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Dartz · 06-10-2024, 02:33 PM

A repost of some things posted previously - but now re-ordered into something resembling a story.

---

The booth had been designed to fit an average human - it hadn’t been designed to fit anything like Jet Jaguar. Even with her body mostly hidden by a fur-collared silver cloak, she still sat awkwardly, with her legs shifted to one side to block the leather bench beside her.

Only a glimpse of her feet revealed her true nature to anyone who could see her. Anyone who might care to look, had their eyes focused instead on the stage far below as the show built to its climax

Jet took the opportunity to slip a plastic document case out from under the table, placing the tube on the top of the table, between a glimmering candle and Kohran Li. A small holographic projector sat beside it, waiting for the third member of the group.

“Those’re the draft designs,” she said.

Kohran Li placed a gloved hand on the case, pulling it towards her.

“You printed them?”

Jet nodded. Kohran flipped the lid open, withdrawing a roll of white paper a few centimetres, before sliding it back in.

“Ye’re puttin’ Godzilla in a can…”

“It’ll work,” said Jet, turning her eyes away for a moment

“I ain’t comfortable with things that can run on a positive feedback loop.” Kohran added. “Especially things that’ll sterilise entire planetoids.”

“I know,” said Jet, her mind clearly not entirely in the room.

“Do you understand what the consequences of this thing getting out will be?”

“I do,” said Jet. In a moment, the look on her face changed and Kohran realised she’d been in the room the entire time. “I know how many people the last accident killed. I just don’t know who they are yet.”

“You’re not filling me with much confidence.”

“Everything else will either take too long, put up too many red-flags - or be even more dangerous.”

Jet didn’t read like a madgirl, locked into the one course that triggered her blue hair fascinations. Resigned, was the word that came to Kohran’s mind. Either unable, or afraid to think of another option.

A failure of imagination, was what came to mind.

A small light on the comm-link on the table flashed red once, twice and then a third time. A moment later, a hologram shimmered to life above it - an image of a dark sphere. Electric circuits flickered in a gridded pattern across its surface, all coalescing at a single staring red monoeye.

“Well hi everybody, I didn’t think you’d be here so early.”

“I’ve never been to this sort of show,” said Jet, showing a flash of a smile. Kohran realised it’d been the first time she’d seen her smile since she arrived. “I’d some time to spare.”

“So what’s the verdict?” Kohran asked.

The sphere revolved, its mono-eye glancing at each of the pair in turn.

“I have run multiple simulations - to account for all combinations of production tolerance and fuel loading scenarios,” Eddie said.”I’m sorry to say, there is a larger delay in stabilising action of the temperature coefficients than the Soviet designers thought.”

“How bad?” If the hologram had had a throat, Jet would’ve jumped down it.

Eddie’s monoeye turned to face her. “How much of a delay, depends on the reactor power, reactivity margin, coolant flowrate, quality of the fuel and the thermal interface between channel and core stack. Using a nanotube-reinforced graphene foam to provide a thermal interface between the zircalloy technical channels and the diamond lattice does significantly reduce the time constant for power correction.”

So, not that bad? An expression of hope entered Jet’s face.

“In some edge cases, there remains a potential for the positive void coefficient to trigger an explosive power increase before it is damped by the negative temperature coefficient. This can occur once in every five thousand reactor operating years”

“Damn,” Jet breathed, deflating into the chair. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

For a moment, she looked just like a child being told she couldn’t play with her favourite toy

“Plan C?” suggested Kohran.

“I have something in mind,” answered Eddie. “I am still trying to solve the proliferation issue in an elegant manner.”

It seemed to bug him that it’d taken more than a moment’s thought to come up with something. The tracings on the hologram began to glow as he dedicated more and more of himself to simulating different designs.

“Maybe the issue’s one of control,” suggested Jet. Her blues eyes moved between the pair, looking for support.

“AI systems,” Kohran added quickly, getting a little more comfortable with the idea of a system that couldn’t be corrupted by someone.

“A mind with well directed training would effectively eliminate the risk.” Eddie confirmed. “With a second system running a continuous look-ahead simulation of all possible reactor states from current. These can be fed back to the matrix to allow the mind to trial different solutions.”

Easy when you knew how.

“What kind of mind?” Asked Jet. Her face darkened, a visible discomfort filling her armour. Of course she’d feel more uncomfortable with a mind controlling a system, than with a system that could sterilise an asteroid if it malfunctioned. .

“Beta-class, with an Alpha specialisation would at least would be sufficient.” Eddie assured her. “I understand, of course, how you would feel about it, considering your brother, which is why I dismissed the option.”

And he samed most relieved that it was back on the table.

“You’re assuming things will go as smoothly on Frigga, as they would on the Forge.” Jet answered. “That doesn’t happen. Especially with handwavium.”

Her ice blue eyes dared Kohran, or Eddie, to disagree. Kohran sensed something beyond a punk’s natural spite in her voice - a rippling undercurrent of unease.

“I don’t see why not,” Eddie answered calmly.

“This is probably the biggest engineering project in space. The amount of work needed to do it is -” she stopped to search for the right word, “- immense - and it all has to be done right, on time, on schedule and be near perfect.” Jet took a breath “The people who’ve to do it have spent the last year being bitched at by grandstanding BNF’s on Venus whenever something didn’t go right. And that was before the reactor blew.”

Kohran heard a real anger cutting in her voice, the kind that - in the moment - reminded her of so many Boskone self justifications - the kind that seemed amazed nobody could sympathise with their petty reasons for evil.

“And then the whole universe took the chance to gloat about the idiots who blew up a reactor, rather than cheer the heroes who stopped an accident from becoming a disaster.”

“Are we talking about the people on Frigga, or you, Jet?”

The sharp look the cyber threw her direction gave Kohran her answer. Yes.

“All that negativity is going to poison any attempts to create any handwaved solution.” The cyber’s voice remained even.“You handwave afraid that it’ll fail, and what’ll happen?”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Kohran suspected Eddie meant it as a joke. His deadpan delivery dropped it flat on the table.

“People tell me we live in a world were technology and handwavium will solve all our human problems,” said Jet. “More and more it feels like I live in a world where they won’t.”

“This is not a project that can be completed by feelings and opinions.” Eddies voice took on a harder edge - something had irked him

“Which is why I want to keep the wave out of it,” Jet shot back.

Kohran had the sudden realisation that a shouting match between a cyborg and an AI would probably draw a little too much attention in the middle of a show.

“You really think handwavin’ this thang’ll be a disaster?”, she asked, keeping her voice as calm as she could. Her own natural accent twanged through despite herself.

Jet’s eyes locked with hers.

“Do yeh want to run the risk of a Paul Ritter living in the computer system having direct control over this thing?”

Kohran saw a pure, thoughtless terror flash across her face, right from the depths of the soul.

“That won’t happen.” Eddie reassured, aghast that anyone could possibly think otherwise. “We are the best at this.”

Kohran felt the air begin to simmer. Of course Eddie’s reassurances had struck a sour note.

“We could look at the helium cooled designs again.” she said - trying to change the subject. “They have none of the void coefficient issues, the neutron spectrum is ideal and the temperature is suitable for power generation.”

“Didn’t we have material problems with the alloys required?”

“I have solved all the problems.” Eddie answered with the same, cheerful confidence. “The required high-temperature alloys can be made in quantity.”

“Do you honestly think we can implement that? In the time we have.”

Jet didn’t even give it a thought. She just assumed it’d be completely beyond her capability.

“The Forge can.”

Of course it could. Eddie stated a fact. Jet took it as an insult. Eddie wasn’t stuck with her. Kohran was.

“And we’re back to shit that’ll work on the Forge but won’t work on Frigga.” Jet cut back. “You’re forgetting the people element. The one’s who’ve to run it, repair it and live with it”

Kohran drew on deep breath.

“We can argue over this for another six months and still be in the same place.” She rubbed at her temples. “We’ll take a break for a couple of days. I think that’s for the best.”

Let everyone stop being children. Maybe they’d cool off.

“Agreed,” said the holographic sphere. “Time for some to reconsider would be helpful”

Jet looked at her, a flash of anger on her face - almost like she’d been betrayed. It died as her conscious mind caught up, a flush of warm embarrassment reddening her cheeks.

In a moment, it disappeared in a pursed-lip pout worthy of any teenager who knew they’d done something wrong - and hoped they wouldn’t be called on it.

Kohran, of course, had a sense of diplomacy.

“How’s Mackie doing?”

The question, of course, caught a Jet who’d fully prepared to defend herself, completely off guard. The cyber sat for half a heartbeat as she swallowed the words that had been sitting in her throat.

The edge of her lips tweaked up into the first smile Kohran

“Last I heard - Gaige qualified with the Knight Witches.”

Taken aback. Kohran felt herself blink.

“That’s a five year contract.” she said, before her mind caught up. “With an all female unit.”

“Her decision,” said Jet, with a smile. “It was either that, or live the next five years under protective isolation.” she took a breath, looking down at the stage below. “She preferred freedom.”

Kohran settled herself back into her chair - recrossing her legs. Her hand settled on the plastic case of the reactor plans. Below them, the show continued.

In moments, Jet was lost in the lightshow.

Kohran decided to wait until the intermission, at least. It’d been a while since she’d watched her own show. It was the mark of a good Engineer to eat their own dogfood from time to time, and Makoto gave the Revue an entirely different colour of sparkle.

It’d be a shame to interrupt.

The auditorium moved to the beat of the show. Jet’s finger tapped out the rhythm on the glass surface of the table.

Kohran watched her get lost in the music.

Something about that felt wrong - like Grits and Maple syrup. It just didn’t fit the cyberpunk image, did it?

Kohran found herself musing on that, on how pigeonholed so many people could become, once their schtick had been decided. Few ever transcended what people expected of them.

AI’s expanded beyond their base image. Humans tended to contract towards their public image - until they became little else.

The thought lingered in her mind until the lights came up for the mid-show intermission. The crowd below shuffled out to stretch their legs, relieve the pressures of sitting for an hour at a time and replenish their glow sticks.

“That was good,” said Jet, after a moment. She settled back into the booth as much as her body allowed her to. For the first time, Kohran saw a real light in her eyes, a little spark of happiness.

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen one of these shows.”

“Never had the chance,” Jet answered. Naturally.

Kohran placed her hand on the case. Passions had cooled. No better time than now to ask the question

“Can you tell me Why’re you so dead set on this?” she said. “You really slammed the door on Eddie there. He was just trying to help.”

Jet looked at the plans, then at her

“Because this will work,” she answered. “It’s the best chance of working. With the fewest questions.”

“You know the risks?”

Jet gave a slow nod.

“A reactor explosion is a problem. An atomic explosion is a nightmare.” she said. “The wave has given me too many nightmares.I don’t want to risk another one.”

She meant it too. Kohran could see the fear in her face, a nip of panic that ran up her spine and widened her eyes. Something that could fester, given half the chance. The fear that always ended in suffering.

“Maybe you don’t need to do this.”

Her lips stiffened. “I do.”

Had Jet misunderstood?

“It is okay to step back and let someone else carry the torch. You’re not the only one who can make this project work.”

Kohran wore an earnest smile, hoping Jet’d agree. A chance to bow out without shame - to be something else for a while.

Jet looked at her again, then down at the reactor plans. “It’d be out of character for A.C.to do something like this - she comes up with the clever solutions. It’s far too close to ground zero to be done by anyone on Atalante and I don’t think Stellvia would be crazy enough to fund this - or have a need for that much power. The conspiracy only works on Frigga.”

Jet took a moment, before giving a thin smile.

“Thanks though.”

Of course, it all seemed logical to her, fear could make it seem logical. Mixed with a little pride and the comfort of an already solved problem. Everything from the basic principles of how it worked, to the worst possible failures - and their causes.

And even that, was a known quantity. In the real world, and in Fenspace.

There was comfort in the known. Kohran understood that, at least. Better the devil you know, no matter how evil the devil.

Kohrans eyes fell to the case with the plans.

“Not building a bomb, is so much harder than building one.”

---- (2)

Five waited in the corridor, each wearing the same anonymous disposable white overalls.

The door opened. Beyond it, the bright lights, timber wall panelling and floral patterned linoleum of the de-aerator corridor gave way to gloom and concrete, flaking Soviet-era paint transforming the corridor into something ominous and entirely unnatural.

The scent of damp concrete, mould and metal drifted on a cold breath from within.

A handheld meter alarm, followed by a second, then a third within a heartbeat

“What does the dosimeter say?” asked the tallest of the three.

“3.6 Roentgen,” said the second, a goofy grin plastered across their face. Her blond hair spilled from under the square white cap.

“3.6, Not Great, Not Terrible,” the third answered, before taking a photograph of his gamma-scout with his phone. All three giggled like schoolchildren, as if nobody’d ever shared an instagram post of a panicking gamma-scout at Chernobyl before.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake, thought Serhiy Kobrin. If the meters read anything, it was in microsieverts. Harmless for a short while. They wouldn’t allow tourists anywhere dangerous.

“Tourists,” he huffed in his own language

“They bring good money,” said Khem Starodumov - official plant tour-guide.”Especially with the anniversary.”

Serhiy raised his head in grudging agreement.

“Walk straight. Walk quickly. Do not touch the walls. We are approaching the control room of reactor four. Do not touch consoles or equipment. Photographs only. Everything is contaminated. If you are contaminated you will not be permitted to leave.”

Without being decontaminated, he didn’t say.. .

“I was on a Discovery Channel film crew twenty years ago. I touched a switch. Now I am a tour guide,” added Khem with a smile.

One wall of the original corridor had been damaged by the blast. A new one had been built along with the shelter object, guiding the small group through a turnstile, a radiation checkpoint, another doorway, and then into the new corridor, built alongside the run of the collapsed de-aerator corridor.

Even after ten years, the layout felt new to Serhiy - just that little bit wrong and unfamiliar compared to how he’d learned it..White LED light’s from the tourist’s phones lit the corridor ahead, throwing hard black shadows onto the walls. Steel pipes and cableways plunged into the darkness, inert and empty for four decades.

A new steel door stood where the Shift Supervisor’s desk had once been. The wall had been added to support the demolition of the shelter object.

Prior to that, the room had lay in state for twenty years - untouched like the city beyond the station.

Serhiy almost found himself wishing it’d remain that way. A monument to the moment a routine Saturday morning test became a life-long nightmare.

He watched the visitors move through the room from the doorway, making sure they disturbed nothing. Footsteps took a space

“A little bird told me you’re retiring,” said Khem, with a faint smirk on his lips.

“From Chernobyl,” Serhiy confirmed with a single nod. “Someone sent me a job specification.”

“Hmmm…” The silence begged for more information.

“A station blew a reactor last year. They’re replacing it with a fission reactor - an RBMK derivative. Which means someone experienced has to train them how to operate it.”

“Why would they build an RBMK?” Khem asked. He might’ve asked why they bothered sacrificing a living child on an altar for the look for shock on his face.

“God only knows. But it’ll pay better than this…”

Raised voices interrupted their quiet conversation, as the tourists played their roles.

“You’re delusional. RBMK reactors don’t explode.”

“Take him to the infirmary.”

Serhiy drew down a deep breath, watching them re-enact a re-enactment. “...I’ve no reason to stay anymore. And I’ll take any chance to run a reactor once more, rather than another tour group.”

“Ah…” said Khem, understanding everything.

And of course, they touched things. They snooped around the room, gamma-scouting for the hottest of hotspots - perhaps the tiniest mote of reactor fuel or graphite that’d settled in a crack to decay peacefully for four decades.

They seemed to revel in a danger long since passed.

Their flight to Ukraine would’ve registered a higher rating on their chirping counters, if they’d bothered to look.

His eyes closed for a moment. Somehow, he could still taste metal.

“Excuse me, Can I ask a question.”

She stood taller than him, and far thinner. A dustmask hid her face, but her brown eyes stared down at him in a way that made his skin crawl - as if maybe she thought he was nothing more than a tour guide - something beneath the contempt of one able to afford the tour. It rose up his back, crawling with a thousand legs, mingling with the taste of

He didn’t feel like holding back.

“I was a trainee operator in reactor room three. Yes, I was on duty. And I knew everyone in this room. Proskuryarkov and Kudryatsev were my friends, and I spent four months in Hospital Number Six because the ventilators were not switched off and I finished my shift in three. A year later they restarted the reactor, and here I am still. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

She blinked. For a moment he thought, maybe she got the point. Even behind the mask, he could see her scowl.

“We paid to be here you should treat your customers better - we have ‘gram accounts you know…I’ve over a thousand followers”

And then he understood. To her, Chernobyl was a TV show - a documentary - a word from a foreign country that’d become the latest Dark Tourist hit - another place where you could purchase your own personal fragment of a tragedy.

