimpered, settling for being able to lie on her back.
“Kotono,” she heard a voice warn. A very sharp tone.
Daryl Haur. Kotono Ito. She managed to turn her head to the side, getting a view of a woman’s back. She was wearing a tight black and white skinsuit.... a derviative of the OGJ-standard with some extra cabling running from the backpack. It left nothing at all to the imagination.
It was obviously Kotono’s slight figure, her attention buried in a medkit spread out on a kitchinette desktop.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Our passenger’s awake,”
Maico craned her head back. The Blue Saber was sitting on top of a locker, her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest. Daryl’s blond-hair framed face seemed to have been photoshopped on top of the armer. She felt something catch in her throat.... a yelp, a gasp, a cheer that she’d been right.
It might have been her head injury playing tricks on her.
“Where am I?” she managed to force out, her voice wavering as her vision blurred. Kotono dropped out of focus as she turned around, the polymer skin covering her body as she moved.
“You’re on our ship,” she said in a voice that was soothing and soft as a favourite cuddly toy. “You have a bad concussion, try to not to move,”
Fingers pressed against her shoulder, easing her down onto the bed. She could see all the little connectors and cable plugs for a hardsuit coming into focus along the arm.
“What ship?”
“Our ship,”
Maico did her best to scowl at her.
“The good ship KnightWing,” the Blue Saber clarified. “We rescued you from that Merc. That’s all you need to know,”
“So you are the Knight Sabers, then?” she questioned, her voice just a little hoarse.
“Bingo!” Kotono chirped with a fat grin on her face. It seemed to split her head in two, running from ear to ear. It was the smile of someone who thought they’d pulled the greatest prank in history.
Maico didn’t have the energy to cheer. Her mind just rolled over and started to spin around.
“Where’s Jet?”
“Forward, with Anika,” said Daryl. Maico could see her trying to brush her hair back into it’s normal style. That feathered hair seemed determined to stay, no matter how hard she tried to keep it down. “Stupid quirk,” she spat on her palms and tried to slick it down with her spit.
An image of Anika lying soaked in blood flashed through Maico’s mind.
“Anika?” she gasped. “As she alright?”
Kotono’s hand held her to the bed with gentle pressure.
“Oh, she’s fine,” Daryl answered with an unworried swat of her armoured hand.
Maico gave her a dubious look for a moment, “But I saw her die,” she said in a small voice. “Shot straight in the chest. I saw her blood,”
Horrible, red, sticky and oily.
“That was just hydraulic fluid,”
Kotono was giggling behind her hand, Daryl chuckling in her throat, a smirk on her face. Another colossal prank. The memory hit her in the head like a fire-extinguisher. I’m a CI, Anika had told her.
Her skull throbbed with another wave of disorientating pain. She grimaced, bracing herself to keep from rolling over and falling to the deck. Her inner ear made the journey while the rest of her braced herself on the bed.
Either there was something wrong with the gravity field on the ship, or she was worse off than she thought.
A hatch opened above her head. She tried to crane her neck around, get a glimpse of white and blue armour.
“Jet?”
“You’re awake?”
“Reports of my demise have been slightly exaggerated,” Maico just about managed to say
“Glad to hear it,” Jet answered. The cyber glanced at her for a moment, just long enough to let Maico know that her welfare wasn’t Jet’s immediate concern. “We’ll be back at base inside twenty minutes, and there’s a doctor waiting to see you,”
“Thank you,” Maico managed to say.
“It’s what we do,” Jet dismissed it. “Anyway, we have a bit of a problem. A half hour after the shuttle got attacked, somebody sent a message to the patrol blaming us for it,”
“We were framed, “ Darly jumped to the obvious conclusion.
“The only people who could framed us are people who knew Maico would be on that shuttle, and know we’re based on Frigga,” Kotono pointed out,
“Or they just realised who she was, and thought it’d be a great way to make us enemies of Fenspace, while also sending a message to Frigga. They didn’t even have to know we’re the Sabers, it would’ve seemed like a two birds with one stone deal,”
“It’s possible,” Jet admitted, taking a deep breath. “It makes things tougher for us anyway. The truth is already out there, but we have to be careful how we handle this.”
“Maybe it was Ryan?” Maico interrupted, in a small voice.
Three sets of eyes looked to her for an explanation, “Who?” said Kotono
“He’s a friend who knew I was chasing you. I was messaging him right when they attacked, so maybe he jumped to a conclusion,”
“Human stupidity,” snorted Daryl, “trumps human ingenuity any day. That’s what happened.”
Maico dropped out of the discussion for a moment, doing her best o make sense of where she was. A small living space in a cramped spaceship, with three Knight Sabers in it. And how was Jet wearing that armour
It was Saber Whites. A similar colour scheem to Jet’s own, but somehow a little bulkier with more prominent shoulders, and none of her etched markings besides the words “KNIGHT SABERS” on the helmet, and “HARDSUIT” across the chest
A half-remembered conclusion coalesced out of the fog of her thoughts.
“Jet,”
“Yeah?” the cyber turned to face her.
“Are you Sylia Stingray?”
“Sylia’s this puppet body, with dyed hair and contacts, yes. “ confirmed Jet, smiling just a little. Her expression softened assuringly, “We’ll take later back on Frigga when you’re able. We’ve a lot to discuss.”
“So long as I can record it.”
“We’ll see,” said Jet, and Maico suddenly thought of the hundreds of times her parents had used that as a euphemism for ‘No’. She didn’t feel like picking a fight over it, instead, focusing her attention on the name plate affixed to the bulkhead.
High Energy Research Laboratory
Project Bone Prototype Series.
Spaceframe B0N3-098-STA
SC KnightWing.
“Out of the darkness...comes the Knight.”
It wasn’t a very comfortable bed.
Meanwhile, back in 2019 on 37 Fides, a minor side story:
Quote:“Thunk,” went the switch.
It was followed moments later by an electric scream, cut short by the sound of something hard and heavy dropping against something metallic.
Jet had a thundering headache when she came to, her pulsing brain was being squashed inside her skull, drumming against bone and metal to get out.
“Segmentation fault,” she slurred out, bracing herself against the cockpit frame. Instrument lights were star spangled blur. Blinking a little, she tried rubbing at her eyes. Steel fingers stunned her for a second, before her mind caught up.Hardsuit, right.
“Uh... Sorry JJ. We forgot to switch their boot order. It tried to use your brain as a boot device .”
So that’s why I feel like I’ve been kicked in the head.
“Uh....Jet...” a woman’s voice was calling. One of the squirrels, it was to high pitched to be natural.
“Jet Jaguar, respond,”
Who? Right, I’m Jet.
She found she was breathing without inhaling. Or something. Air was being injected into her chest, before being drawn out again and recycled. Primary Life support stable, she thought.
“Help me... somebody help me please!”
A boy. That snapped her clean out of it. She glanced around the cockpit, eyes darting to instruments, then to the cables running down from her body,
“Medical team to workbay 7. Medical team to workbay 7 Emergency,” the radio announced.
Where was he?
“Where are you?” Jet barked out.
“I don’t know sis.... I can’t see a thing.” was the answer.
It was coming from the shipmind interface panel. Of the three drive control computers, two were answering green. The third was answering with a red ring. Readouts on the centre console advised her that it’d been voted out of the triumvirate due to anomalous core fluctuations.
She pushed the comm button, “I’m here,” she soothed. “I’m right here,”
“Where?” the boy’s voice asked.
“Right here Mackie.” Jet responded, feeling a horrid lump rising in her throat.
“I can’t see you. I can’t feel anything. I can’t..... I can’t...”
He was panicking. He might’ve been gasping for breath.
“You can talk to me. I’m your sister, I’m right here. And I’ll figure this out,”
And she was shaking. Jet punched open a comm-channel.
“I’m alright,” she croaked, “But.... but my brother. I think....” she glanced around one last time; all seats empty. “I think he’s in the drive computer,” Her voice cracked.
“Brother?” the voice on the other end of the line blurted.
Jet blinked for a moment. “Yes my brother,” she snapped back. “Get someone down here. Get a cyberneticist. Get someone who knows this shit and get him the fuck out of here before I come up there and start cracking skulls.”
“But Jet,” said the voice, calmly, “You don’t have a brother...”
“oh....” her voice shrank. So that’s what happened. Comprehension was a brick to the face. The computer had tried to use her as a boot device, reading her hardware like a disk drive. “I do now,” she said, choking on the words.
Jet didn't pick women who had similar personalities to the original Knight Sabers, just to stick with the canon dynamic. It's the result of something of a silver-haired day
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Another bit of story
Quote:-----
Maico’s eyes burned. She warred against the instinct to screw them shut against the light. First one eye, then the next. Tears welled up. She blinked hard to clear them, he vision blurring for a moment.
The Stellvian doctor stepped back, glancing at some notes projected directly onto his retina by a computer headset.
“Well,” he began in that official tone that preceded all diagnoses, from the mundane to the terminal, “There’s no sign of serious traumatic brain injury. You were lucky, Miss Tange,” he concluded. “You have a concussion. You’ll need rest for a few days, and I’d like you to remain with me on the Rinna Kazamatsuri for observation.”
Maico eyed the concrete flooring beneath her feet.
“It’s alright,” the Doctor assured her, “I’ve cleared it with Captain Safety. Some private quarters have been prepared. You can be our guest. ”
“It’s not that,” said Maico. “It’s....”
The Doctor sighed, his expression darkly sardonic. “Your story’s here on Frigga, so you intend to stay behind. Is that it?””
“Yes,” Maico nodded.
“I could use my position as chief medical officer to order you aboard, but seen as you are not StellviaCorp personel, enforcing it wouldn’t be worth the effort.”
“Thanks,” she smiled, “For everything,”
“It was my duty. But it isn’t my duty to keep you from getting yourself from getting hurt again. Still, try rest for a few days, and if you notice anything serious, see a real doctor quick, alright?”
“I will.” Maico pushed herself off the bed to her feet, catching herself as a wave of dizziness washed over her. The whole asteroid was spinning, with her as the axle.
“See,” said the Doctor, tapping a light-scribe on the edge of his touch-tablet,”You’ll be getting dizzy spells for a few days, and probably feel a little headachy for a week. If symptoms persist for longer than that, call a doctor,”
“Yes, Yes,” she said, a little weakly.
The Doc’s eyes rolled back into his skull, “And they really need to get a proper doctor out here, I’m amazed their medic even recognised a concussion,”
He harrumphed, packing away his instruments into a genuine leather split-handle doctor’s bag Maico thought was absolutely wonderful. She placed a finger to her lip,
“Three of them have GJ training, “
“Yes, but anyone who’s idea of treatment is usually to just stick an injector of green stuff into the neck and hope it makes the dying stop, hardly qualifies for the term ‘medic’,” answered the Doctor with a sardonic snort. “We’re departing in three hours. The offer’s good until then. Goodbye Miss Tange,”
“Goodbye,” she said, “And thank you,” she restated.
The Doctor left with a surly harrumph, pulling the door shut behind him. Maico took a deep breath, and allowed herself to feel alone in the Friggan apartment. Big, cold, lifeless. She managed to log on to the local network with a borrowed laptop.
“Ryan. I’m safe. The Knight Sabers rescued me,”
She winced, immediately regretting telling the truth. While waiting for the response to come back, she treated herself to a genuine hot shower, and gentle soft towels. The hope was it would clear the jelly still slopping around between her ears.
It seemed to help a little.
“For real? Traceroute puts you on Frigga. MAC address is wrong so either you’re someone trying to cover their tracks, or they’ve gotten to you,”
“Ryan, stop being so paranoid. Some mercenarys were hired to attack a shuttle leaving Frigga, they just happened to pick the one I was on. The Knight Sabers rescued us,”
“Tell me you got some good footage of them in action. Pleaaaassse,”
“Sorry. They erased my headset. Or something. I can’t really remember. I still have a concussion. One of the mercenaries hit me over the head with a fire extinguisher.”