“I can’t do this any more,” he said, in his own language.

----

Spoiler

Dartz · (This post was last modified: 06-10-2024, 02:57 PM by Dartz.)

===Sidestory - - Preperation H ===

Jet knew it was serious, when the mechanics insisted on wearing sets of coveralls stolen from the reactor department. They had full-face masks and air-tanks borrowed from the fire brigade. It gave them a look of faceless menace. Or chemical weaponsmiths.

All three of them stood a safe distance from a plastic container labelled 'fuel'. Inside it was nitromethane and a dozen other things that'd been mixed up into a chemist's nightmare. Another beside it was labelled with a cartoonish skull and crossbones. If only to hide its true contents from the folks watching on the internet.

It was an oxygen scavenging agent borrowed from the turbine engineers and was normally used to keep the corrosion in the reactors down. It could do interesting things when mixed with Nitro.

Sitting beside both containers was a motorcycle, stretched and enlarged to almost comical portions with a rear tyre fat enough to spin the world backwards. The engine had been printed as a solid billet of metal, with an oversized supercharger and a set of straight pipes that ran under the rider's saddle and exited out the top above the rear wheel. A wheelie-bar stretched behind the bike. The bike's frame had been hand-welded from heavy steel beams, more like a cage to contain an explosion than anything structural

A thin front wheel reached far ahead with a brake that seemed more a token effort than an actual method of stopping the thing. Some carbon bodywork provided scant protection from any wind pressure.

One of the masked mechanics looked at her. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Jet took a breath, feeling a little tingle of unease. " Let's just fuel it up,"

All three suits shard a glance. Jet could sense their unease – like she'd asked them to arm a bomb. In a way, she had.

The crew added the Nitro mix to the bike's fuel tank. Jet herself added a carefully measured amount of the special sauce. She couldn't help but notice how everyone had stood back from her as she did. A vague ammonia-like scent that reminded of a recently cleaned hospital encouraged her to close her visor.

The mix in the fuel tank began to steam white. A fuse had been lit. Everyone had to hurry.

Jet sealed the tank.

She sat herself on the bike, locking herself into place in the saddle. She motioned for the crew to start the engine. The fuse in the tank continued to burn. It occurred to her that she had no real idea how long the fuse would actually be, or how fast it actually burned.

One mechanic held a bottle of petrol to the intake. The other had an electric starter to the crank of the engine. The third had an optimistic fire-extinguisher. A crowd that'd gathered on the gantry crane above began to cheer.

Jet flicked the switches for both magnetos. The starter was offered to the engine, spinning it up to a high rate. A squirt of fuel through the intake caused it to catch with a bark, sending a shudder up through her body. She could feel each of the engines four cylinders firing beneath her.

After a few seconds to heat the cylinders, she switched to the nitro pumps.

The motor settled down to a shuddering cackle, puffballs of white smoke spitting for the four pipes behind her, mixed with the occasional lick of green flame. The air around her grew thick with the scent of shoe-polish and disinfectant.

A tickle of the throttle sent a shockwave along the launch-bay. Those on the gantry dived for cover. Green lightning shot from the exhausts. Jet cycled the bike through its gears, testing the clutch, brakes and throttle.

She heard the whine of the superchargers. She felt the cackle of the nitro detonating. The whole frame of the bike shuddered in fear of the power it contained.

She felt the thrill run through her that'd been absent for so long. A sense of being alive and whole again.

Frigga's landing bay stretched before her, with the hard stop of the main landing bay door a kilometer away.

She checked around her. The mechanics had retired to a safe distance. Jet suddenly felt herself keenly aware that the blue touch paper had been well and truly lit and she was straddling it.

She paddled the bike backwards to the starting line. Heat rose up from the engine block, soaking through her. Her eyes had begun to water.
Jet took a breath and braced herself.

A twist of her wrist unleashed hell, putting her for one insistent at the centre of one continuous explosion. The machine beneath her launched forward, ripping its tyre along the deckplates laying down a thick black streak of hot rubber.

Nobody dared to help her wheel the bike back to the start line. Nobody wanted to get close to the bomb. She paddled it back herself, taking an agonizingly long time to do so.

One solitary brave soul guided her to the timing lights, making sure the bike was properly lined up for the run. Jet gave the bike one last check, before switching the engine controls over to full power.

Jet guessed it might've been generating somewhere north of two megawatts of power, but lacked any sort of ability to test it. Even the Highway Star at its most aggressive, had barely touched half of that with more than twice the capacity.

Jet took a breath and braced herself.

The mechanic shied back away in fear.

She waited. The engine cackled through its pipes behind her. Beneath her, the supercharger whined, gulping air into the engine's cylinders. Adrenaline surged through her muscles, sending shivers through her body. The ground itself shook in sympathy. All of Frigga rang like a bell in resonance.

She locked it into gear.

The last mechanic raised his hand.

Time stopped. She had long enough to wonder if the devil's venom in the tank would blow from the sock of it when she opened the throttle. Would her armour withstand a bomb going off while she straddled it?

Jet concluded that she wouldn't have to worry about it, no matter what happened.

God help her if anyone found out what she was actually riding. They'd call her mad. Lighting it off in the enclosed environment of a space station would probably be called a crime.

The mechanic dropped his hand, and she launched to bike.

It felt to her like she'd been shot from the barrel of a cannon, or a suicide bomber traspped eternally in the instant of hot acceleration between flicking the switch and meeting god, her insides threatening to leave themselves behind as her body pushed forward. Every single muscle clenched in response, force blood to her brain.

Hot flame warmed her back and hips, unburned fuel flash-igniting a bright witch's green as it met cold oxygen.

Her heart stopped.

She felt the machine slew beneath her, threatening to cartwheel out of control. One quick shift of weight brought it back into line. Her fingers covered the brake. He hand held the throttle pinned to the stop.

Within a second, she'd exceeded 160kph.

She kept accelerating.

Dataloggers in the bike reported its running conditions to her. Exhaust temperature. Fuel pressure. Oil pressure. Manifold pressure. Manifold temperature. Anything that could possibly indicate an incipient explosion before it happened.

Jet had time to wonder if she'd be able to eject herself in time. She'd have maybe a microsecond to think about it as the machine began to destroy itself. Would a cyber's accelerated reflexes save her from an explosive death.

A cylinder might misfire, once, maybe twice and then hydrolock on unburned nitromethane. If the fuel didn't diesel itself, the engine would shatter. Then detonate.

Jet found the idea thrilling.

Three and a half seconds saw her moving well over three hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, having covered just under two hundred meters of distance.

The shockwave from the exhaust had already hit the bay door at the end of the hangar. Dust raised up from the floor. Glass showered from blown lights on the ceiling above.

The engine continued to run, revolution after revolution.

One button push shifted the engine into high gear. It burped a moment as the clutch slipped and picked up once more, propelling her forward with even greater fury, each cylinder lighting off like its own miniature shot of Hiroshima – swallowing Nitromethane and an evil mix chemicals at war with themselves from the moment they had been mixed through the engine at a rate well north of a gallon every second.

The line at the end of the track flashed past in a heartbeat. Four hundred metres travelled in five and a half seconds and still accelerating.

Jet closed the throttle and popped the parachutes. Silence followed, filled with only the howl of the supercharger and the whine of the gearbox still coasting down. For a moment, her body tried to keep moving, even as the bike beneath her hit an aerodynamic brick wall.

Jet hauled on the brakes with all the force she could muster, skipping and skidding as it struggled to slow. A hard metal wall raced up to meet, far faster than she'd expected

The machine stopped twenty metres from the door at the end of the launch bay, engine cackling at idle, laughing at her for not going even faster.

For a moment, she almost forgot about the chemical timebomb still ticking in the fuel tank. She paddled the bike around, and idled it back to the other end of the launchbay, trying to burn off as much fuel as she could.

Jet parked right where she'd set off, opposite her own black tyre tracks. She killed the fuel pumps for the engine, letting it wind down.

Silence deafened. For a few heartbeats she felt herself at a level of peace she hadn't experience in a long time.

The real race began, to get the tank drained and defuse the bomb they'd created. She unhooked the fuel lines. One of the mechanics, finding a shot of bravery, offered her a container filled with absorbent.

It took moments to drain the dregs from the tank and seal them off. She opened the cap to check for any solid residue, only relaxing when she saw it clean. One of the mechanics peeled back the hood covering their face, before unhooking their facemask.

Dary Haur shook her head to release her hair, carrying the mask under her arm. Jet popped her visor, the scent of ammonia, boot polish and sweet nitro tingling her nostrils and watering her eyes.

"That was crazy," Daryl announced, still shaking herself.

Jet felt herself smile for the first time in what seemed like forever. She felt the blood running in her veins and her heart beating in her chest. She felt her mind running clear and the weight of the universe lift from her shoulders.

Nothing at all mattered beyond the moment, beyond being alive in that instant.

"I'm alive," she said

And fit to giggle. Her body shook and she found herself longing to do it all over again, to wheel the machine around and launch it one more time. The whole engine would need to be rebuilt first

"The timing gate blew over," said Daryl. "That thing was like a bomb going off"

Jet found it hard to care. She knew how fast she'd gone.

"At least we got it on video," she said.

A dozen or more people on the gantry above cheered. Already the videos were making their way out to the wider interwave where people began to take notice.

In the end, that's what mattered. There'd be followup videos, explaining the technology of the engine and how it'd been put together using a combination of 3-d printing, forging and classic machining.

Enough to win some mindshare for herself and the Asagiri brand, to broaden their reputations for speed and engineering and doing things 'real' rather than with the 'wave. Maybe they'd get to run it at the next convention - and then to feed into another series of videos about their spacecraft that might actually start making money by selling them.

Everything according to plan and all that.

Jet took a breath.

Already the excitement had drained, leaving her feeling oddly empty all over again. All the buildup, and it'd already ended.

---

Spoiler

Dartz · (This post was last modified: 06-10-2024, 04:00 PM by Dartz.)

– 3–

Anika killed the account with a single, spiteful button push, and rewarded herself with a bite from a Cherry cheesecake. Another dickhead that seemed to get glee out of cheating on a free non-competitive game.

A hate filled death-threat was answered by a concatenation command to dev/null and another soothing bite from the cherry.

Aces churned on, network traffic and system loads relegated to a single monitor where she could keep an eye on it.

The rest of the room was the domain of the MAGI system itself - a dozen monitors reading out thousands of critical station parameters. One entire wall had been replaced with a wire-frame map of the station itself, showing the location and status of every critical system. .

Everything looked okay.

Anika simply sat and watched as the MAGI system swallowed up thousands of different metrics from across the station - failure rates, parts quantities, work-rates, breakdowns, food supplies, supplier orders, personal orders, delivery schedules, injuries, radiation levels and funnelled them into a thousand ‘recommendations’.

New orders were spat out, shipments were organised and resources allocated. Failures and issues escalated themselves all the way up from the miner at the rockface, through the supervisor, the engineer and up to the station council if necessary.

In a moment she allowed herself to feel a small spark of pride - as one of the principal architects of a true Level 5 system, and likely the only one that didn’t come with a cheerful anime-related personality.

In theory it even worked.

She sat and watched it for a second, daring it to prove her wrong again.

Her job was to keep the channels to the system open, to keep the data moving, to fix the bugs crawling through the system and keep it from getting munged by the wrong bad actors and the right idiots.

Answering the dare, a single alarm sounded, answered by a dozen more as an entire data node fell over. Half-blinded, the system went into full panic, begging for her help.

The failure cascaded from node to node, as data re-routed then overloaded each node in turn - like an avalanche begun by a single snowflake. In moments a dozen more flashed from a safe green, to an angry red. She switched the system to master priority. Scorpy messages from angry residents followed within seconds.

Someone glitched out of a paid KoFen match while they were winning. Two job interviews were interrupted. A CDN for Fenboards toppled moments later. A dozen video streams dropped.

MAGI prioritised every single bit of bandwidth to keep itself fed, then prioritised the critical over itself. Power, Water, Air and nothing else.

Anika fought to keep the network alive. Her fingers raced across keyboards, manually adjusting the tables to route around the damaged areas. Her earpiece buzzed as someone finally found speed-dial for the control room’s extension.

“Yeah, Anika here,” she answered.

All five comm-lines lit up on the console. A dozen other calls were bounced for being too slow.

“My stream just cutout and I’m in the middle of a donation drive,” a voice shrilled in her ear. “Do you know how much money this is costing me? I need my network back.”

“I’m sorry, I’m doing my best.,” Anika pleaded, her mind more focused on the screens in front of her than the drill of a voice piercing her ear.

“Get it done. Do you know who I am?”

“Yes and you’re slowing me down.”

“You people are so rude. I’m going call Jet.”

Be my guest, thought Anika. The line went dead. Five others chirped for her attention. A moment later, comms to the control room were limited to a very specific whitelist. Anika had the space to focus, to get ahead of the cascade and create a sort of firebreak in the network.

She raced from terminal to terminal, setting one running a script while writing up another on the fly. Reams of green text flashed past as the terminal set to work.

She had to get in front of the rot. It had to be stopped before it poisoned the entire network and forced a hard restart. Half her mind had already begun to plan for that eventuality.

She wheeled her chair from console to console, working only by the illumination from the switches and screens. The master display showed nodes turning red across the map as each one timed out.

Her wristwatch buzzed.

“I’m here,”

It carried a request for an RT connection.

Radiotelepathy was more than a sharing of words. In a moment, fully formed ideas could be shared - entire plans and intents. In the time it took a human being to blink, two cybernetic minds could share an entire concept.

After a moment’s discomfort, Anika relented. Her interfaces had been designed for a specific hardwired protocol - RT comms just didn’t feel right run through them, like suddenly being able to see with her fingertips and hear with her eyes.

Jet’s mind made it just a little bit worse. Not quite an AI - her thoughts had an odd colour to them, a slight off-focus haziness. The background Bokeh of her mind carried a strangled sense of frustration.

The plan took less than a second to form. What needed to be done, how to do it, who could do it. Anika got ahead of the breakdown.

Only Jet’s onboard comms had the bandwidth to take care of the next part.

A single command spread through the Exocomp hive, relaying from machine to machine, then answering back through the interface. In the back of her mind, Anika could see each machine flickering to life, acting with one mind.

Nodes flickered and died - being disconnected far faster than the network could compensate. In three seconds, the poisoned sectors had been completely separated from the main network into their own island.

Isolated from the main system, the island died in darkness.

Anika learned its fate as the swithboard exploded with a dozen calls. It blocked her from calling out to the rest of her team.

Idiots, she thought. She blocked all inbounds, then tried everyone in her control group, one after the other, getting dead lines with attempt.

The words came out of her mouth more as a data chirp - a burst of noise far beyond what a human ear could comprehend.

“Anika?”

She released she’d reached Arnaud, from tech division.

“We just dropped two dozen nodes,” she repeated.

“Aw shit.”

“And one of them’s the main transceiver.”

“Aw shit.”

“It started in 42-34, are you near?”

“I’m on the Mezzanine.”

“Damn.”

People could tolerate a power cut, or a fault with the water system, or a few late deliveries - but losing the network would start a revolution in minutes. Her fingers tapped on the console on front of her.

With no other option, she flashed the same

42-34? Jet was a minute away. And getting more irritated by the second.

They’d gone up the chain to complain that their desperate calls weren’t being answered. Memes were going unshared. They were already seconds behind the system on all important news, and losing ground with every passing moment. .

A message followed through the station’s All-Call a moment later.

“We’re working on the network issue. Thanks for letting me know.”

Problems on Frigga had a habit of going straight to the top. If only Jet knew. Of course, she made it worse by actually solving them. Anika tapped her finger, watching error messages crawl across screens as process after process tried to access nodes that’d left the network.

Not a problem compared to losing all off-world communications. Everything else had dropped itself to level 2 or level 3 - various levels of local control. The reactors and turbines had their own governors. Water supply would run on pressure. Air supply would run on global, rather than demand. An archipelago of islands, rather than one whole system.

Anika began to wonder how she’d get them all to resync

The fucking cunt’s bollocksed.

Thanks to RT comms Anika understood exactly what’d gone wrong from those four words - even if she would’ve preferred more.

A flange on a water line had leaked. A gasket had split. Someone tried to patch it with gobbets of sealant - most of which hadn’t cured right. A slow drip of water had drowned the server beneath. Its death-throes poisoned a node with corrupt data and it all toppled from there.

I’ll fix the bloody thing.

The tone of the message carried far more determination than something that simple needed. Of course she didn’t have to do it. Basic maintenance was beneath the office of Baron Frigga. Things like that were supposed to be delegated.