“Damn. I was worried you know. I thought they were moving against you because you were investigating them, so I called the Patrol. How can you be sure that this still isn’t a game of some sort? Set up the attack, then stage the rescue. Especially since we know that the Friggan’s themselves are the Sabers.”
Maico took far longer to mull over her response.
“I know. The situation has gotten complex. I need you to keep everything quiet. I have to play this close to my chest. So please, sit on this until I tell you otherwise
“Maico. There’re two ways to silence someone. Kill them, or put them in your debt. They couldn’t kill you, so they’re manipulating you. They only rescued you to use it as leverage. Don’t fall into their trap,”
“I think. I’ve arranged to speak with them in person. This is complicated and touchy. There’s a lot going on, and I lose everything if you go too soon. And don’t tell me that they’ll harm me, I’m certain they won’t. “
She waited a moment.
“And it might’ve been me who wiped my headset.”
“Alright. I’ll hold on to what we know. All we have is proof of Sylia Stingray anyway. Everything else went poof when your headset did, right? The rest is just informed conjecture at this point. And why would you do something like that?”
“I can’t remember for certain,”
She closed the lid and redressed herself. Feeling as refreshed as it was possible for her to be, she made her way through gaunt corridors to the control room, hopping to find Jet or one of the Sabers. She found only exocomps on the way up.
Zooming. Pausing. Staring. Following. Hiding. Creepy. Little. Robots. Hayao Miyazaki could have a field day with them.
The lift carriage was doing nauseating loops as she braced herself against the railings. Rock walls rumbled by, beating on the inside of her skull. The thought did occur that maybe she would have been better off taking up the Doctor’s offer.
The upper levels were just as empty. Dead. Tomb-like. The little bit of life that had been there was now boarding the spacecraft in the main bay. They left behind them only the faint scents of cooked meals, perfumes and sweat already beginning to get swallowed by the dry industrial air.
She knew she was on the right track when she found that flaking children’s mural. The doorway to the control room was ajar, and invitation to enter if there was any. A piercing shriek from the hinge made her wince, driving an ice-pick through her head. Maico shook it off as best she could.
“.... need to make sure that this gets to Mr. Scott. Classified Gamma-2. And thanks again for your understanding,”
Jet - armoured Jet - was handing a small data card to Miyuri.
Miyuri carefully placed it in her uniform pocket. “It was the least I could do, and. it’s been a...” she took a deep, tired breath, “...learning experience.”
“The full evaluation will be sent by tomorrow. But it should be pretty positive,”
“I still think I could’ve done better,”
“The important thing is, you did what you had to to save the Station, and everyone on it,”
Miyuri smiled wanly, “Well. Captain Safety wants to depart as soon as possible. She wont appreciate being held up and...” she turned to the doorway. Her eyebrows rose as she spotted Maico, “Oh....Maico, I thought you were coming with us?”
“I have business here on Frigga with Jet,” Maico told her, not quite sure how much she knew.
“oh...” Miyuri glanced between the pair.
“Yeah,” said Jet, “I’ll have to handle a few things up here first before we take care of that. ”
“But of course,”
“Well, goodbye Maico, Jet,” said Miyuri, before leaving through the door. It refused to latch properly, swinging open again. It’d obviously been damaged by something pulling hard on the handle, buckling the frame.
Jet switched a few systems over, switches and nobs thunking and latching over as she worked. It was oddly fascinating to see such old-style hardware in use, and made perfect sense when Jet’s hands were considered.
“When can we start?” Maico ventured.
“When I’m done here,” Jet answered, a little tersely. “The Rinna’s going to be departing soon, and I’ve got to set this to run unsupervised for a while,”
“But of course,”
“I was really planning on showing you the truth, rather than just telling. Just give me ten or fifteen minutes and I’ll be done here.” She had that same slightly distracted look in her eyes, that suggested she was paying attention to far more than was in that room.
Maico watched annunciator lights flicker in patterns only Jet could undestand. She leant back against a wall, fighting against another wave of dizziness.
“You alright?” enquired Jet.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” Maico answered. She cringed at the weakness in her own voice. She didn’t realise she was rubbing at the side of her head.
“Sure?”
“Yeah,”
“Alright.” Jet didn’t sound too convinced. The cyber kept working. “This isn’t really the best time for this. We’re going to be clearing up after the Stellvians for a while here, and in two days we’re taking a trip to Venus to hold some job interviews.”
“Job interviews?”
Jet grinned from ear to ear, “Well, Survival Shot’s an expanding business. We need pilots for our choppers, and some actual staff.” Jet ran one of those big metal hands through her hair, exhaling a deep breath, “Five of us aren’t enough to run this place anymore. Three days after that, we’re out to Atalante to do the same thing,” Jet paused as she adjusted something on the monitor in front of her. “Anyway, it’ll be a while before we’re ready to sit down and talk, then a few hours after that I’ve got my own students.”
“I can wait,” She didn’t think she could. “I might need a paper and notepad from somewhere though, my headset was destroyed,”
Jet didn’t look at her. “Anika told me you did it,”
“I think I did,” Maico answered in a shrinking voice, “But I don’t know why,”
“Anika told me it was right after he figured out you were after the Knight Sabers, and that you had information on them,” said Jet, “She also told me he offered to cut you lose if you told them what you knew,”
Maico felt her throat clench tight. Her stomach began to turn
“I didn’t!” she yelled.
“I know,” Jet answered with a startled smile. Soft, harmless and earnest. “And I never properly thanked you for that either,”
Maico felt her cheeks begin to go warm, “It’s my duty to protect my sources,”
Jet punched a few buttons. They thunked, and the comput chattered and chirped in a manner that suggested and mechanical gears going at their work beneath. Displays cycled through vector graphics and line representations of the station. Sectors lit up, a list of serial numbers
“Well, I think that means you understand why we have to keep our secret,”
From Jet’s tone, Maico felt like she was being welcomed into some strange mystery, solely because Jet believed she wasn’t about to talk about it.