Anika pinged a quick reminder to Jet.

Jet answered with absolute insistence.

Behind that one concept of insistence hid a pressure cooker of frustration, boiling and whistling, begging for an excuse to pop, mingling with despairing sense that, despite the best efforts of the Magi system, it still seemed like half of Frigga was being strapped together with duct-tape and twine.

Anika couldn’t help but notice that - despite the best efforts of the Magi - two of the three striplights over her head were missing at least one tube.

A dozen KPI’s and metrics assured anyone who cared to look that things were getting better. Breakdowns were getting less frequent. Failures were getting repaired. Even maintenance had begun to catch up.

Things didn’t feel that way.

Already, there were noises on public fora from those who could still dial out.

Anika tried to ignore them, focusing on getting the network back in sync, untangling the mess and rejoining the archipelago of networks into one - without causing a further collapse. It was little different from trying to rebuild a ship’s engine - while it was still running.

She’d done it before.

It just took a little creative editing of some of the live process variables in working memory - nothing too risky.

The phone on her desk warbled once more - begging for her attention. She did her best to ignore it and wait it out.

“Anika?”

Kelly, from the Operations room

“Yeah sorry, I’m busy right now.”

“But two Messengers of Mercury just arrived,” Kelly said, in a conspiratorial tone more suited to a juicy fragment of gossip. “There’s one for you.”

Obviously, Kelly hoped Anika would know why. Kelly could yhen be the first to know - the very first link in the gossip chain.

Anika dashed her hopes.

“Huh?”

There was an audible sigh of disappointment. “You know where Jet is?”

“Somewhere near cabinet 42-34.Why?”

“One for her too.”

Kelly hung up, leaving Anika alone wondering just what the hell she’d done wrong to have a Messenger of Mercury sent for her - Officially messengers of the Court of Venus, they normally carried summonses to a court of inquiry for those suspected of conduct contrary to the principals of Love and Justice.

What could both herself and Jet have been involved in to get summonsed?

Aside from the one big thing that hadn’t really been a thing in years. Technically, the Knight Sabers had been a criminal group of mercenaries. But they’d also been operating under warrant. Oh - and the other thing....

Her mind whirled with possibilities - most worse than the previous.

When the knock on the door came, it took her completely by surprise. Her body spasmed in shock.

It opened a moment later. The messenger stepped in.

She found it hard to believe the woman’s uniform had survived the journey all the way out to Frigga in such immaculate condition. Her boots had been polished to a mirror gloss. deeper than space itself. The pleats on her skirt had been crisply pressed, almost rigid. Her Leotard has been bleached a bright snow-white - still freshly pressed and wrinkle-free like she’d only put it on ten minutes prior. Gold braid on her collar shone in the overhead lights. The brasswork on her Tiara had been polished to a lustrous shine. Her blonde hair had been combed bolt-straight, falling down behind her to the small of her back.

Even her makeup looked fresh - tasteful and clean, without being over the top.

Anika wondered how she did it.

“Anika Daini?”, asked.

“Yes?”

“By personal request of Her Majesty Queen Serenity the Second. You are hereby summoned to the Order of the Celestial Star.”

From her satchel, the messenger removed a single envelope, offering it to Anika with both hands. Anika felt herself blinked, her mind stuck in spinlock as she tried to process what exactly that meant. A gold-foil envelope, with the royal seal in golden wax. She held the envelope in her hands, looking down at her own distorted reflection.

She looked so bad, after hours at work.

“Congratulations” said the messenger with a smile, and a deep bow.

Anika sat in her chair, watching her leave. The envelope remained in her hands. It took her far too long to work up the courage to br

Heavy paper, inlaid with gold. The message had been handwritten in meticulous illuminated calligraphy. It took a moment for her to read it.

“Eh…” She read it again to be sure. “Eh?”

There was one other reason a Messenger of Mercury might have to seek someone out. It happened so rarely, she hadn’t even thought it possible.

--

Jet stood, scratching at the belly of an Exocomp,. The machine responded with electronic chirps and burrs, the machine’s manipulators twitching in time with each scratch. Like a giant, hovering puppy. it basked in the attention.

Jet’s own antennae twitched in turn, suggesting more than just a scratch was being shared.

“It’s the last survivor of the first ten we bought.” Jet said, wearing a sad smile. “All the others broke down.”

Anika found herself wondering what sort of news Jet’d received. She still clutched her own envelope in her hand

“I’ve been nominated for Sailor Frigga, Jet.” It burst from her mouth. She held the letter up as proof. It wasn’t a joke, or a prank - there it was in ink and gold. “They nominated me for the reactor. Why’d they come for you?”

There couldn’t be two named Sailors on a settlement, could there. A Sailor Chaos, and a Sailor Cute?

Jet looked away for a moment, taking a breath. Obviously note

“I’ve a date with Judge Skippy. For the same reason.” She kept her smile. “Congratulations Anika, you really deserve this.”

— 4 —

I petition Her Majesty, Serenity II, to grant a singular boon.

The details of the actions taken by many people at Frigga, as revealed by Baron Frigga in her recent petition to the committees responsible for honours and confirmed by both myself and Kohran Li, make clear that one of the people involved in mitigating the disaster went far above and beyond the call of duty. Anika Daini had every reason to believe that the actions she volunteered to take would cause her to suffer a lethal dose of radiation, despite her personal shielding and protective armour. The actions that she carried out despite that belief were key to the successful containment of what otherwise would have been a disaster that would have killed every person on Frigga and left the surrounding space unapproachable for decades if not centuries.

I humbly request that Her Majesty grant the most honoured and respected title that is in her perview to award, and name Anika Daini to be Sailor Frigga.

Your humble servant,
Yayoi Fujisawa, Sailor Stellvia

— 5 —

What is the Price of Truth?
by - Maico Tange
technical research by Shizuka Hayama
---A report on the Accident on Frigga 77. The truth about what brought a settlement to the brink of disaster, and the coverup that followed.
---Part VII. One Final Question remains.

Our story, which began with a meeting with an engineer in a cafe, now comes to the final question.

Who is responsible for the accident on Frigga? Who is to blame?

Jet Jaguar is first under the glare of the inquiry - a cyber with a habit of going off half-cocked, of leaping before she looks and only figuring out how to land halfway down. As Baron Frigga, she first set the tone for the settlement - its character and its intrinsic nature. She fostered a culture of getting things done, almost in spite of the risks of doing them. It was her idea to use Uranium inside the reactor core, to improve its energy output.

The presence of which would have been near harmless, if not for a design flaw built in to the reactor itself. When subject to a thermal shock - such as that caused by an interruption and sudden resumption of coolant flow - the inner reactor liner is at risk of collapsing. A collapse of the liner would expose lithium breeder blankets inside the core to the full force of the reaction, triggering a miniature nuclear explosion which would wreck the core.

The presence of Uranium only increased the magnitude of this explosion and the resulting fallout. Three tons of TNT, became Thirty. An explosion that would have merely wrecked the reactor, instead threatened the entire containment structure and required rapid actions to prevent a far greater disaster and a release of radiation which would have led to hundreds of fatalities.

This collapse, might never have happened if the reactor operators had followed the procedure rather than improvising on the fly. Nobody in the room had any formal training in operating the reactor, but they did it anyway, thinking they understood what they were doing. What they did, was the exact same thing they had always done without fully understand why they were doing it. Continuing the test after it should have been shut down primed the accident to happen. Their well-meaning actions in the last moments - instead of saving the reactor - acted as the final detonator switch.

Lensherr heavy industries knew of at least one occasion, prior to the accident on Frigga, where liner damage had occurred inside an operating reactor core. The possibility of this occurring was never mentioned in the company literature. The reactor documentation detailed thermal limits and heat up and cool-down rates based on the possibility of a coolant channel fracture. In truth, the company was aware that this was not the case. At stake were millions of euro, and two unfinished reactors at Bielefeld.

Privately, computer modelling had shown that a rapid change in temperature inside the liner, could cause damage. The circumstances that would cause this were thought to be unlikely.

A reactor after a decade of operation, with cracks and weaknesses accumulating in the carbon-carbon liner, having its coolant supply interrupted while operating at high power, and then having it restored again without any cooldown time, creating a shock cooling event. These circumstances were replicated exactly on Frigga.

The safety test was prompted by an internal review inside Lensherr, which suggested that there was a possibility these circumstances could occur, due to a delayed shut-down. Ultimately, the safety test could fail in a manner which caused these exact circumstances to occur.

Once they did, the reactor simply did exactly what physics required of it

The test is only being run, because Frigga had begun to experience energy shortages, and requests for funding to upgrade the system had been denied by Her Majesty's Government. Feeling they had no alternative, the Station Council began a project to modify the reactors to produce more power by hybridising them, using the Fusion reaction to drive small scale fission reactions, extracting even more energy and pushing the reactors hotter again. The test program was begun to prove the integrity of the reactor, before the program advanced.

Data logs reported by Frigga to the Convention Active Reactor Safety Committee showed Reactor 2 and Reactor 4 regularly operating for long periods at an output at times at least twenty-five percent above their maximum rated operating level. This gave them an extra ten percent electrical output. This was not flagged as a deviation by the ARSC, and no investigation was begun. It was allowed to continue.

The accident requires all of the above to be in place to happen as it did. Each participant can rightfully claim that others forced their hand, or without the actions of others, the accident would not have happened.

No crime like this has ever been committed in Fenspace. In truth, nobody is even sure that what happened was a crime. The accident on Frigga is almost unprecedented in human history.

Whether the actions of the station council, and the reactor operators could be considered as grave an offense as endangering the collective security and safety of one of her Majesty's settlements remains to be decided.

It seems likely the Court will find those involved guilty of deceiving Her Majesty's Government by first covering up the accident, and doing so again after the reality of the accident was revealed - trying to downplay its consequences.

Even still, to the Courts of the Crystal Millenium, a person's actions are only part of the picture.

Of equal importance and specific interest to the Court is the content of their hearts at the moment of action.

In the agony of the moment, What were they feeling? Why did they make the decision they did? What did they expect was the outcome? What is the nature of the darkness that overcame them in that instant? What is the light that guides them? What in their nature drives them to act the way they do?

Not just a rational what and how, but a soulful why?

I put the question to Jet herself. After a few moments thought, the answer she gave me was a single sentence.

"Where once I feared the cost of lies, now I only ask, what is the price of the truth."

Exactly what she meant, by paraphrasing the closing line of HBO's Chernobyl miniseries, is known only to Jet herself.

As for the price of the truth, that remains to be decided. Within the Courts of the Crystal Millenium, and the Office of the Convention Authority, the wheels of inquiry have begun to turn. The collective Juries in the Courts of public opinion have already begun their vociferous debate.

One is left only with the impression that the price of truth that Jet Jaguar fears, is far higher than anything within the powers of the Convention.

-- 6 --

The office had little, to no decoration - a bare testament to how little time its occupant actually spent there. A desk finished in cheap printed plastic veneer carried no papers or computer. An office chair had been used exactly once, causing the shock to collapse.

The crystalline carbon walls had been rendered a milky white opaque by careful acid etching, patterns waved through layers mimicking the grain of timber.

Only a pair of battered steel blades in a presentation case, and a greyscale sketch framed on the wall gave it any sort of personality. Jet couldn’t help but stare at that smiling image of herself, soaring through the sky with a bright shining smile on her face.

Jet found it hard to remember a time when she’d been that happy.

Not recently anyway.

Her mind couldn’t quite put words to how she felt, while the image grinned back at her with a mockery of how she should be feeling.

Her muse did it’s best to be helpful, pinging off another dozen alerts that her name had appeared in another dozen blogs, a few forum posts, and even a Boskone darkweb site. The Chewy Gristle commentary hour had well and truly entered its second priapism.

Momo von Satan gleefully read out the possible consequences, while The Cock ejaculated over the deeper technical details of exactly what went wrong and the physics behind it.

She pushed it out of her mind. Of course, they’d all found the story they wanted.

She felt the ground shift under her feet - a momentary sense that the room had begun to turn around her, even as her own stabilisers insisted it wasn’t. That, and a building headache in the back of her skull warned that her blood sugar might be getting low.

Jet opened a drawer in her fibre-board desk and grabbed a fresh ‘Booster’’ pack. It took a moment to unclip the empty one from her waist, then mount the fresh one in its place. A blip from a chip in the pack’s own controller her told her it’d last for another twelve hours.

The booster-packs contained the majority of vitamins, minerals, sugars and proteins needed to keep her going, in a format that could be fed almost directly into her bloodstream.

They had been intended to keep Kunstler going on long missions in open vacuum where having an actual meal would be obviously impossible. Jet’d taken to using them just to keep going and save time on bothering to cook and clean up.

In the back of her mind, she noted it’d been weeks she’d she’d actually eaten anything, and almost as long since she’d felt hungry. Something about that idea warmed her inside, confirming her self-identity just that bit more.

A message from Frigga through her personal relay killed whatever small comfort that gave her.

Two more banal items that begged for her personal seal of approval. The interruption blistered her mind. A third had her snarling, wishing she had a phone she could launch through a window to escape from the stream of notifications.

She gave everyone the answers they could’ve found themselves if they’d bothered looking them up.

Baron Frigga had to be on call to make shit happen. Jet couldn’t say No. Things would start to unwind without her. On Frigga, the War on Kipple marched on and it had an insatiable appetite for bureaucracy.

It was necessary, she thought.

A knock at the door

“Yeah, who is it?”

The door opened with a squawk from an oil-starved hinge. She heard the rustle of fabric, followed by the groan of irritation of someone dealing with it. A smile crawled across her lips

Jet always thought that Anika Hansen never particularly looked comfortable in glacier-white gown made from spun diamond fibres and silk. Privately, she never ceased being glad she’d been spared the requirement to wear a similar level of plumage.

“We need to talk, Jet,” she said, before taking a seat on an unused couch.

Oh.

“I need you to tell me what happened.” said Anika. “I need you to tell me why you didn’t tell anyone. I need to know why this happened, Jet. I need the truth.”

Jet knew in her heart, Anika would be the one to understand. Finally, someone who wouldn’t just assume the fucking worst.

“There’s no truth - not really,” she said, looking right at Anika as if she’d understand from that. “Fenspace runs on the narrative, on the story. Some people want stories about heroes and not victims. Some want stories about victims and not heroes. But every good story needs a villain.” Jet didn’t break her gaze. “It doesn’t matter what the reality is. Now they have their story. And we have to be the villains.”

“That’s cynical,” said Anika, calmly.

Jet folded her arms. “The fact that we’re both here tells me otherwise.”

Anika took a breath. “We aren’t here because of the explosion - we’re standing here because of the coverup. Because for some reason you felt the need to keep quiet on what was almost another Crystal Osaka. Because everyone on Frigga was nearly killed.”

She placed her hands on her lap, obviously trying her best to keep things even - to keep the manner people expected of someone they called ‘Queen’.

“But they weren’t. We stopped the accident. Why should we tell anyone? Why should we let ourselves be dragged over the coals as the morons who blew up a reactor? We’d look like idiots who can’t do anything right. Who does that serve?”

The sense of betrayal stung in her heart and snapped from her tongue

“People could’ve helped.” said Anika, sounding more saddened, than annoyed. “Everyone would’ve helped. If only they’d been asked. Putting out the fire. Cleaning up the wreckage. Cleaning up the radiation. Making the existing systems safer. Even evacuating Frigga rather than risking hundreds of lives on a gamble.”

“You know damn well that they wouldn’t…” Jet snapped back at her. “And even if they did, they’d only do it so they could gloat over us afterwards, as proof that we weren’t capable of looking after ourselves.”

“So instead of trying to work with everyone,” Anika answered, softly “Instead you’ve convinced yourself, and every one Frigga, that everyone’s working against them, and that you’ll have to go it alone.”

Jet felt herself compelled to look her in the eyes.

“It’d help if the parliament didn’t start out treating us, like a rock full of children. No matter what happens, we can’t fucking win. We try ask for more funding to fix basic things and it gets turned down because, obviously we’re a fuckups if we can’t maintain basic shit on our own. And when shit breaks down because we can’t afford to fix it, and we miss our targets, we’re fucking incompetent and don’t deserve the money to fix the problem because obviously we’ll just piss it away into space.”

Why the hell couldn’t she understand that. “I’m doing what needs to be done to keep Frigga working the way everyone wants it to.”

“So you went somewhere else.”

Jet felt herself blink owlishly “What?”

Why did that sound like such an accusation?

“Ben told me about the project. That they’ve been funding it undercover.” Anika paused a moment, taking time to consider her words. “ I don’t know how I can let it continue after this. This has created an unholy mess”

“Like I said, I don’t have a choice,” said Jet. “We had to keep it secret.”