“Telling a mercenary in secret, is different to telling the public.” said Maico, keeping her voice as firm as she could manage.
Jet stopped. “I don’t think so. The same information will still filter down to the same villains who will still use it in the same way. The only difference is, we might know they’re coming.”
Maico grimaced as her headache returned.
“The public have a right to know,” she paused for a second, letting it subside, “I know that sounds naive but you’re operating a mercenary group acting as judge, jury and executioner, with zero oversight of your actions, motives and intentions and I believe they have a right to know who and why and how.” She hadn’t intended to sound that forceful, but the momentum she’d built up wouldn’t be denied “Even SHIELD agents or OF-8 Troubleshooters or Section 9 report to somebody who can call them to account. Who do the Sabers report to? Who calls them to account?”
Jet gave her a fatalistic smirk “If we cross the line, all of the above. Enough people among the SMoF’s know who we are,”
“Who?” Maico pressed. “Noah Scott, Benjamin Rhodes....”
“Enough,” said Jet, putting the wall up. “More than enough,”
The comm’s panel hissed an interuption. “Frigga Control, this is Rinna Kazamatsuri. We are sealed up and ready for departure sequence,”
Jet breezed over to answer, punching a blinking red button beside a screen, “This is control. Commencing bay depressurisation,”
It took three keystrokes to begin. A pressure gauge appeared onscreen, slowly ticking down. Maico’s head began to swim, her thoughts dissolving away. Something else came to mind.
“The Rinna Kazamatsuri would’ve seen you on sensors as you left with the....” she screwed her eyes shut, what was that ship’s name again. Darkness comes the Knight, she remembered. “Dark Knight.... they would’ve had to stay behind. So, you would’ve blown your secret by rescuing us anyway. Why did you?”
Jet seemed almost offended by the question.
“Because the secret isn’t worth a life.” the cyber said. Had she told me that before, Maico wondered. It sounded familiar. “Normally we would’ve used the Dragon Wagon 2 and the choppers, but the truth is, we were already in the air chasing,”
“Uh.... why?” Recollection struck like a fire extinguisher. She felt herself wince as another throbbing wave passed over, “Was this the plan I heard talked about?”
“Yes,” nodded Jet. She re-opened the comm-line. “Rinna Kazamatsuri, Control. Bay depressurised. Opening outer gate. Docking latches and tie downs at your command.”
“Control Rinna Kazamatsuri. We are free and clear. Awaiting final clearance.”
“Standby,” Jet glanced at another panel.
“We planned to chase down the shuttle and pick you and Anika up. I knew you knew who we were as soon as you told me how you found Sylia out. Since I couldn’t convince you to keep it quiet, we planned to do the reveal on our own terms instead.”
“Oh?”
Jet held up her hand. Comm-line suspense time, “Rinna Kazamatsuri, Frigga control. Cleared for departure. Safe home,”
“Rinna Kazamatsuri departing. Thanks for the hospitality Frigga,”
The channel cut, and Jet gave a soft, satisfied smile. One big problem dealt with.
“The plan,” Jet continued, “Was to fly with you aboard to the L5’s, then dock with Genaros, Central or Stellvia and take our helmets off in public and explain everything right then and there, rather than wait for the news to get out. Some gobshites hired by the UBA bollicked it up,”
A light went on above Maico’s head. “So you are at war with them?”
“Frigga is, yeah,” Jet confirmed. “Mason didn’t appreciate Ford breaking his nose. The short form is that he’s running a protection racket. Zwilniks attack your home, you fight them off, the UBA appears to offer protection and membership of the cooperative for a fee. You pay up, apparently the attacks stop. You don’t... the attacks get worse until the mercenaries win, or you eventually pay. Long form is, a little more complicated,”
“So why not go to Great Justice?” That is why a pan-factional organisation like Great Justice exists.
“It’s complicated,” Jet scratched at the back of her head. “Most members of the UBA don’t realise it’s a racket, Mason’s been hiding his connections well, so if GJ starts going after Mason, it looks to them like Fen forces are attacking them, and they circle the wagons. Even if the truth comes out, it’ll be dismissed as propeganda, unless it comes from someone set aside from GJ itself,”
Maico joined the obvious dots, feeling just a little thrill as the connection formed. “So that’’s why the Sabers have been fighting them,”
“Not fighting. And the Sabers didn’t start because of them. But yeah,” Jet nodded. “that’s essentially it. We’ve been gathering evidence trying to link Mason and some of the higher-ups in the group conclusively. The attack on the shuttle might just have put us over the top,”
“So, you can prove that a faction leader is working with Zwilniks to extort money from settlements and mines?”
Her story sense was tingling. This got bigger, and bigger.
“Only if you can keep our identities quiet,” Jet made her counter offer with all the subtly of a core drill being used to crack a nut.
Looks like Ryan was right about her. She probably would’ve pulled the same stunt, regardless. Either go with the Saber story, or go with the UBA story.... and the possibility of many others to follow.
“Tough call,” she breathed.
“Frigga Control, Rinna Kazamatsuri. We’ve cleared outer marker. Switching to interplanetary frequencies,”
“Acknowledged, Rinna Kazamatsuri,” Jet responded.
Maico closed her eyes, warring with another wave of dizziness. It was starting to get just a little nauseating. She recalled her mother’s voice. You think the whole world revolves around you, don’t you Maico? It sure felt like it was.
Jet worked at a few other switches, setting the gates to close and readying the repressurisation sequence.
“You sure you’re feeling alright?” she asked.
“I’m OK,” Maico assured her, holding both her hands up.
“Alright,” Jet said, obviously unconvinced. “Well, if you’d like to rest, my puppet’s down in the Powerhouse. I’ll meet you down in the main landing bay, since it’s on the other side of that.”
Jet’s tone made it sound like a suggestion, but Maico had the feeling it was anything but.