She gave Jet a look that seemed more disappointed, than angry. “If that’s what you’d told me earlier, I might’ve believed it.”

Jet felt her words die in her throat. She wanted to scream at her. To beg her to try and understand

Ben leaked.

“What did Ben tell you?”

“That you’re going to be making fuel for the next generation of Blackbirds. And this whole thing’s about keeping the Boskone from finding out.”

“Fuck’s sake.” she breathed. Jet buried her face in her hands, resisting the urge to scream. She probably could’ve crushed her own skull, if she tried. It might’ve been merciful.

Anika’s gown rustled again as she pushed herself to her feet.

“We can’t risk another Osaka. Not over something like Blackbird fuel.” she said. “And if you can’t understand that, maybe you need to find somewhere else to live.”

“Frigga is my home.”

The words came from her mouth before they even reached her mind.

“It’s also home for over five hundred people now. Being first in the door, doesn’t give you the right to stay if you’re making it a dangerous place for everyone else. I’ll leave you alone to think about that.”

Jet stood there, spinlocked. The right thing to do, would’ve been to fill her in - to tell her the whole truth, or let her work it out on her own. Telling her, increased the risk of it all falling apart. One more datapoint that allowed one of the pattern-matchers out there to work it out.

The necessary thing, was to keep the secret and drive on, to close ranks just that little bit tighter - maybe to put things in motion in a way that couldn’t be stopped.

She heard the door lock again, and realised she’d been left alone with her thoughts. Jet paced the room, her heels clicking on the tiled floor, looking for a spark of inspiration - something to guide her towards the right answer.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

The picture didn’t answer. It smiled back at her, mocking her on some level. That was the person she wanted to be. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t who she became.

An idea entered her mind. Before she’d even recognised it, it’d carried her through the city’s airlock, and out into open space.

Venus receded into a point of light. She had a sense where it changed - she just needed to see where it happened.

--

Breaking into the asteroid proved far easier than she remembered. Where once there’d been monitored deadlocks and automated defence turrets - only a simple padlock and a pressure seal remained.

The blast-marks on the surface still seemed as fresh as the day she’d made them.

A few guards from Great Justice remained to patrol the ruin, keeping the Stalkers away. Otherwise, the rock had been empty for nearly a decade. It’d been stripped bare of anything that might’ve been valuable, or could’ve been of use in a court of law, on a test bench or to an intelligence analyst. Only the structure and framework remained,

The metal framework supporting the tunnels had already begun to split and fray like rotting timber. The hopes and dreams that’d built the place had long since gone, replaced first by a nightmare of violence, then by nothing at all.

The wave had a funny way about it. Things would last for years without maintenance or repair, so long as someone still lived there and gave it a spark of life. Once abandoned, things could unwind themselves in months, turning to kipple as the energy and intent that filled them evaporated and left them to come apart and become kipple. Once Kippleisation set in - almost nothing could stop it. People just stopped caring.

It happened to people too, Jet figured. The wave broke both ways like that. What people thought you could do mattered as much as what you thought you could do.

Jet moved on with that thought, carrying it with her.

Papers, cloth, toys, smashed fragments of people's lives gathered in the corners to hide, or waited patiently for their owners to come back.

Some were in prison. Some had been released. A few lived out their lives in rehabilitation or long term care. Many died when the station fell. Most had been forgotten.

Only the darkness seemed to remember. It resisted a cyber’s unnatural eyesight. It fooled the image intensifiers in her visor, throwing back shades of threats that’d long since passed. The sense of dread lingered in her heart,

Her mind mutated the static of her radios into the sounds of a distant war - shards of dead voices playing in the back of her mind, begging for rescue she couldn’t give.

Alone in the dark Jet felt herself being stalked by some unseen predator, biding its time, waiting for a door to close and lock behind her. The sensation pulled her body tight, begging her to bolt and run for it - to get out.

She dared to use her torchlight, risking discovery by a passing patrol. Jet knew she could stay ahead of them

Alone in the depths she found herself wondering at whatever impulse had compelled her to come back. In the back of her mind she felt a thrill rise in her body as her navigation maps fixed her position.

She’d stood on that spot, years before.

A brief pause, while she’d gotten her bearings.

Rubble blocked her path back. Only the Gruppe had raced ahead, riding the shockwave. Dozens had been buried under tons of rock - the few survivors begging for help through their radios while an entire asteroid crushed in around them.

It took far too long for them to stop. Longer again to find what was left.

Jet kept moving. Forward was the only way to go

She could walk through the moments, as clear and vivid as if they’d happened the day before. Brass shell casings still littered the floor, mingling with fragments of grenades and the few shards of bone the cleanup missed.

Jet drew a long breath through her nose, flooding her nostrils with the same familiar scent - a mix of wet iron, dry concrete and burnt gunpowder. She felt that flash of panic. That thrill of survival - of being one step ahead and leaving death in her wake. Faster. Smarter. Stronger. Keeping one breath ahead.

She felt herself hunted again, the darkness chasing her forward. Of course, the security grid must’ve still been up. The guards must’ve spotted her.

Jet reached out with her sensors, finding only glimmers of distant energy. Nothing close. Nothing active.

She waited, holding her breath, expecting anybody. But nobody came.

Jet took a breath, moving deeper, past research labs that’d been stripped bare and bunkrooms whose occupants might’ve survived and found their way home, even if they never really left.

She passed the moments where she’d found her friends, dead on the ground. Jet stood, staring at blank stone where Alex had died.

Jet took a breath. Her heart ached to fly with Alex again, even after thirteen years. Her face still shone in Jet’s memory.

She moved on before too much could be dredged up. Maybe if she’d been faster the first time around, they could’ve linked up and made it out together, but that didn’t happen.

She scattered the Gruppe so they could each use their speed to their advantage and spread the enemy, rather than being tied together. It meant they’d died alone without help if they got pinned down.

Another collapsed tunnel marked the graves of some Chaos Marines. Jet found another way around this time - through a tunnel that’d been laser-cut by the teams following her through. Glassified walls threw back warped reflections of herself.

She thought she might’ve looked that bit too clean compared to how she felt.

Someone had taken a photograph of her on the way out. Bloodied, but not her own blood. Battered, but still standing. She’d looked like the Mad Max version of herself - armour strapped together, but with blades on her arms still shining clean.

Look at those eyes, as cold and hard the ice at the bottom of a glacier.

That was how a random voice online had put it. That was how they pigeonholed her. What people expected her to be good at, what they expected from her when she wasn’t going off half-cocked or figuring out how to land when she’d already leapt.

They didn’t understand. Doing nothing meant death. At least if you acted, you could fix your mistakes later.

What people thought you could do mattered as much as what you thought you could do, she recalled.

Jet took a breath.

It’d been founded under the name ‘Olympus Heights’. Official records called it Boskone Four. Most who’d been there called it Jusenkyou. What began as an experiment in meritocracy with a libertarian bent, ended in nightmares and nemesis.

What began with the basic idea that success was earned, mutated into the assurance that failure was deserved, a might-makes-right Kratocracy where those with more money, strength or influence could do what they willed with those who had less, assuring themselves the entire time that if you weren’t strong enough, wise enough, or wealthy enough to stop someone doing something to you - then it was your fault it happened.

Survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog, an unplanned experiment in Social Darwinism - a Randian Gulch turned into a grim authoritarian parody of itself. Even the true Randroids had been horrified by what happened.

She entered the main concourse, a rusting sign hanging from the ceiling, showing a tournament bracket,. still announcing ‘Bitches’ as the challenger for top dog. Jet mused that, since she killed the man in the centre circle, technically that made her the last lord and master of the rock. She passed the spot where she’d watched a catgirl exact revenge on her handler. The man didn’t scream as he died - but it wasn’t from lack of trying.

She’d killed anyone armed, in case they shot her in the back - no matter how panicked they seemed to be. It could’ve been an act. It had been for one of them. It was about neutralising the potential threat, removing their capability to act.

She’d put that in her report. In a cold office, the review board had rubber stamped it as justified.

Jet found herself standing at an open door labelled ‘Station Director’. She could remember the sound it made as it hissed open, revealing the man at the centre of it all. In the darkness beyond she could almost see his ghost still standing in his own armour.

A flash from her torch exorcized the room. The little kick of adrenaline remained in her veins.

In a strange way, she’d still expected him to be there - but nobody came.

It’d taken her three hours to reach it. It’d taken her two days and dozens of bodies to make it the first time. Like going back over an empty level in a videogame to find that last pickup secret. Nothing remained but dead desolation and echoes of what had been.

She entered the Director’s office. The blast-mark on the wall that marked his passing still remained, two great gouges torn from the concrete floor and ceiling where the arms of Alex’ balisword had embedded themselves. Bits of the director himself probably still lived in the cracks of the floor.

Immortal maybe, but not indestructible.

His office had been stripped of anything valuable. Only bare walls and the empty skeletons of computer consoles remained. Power cables had been tied into hanging nooses to keep them from dangling.

Jet felt grateful she’d come unarmed this time.

She pondered on who Rosebottom had been. A person who’d come up with the same hopes, dreams and ideals as the rest, became their anthesis. Someone who’d gone from Sad Puppy to Mad Dog, desperate to test himself against the best so he could prove himself better.

She remembered finding some of his blog posts, from right after he’d come up. He’d seemed so damned happy and excited, the same as everyone else. Then it all began to rot. With the benefit of hindsight, it seemed almost Greek.

Ultimately, the universe concluded he’d become exactly what everyone expected him to be. They’d put him in a pigeonhole and he’d expanded to fill it.

She paced around, her heels tick-ticking on the concrete floor, looking for something, while still not being sure what it had been. Whatever epiphany Jet had expected by going there, eluded her.

In the end, it had just been an empty office.

Jet took a breath.

She’d traced her entire route through Jusenkyo and found nothing. Except for one last place.

She had to backtrack. A blown tunnel had blocked it off.

Jet found herself dreading it. But she couldn’t avoid it. The closer she got, the more she felt certain it was the root of it all, where she’d find her answer

Excercise Control.

The room had been stripoped bare, leaving only a single steel desk that’d been bolted to the floor. Underneath it, a scratch on the floor marked the point where one of them had tried to hide - and failed.

Please, You don’t have to do this.

She stood in echo of that moment from a decade ago, letting it wash over her. She remembered how she’d written it up at the time.

"Drone operators neutralised."

Whether they deserved to die or not, didn’t matter. A flat, impassive tone allowed her to skirt below the threshold for the mandatory psych debried. The truth might’ve even made the Kratmanites nope the fuck out. It’d been the necessary thing. Enemy combatants didn’t just carry a gun. It didn’t feel right - but it had been. It must've attracted attention. A week later, she'd been offered her first warrant card.

She felt in her soul, that the ability to see past what felt ‘right’ and do what was necessary in the moment, had burned her in some undetectable way.

She did what was necessary. To keep the lights on on Frigga. To keep the Boskone from rising back up. To keep the world from falling apart. Jet was the one who knew where the line was - and could operate in those grey spaces where what ‘felt’ right, and what was right were two different things.

The sound of footsteps snapped her out of it, shuffling down the concrete. Loud, either incompetent, or doing their level best to announce their presence. They wanted her to know they were coming.

Either they were supremely confident. Or they didn’t know who and what she was.

Jet readied herself.

“Great Justice. I’m not armed,” a man’s voice called out.“I’m here to talk.”

She prepared herself, incase they were lying. Her engines spooled, energy charging her body, waiting to be unleashed in a high-speed run for open space.

A man in a light tactical uniform stepped around the door, gloved hands raised above his head. Jet guessed from his face that he couldn’t have been more than 20 years old, with deep, hazelnut eyes, and a dark, full beard

“I’m not armed,” he said again. “I just want to talk.”

Jet felt her body relax.

“I’m fine,” she said, curtly.

“I know,” he said. “But people like you come back here all the time. We just make sure they aren’t going to hurt themselves.”

Of course, he was insinuating she’d come there to kill herself.

“I’m fine,” Jet answered again. “I just wanted to see something.”

He looked up to her, then took a breath, looking in to the empty room

“They found seven bodies in here. Some station technicians who’d been running the drones. Basically unarmed IT people. They re-programmed the drones to turn on the Boskone and someone murdered ‘em for it. Complete cold-blood slaughter - some of them were hiding under the table - they weren’t even armed.”

“I was here,” she said, in a quiet voice.

“I’m sorry you had to find that,” he said, trying to console her. His gaze settled on the desk. “Rosebottom was a psycho. Good thing A.C. put him down when she did,”

Jet’s jaw hinged open, distraught. She wondered for a moment if she’d mis-remembered the entire thing

Reality didn’t matter, not when faced with the narrative. In the end, history was nothing more than what people collectively agreed had happened. People preferred the narrative -- it was so much more comfortable than the real thing.

Heroes were heroes. Villains were villains. Once the narrative decided what path you were on, every decision it allowed you to make just reinforced it.

Like a shite game of Dungeons and Dragons.

“I’m on a train that’s going somewhere,” she said. “That I don’t want it to go.”

“I can’t help you with that,” the guard said. “There’s a counsellor at the outpost.”

Jet felt a soft smile curl her lips. “I don’t think they can help with this problem. It’s something different.”

It left her with the idea , that she needed to do something to get off the railroad -s something that ran across the story and into a new direction - something intelligent.

She needed to talk with someone - she just didn’t know who.

She needed to know what the narrative expected her to do.

----

Spoiler

Dartz · (This post was last modified: 06-10-2024, 04:38 PM by Dartz.)

===Sidestory=== --- Locomotion
What would people think, thought Jet, staring at the plans printed on her desk. They already thought we were a bunch of lunatics.

There was a real danger this would put them over the edge.

"There's no wave in this thing?" Jet said, looking up at the two proponents with a sceptical eye.

The first, Lemprex Birrman from the reactor teams, pushed another dataslate towards her. She was a formerly white-furred catgirl who'd managed to stain her fur and overalls with a dozen different types of machine oil and grease. "We've built a model," she said, before licking at her teeth in a way that suggested she still hadn't quite got used to them "Provided you've enough fuel and oxidiser to fire it, it'll work."

The second, Oliver Porta, was a station mechanic who'd dressed himself in the faux-brunellian fashion complete with stovepipe hat – though without the usual pipe-bomb in a clockworks spattering of useless gears and cogs.

"It solves all the problems with heat rejection on a combustion engine, the ceiling's too high for a catenary and even battery electric units will need cooling in vaccum."

"You've run it by the technical council?" asked Jet.

She knew they hadn't.

"They'd say 'No'." he said.

Of course, Jet already knew that too. Which meant, of course, they'd come to her because they knew she could make it happen – somehow. The Council had to govern sensibly no matter what they actually wanted, while Jet, at least gave the veneer of deniability.

"I can tell you think it's cool," the catgirl added with a gleam in her blue eyes "And we already have the cyberpunks and dieselpunks here – even the atompunks and biopunks have something to do. This is our thing, and it'll work."

"Castle Heterodyne will love it," Porta assured. "And there're more of us on Frigga than you think."

The catgirl nodded. Jet looked up at her with tired eyes. Aside from this, she had a dozen other things on her mind

"That's not a threat by the way," she said, running her words over themselves in a sudden panic. She held her hand up in self defense. " We just think it'd be cool and we'd feel more involved in things if we got a few favours too and all the other punks get something…."

"Just don't do anything that makes the bureaucrats come here, please." Jet took a breath. A thin smirk crawled across her lips "Not until I figure out how to hide the funding because those dry shites would never agree to it."

"This'll be so cool, you won't regret this I promise. We're actually going to build these and it'll be amazing…"

"People will come to see these," Porta reassured her. "We might even be able to sell the design to other mines that need to work in vacuum."

"Just don't get caught," said Jet.

Both of them left her alone with the plans and models as reassurance that everything would definitely work. They even had a video of a model running in an open airlock to prove it.

It could probably be dragged from the general slush-fund and the retroactively assigned to a specific expense on last year's official budget once people formed an opinion on what it was actually for, as a sort of Schroedinger's line-item.

Medium machinery, transportation and public services, artistic installations or tourism and visitor attraction? So long as the paperwork looked right and people liked the result, it didn't matter.

----

"Hey., yeah, Jet--- did you really mean to order this?"

"Order what?"

"Project Mars and Project Venus. Order 242 and 243."

"Oh....that – yeah that's a secret project here."

"Why in the hell is this a secret?"

"Her majesty's government doesn't know they've agreed to pay for it yet. And I'd rather they didn't know until after they're built"

"Jet – just be careful. There're rules – and there's only so far you can push them."

"I can make it work."

"Be careful, Jet, seriously"

"It'll be alright"

-----

Jets impressions of Steampunk had long been one of having the appearance of functionality, while being utterly useless. An art-form assembled from the language of industrial machinery, Victorian fashion and colonialist imperialism, but without the requirement to actually work, like so many tattoos in 'Japanese' people had gotten themselves because they looked pretty and not because they wanted a Japanese Hannibal Lecter to know they were non-poisonous.

Wreathed in vapours Mars - named for the planet and not the Sailor - immediately gave the impression of being a machine which suffered the constraints of reality and the requirement to do something more than express an artistic vision. Even brand-new, it dripped with grease and oil. High-power electric lights flickered in time to the rotations of the turbogenerator throwing hard black shadows across the ground.

The exhaust stacks billowed white steam which flashed to diamond dust before falling back to ground the moment it lost its momentum, creating drifts of soft rime ice on cold black metal, or sublimating back to vapour where it landed on hot steel.

Mars looked like no other locomotive Jet had ever seen. The slug-like cylinder of the boiler with its superheater bulge had been set aside to make space for a high-pressure-gas tank and a three cylinder steam engine. Drive ran through a snake-like string of universal joints and prismatic couples to four sets of two-axle bogies. Bevel gears on each axle meshed with the driveshaft and threatened to shred any finger that got near them while they turned.

Brake lines, gas lines, cable-conduits and railings, traced across the boiler and over the engine, each one labelled and colour-coded according to its contents, and whether it was hot, cold, pressurised or powered. A pair of quick-connect manifolds tapped the boiler and gas reservoirs to provide steam power to modern hot-gas monopropellant mining drills like those the Rockhounds used. They would be faster, more powerful and more reliable than the obsolete electro-hydraulic and atmospheric tools Frigga relied on.

Someone else had already begun a project to try convert an old electric drill to gas power. Engineers, makers and creators fed off each other's work like that. Sparks ignited flames. Maybe buying new tools could be justified, now they had the infrastructure to support therm. The miners had already begun to make noises in that direction. Maybe what was left in the slush-fund could flow in their direction next.

The old Mad's adage applied. Get your technical success, then let people figure out what to do with it later.

Two mechanics in vacuum suits made the last few checks of the running gear and driveline, ensuring the bearings had been properly greased and each coupling had been pinned and locked.

A larger tank of 'oxygenated water' and a smaller tank of kerosene fuel sat on the tender, freshly topped off, but still draining quickly to keep the boiler hot. Compressor-driven condensers recycled as much of the water and exhaust as possible, if only to make the environment in the tunnels a little less unpleasant.

A brand new, factory-fresh steam locomotive, sat waiting for its first test run, being attended to by a dozen people in spacesuits, while video-equipped drones swarmed around, broadcasting its first true steaming to the wider internet as a whole. Like a redshirt at a Storm trooper convention, it obviously didn't belong, but somehow worked as a scene anyway.

The crew on board busied themselves explaining the intimate details of its operation to an enraptured audience of enthusiastic anoraks, gricers, trainspotters, railfen and Tori-Tetsu, not to mention the Gearheads and the Gaslamp Fantasists. Castle Heterodyne quickly made its approval known - it took a certain level of madness to stand in close proximity to what was basically a small rocket engine burning catalysed peroxide and kerosene.

Lemprex Birman and Oliver Porta would go down as the Sparks who'd built a genuine steam locomotive in space - one which ran in vacuum, ran on steam and didn't require much, if any handwaving to get running. The only handwavium was in the paperwork. Some civil servant in Crystal Tokyo was simultaneously discovering to their horror that they'd inadvertently authorised it's construction months before anyone had even thought of it as a possibility.

The success of the project would likely get them noticed for being 'brave' and taking chances. Their career would likely never recover.

Whether Jet could get away with fiddling the paperwork would be determined by the overall public reaction. She figured it'd be fine. Most commenters were, at least, impressed that it existed and glad someone tried.

That was it's real benefit. People liked it and engaged with it. They commented and shared and spread it like a virus. They'd want more of it - more things like it. And with that, came the permission to do more things like it, the funding to enable them and even the belief that they could be done.

The more people believed you could do, the more you could do. The more people expected you to succeed, the more likely you were to succeed. That's how Fenspace and the 'wave really worked

The locomotive's lights strobed a warning to get out of its way, clouds of snow blowing from a silent whistle. Draincocks on the cylinders shot jets of vapour and oil as the motor began to crank the locomotive forward at less than a walking pace, drones sweeping in the capture the intricate details of engine crank and valves as they churned all hundred and fifty tons of steel forward.

Nothing could stop it. Given the chance - and enough fuel - it'd happily run along the Helium sightseeing line on Mars alongside the Galaxy Railway's handwaved excursions. Even the gauge matched.

Lemprex waved for the cameras from the footplate. A catgirl in a spacesuit driving a steam locomotive - the incongruous image alone brought a smile to her face that lasted far longer than expected.

For the first time in a long time, there was a subtle buzz about the asteroid, a sense of excitement and the possibility of things getting better. More, similar projects had started to appear on the station's public forums, looking for supporters - the things that might make life better, but may need to be done outside the usual channels.

In the end, people needed more in their lives than sleeping, eating and working. There needed to be things on Frigga that allowed people to enjoy being there - from the little victories and successes, to the colour that made life interesting. From the polychromatic rosebeds that'd been planted outside the hab-blocks that added colour to the grey concrete and stone, to the animated murals that'd been painted on the walls, to the arboretum the more sensible people of the station council were trying to assemble and the neon signage on the mezzanine that people had added on their own initiative, along with that little bit more freedom than could be permitted on the Crystal cities to let people do the big things that interested them.

===Sidestory=== --- The Theology of Anika Daini

Posted by: daini@Friggarock.fen
To: talk.cybernet.General
Subj: RE: RE: RE: "From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God—"

I think it's like the difference between Gaia and the God model of things. In the God model of things you've this big central brain that's responsible for everything. It knows all, it sees everything, it measures everything and it chooses to respond to those measurements by turning things off or on, or turning things up and down. Everything's running in lockstep and under control. Disturbances are managed by the brain and corrections are programmed in and all the possible states are known beforehand so you know what you're doing to get out of them. It's like, all these station's have their mind's at the centre of them that can see all and know all on the station, and adjusts things consciously to match. It's sort of the Shiva pushing all the buttons at the centre of the world in the Simpsons.

What we're trying to do is kind of like a Gaia thing where - you know how on Earth there's no real God but everything sort of works together anyway - it all self corrects? So you have all these self contained small little systems and they all sort of come together in a way to make one ecosystem that sort of tends towards a stable place and when one of the small systems gets fucked with the other change is ways that cause the systems to self correct. We're trying to do shit like that. So instead of the big brain knowing what the demand is on the system and adjusting everything to match, the system sort of adjusts itself. So long as there's enough transduction to handle the variety. It's like a load of different things looking after themselves and their own little universe that when put together they just sort of stabilise without anyone having to do anything. All these systems just sort of self-stabilise as one big system around a comfortable point.

Of course - if you have a problem where one or two things break down -the system can tell you - but it can sort of keep going in a degraded mode with a pump stuck at maximum, or a valve failed in a safe position or a broken line. The system is sort-of uncomfortable - but still able to keep going on the same way you can hold your hand there. Everything up and downstream sort of self-compensates.

The brain can be a lot smaller because all it has to do is respond to specific things going wrong that might push the system outside the stabilised point. It's only when things start breaking down or it gets into local overloads that it starts praying to God to intervene, but that makes God's work a little easier, doesn't it?

God can be whoever sat at the desk that day, rather than a Mind built specifically for governing the station.

It's a little bit harder than waking a Mind, sure, but at the same time, you're not creating a whole Person just because it's convenient.

-Anika Daini
----

Sysop, Frigga 77, and connoisseur of confectionery.

-----------------------------

===Sidestory=== --- The Nekonomaccounts

Everything in Balance.

It's the first law of accounting. Credits must equal Debits. That's the double entry rule. One Cancels the Other.

I recall a catfolk I saw strolling along the edge of a fence, one foot in front of the other as easy as you or I would walk on the pavement. Perfectly balanced.

It is the work of accountancy to bring order to chaos and I have not seen chaos such as this since Enron. It has taken weeks of investigation to scratch the surface of this financial melange. Thousands in Credits vanish from personal accounts to arrive in business accounts. Business accounts make payments on public projects. Public accounts make payments to personal in quantities which serve no obvious correlation to each other.

Frigga is in debt to Jet. Jet is in Debt to Frigga. Asagiri owes Frigga a sum far greater than both. All three make payments to a dozen mundane shell companies. Those companies owe Frigga, Jet and Asagiri a great deal of money in fees and administration.

By one mark, fantastically wealthy. By another, destitute. Money is simply taken from where it is available, to where it is required. None of it balances. Yet it all evens out. No invoice is ever overdue. At the same time, everything is insolvent.

I cannot sleep at night. I see nothing but chaos in my dreams. I see no solution. I see only the inspiration from that one catfolk on her fence

There is a dimension that may be missing from this, a second or third order to join the disparate parts together, but it forever escapes my grasp. And still the higher-ups Crown Revenue demands my report with greater vehemency. I have not slept in days.

I am staring at the works of genius, or insanity.

And I fear they will drive me insane before my commission is complete. I see the shadow of something beyond financial reality and I must pursue it.

That balance.

I cannot forget that catfolk, and I know what I must do.

The door to the machine is open. And I must step inside. I see, I must become the cat.

----

The world is one formed from sound and scent, dimensions of awareness beyond the human. A cacophony of scent. A kaledoscope of sound.

The fence stretches before me and my feet find their place on it. It takes moments before my body steadies itself and I allow myself to be carried along. One foot in front of the other. The moment I stop, I wooble and struggle to catch myself. My tail provides a counterweight, a mass to damp the sway.

It's then that it hits.

Balance is dynamic, rather than static. I am stable because I am moving and I keep moving and so long as I keep moving I can never fall. The future and the past. The rates of change matter as much as the states today. It's not just position, but velocity and acceleration.

I can finally see it.

The past balances the future. The future balances the past.

So long as it keeps moving. So long as it is never stopped.

The epiphany comes to late.

I have been catfolk for three months now. My post now occupied by another - one who faces the same trial I did. I wish him luck. I no longer feel the urge to apply myself to anything beyond the now, and a life of redolent luxury and headpats.

Nyan Nyan, Catgirl fthaghn!

--------------

Spoiler

Dartz · 06-10-2024, 05:00 PM

--5 —

“Instrumentality Committee Meeting”

That was how it always appeared in her dayplanner. She preferred the reference to what it was actually called. It matched how she felt about it, even if it lacked the truly ‘scure cachet the real name had.

The worst part of her job, Jet thought, were the group calls and conferences. At least the meetings on Frigga could be held in person - but calls to Mars, to other members of parliament, to the mundanes - all had to be done by remote. By hologram, by video, or by ominous sound-only monolith.

She hated how nobody ever managed to get their damned mic levels right. Someone was too loud. Someone was too quiet. Someone spoke in jitters and starts, fractions of a syllable being lost to cosmic rays and encoding errors. Someone lagged by long seconds, perpetually speaking out of sync and killing the flow of conversation.

Jet gave thanks that the camera on her monitor had long broken - it gave her the freedom to walk around a little. Moving helped her think. It sparked the mind. It earthed the restless energy in her bones.

Eddie had the characteristics of the still to be built reactors finalised. They existed in their complete form in his mind, running already for years. He had a roadmap for the life of the reactors, from first fuelling, through to their eventual decommissioning. He had the characteristics for the reactor’s plutonium confirmed.

Jet kept her usual misgivings about his simulations to herself. She’d be the odd one out in the group - especially with A.C. having decided to join in. Jet suspected Eddie had begun to hate her.

Oh ye of little faith. Jet wondered where they got theirs, or where hers had gone.

Kohran had begun designing weapons, based on that characteristic.

“It’d be as powerful as a truck bomb” she said, “But a truck bomb with some stolen nuclear waste would be a lot easier to build, a lot easier to hide and wouldn’t have to worry about it meltin’ itself to destruction.”

“Problem solved then” Jet’s muse added her reply to the conversation, correctly guessing what she would’ve felt.

“There is still the benefit to producing such a weapon - the radiation pulse of fission,” Eddie remarked. “It would be extremely radiotoxic.”

“Well yeah. You can’t make it impossible. So you just make it like doing a tooth extraction on an angry badger - from the wrong end.” A few people smirked in response to that. “And it can’t trigger a secondary.”

“There are easier options, to do far more damage.” A.C added.

“Best we can do I guess,” Benjamin Rhodes added with an almost incongruous cheerfulness. “No more city-killers.”

The buck passed to Jet, responsible for the practicalities of getting things done. Her mouth regurgitated the details of the funding plans.

“I’ve got deals with some former Belt Alliance mines.” she said. “They’ve been hammered lately but since we’re subsidised by Venus to supply Bristol, we can sell them ore well below their cost of production - they can compete with the Rockhounds and line their pockets with the difference.”

If they had an attack of conscience, they had to worry about whatever evidence might’ve potentially been gathered on their own specific activities as part of the Belt Alliance protection racket.

A.C’s expression flattened, her lips pursing as it sat a little ill with her.

“I know we’re breaking the Parliament’s agreement with RDA” Jet continued, feeling a little bit giddy inside at getting one over the powerful. “ Some of it’s going to the station fund to pay for everyone’s pet projects and quality of life things here on Frigga, but I’ve had to cut a few MP’s in so they’ve an interest in keeping quiet. The Project gets less than half of it.”

“I might like to know who they are when this is done,” A.C mused

“There;ll be hell to pay if this gets out. The Rockhounds have political influence,” said Kohran. “They’ll go to legal war.”

“We can always buy a coupla shipments,” said Ben. “Send a regular ship over that comes back empty. Take it into stock on paper and then lose it to production issues. It never actually exists. I think everyone can do that.”

“That’ll help.” Jet said, with a quick smile. “We’re doing some production efficiency things to increase output aswell, but there’re limits. The more we sell, the more the cost of doing business goes up.”

“You might approach the RDA under the table” A.C. suggested. “If the sale price is lower than their production costs, they may be interested, and that flips the scandal from Frigga breaking an agreement her Majesty’s government made, to Frigga being forced to look elsewhere.”

Jet felt her stomach drop, appalled at the idea for reasons she couldn’t explain.

“It’d embarrass them, rather than give them more ammunition,” A.C added.

Of course, the idea drew a few nods of agreement from the rest of those present. It made perfect sense. It sat wrong with Jet’s soul in a way she couldn’t place - as if it violated the basic tenant of her being - an anathema to her existence.

The faces on the call waited for an answer.

“Yeah, I can do that,” she said, with all the enthusiasm of a child for their homework.

Jet had long learned the art of separating how she felt about doing a thing, from the necessity of actually doing it. These tasks were essential, no matter how wrong they felt.

Her mind still clutched at straws, looking for anything to justify her instincts.

“But the power dynamic changes,” she said.“The Rockhounds have no incentive for keeping the arrangement secret. I can’t push them harder either.”

The corrupt could be relied upon to do what was necessary to keep their face in the trough. The RDA had no such incentive - they could make demands. They could take control.

“I’ll have to make the introduction, of course,” said A.C., not seeming particularly enthused about it. “Marsden may need some convincing.”

Of course, Jet thought. Her presence changed the dynamic. The orbit of the conspiracy shifted.

The sense of powerlessness simmered inside Jet - of having no choice, no matter what, of being swept along in the narrative, no matter how she thought things should be. Dealing with Big Name Fans always came with a cost. But they all brought their own strengths to the table.

Ben contributed the bulk of the engine technology, the nuclear fuels and, on the surface, a lot of the overt funding. Kohran contributed the weapons knowledge with Eddie as a backstop. Eddie himself brought the biggest technical mind in Fenspace, even if it strained against the mundane limits of Frigga’s own engineers.. A.C. had been the unwitting participant, not even knowing about her involvement, until it had to be explained to her. She now had enough influence to maybe keep things smooth - that tendency to shape the narrative and help it flow. Of all things, it made success more likely.

Jet contributed a space station with a lot of space and a history of successfully containing a reactor explosion, along with the willingness to go so far out on a limb, she couldn’t even see the tree - and the ability to figure out how to land when the limb finally snapped.

Jet Jaguar could be seen to be that bit reckless. It fit how the narrative of Fenspace saw her.

It’s how everybody believed she’d snapped when she chased down Asmodeus Grey. It’s why nobody believed she’d been the lead on the mission - after one attempt to cover for her backfired.

Jet’s eyes had fallen to her reflection in the monitor.