“What sort of rest?” Maico cautiously asked, one eyebrow raising.
“The number two reason why I decided to change my gender identification,” the cyber smirked at her. “And, the others will be down there soon enough to relax.”
What could that be?
Maico wasn’t sure what she was more curious about.
-----
Agh. Balance Balance. Maico needs to make good points, not be a receiver for Jet's own theories.
And this is becoming very bottom heavy. Any suggestions for more 'Maico Meets' up top? Cathy and CGI might be possible, but Maico has no reason to suspect Sabers use CGI tech, so no reason to look them up.
And because I doubt I'd get a chance to mention this in story,
Quote:From: jet.jaguar.@friggarock.fen
To: plugins@lists.stingray.fen
subj: Another Friggan release.
And yet more Friggan puns.
Attached to this message are the software and design information required to add a VOOMER system to a standard Stingray Pattern hardsuit. It won’t be in the official stream, since the technique used to generate the ANN images is something of a silver-haired day and can’t really be replicated. The images themselves are binary blobs compatible with any SANITY4-compliant ANN system. Copy, upload, fire away.
VOOMER is a replacement for the standardised expert system normally found at the core of a hardsuit, and replaces this system with an ANN Core, a core imprint and the necessary control and induction software. VOOMER equipped hardsuits are capable of achieving a performance boost of up to 20% compared with the base package model over a standard course, with no further modifications.
There are four ANN images available. Hardsuit Sylia, Hardsuit Priss, Hardsuit Linna, and Hardsuit Nene, named for personality traits and styles of the original 4 Knight Sabers. For best results, choose the image that most closely resembles your own personality, or your own usage patterns. Please don’t email me asking for more, or for ones of specific people or characters, since I can’t really make them. They’re a lucky break of the wave and then some. Picking the wrong image may lead to an overall reduction in performance.
Hardware requirements are a standard Stingray hardsuit with Gen 3+ processor, OS 4.5, fitted with an ANN plugin to expansion slot 3.
Provided totally in the hopes that someone might find it useful, without any warranty of merchantability or all that. Basically, if you use it and it breaks or and you crash, you’re responsible for it. It hasn't been tested with each and every OS plugin available, so use it at your own risk.
-Jet.
-------
It never got fast enough for me
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Dartz Wrote:Another bit of story
Now I'm going to have to decide how much Miyuri knows... which is a subset of "Exactly what does Noah trust Miyuri to know?" (He and Yayoi keep secrets from Leda, so it would be out-of-character for them not to keep secrets from the other StellviaCorp shareholders.)
Luckily, this isn't something you need for your story, so I don't have to come up with an answer right now.
Dartz Wrote:Agh. Balance Balance. Maico needs to make good points, not be a receiver for Jet's own theories.
And this is becoming very bottom heavy. Any suggestions for more 'Maico Meets' up top? Cathy and CGI might be possible, but Maico has no reason to suspect Sabers use CGI tech, so no reason to look them up.
One idea: Where did the Roughriders get the raw materials for their spaceframes? I suspect they buy steel from Hephaestus (everyone else in the Belt does) ... and Hephaestus makes some 'waved alloys that can survive the industrial accident that "destroyed" those two spacecraft. If Maico was to interview WireGeek or Hermes before visiting Frigga, she might have more than just a hunch to go on that the KnightWing came from Atalantae.
This requires inserting a scene into the story and revising some of what you've already posted, though...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
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Well, adding/revising was what I'd intended.
There's plenty of space after the Benjamin Rhodes visit to add new meetings in..... either those who're in on it, or who aren't at all. The technology trail especially. There is one mentioned in story that I'd planned on writing, but decided not to because I couldn't get the character right, and it'd be much too short, just. "It's not me and I'm sick of it!" which wouldn't be fair.
Miyuri just witnessed the Sabers specifically launch from Frigga and return. Whether she was told about them or not beforehand is another matter. The disk drive Jet handed to her were contained the details of the UBA case, which is supposed to go to those 'it needs to get to'. Basically, the links between Mason and Zwilniks, proof that he's been hiring them to attack settlements that refuse to join.
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Jet doesn't really do in subtility...
But in this case, being direct might have an advantage of its own. Even if it just helps to create a contrast to the UBAs actions.
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First of the insert scenes. Right after Maico's visit to Ben. (Re-ordering the travel plans). Courtesy of Mal...
Quote:The Supers had been a bust.
It wasn’t that they wouldn’t tell her anything, it was that they didn’t tell her anything she didn’t know already. Maico found a quiet bench in Schuster Creek park to rifle through it all, not far from Korolev. The water in the creek babbled suggestions at her, but they weren’t anything she could use.
“Well. I was chancing my arm anyway while waiting for the shuttle,” she told herself. It was either that or sit around doing nothing but wait.
The bench creaked as someone sat beside her. She felt a shadow fall across her. She started to speak, but her guest held up their hand,This was someone who, for the time being, preferred to be an anonymous source. She made certain the video feed from her camera was off. Audio, kept recording.
"So, I hear you're chasing hardsuits?" The question was light, but there was an edge behind it that made Maico's skin crawl. She'd drawn attention to herself, never a good thing when chasing ghosts.
"Yes," she confirmed. "Know anything about them?" It was a joke, technically. Still, she was hoping for an answer.
"A little," Tina said. "Most of which I can't exactly tell a reporter, mind." Maico's heart sank at the revelation of another dead end, and almost missed is as the Soviet went on. "But I can tell you a little about their target-du-jour."
"The UBA?" This was something, maybe. "What about them?"
"They're crooked, for one thing."
Maico gave her companion a skeptical glance. "That's a pretty big thing to just say flat out."
"Oh, they didn't start out crooked, and most of the rank and file don't know anything about it. But they're crooked, starting from Jimmy Mason and going all the way down through the board of directors into the upper management. The problem is," she added with a frustrated huff, "we *know* they're crooked, but we can't *prove* they're crooked. So far they've been too good at covering their tracks."
"Maybe you should start from the beginning."