The woman who stared at the wall behind her, looked tired beyond belief, like an echo of who she’d been over a decade before, when a random photographer had caught a picture of what’d been left after Jusenkyou had been finished.

She looked like she felt - like the dregs of a drink sitting in last night’s glass. Little left to give, and what was left had long gone stale. Little left to look forward to.

“There’s another fly in the ointment,” she said. “Anika knows what we’re doing out here - Anika Springfield.”

That moment’s silence, invited her to speak more. Of course, she’d have to drop a friend in it.

“I told her,” Ben announced, saving Jet the trouble of dropping him. “She asked me questions, and I couldn’t lie to her, so I told her it was our project - “ he smiled again “To hide the real truth.”

The worst part of it being, he’d thought he’d been doing the right thing.

"Ben, talking to Anika will have consequences you know."

Consequences that could range from a calm chiding, to having to bring the chocolate cheesecake the next time the ‘committee’ met, to time, costs or influence as needs be. A.C. spoke in a tone that didn’t

"I was trying to-"

"You DIDN'T. CONSULT. That's caused further issues to deal with. And it doesn't look good for you."

"Wha-?" Benjamin’s avatar blinked on screen

"If that's what you do to a supposed friend, what else?"

“Anika’s my friend too.” Ben had his hackles up. “She asked me if I knew anything. I couldn’t lie to her.”

“Yeh still coulda sent me a bleedin’ message before she knocked on me door,”

That moment of silence warned her that her frustration had bubbled up - the mask had slipped. Eddies little avatar seemed to inflate a little with barely contained smugness, as if to say ‘See what I’ve been dealing with.

“This won’t get us further,” A.C. warned in a plain tone. “The next step is, of course, either to try and convince her that it’s best if this remains a secret, or to try get ahead of it.”

The discussion began - what, how and who. What did the narrative expect. They each offered the solutions expected of them.

Her mind drifted away. A few people on Frigga offered their problems, hoping Baron Frigga would solve them with the personal touch. Sign off on a project. Put a word in with the council. Ask a question of a minister. Figure out which node had gone corrupt. Simple things - stupid things - but solving them made people happy and say thanks. Local politics never changed - she may be a loon who’ll kill us all, but sure she fixed the roads and got the jobs in, and didn’t she get those two steam locomotives approved for the Sparks?

Even that didn’t seem to matter. Part of her mind still lingered in that room on Jusenkyou, terrified at being discovered, and still hoping nobody ever learned of her side-trip.

The only way she could win, was get off the path the narrative expected of her.

What’s the last thing you do in a conspiracy?

“We go public,” Jet said. It wasn’t a proposal. ”Everything except the bomb. We go with Ben’s explanation.”

The silence that followed, politely requested an explanation. She figured out the reason why, after coming up with the action.

"When it all comes out, they'll all be happy that we got caught, and they'll be happy that they know and they're smarter than us and we didn't get away with it. And maybe they'll understand why we kept it all secret, without really knowing. " Jet felt a savage smirk draw across her face. “So long as they’re happy with the story, they’ll stop looking and nothing ever needs to be hidden again.”

The ordinary fan could be glad about being smarter than the Big Names. They could be happy with the narrative - so long as it fit what was expected of the participants. The narrative would become truth. The reality would be forgotten.

Ben made a face like someone had stepped on his grave. “Yikes!”

A moment’s silence followed. Kohran glanced at Eddie’s Avatar.

“Marsden might not want to support a competitor, in the case,” A.C. remarked. “But that might also be a matter of discussion,”

Of course, she’d also understand, on some level. They both worked as Troubleshooters. A good hang out could hide a great many things, especially when that hangout confirmed people’s biases.

In the back of her mind, Jet’s muse made notes on an angle that could be played. Play into Marsden’s impression of Frigga, the Millenium and Government enterprise.

“Well, there’re other things that can be done with a nuclear reactor, too,” said Jet, “I’m sure we can find something of value we can do for the Rockhounds.”

Kohran glanced offscreen momentarily. “Yeah, that’ll be easy an’ I know they use some isotopes for densimeters.”

“We use them too,” added Ben. “For deep penetration inspection and in the infirmary.”

A.C’s avatar paused a moment. “I’ve requested a meeting with Marsden.”

Jets eyes glanced at all the window. “Speaking of meetings, I’ve to get to Venus in an hour.”

“Good luck,” Ben Chuckled.

She gave a shrug of her shoulders. “I can be late. It’ll be nice to be fashionable for once.” Jet took a breath. “By the next meeting, I think we’ll have a press release ready, our engineers will have the construction plans done.”

Another message pinged off inside her mind - one requesting Sylia attend an urgent meeting. Keeping that deception going be telepresence wouldn’t last much longer, but it had to. Jet thought she could take it while flying.

“The Prototype bird with the new engines will be ready by then,” and Ben seemed positively proud of that. “We’re getting a little more kick out of the engines too”

“I might wanna try one of those,” said Kohran.

“I’ll get you one of the first batch,” Ben promised, showing the first

“Just a test is fine.”

“I will have the blast shields ready,” said Eddie. And he would be so pleased to do it. “Along with the final stability calculations in a format which is human interpretable - and for public consumption.”

Through it all, it seemed like they were still on track. She realised she’d stopped pacing around the room.

The participants logged off in turn, each with their own traditional goodbyes. Jet watched them go, one by one, until only A.C. herself remained, her green eyes not able to see Jet, but somehow still watching.

She sat back in her seat, and Jet found herself wondering what was left to discuss.

“Are you alright, Jet?”

She hadn’t expected that. Her breath caught in her throat. She felt like a child who’d been caught with her hand in the biscuit tin.

“It’s not hard to tell that you haven’t had time to sleep for at least a month.” A.C. gave a gentle smile, not threatening. “Which means you’re probably neglecting your maintenance.” The chiding was gentle - non-threatening. Just a warning that it’d been spotted. “No matter how much we want to think otherwise, we’re only human,:

Jet could tell she was being deliberately careful, like she was offering a hand.

“I’ve too much to do right now.”

Back off on any of it, and it all fell apart.

“Other people can carry the torch, if you let them.”

Other people would probably fuck it up. Jet bit her lip a moment, getting the sense she was being led into a minefield.

“I’ve a meeting with an advocate about the reactor inquiry in an hour,” she said, as a deflection. “I need to get to that. I’d rather a barrister in that room than me.”

A.C. simple nodded again.

“I’m asking you as a friend,” she said. “Before I have to step in as your Doctor. Please look after yourself.”

The call cut, leaving Jet alone in the room, shaking inside her armour. She screamed at the blank screen, before launching it across the floor at an inhuman speed. It burst into a shower of electric sparks.

Rage. Betrayal. Fear, she couldn’t explain what it was, even to herself. How the fuck was she supposed to take a break anyway?

Stingray begged for more attention from an owner who never existed, and who had kess to give. If that collapsed, she’d be the person who let an entire company and those who it employed collapse into the ground - for no good reason at all..

Frigga and the War on Kipple raged on. A flamewar needed to be headed off after someone accidentally modded themself into some artist’s closed species. Something always broke, and it was always something she had to fix.

Followed by the duties expected of Baron Frigga to Her Majesty’s parliament, which seemed to actively reject her presence but still demanded she attend to them.

Asagiri needed work to stay relevant and in people’s minds. Someone wanted to buy a spacecraft and it needed to be tweaked for a test-flight. The last remaining racing team since Daryl pulled out pushed for more and more technical support to stay ahead. Let that fall, and the one thing that might’ve been interesting would wither and be forgotten as it fell out of the collective mindshare of enthusiasts everywhere.

And then, The Reactors, which ate hours between local planning and negotiations with suppliers and keeping an eye on the Boskone to make sure they hadn’t figured it out. Leave it alone, and risk the end of the world.

The one thing A.C. didn’t understand - a controlled shutdown of all four machines couldn’t be possible. And trying to stop them would have her taking the blame as the person who ruined it for everyone who relied on it. Nobody would care.

Even if she succeeded, nobody would know and she’d have to put up with everyone thinking she was a loon.

Worse than that…

…given a few quiet moments she really wasn’t sure what she could do to take a break. Nothing in life was fun anymore. Most were just a slow march towards an inevitable disappointment.

Jet worked in what had once been the Station Chief Engineer’s office, surrounded by dozens of half-finished projects that’d been abandoned as whatever spark that’d momentarily inspired them guttered and died. Mackie’s hacked-open skull still stared from a shelf where it’d been put.

She couldn’t bring herself to do anything else with it.

Her meeting on Venus still insisted she attend.

Within minutes she was hurtling through open space aboard XR, pushing up against Magnificent Midnight’s speed records. She cut it close inside the orbit of Mercury - close enough for the paint to blister, panels to pop and the sunshades to start to fizzle.

She plunged the black, dagger-like aircraft towards the planet, crashing it into a high parking orbit, annoying some tool of a pilot who an alert from his TCAS and acted like it was the worst thing in the world

Rather than bother with spending a half hour in the swarm of traffic control to get down into the cities, Jet left he spacecraft in orbit on autopilot, set the transponder to broadcast the ‘crew resting’ signal, popped the canopy and snuck herself down through the traffic with her private transponder off.

XR remained in orbit, pilotlessly cruising through traffic.

—-

“Hey?-----How ya doin? It’s been a while?”

“It has” —-- “I’m on the right side of the ground.”

“That’s always a start,”

“What’ve you been doing?”

“Well yeah I got the Cat running and I got the permits from the city at last - so it seems my Aunt’s family name still carries some weight with the mayor’s office.” —--- “Actually kind of surprised I didn’t hear from you before now.”

“I couldn’t think of anything to say,”

“We were going out for ten years. I would’ve thought…”

“I wanted to be friends, but I didn’t want to be the friend who only called up when had the world to unload. It’s been tough.”

“I read about the accident” —--- “And Mackie. I’m sorry - by the time I got the news, everything had moved on and I didn’t want to re-open a wound like that.”

“There’s more to it, that you don’t know about” —--- “And that I can’t talk about right now, but I appreciate it.”

“I don’t think you wanted to catch up thought….”

“I just needed to talk to someone - I guess. Someone who had a different perspective - who was outside the flow of things. Everyone else is caught up in it all. And you’ve been on the ground for a year.”

“Alright. What’s the problem?”

“I’m stuck into something that’s forcing me to go one way, with an end that I don’t want to go to, but is going to happen anyway. Like being in quicksand - where every choice I make, will just make everything worse in a way I can’t deal with. There’s no good ending, just different shades of bad and I can’t see a way out of it.”

“You’re not thinking of hurting yourself, are you?” —------------------“Jet?” —----------- “Or harming yourself?”

“I didn’t realise it, until you said it”------------------- “If I burn out, or have a bad accident, it stops. I’m out, it all stops before everything goes bad.”

“I’m glad you spoke to someone, at least” —---- “I wish it wasn’t me this early in the morning but goddamn I wanted to hear from you. And I still want to hear from you”

“I still have to figure out how to stop all this.”

“You stop, and figure it out afterwards.”-------- “And this from the person who’se known for figuring out how to land, after she jumps”

“I suppose you're right. You always had a better head for this sort of stuff.”

“I guess I grew up with feelings.” —------------”I need you to tell me you’re not going to hurt yourself”

“I’m alright right now.”

“Promise me you’re not going to hurt yourself.”

“I promise I won’t hurt myself.”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe if you’re up in the near future, you could stop by for coffee. There’s a lot of cool stuff we’ve started.”

“It’d be nice to talk again. About better things.”

“I’d like that.”

“Later Jet.”

“Later….”

------------------

Spoiler

Dartz · 06-10-2024, 05:13 PM

In: Boards >> System >> News >> Current Events
From: Needtocomeupwithaname (Fenspace Gargoyle) (Original Poster)
Posted on October 11th, 2025: Friggan fallout pt4

Alright. So in summary, so far we have.

• Nothing Happened at ALL
• There was an incident - don’t worry about it
• There was an accident - these heroes prevented a disaster
• There was an explosion - it was operator error
• There was an explosion - it was a control system error
• There was an explosion - the government’s at fault for not funding more modern reactors
• There was an explosion - it was contained in the containment of the reactor
• There was an explosion - there was a minor radiation leak.
• There was an explosion - 65535 nanosieverts is as high as the dosimeters ever read.
• There was an explosion - and radioactive smoke entered the public spaces but nobody was contaminated
• There was an explosion - but decontamination of public spaces was effective
• There is some mild contamination - we are looking at blasting a new main hangar in the future.
• The explosion was caused by a flash fire inside the reactor caused by a water tube leak inside a molten lithium chamber.
• The explosion was caused by a flash nuclear reaction inside the lithium breeder blanket when the core liner broke apart due to thermal shock.
• The explosion was caused by a flash nuclear explosion in the depleted Uranium we’d stuck inside the reactor to try hybridise it, when the core liner broke apart due to thermal shock.
• The explosion was caused by a flash nuclear explosion in the depleted Uranium we’d stuck inside the reactor to try hybridise it - because the government wouldn’t fund the upgrades we needed so we improvised.
• We stuck the depleted Uranium in the reactor to get more power out of it rather than build a whole new power core.
• We’re building new reactors to overcome a power deficit - the design is a safe, natural uranium and graphite design.
• We’re building new reactors to overcome a power deficit - there have been no reported core damage events with this reactor design in 30 years.
• We’ve modified the reactor design to be absolutely safe - because the core damage incident 31 years ago was a doozy.
• These RBMK reactors definitely, totally won’t explode. (And we’re sure of that because physics says so).
• And now, today’s releases; And, we’ve been trying to hide a secret program to cook Uranium into mixed oxides to fuel the next generation Blackbird engines and we didn’t want the Boskone to find out and blow it up. (Oh, by the way, put some Moxy in your Blackbird!)

My God. I think, finally we might actually be at the end of it.

Hopefully.

Figuring out what she’s up to is like trying to piece together an original novel solely by reading the fanfiction of the television adaptation. We still don’t know how this relates to Lun and the Gate Metal fiasco.

But the generally effect seems to be to make The Convention as a whole and Her Majesty’s Government in particular to just give up on ever knowing what the fuck is going on so they give up on trying to stop it.

For more of the wilder theorisation, go to Boards >> Misc >> Conspiracies. There’s a whole topic on using the reactors to make Gate Metal precursors that almost seems plausible.

>>Quote: Black_Amethyst Posted: “The only acceptable result of this is the Immediate removal of the Councilors from office.”

You’re forgetting the background here - the whole election fiasco that led to the ‘Baron Frigga’ in the first place. Simply removing the Station Council - even with cause - will probably break whatever relationship Frigga has with Venus. Nobody living on the station will ever trust the parliament in Venus ever again.

And this hearing isn’t likely to change the perception of the station council. They are generally fairly popular among people living there. Most are engineers, team leaders, or business owners.

And they’re popular because they’re doing exactly what’s expected of local government leaders:
–Keep the lights on
–Grow the local economy
–Create opportunities for people to do shit to make their lives better
–Be seen to give the ordinary Joe Soap a voice in a distant parliament.

This is a clusterfuck with multiple participants. The reality is, this all began with Her Majesty’s Government’s initial Rules At All Costs approach - even when the situation that existed at the time was clearly outside those rules.

It has been exacerbated by Frigga’s tendency to both treat the rules as ‘Guidelines’ and as something that will be used to punish them when things go wrong rather than as a framework for a fair and equitable government.

This tribunal is Her Majesty’s Government’s best effort at - at least - understanding just what the fuck happened here and why and - more importantly - if there’s a risk of it ever happening again. Frigga doesn’t trust this - for reasons that should be obvious.

The truth is, I don’t expect there to be any harsh consequences for those involved - beyond some form of administrative yellow card - a warning not to do this sort of thing again.

>>Quote: Sokitumi Posted: “Her Majesty’s Government needs to understand Frigga is an equal member and not Colony.”

This is the exact sort of thought ending rhetoric that causes a problem and amplifies the antagonism, both here, on Venus and on Frigga.

The only way out of this is to work to create a level of trust and cooperation between the Council of Frigga, and the Parliament of Venus so that accidents like this can be openly discussed.

Frigga needs to be open with Her Majesty’s Government on its goals, objectives and what it’s actually doing rather than hiding everything embarrassing from ‘Big Sister’. Frigga needs to create an environment where Her Majesty’s Government can trust what the Council states is happening on Frigga reflects the reality of what’s happening on Frigga, and that it can follow the rules it agreed to when it acceded to the Crystal Millennium

Her Majesty’s Government needs to create an environment where it’s OK to ask for help and where Frigga can expect some level of support towards growing as a settlement in the belt, without the hammer falling down the moment something goes wrong. Trust is a two way street.