"Right, okay. UBA started as a mining co-op, right after the end of the war. By that point Greenwood pretty much owned all the trade between Earth and the Belt. Most of the indies were looking at either slowly going broke or throwing in with Greenwood. UBA offered a third option."
"Join together and combine their efforts?"
"Exactly. So they started the co-op, and united they stood. It was a bulwark against Marsden's monopoly, and it had a lot of support from other small groups. The first couple of years went well enough. They were run by a board of directors with representatives from each mine, with the mines themselves being run by worker's councils-"
Maico smiled wryly. "Something about that sounds familiar," she noted.
"I couldn't possibly comment," Tina replied loftily. "In any case, as UBA grew and prospered it started to draw professional management talent, a lot of it from Earth. The board nominated one of these new managers, guy by the name of Jakob Eisen, as the official chief operating officer. He did a pretty good job of it by all accounts. Something happened next, none of our sources know what exactly, but about six months after Eisen took over as COO there was a huge shakeup on the board. The old council structure was gone and replaced with a more corporate chain of command. A lot of UBA mines protested, and Eisen was supposedly planning on going back to the status quo when his shuttlecraft got shot down by pirates on a routine trip."
"Suspicious."
"Very. The board elected one James Mason to replace Eisen as COO. And that's when all the shit started."
"You think Mason arranged for Eisen's shuttle to be shot down?"
"I didn't say that."
"But of course. So. What sort of person is Mason?"
"You ever see 'Wall Street?' Jimmy Mason's an alpha sociopath of the highest order; all he cares about is amassing as much money and power as he possibly can. And he's smart, really smart. We're a hundred percent sure that Mason or one of his hench-lizards has been hiring mercenaries to attack independent settlements in order to scare them into the UBA, but he's managed to cover his tracks so well that we couldn't take it to a tribunal."
"Sounds nasty."
"He is. Unofficially, nobody on SMOFcon would bat an eyelid if he were to, ah, vanish." Tina stressed that last word just a little, riding a smirking chuckle. It sounded like a joke.
"Vanish?" Maico repeated, her mind working through each and every connotation of that word.
Tina smiled at her. "In iocis veritas. Thing is, no matter how satisfying it'd be to geek Mason, he's just part of the problem. There's enough people like Mason infesting UBA now that even if we took him out there'd be another one to take the reins and we'd be back at square one. They can't be stopped without starting a dangerous ball rolling, so we need a different way to deal with the issue."
"And that other way would be the Knight Sabers?"
"I couldn't say." And that was confirmation of something. Maico just wished she knew what it was.
-----
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These fit in right after Maico's visit to Grunthal.
Quote:“Panzer Kunst masters. I can name five off the top of my head, and the only one still publicly practicing is Jet Jaguar,”
“Yeah. She runs that training school out of that old mine with her partner and four other women. Survival Shot’s a gas. Just don’t get a simmunition to the ass. It hurts more than the real thing!”
Maico found herself giggling.
“It might be worth my while talking to her. If she trained them, then she will have to know who they are,”
And, Maico noted privately, she does have connection to Great Justice.
“Don’t count on it. We don’t talk about our customers unless presented with a warrant, I doubt she will too. If she did, I doubt any of the big customers they rely on would want to work with them.”
“So talking to her would be a bust then?”
“Probably. For one thing, we’d know it was her. She has all the subtlety of a JCB. Did you see the busty redhead they had dressed as Yoko Littner with that Anzio on their stand at Republicon? People didn’t just go there for the shiny helicopters...”
“Right so. Maybe if we follow the technology train to its final destination. Who could put together the hardsuits they wear?”
“You know Jet Jaguar began the Stingray project....”
“And there’re plenty of gearheads who’ll happily build one for a fee, and plenty capable of modifying one up to that standard. Name your mad? It’s open-source.”
“Not at the level these ladies operate. Look at the footage. One of them can hover with a gravity drive and has a bulletproof forcefield.”
“Maybe they contributed their changes back to the main project stream,”
“Haha... Hah. Hah. ….. Hah. There, that’s the appropriate level of mockery of your comment. Somehow I doubt it.
“Well, biggest hardsuit builders are Steganovich Steelwear in Crystal Tokyo. Might be worth digging up the latest ‘Following the Curve’ post to see if anyone’s been public about having that sort of forcefield,”
“It looks like a mass effect field... which also explains the hovering. And why it doesn’t seem capable of doing both at once.”
“But of course. Who makes Mass Effect gear?”
“Who built themselves a rather snazy Normandy? Catgirl Industries out of Jenga.”
Maico made a note in her planner to prepare emails to Steganovich and Jenga. This was going to be a long, hungry series of trips.
-----
Crystal Tokyo was always just a little bit hot and clammy, despite the best efforts of the air conditioning system. It was the oldest of the Crystal Cities and by far and away the busiest, with a bustling level of activity that swept her along through transparent carbon corridors.
Lights embedded in walls cast a diffuse glow, whole walls forming into sheets of light.
Stengovich Steelwear was close enough to the main concourse to be ‘succesful’, but not close enough to be important. Maico paused outside, gazing at the store models. For Senshi and Knight alike, a sign advertised. The male version was a stunning silver with blue accents. There were the traditional replica models too. White, Blue, Green, Red. 2040 Fen catered to as well.
Though she did have to wonder at how useful an armour would be with a bare midriff like that.
The door opened with a gaseous sigh and she stepped inside. 2 Sammies were ogling a cutaway exposing the motor-truss understructure. The model inside was a plastic ideal that only biomods and prosthetic bodies could possibly reach.
High fashion, cast in metal. Options included Evangelion-style, Iczer-style, 2032, 2033, 2034 or even 2040-series. They promised to try make a custom variant for any sort of form fitting armour, for an extra fee of course..
The gynoid at the front desk stared out with vacant, glassy eyes.
“Can I help you miss?” she intoned. lit might’ve been a recording.
“Yes. I’m Maico Tange. I’m here to see Vyacheslav Stengovich. I have an appointment at ten.”
“But of course,” it said, unblinking as it stared. If it wasn’t programmed, Maico could’ve sworn it was mocking her. “Please take a seat. He shall be out shortly.”
A few well thumbed magazines offered a quick diversion while she sat herself in a plush, pink fabric chair that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Doctor’s office. The Sammies were discussing the relative discomforts of skinsuits.
“And look at the hips on that armour. It makes the butt look huge,”
“The whole piece looks like a pair of panties,” the second giggled. “And check out those heels.”
“Sexy. And Safe,”
Maico rolled her eyes.
“Miss Tange,” the android called out. “Mister Stengovich will see you now. Please come through into the workshop,” It indicated towards a doorway with a floorish from her hands.
Vyacheslav Stengovich was a refugee from 1973. That was Maico’s first thought. That moustache, that hairstyle with those sideburns, the brown-tinted glasses and an oversized, neatly pressed lab coat.
“Ah, Miss Tange. You’re hear about the Knight Sabers, I presume,” He had a soft, smooth voice.
“Their hardsuits especially
“Well I can tell you one thing,” he said, airily, “It wasn’t me. Their hardsuits are armed. Crystal Millenium arms-export laws prevent me from building anything with that level of firepower,”
Amomentary expression of dissapointment passed across Maico’s face. But at least it wasn’t a ‘we can’t confirm or deny’ firewall.
“It’s alright. I was hoping you might have some insight on who did, or what went into the suits. “
His face light up. It was a mad’s excitement, no doubt about it. The chance to explain their obsession. “Do I? The whole ML has been hopping. Come in back to my office,” he beckoned with his arm, “I’ll show you what we’ve got. “
They passed through the workshop, passing a variety of computer-aided machinery Maico couldn’t identify and the frames of three half-finished suits suspended on hangars. One male, two female.
“What’s the general feeling about them?
“They’re a bunch of assholes. FOSH Parasites” said Stengovich with a sneer.
“Oh?” That was a surprise.
“They’ve taken an open-source design, made some improvements we could all benefit from, then refused to re-contribute their changes back to to the main stream. Unlike me,” he finished with a haughty swagger.
Maico felt herself sigh.
“Anyway. Come on in here and I’ll show you,”
The office, was wallpapered with blueprints of hardsuits. Checks and re-checks. He sat at a computer terminal, booting it up. Standard holographic 3D, with an air-tactile interface.
“Perhaps you should start from the beginning,”
“Well, the first Stingray suit was built by that Knight Saber cyber, Jet Jaguar.... well, not the first Crisis Replica but you know what I mean. Anyway, someone saw it, and asked her if she’d build one. Jet released the design plans under the LGPL instead. The Stingray Project itself grew out of the builders list.”
“I see,” A second mention of Jet’s name. “Is Jet Jaguar still active on the list.”
He snorted. “Sometimes. Technically she’s on the project committee, but getting her involved is like pulling teeth.”
He nodded, “ Anyway, the first suits themselves were based off the Stingray armour from the Whole Fenspace Catalogue. The problem with the WFC suits is that they’ve been sanitised of everything offensive. All the weaponry’s been stripped out.”
“And the relevance of this is?”
“Well.... that makes them tough to build because the weaponry is so integrated. They basically had to be redesigned almost from scratch to work right without armaments. There’re a few supported plugins, like Kohran’s weapons packs, and the Sunday-Punch kit, but they’re still additions to the sanitised version. Loaded modules, rather than compiled into the kernel, to use a computer metaphor,”
“I see,”
“Now these Knight Sabers.” He brought up a rough technical scetch of Saber White’s suit. “These Sabers are running with fully integrated armaments. These are full Stingray suits. Whoever built these knew how to fill in the gaps in the WFC design, or had access to the unsanitised versions.”
With a few strokes of his fingers, he brought up the same video of the Sabers. “I’ve seen this before,” Maico stated.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “And there’s just enough for us to be able to tell that these are well beyond the capabilities of the mainstream suits. These things are beyond our roadmap, at least a generation ahead, maybe two.”
“Oh my,”
“Yeah, they’re real cool,” he smirked, “zooming the video in to Saber Green with a pinch, “This level of accuracy and speed is impossible to achieve with the standard system. If any of these women were wearing a standard suit, they’d be stumbling over themselves,”
“Can you tell me who might’ve been able to build something like this?” Maico asked him
“Name your mad,” he said, with an annoyed shrug. “That’s all I can say. Really. It’s someone with a hell of an obsession, and enough mechatronic knowhow to put it together. There’s some similarities to the suits used by the Roughriders, but even they’re just the standard model with cermet armour and a smattering of plugins,”
Maico thought for a second. “Could you tell me, how might they have gotten so much performance?”
“I really don’t know,” he growled.
“If you had to guess,” Maico pushed. “If I had an idea of the sort of technologies, it might give me a lead.”
“Well,” he wiped the sweat of his brow with his free hand, ruffling his fringe. “Hardsuit tuning is a pretty exact science. That’s how I made my name. Anyone can build one, but the level of fine tuning needed to get one right shows who the real experts are,”
The implication was, that he was one. Stop bragging.
“The Stingray design was always finnicky. They have the potential to be better than Iron-Man types, but only when they’re very finely tuned, and operating within a narrow range. The difference between a tuned hardsuit and an untuned one is as much as twenty percent over a standard course,”
“And tuning involves?”
“The expert system has to be trained to match the wearer’s own personal techniques, their own natural movements. The centre of mass of the hardsuit and wearer together, has to be tweaked to be as close as possible to that of the wearers when naked. Actuators need to be balanced in the limbs to compensate for any imbalance in the wearer’s natural strength. It’s also best if the wearer is female.”
“And that would give how much of a performance boost?”
He snorted through his nose. “That gives you the rated performance. To go beyond that, well...” he trailed off for a moment. Rapid fire manipulation of the holographic display brought up text files and mail archives. Maico could see he was pulling down lists of plugins. She half-glimpsed files as he flicked through them, listing milestones and technolgies being research.