In short, both parties need to grow the fuck up, get some cop on, and act like adults rather than kids running a college anime convention.

>>Poster Black_Amethyst I.P. Address: 87.245.195.192.
>>Poster Sokitumi I.P. Address: 88.86.93.170

Chelyabinsk? Kostroma? Why am I not surprised? Ivan forgot his VPN again.

This is how mundane governments mess with us. It’s the corrosion of the ties between us that weakens us. Eventually, they’ll slip their own stooges in and, right under your nose, you’ll become their agents without even knowing it.

Hopefully, both parties in this will be able to sit down and deal with this like the grownups they’re pretending to be.

-----------------

Spoiler

Dartz · (This post was last modified: 06-10-2024, 05:52 PM by Dartz.)

–7–

Jet slept for the first time in months - A.C’s estimate had been off by a factor of 6. Jet woke with a thundering headache, a vague memory of a dream involving a naked A.C. Peters getting annoyed at having to wait for her in a secret underwater Europan base, and a hundred notifications begging for her attention, some of which had already resolved themself once people realised she wouldn’t answer.

The house hadn’t been cleaned in months, a layer of dust coating the timber surfaces. Not eating had kept the dishes from multiplying. Not having anything to clean, saved time as well.

Aside from the footprints on the floor, the house simply looked abandoned. Ford’s bedroom still had its bed unmade from the last time she’d slept in it - a year before. Everything else had been taken when she’d Gafiated. Mackie’s room still waited for him to return from the last semester at Nekomi. It looked like a bombsite, with worn clothes strewn about the floor, mingling with the wreckage of various madboy toys and a well worn copy of Intron Depot No. 1. Mackie, for the time being, didn’t exist anymore.

The whole space felt empty - dead.

Nothing lived there. The drain traps had dried off, letting the smell of the sewers beneath fill the house. The floorboards had begun to split where her footsteps had worn through the varnish, bare wood turning pale and silver. Most of the doorhandles had broken off. The locks on many doors had been wrenched from their frames.

Kipplisation had set in hard in her home.

Even the Highway Star had started to leak its fluids onto the floor beneath it. Jet suspected the engine had begun to corrode inside. It’d need new irons at the very least to get it running again.

She got herself another booster pack from the fridge, clipped it to her waist and allowed it to charge her body back up with all the nutrients a combat cyborg could need to keep going. She mixed in a bit of her own wavemix.

It didn’t hit like it used to, evapourating inside her and leaving her feeling empty inside.

Kippleisation could affect people too, she guessed.

Jet took a breath and opened her mind to her email accounts, allowing her muse filter it down to the most important items.

Seteshang Psyche would trade under the table for water, oxygen, and a shipment of ore to meet a contract. Jet wondered if they knew she’d been there before, before the Canturbury mining group moved in.

Jet wondered if the whole fictional Innerworld and Belterworld dynamic had infected the wave, and caused the issues between Frigga and Venus. Maybe if she had the time she’d watch the bloody series, or read the books, she’d understand better.

Lun would be returning from her charter with the Tsoukalos Institute for Extraterrestrial Archaeology within the week, after a quick stop to go ice-fishing in the Oort cloud.

Tech’ had figured out what caused the leak in the water reserves and applied the technical hammer to a sticking relief valve before clearing a few loose filter beads from the pilot line.

Marsden agreed to a meeting to hash out some of the details of the ore sale. Her Majesty’s government subsidies turned any money they got for the extra rock into profit.

Stingray Motor Engineering began to wake up, demanding more of Sylia’s time. Three suppliers needed a kick. A corporate customer needed a hug.

An emergency meeting begged for her attendance. Boeing had accepted the SCHMU’d part samples they’d sent. The old Fed-Ex Death Cruisers got a stay of execution, as new rudder power control valves could be printed as completed assemblies, seals and all. A new line of revenue opened up.

An hour of her day would be given over to a marketing meeting where, again, it would be suggested that Sylia make an appearance for the public launch of a new project.

Sylia Stingray hadn’t shown her face in person in months and people had started to wonder. The techbros had started to wonder if she’d begun to hide from their trolling after she’d dared profane before the altar of the Dark Lord Musk.

Fuck ‘em.

Jet had her suspicions about what they really hated about Sylia Stingray.

One more message arrived.

The Galaxy Railroad regrets to say that they could not move the core modules without handwaving them into the consist. Anything that large would break the drive field. It broke the suspension of disbelief that kept the whole thing rolling.

Jet felt something hot and liquid pop inside her mind

“After have the plans for six fucking months. After saying you could do it for six fucking months you finally fucking figure it out a week after John Henry starts cutting fucking steel.”

Her muse translated it into something more polite and fired it back before her voice had finished ringing off the walls. A moment later, she heard the crash of something hitting the ground behind her.

She blinked

“Oh fuck,”

The entire kitchen had been destroyed. The fridge had crashed into the cupboards, then through the wall behind into the hallway. It took her a moment to comprehend that she’d just thrown it. Followed by the understanding that she’d have to fix all of it by herself.

“Oh fuck,” she said again.

All she had to do was stop.

Just. Stop.

Just like Ford told her to.

Just like she wished the universe would do. Just Stop and leave her alone.

Jet paced the floor, pinned between her obligations, her responsibilities and the reality that the only way her body could see out of it was to drive her to the point that she imploded, or had some unfortunate accident that’d leave everyone shrugging their shoulders and going ‘ Well, that was expected’. The brightest stars burnout fastest. Lets hope she finds the peace in death that she didn’t find in life.

Another message pinged through her mind, one from the barristers on Venus. They’d finished preparing for the tribunal, sending the final documents for her to review while they slept.

Get cleaned up. Look healthy, fresh and ‘good’. Show off the silverware. Try to show up looking like the hearing matters.

Just stopping would be so much easier if the universe would let her. In twelve hours, the tribunal on Venus began. For the barristers, it began tomorrow morning. For her, it’d be the end of the day.

Jet longed to just give the entire universe a piece of her mind, tell ‘em to fuck off, put up with it and get the fuck over it, whatever it was.

They all seemed so damned happy.

Jet felt anything but. Jet couldn’t tell what she felt beyond being - empty. Jet took a breath. She’d promised Ford she wouldn’t hurt herself. Something in the back of her mind probably didn’t feel compelled to follow that.

While Venus slept, the full technical details of Frigga’s reactor project would launch. Everything they’d agreed to share would dump on the web. Her solicitors knew it’d be coming.

Only the critical piece of the puzzle would be missing. But after a year of mush and half-truths, something concrete would flip the narrative. Everyone would know and they’d be happy, even if they didn’t have that last little piece of the jigsaw.

They’d be satisfied enough to keep from looking for that last fragment.

Within the hour, her head would explode with messages from bloggers and journalists looking for the personal answer. For the what, for the why, for the exuberant press-release telling the ‘verse exactly how awesome the three largest fission reactors in history would be. For the smiling photograph about how proud they were to be a part of the whole endeavour.

Jet felt her body revolt against the possibility, a sense of dread crawling beneath her armour.

It couldn’t be stopped.

And then came the hearing, and more questions.

Jet closed her network interfaces. All connections refused.

A flash of anxiety followed, the dread fear that she would miss something important. Every synapse flared with the urge to re-open them, just in case something had happened in those last few microseconds.

Someone in Crystal Titusville might’ve reposted that bloody meme featuring herself, A.C., and the final punchline ‘The Combat Cyborg we have at home’. And, of course, the flamewar would begin as even Jet had supporters.

She took a breath.

The interfaces stayed closed. Paying any attention to either side would scorch the brain.

–

RACOON FIREARMS .440 CORBON LUCIFER HAWK CUSTOM.

The engravings still shone bright. The blackened finish had worn off the edges over the years, highlighting all the switchgear. The grip had been cracked and crushed by her fingers.

“Racoon Firearms?” said the tech, turning the weapon over in his hands. “Never heard of them.”

He’d been the only gun-tech that sold a Desert Eagle - one of dozens of the garagistes using the war to try become another Whistler. Jet only knew him as Kendo. Jet doubted anyone else remembered him or cared that he ever existed. His profile on The Gun Jesus website was a redlink.

“He was based on Crystal Osaka.” Said Jet.

The day she went to pick it up, had been a hell of a day.

“Sorry,” said the tech. “This has had a lot of rounds through it.” He racked the slide back and locked it in place, peering into the gas ports. “So that’s why they used a Desert Eagle - it’s been fitted with some form of self-adjusting gas regulator - like a battle rifle.”

“It was the only pistol that’d self-compensate for atmospheric pressure.”

Only one she could afford anyway. And magnum revolvers took too long to reload.

“A rocket-valve system like a Whistler MPAW would’ve been so much simpler,” said the tech with mild derision. He released the slide catch and let it slam forward with a hard, metallic clack that threatened to sever a trapping finger and earning a raised eyebrow.

“With tungsten-core rounds, this thing was the only way we could pop helmets, without bringing a BAR,” explained Jet.

Browning Automatic Rifle. Or at least, pattern replicas. Old technology, but full-auto with 30-06 couldn’t be argued with. The tech looked at her like she’d been talking about muskets, or maybe rocks and slings. Not a patch on a dual-sector auto-electric railgun shooting sixty steel bb’s a second.

“This might take a couple of weeks if we have to make new parts.” he said.

Jet felt herself give a relieved smile. “That’s fine. I won’t need it for a month or two anyway.”

It might’ve taken Ford a couple of days, if she’d still been around, but having it go away for a while didn’t seem like a bad idea after all - especially considering the damage she’d done to her own home.

The tech locked the slide open with a yellow, numbered tag. He broke one half off and handed it to Jet as her docket.

“Don’t lose that or we can’t give it back to you,” he warned.

Jet gave him a look for a moment, half wondering if she shouldn’t dare him to try and enforce it. Both gun and owner would be fairly obvious in any world with common sense.

“Let me know when it’s ready,” she said

“Like I said, a couple of weeks at least if anything needs to be machined.”

She watched it join a rack of local-built .22 flechette rifles.

“There’s no rush on it,” she said. “No Rush at all.”

Jet stepped outside, and found herself on the station’s main concourse. Two years ago, it’d been a dead and rusting hulk. Now it buzzed with life, dozens of people milling about. Some wore industrial overalls, with high-visibility flashings across their shoulder. Others, their own private uniform that was half 19th-century military, and half short-skirt and long boots.

Ohtoripunk had become the fashion on Frigga, a revolutionary counterpart to the clean, classical neo-romanesque architecture of the Crystal Millenium.

Archwork which would’ve been grown from solid crystal on Venus, had been wrought and welded from meteoric steel into graceful, skeletonised art-noveau curves. What would’ve been formed from filigree metalwork in Crystal Tokyo, had been blown into electric neon lights, fizzing with energy.

Metal, light and concrete came alive, rather than existing in an eternal indestructible stasis. Bubblegum-pink roses with nuclear green stems framed inside brilliant white strips lit the passageways below.

Kotono’s Phitness Bee gym had a golden bumblebee merrily buzzing between white daisies. When Frigga’d been a mine, it’d been a boardroom for middle managers. The Midoriya Cafe shone a soothing, grassy green. It’d been the staff lunchroom. The Rock and a Hard place bar sparked in an electric blue. It’d once been the HR Department. The cubicles made for good private booths.

The executive boardroom had become a school for the few fen-kinder they had.

Only the general store lived in the same place as it had back when Frigga had been a corporatocracy trying to emulate the Greenwood model. The Original ‘New Bermingham Company’ sign had been restored

The Fellow Travellers had pasted a sign on the wall, warning people it still traded in souls. Justice and Peace suggested taking salary payments in scrip contravened the principals of Social Justice. The Station Council reminded that station scrip didn’t count as taxable income for your monthly dues to the Crown as it was and they were working to keep it that way .

The Company Store saved everyone money on transport costs.

People took it according to their own beliefs, what suited their goals, or what they needed most.

Rose bushes filled planters that had previously been home to monochrome shrubbery manicured to the square and level. Daylighters in the ceiling kept them alive. The diffuser panels had long been lost, throwing sharp black shadows into the corners and sparking hard and bright off glass and metal trims.

The workshop Ford had once worked out of had become the station’s public armoury. The Heavyarms sign had been replaced by the glowing pink outline of a catgirl carrying a sleek shining pistol.

Next door to it, a luscious purple cat beckoned visitors inside for a more intimate and private experience.

One smelled of gunsmoke, metal and oil. The other, of spicy perfumes and menthol aftershaves. Minnie-May Hopkins had taken over both.

Jet took a deep breath and stepped inside the Purple Kitten. Silken drapes flowed across her armour as she stepped into a world of plush fuschia cushions, golden trim and deep, crimson. Thick, luscious carpet the colour of fine wine muffled her footsteps.

The look of surprise Minnie May greeted her with, turned a nervous knot in Jet’s stomach.

“I need some help,” she said, momentarily wishing she could turtle her head into her armour.

“Help?” Jet watched Minnie’s eyes drop to a point just below her legs. “How?”

There were, of course, some obvious difficulties.

“I need to get cleaned up.” Jet said. “It’s very hard for me to get properly clean.” She demonstrated by trying to touch her back.

“Well, we know how to be discreet!” Minnie assured with a bright smile. “And I know just how to help. Room A-2-4 and someone will be right up.”

Another Patron passed by, dressed as Yuri from the Dirty Pair, her tanned skin shining with sweat as bright as her golden battle-bikini.

Jet guessed they weren’t used to walking in heels, or with so much weight up top. Someone trying on a puppet to explore a new identity, or to indulge a private fantasy? Someone who would quickly spread the rumour

The puppetmaster raised a single finger to her lips, making a quiet ‘shsssh’.

Jet matched with a steel finger and a smirk. A mutual secret that caused her to tingle inside. Whomever really lay behind those mahogany eyes thought they had as much to lose by being discovered as Jet did.

A giggle escaped the puppet’s lips, chased by a warm red blush as they realised what they’d just done.

Jet felt a soft smile on her own lips, chased by a momentarily thrill of anticipation and moments fantasisation about breaking out of her armour and giving Yuri a Kei as a cosplay partner.

What would that be like?

She found the door, and pushed it open. Inside, the lights shone harsh and bright, like an operating theater. The air still carried a faint hint of antiseptic, mingled with spiced wildflower and that machine-oil aftertaste Jet would normally have associated with A.C Peter’s workshop.

The walls had been painted a hard, clean titanium white. The floors, a clean, medical blue linoleum intended to be hosed down.

The entire room had been formed from Catgirl Mimetic polymers - adapting to every customer - with a little extra help from a Wizard trying to replicate a Room of Requirement.

Jet heard the shows Followed by fresh menthol aftershave. She turned to face three men, each carved into the image of Olympic perfection.

Jets eyes fell to the muscles first, sharp and chiseled as cut from stone, oiled glistening under the spotlights overhead Followed by the budgies being smuggled in underwear that strained to escape.

Something deep inside her stirred - a little giddy electric thrill that echoed inside the remnant of her body. A little ember that’d long been asleep sparked, flickered and began to smoulder .She felt herself swallow a lump a wave of desire rising inside her.

Wow.

“May?” she sounded her best to sound cross. “Why’d you send the Adoni?”

“I’m busy in person,” the first of the Adoni answered. “The amazons were booked.” said the second. And I pride myself on knowing what my clients want, even if they don’t want to admit it to themselves.” said the third. “Besides, all you need is some help getting cleaned up,” chorused all three.

“You know I’m not into men,” Jet said, firmly.

“You said you prefer women. That’s different” said the first. “So you won’t enjoy a single bit of this then”, said the second, teasing Of course, he gave a roguish toss of his luxurious blonde hair over his shoulder. Her face had turned a hot red. His face had been cast in the mould of female desire, longing to worship her.

It didn’t matter.

They’d already prepared the buckets of warm water, sponges, chamois leather, cloth and turtle wax.

Getting properly cleaned up was intimate work for a cyber such as Jet, and, of all things, Minnie May Hopkins could be counted on to be a professional and not blab about it.

–

Kotono glanced at the screen on her watch. Fifteen minutes to go. Daryl still hadn't shown up. Fifteen minutes and they'd miss their landing slot in Kandor. They''d miss check-in at the hotel.

Her finger tapped on the table. Her packed bags waited on the floor beside her.

-:Nothing fits anymore

She tapped an angry message into her watch.

-:We can get something there

Honestly. Then again, Daryl had never really been the sort for planning things out.

-:Fine. There in fifteen.

Kotono wished her watch could transmit more than messages. She wished to pour her boiling frustration through the screen and strangle the woman on the other side with it.