“Best guess,” he began again, “They’re using some form of neural induction set in the helmet,”
“Someone told me Saber White hard to have direct control over her actuators,” Maico confirmed for him.
He grinned and seemed to giggle inside himself. “I knew it! Ah.... sorry.” He glanced around, shamefully looking for any other witnesses to his little outburst, “But having an NI set, would let the suit respond to the wearers intentions, rather than merely processing and following muscle signals. It’d drop the active lag to near zero. It wouldn’t account for all the boost, but’d give some.”
“And...”
“You’d have to upgrade the processing hardware. The ES would have to be overhauled to handle the NI interface, and that’s a lot of coding. They use a different thruster arrangement, which means the flight dynamics are changed, they’ve rewritten the flight stability subsytem from scratch.. These weapons require a brand power supply since they appear to be electromagnetic, at least double the current output”
He stopped for a breath. “The armour. It appears to be just battlesteel rather than cermet. But it’s a lot thicker in certain areas, especially shoulder pads and joint covers. And they have to have upgraded the motor-trusses to make them move so fast with the added mass of that armour which means even more...”
He stopped mid-sentence, an idea striking like lightning. Maico opened her mouth to ask him what it was
“You might want to check out heaphestus to see if anyone unusual is ordering large stocks of custome forged billet. Almost everyone building custom hardsuits gets their blanks forged there, and then machines them down to size. The presses required are obscenely expensive, and anyone using one in combat goes through armour very quickly, so their order will show up.”
“Thank you,” said Maico, “That might actually help,”
“Now, to finish it off... Pinky there.” He zoomed in to the image of the pink Saber with a pinch, before plucking her free of the video. A few quick manipulations had an extrapolated 3D model standing free. It gave a cheeky wave. “Pink takes things to a new level. Take a look at her backpack. No thruster exhausts, she replaces that with a Mass Effect system. What she does have, are a set of heat-sinks. Big ones. You can see the intake shrouds over the fans. Something in there puts out a lot of heat. There’s a real powerful computer in there, probably something not intended to be made mobile, and those antennae make for a complex multi-function radio and sensor set.”
He sighed, easing himself back into his chair. “Merge it all together as one, rather than just a collection of bag-on-side plugins, add some real deep magic and then combine with years of obsessive work to refine it all. You might get close to their performance.”
“Do you think Jet Jaguar could’ve built the Saber’s hardsuits?” Maico asked him.
He blinked for a moment.
“Nope,” he stated. Firm, solid, concrete answer. “She’s a hobbyist. This is someone else with more time and energy to dedicate to things, someone doing it professionally. and taken years to do it.”
“You sure?”
“As sure as I am that I am a man. Why?”
“I figured, since Jet’s a Crisis Fan, started the project and I have reason to believe she might have trained the Knight Sabers.
“Hmmm,” he began to stroke at his chin. The image of Saber Pink waved again. “Maybe if she had help, it might be possible. The sort of person who could pull this off either has the connections needed to acquire some hefty hardware and keep it quiet, along with the time to pull it off.... and I really am talking years unless they’re a complete genius mad.” He sighed, “And the ones I know have accounted for themselves,”
“Could you give me an example of Jet’s work please?”
“Sure,” He said. He tugged another text file up out of the archive. “Her last contribution to the project was a new plugin she called Voomer. It’s an ANN based system, replacing the expert system. It’s also a total crapshoot whether it works or not. Most found they were just fighting against it half the time, but those who got it to work for them found it boosted performance. Nobody can fix it for themselves because the ANN images are just binary blobs.”
He gave another distasteful snort.
“Binary blob?”
“Software without the source code. A compiled image. Usually from someone who has something to hide. Especially annoying for those who believe in the dream of open-source because if it’s broken, we can’t get in an fix it for ourselves. We can’t make improvements. We can’t stomp out bugs and cull security flaws. We rely on the package creator for that, and they rarely bother.”
And Maico sensed that was the nose of one huge camel of a rant trying to slip into her tent if she let the nose stay there.
“It’s actions like this that harm...”
“That’s enough, thank you,” Maico interrupted him, as gently as she could manage. He seemed to glower at her. “That should be more than enough, thank you very much,”
“Your welcome.”
He seemed satisfied to have at least had the chance to talk briefly.
----
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The suit builder sounds a lot like a certain raven-hared cyberneticist and crew, doesn't it?
Of course, A.C.'s probably also their Doctor as well as the builder of Jet's puppets. And, by this time there are extras she can provide that will also boost performance for the Sabers.
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Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:The suit builder sounds a lot like a certain raven-hared cyberneticist and crew, doesn't it?
Of course, A.C.'s probably also their Doctor as well as the builder of Jet's puppets. And, by this time there are extras she can provide that will also boost performance for the Sabers.
That's easily where the neural interface and onboard electronics came from, and Anika's own hardsuit entirely since the computing/radio hardware has to be so heavily integrated with the frame and Anika's own unusual nature and interface requirements are beyond Jet's abilities to handle.
The basic framing, armour and motors and such are years of research, testing, squirrel herding, testing, failing, breaking, repairing, upgrading and field-testing of ideas using the Roughriders A-team. They're Jet and Ford spending 4 years hard work, grinding and XP, and pulling in hardware/ideas/techniques from everyone they know, then combining it into on cohesive whole.
A.C. is Jet's puppet builder (I had a nice story where it's an important plot point that Jet gets/uses it, but it's died on its feet). Jet prefers human-level capabilities, solely because it's a nice relief from the stress of living in a world made of eggshells.
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Cobalt Greywalker Wrote:The suit builder sounds a lot like a certain raven-hared cyberneticist and crew, doesn't it? Possibly working from sections of the original WFC that are available only to Troubleshooters... such as the weapons plans that were stripped out of the hardsuit plans before a well-known S.O.B. published them in a forum where Boskonians could get at them.
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GREEEEEEY! *shakes fist at Asmodeus*
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
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