The thoughts of spending a week on Kandor with someone whose apartment perpetually looked like the aftermath of a Boskone raid began to send chilling fingers crawling up her spine.

On the other hand, going alone to a large city to meet someone she'd only ever spoken with by interwave sounded like the beginning of an episode of True Murder Mysteries.

She glanced down at her watch. The animated clock face seemed to pick up speed. It buzzed three times on her wrist, giving an electronic chime as a warning. Every other phone, watch, or pager in the café triggered simultaneously.

A speaker in the ceiling chirped twice. "Shock Warning. Shock Warning," it said, in flat tone.

A heartbeat later, a ripple shocked across the green tea on the table in front of her. Crockery in the café rattled. A moment after, a drumbeat reverberated through the air. A few of the new arrivals jumped, not used to the warning yet.

Half a kilometre away, they were blasting new chambers for new apartments.

Kotono always offered silent gratitude that they'd chosen to create their own warnings, rather than copy the Japanese ones like had been originally planned.

After a moment's pause, life returned to normal in the Midoriyah café. Kotono glanced again at her watch.

Daryl showed as typing…perpetually typing…considering her response when they were already in a hurry. Kotono forced herself to look elsewhere.

Standing in the concourse opposite the café was something she hadn't seen in a long time.

Jet Jaguar. But polished up clean and shiny for the first time in months. Was she wearing makup?

The idea of turning a double-date into a triple amused, for the few moments it took her to realise she had no idea who or what would be an ideal match for a Jet Jaguar. Or that, a fully armoured combat cyborg would probably end up becoming the centre of attention, leaving both herself and Daryl out in the cold.

A little spear of jealousy killed the idea dead, but her curiosity had been piqued.

"Hey Jet!" Jet answered with a look like she expected to be shot at. Kotono gave a soft smile "There's a free seat."

Jet thought for a few seconds, before allowing the expression on her face to soften. The cyber stepped into the café, picking her way around the patrons with fluid care, before settling down into the chair beside her.

The steel chair creaked a protest at the cyber's weight.

Lavender perfume? Mixed with car polish? What was she planning?

"Another date with Alex?" Jet indicated towards the suitcase at her feet

"We broke up three months ago."

And Jet should've known that, if she'd been paying attention to anyone outside her work

"Sorry," said Jet, momentarily ashamed. "What happened?"

Kotono drew her face into a mask of indignation. "I thought it would fun dating someone who used to be a woman." She huffed, folding her arms. "He cheated on me - the asshole. And then tried to blame it on me by saying I wasn't giving him the intimacy he needed"

And Jet needed to understand how utterly and completely blameless Kotono was in the whole affair.

"Men are all the same?"

It sounded like she was more trying to say what was expected of a female friend in the same situation, rather than what she'd actually felt.

"I really thought he'd remember what that felt like," said Kotono.

Jet gave a shrug "He became a woman's idea of what a man is – good and bad. That's how the wave works sometimes."

Kotono gave her a side glance.

"It does explain some ex-men I know."

Jet consciously pursed her lips into an indignant pout. "You're just jealous of my armoured figure." A flash of a smile showed her true intent. For a heartbeat, it almost felt real.

Kotono extended an arm, making a show of checking her nails. "Some of us prefer to be naturally beautiful and elegant."

Jet took a moment to think. "I am beautiful and elegant."

Something definitely felt forced, like she was trying to play a role, skirting the edge of the uncanny valley/

"I can't imagine you'd have much problem with men anyway."

Both from being a fully armoured combat cyborg and a fully armoured combat cyborg.

Jet raised an eyebrow. "Sylia gets a lot of hate from the Muskfen," she said, in a matter of fact tone. She paused and thought. "My first experience with men from a female perspective was trying to requisition a transport shuttle, only to be told by a Great Justice supply officer that he'd never been deepthroated by a chick that didn't need to stop to breath."

Kotono blinked. Wow. Where'd that come from?

"What'd you do?"

After all, she'd seen what Jet could do, and in the back of Kotono's mind there'd always been those little revenge fantasies.

Jet answered with a wry smile. "I didn't even realise it until I talked to Alex who was in the Gruppe with me and she was like, 'First time?'"

Kotono felt herself giggle at the idea of Jet being so naïve. A momentary blush heated the cyber's cheeks, a spark flashing in her eyes. That'd been something real.

"I'm actually surprised anyone would try that with you." she said, before realising that she really shouldn't have been. "Men really are shameless,"

A little sympathy drew a faint smile from Jet, and the faintest glimmer of a light in her eyes

"That sense of betrayal is common to all who call themselves women." Kotono continued. "It doesn't matter what age it happens at. It's one of the shared experiences that sets us apart."

"I used to be one of them." Jet took a breath, looking down at her crossed legs. "The Wave eventually washed away that part of me but, at the time I hadn't realised it yet. I still felt male - even with these hips." The chair squeaked in pain as she highlighted her exagreated figure. "I guess men changed that. Made me feel like something else."

Jet's armour likely meant she'd never really felt threatened by men. Kotono had the sense not to bring that up. It occurred to her that, perhaps, it might be the reason why Jet kept the armour.

"I can meet you in Kandor when the hearing's over, if you're alone," Jet offered.

"Oh, Daryl's coming with me," said Kotono, brightly. "I've arranged a date for her too - with a cop."

She'd already gotten her phone out of her pocket to show off his profile before she spotted an expression on Jet's face like the child left as last pick on sports day.

"That's fine," said Jet.

"Hey, I'm here," a voice interrupted. "We going?"

Summoned by the sound of her name, Daryl stood there, with a backpack slung over her shoulder. A flash of anger heated Kotono's face.

"After this long? And that's what you're wearing"

Daryl answered with a playful scowl. Jet glanced at both of them

It took a lot of effort, to look like you didn't put any effort into deciding what you wore. The right jeans with the tear in right place, the right leather jacket with artificial patina that spoke to an age it didn't have, and a freshly printed t-shirt, machine-bleached to look like she might really have bought it at the band's last concert before the lead singer ate a shotgun slug.

"At least I don't shop for clothes at Gateway 2000."

Feigning injury, Kotono placed a hand on a fresian-patterned jumper at least two sizes too large for her, before rewarding with a smile. A few gentle barbs helped hide the real things that bothered, like a sort of acupuncture.

"You look well,"

"Thanks," said Daryl, She held up a hand to show off the tanned skin of her fingers. "It still feels weird. But I feel good. More like a person I chose to be,"

Tanned skin, red eyes and white hair and all.

Kotono scowled at her "We're choosing to be late."

Daryl flash her a grin, waving it off with a bat of her hand. "Relax. We've plenty of time."

"Enjoy," said Jet. It rang just a little hollow. She knew what she was supposed to say. Even though her heart wasn't it.

Kotono had already gotten herself to her feet. She thought, maybe, they might make it if they didn't have any problems with getting a landing slot at Kandor Spaceport.

On of the stations engineer's ran up, stopping a moment to catch her breath. Kotono felt something familiar about the tabby catgirl, but couldn't place what. A familiar stranger, like most of the blow-ins from the last few months.

"Oh, hey Jet," she wheezed. "We've been trying to find you. We're going to have to take TG-1 offline."

The cyber looked to Kotono for relief. Unfortunately, Kotono had plans to be somewhere else. They hadn't really spoken in nearly six months. What could she expect? You needed to talk to people, instead of burying yourself in your work.

Ultimately, the decision was Jet's to make. Go back to work, or look after herself? Kotono already knew exactly what Jet would do.

–7–

Jet’s eyes scanned the Crystal Tokyo Courtroom, the cyber feeling like an animal caught in a trap.

The room had been built to create a sense of unchanging eternity, to impress in it the authority of millenia, even if those millenia had yet to come. The precedent of the next ten thousand years would be set on that marbelled crystal floor.

Crystal Tokyo existed in the Millenia of deep time. The columns supported the ceiling had been formed from single, solid pieces of Venusian crystal, tinted a cherry-blossom shade by fading filters on the lights. Flashes of copper and verdigris marbelled the ceiling above

It reminded Jet of a bleaching coral reef – an eternal fossil.

Frigga had life and colour, and vibrance. It might wash away the moment the climate shifted, but it still existed in the momentary now.

The words spoken in that room would echo through eternity.

The Queens Councils stood in their full court regalia. Between the Barristers and the Judge, Jet assumed the quantity of curls in the wig was some sort of rank marking.

It all seemed so bizarre.

As if the law had been reduced to a collection of wizard’s spells and arcane precedent, rather than something accessible to the common fan.

Jet hated it. Jet bit her lip. Jet stuck to the script.

Jet had to remind herself that, on some level, she attended by choice. She chose to be a part of this . This was the price of being around people and being a part of society.

This is not personal. This is all theatrical.

She wore her Great Justice awards on a Sam Browne belt across her chest, polished to a high shine. She hadn’t worn them in over a decade. Now they became part of the theatre. Jet Jaguar, Heroine of Great Justice.

Jet, the Good Person.

Even as her mouth worked through the statements prepared between her Solicitor and Barrister, she couldn’t help but feel that if they’d known the truth about how she’d gotten half of those medals, they might have a different idea.

There were some truths the world was not meant to know.

--

A cup of coffee steamed in Jet’s hands. She stared into the darkness in the cup, fighting against a building sense of revulsion. Her body fought against the idea of putting anything in her mouth.

Great Justice ran on coffee. Jet ran on booster packs. She settled herself onto a solid crystal bench.

Her barrister, Rivera, dropped onto the bench with a sigh, still in her full Court-Dress, wig and all.

“That went well,” she said.

Jet glanced away from her coffee.

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, we have been working together for the last four months,” she said.

Jet’s gaze returned to her reflection, knowing exactly what Rivera meant.

“It’s been a difficult year,” she said.

Saying it out loud in an otherwise quiet waiting room seemed to crystallise it. The weight of it all settled on her shoulders.

“We’ve stuck to the message and it’s starting to sink in.”

Jet took a breath. She still couldn’t bring herself to drink. Her stomach turned at the idea.

“Frigga is a small settlement in the Belt, doing it’s best in difficult circumstances,” she said. “The necessary crimes of the weak, are easier to excuse than the reaction of the strong.”

“People sympathise with the weak,” said Rivera.

Jet gave up on ever bringing herself to take a drink, setting the coffee down on the bench beside her.

“It helps that I’ve never felt so damned powerless.”

“Being part of civilisation means submitting to its rules.” Rivera said. She looked at Jet. “For someone used to working outside those rules, I can see how that would be uncomfortable.”

Jet put a hand on one of the medals on her belt – a particularly gaudy and shiny one.

“I did what I had to do in Jusenkyou, and they gave me this,” she said. Jet took a breath. “I did what I had to do on Frigga, and here we are.”

“Context,” said Rivera. “Is for Queens.”

---

Spoiler

---

Dartz · (This post was last modified: 06-10-2024, 06:17 PM by Dartz.)

----8----

After six months, Lee had gotten used to the sensation of ‘snapping’ awake - going from dead asleep, to perfectly alert the moment the cybernetic alarm clock in the back of her mind decided to ring.

She took a few moments to curl up into her silken bedsheets, letting them rub against the haptic feedback panels between her thighs. She thought, if she tried she might’ve been able count the individual fibres beneath her fingers and toes.

She lingered for as long as she could, crunching her toes against the sheets, savouring the sensation.

Half her body existed in a sort of hyper-reality - an absolute awareness of every nerve ending. The other half, existed as a numb shell, covering a slow, beating heart and a building pressure inside that warned she needed to use the bathroom.

She took a breath, and forced herself to sit up. Her bedsheets slid off her body, pooling at her waist. Fabric would glide across metal and carbotanium in a way it wouldn’t against skin. Her gaze fell to her forearms - formed from lacquered metal and carbon-covered myomer in an imitation of bone, sinew and muscle

Of course, she would’ve been one of the ones that modern biotech wouldn’t work on. Either a full cyber, or living the rest of her life as a one-armed half-body in a bucket - no regrets ever entered her mind. Those things she missed, were already gone anyway.

She stepped off her bed, stretching on reflex, straining myomer actuators against themselves. It felt almost natural, artificial signals mimicking the human body’s natural force-feedback that kept a person’s muscles from tearing their body apart.

It limited her strength to human norms, without the discomfort of hard restrictors.

Lee bounced on her feet once, then twice, still marvelling at how easy it all felt, even after half a year .She imagined it would be close to what the really fit people felt - free and fluid - almost weightless, rather than stiff, aching and heavy.

Her apartment had been made by partitioning one of the older family-size apartments into a cluster of studio apartments - each one consisting of a sectioned-off double-bed, a central living area with a large seating area cut down into the rock floor, a small kitchenette with breakfast bar and a japanese-style wet-floor bathroom pod on the other side of the smallest-possible porch.

The buckling of the bathroom floor reminded her of the true weight of her body - a full hundred and thirty kilograms, not including what she’d eaten. Ares didn’t believe in light construction - even for the ‘civilian’ body types.

A ‘civilian’ body lacked things like independent life-support and vacuum hardening, or direct comms interfaces, network uplinks and radio-telepathy. It included the ability to use a bathroom like a normal human being and to have a mind filled with nothing but her own thoughts and no intruding datastreams.

She showered under a water-saving high-pressure jet, activated by a foot-plate on the shower tray. The real sensation of artificial fingertips kneading cherry shampoo through artificial hair soothed. A quick rinse washed the suds from her body.

It took longer to dry. The grykes between metal panels held water in a way skin didn’t. Blasting her body with a hairdryer helped keep her clothes from being stained. A chamois leather took care of the streaks on her thigh.

She took a few minutes to brush her teeth and straighten the curls in her oil-black hair. The face watching through the mirror belonged to her, but still, lacked the texture of who she’d been been - the subtle imperfections in the skin

It was a biomimetic image of who she’d been, draped over a ceramic substrate. A quick touch-up with a little makeup added a dose of healthy reality to her visage.

Six months after first waking up in a cybernetics lab on Noctis, giving herself one last quick check in the mirror before getting dressed, Lee felt perfectly fine.

—-

“It’s different with the limiters off, isn’t it?”

Jet popped her helmet visor Of course, she hadn’t even broken a sweat. It’d all been so effortless for the Panzer Kunst Meister.

Lee took a breath, half astonished that still that she didn’t feel any more sense of fatigue than a soft headache at the back of her mind from concentrating for the last thirty minutes.

“....harder.” she said after a moment’s thought. “Hard to keep up.”

Everything was always a heartbeat beyond where she expected it to be. Her body finished a form and started the next before her mind had gotten halfway through the first. She’d felt compelled to look down at her hands, astonished.

They responded the same as they always did. It felt the same. Only this time, the force between her finger and palm could crush stone into sand.

She’d twisted steel beams into bow-ties as easy as someone might twist a straw.

“You did well for your first time,” said Jet. “Most people trip.”

“I…..” Lee thought for a moment. “It’s hard to fall over.” A cold veil of discomfort settled across her shoulders. In a moment, she felt her self pull back away from the shell of her body into the hollow space deep inside. “I have autostabilise,” she said, her voice shrinking away.

Talking about herself in such a way alienated her soul. She could take a breath, find her centre, concentrate on the sensations of her toes against the leather liner of her boots, and the weight of her feet on the ground.

She curled her toes inside her boots, grounding herself in the reality of the sensation.

Jet waited a moment, seemingly distracted, her mind momentarily outside the room.

“I never got on with stabilisers,” Jet said. “Always end up fighting against them”

Lee couldn’t even tell hers worked - except for the microadjustments her body made to its posture when she decided to push it by doing something silly - like balancing herself upside down on one finger-tip.

Moments like that thrilled, where the exceptional had become the effortless. Lee clenched her right hand into a fist, tighter than she’d ever done before to the point where her fingers felt like they could punch right through her palm and crush solid steel.

From alienation to exhilaration, in the space of a few seconds.

“We’ll just do a few easy counter-strike exercises, and then end it for today.” Jet’s voice brought her back to the real world.

Lee thought it strange for a moment that they’d be doing it at full speed, especially since it was her first time without any running restrictors. She thought about saying something, but figured Jet knew what she was doing.

Jet Jaguar had been training cybers for well over ten years.

Jet Jaguar had settled herself into an easy, ready stance, waiting for Lee to match.

The object of the exercise was simple. Jet would give her an easy attack, she would block, storing up some of some of the energy from the attack to kick it back around. Jet would block, come back around and she’d block again, building energy and momentum the entire time.

Lee caught a strike from Jet on her arm, letting the energy flow through myomer actuators into the core of her body, amplifying it with a push from her feet. Kinetic energy snapped through her leg, accelerating far faster than her mind could keep up.

It felt like the difference between a mousetrap, and a rat-trap. Both were the same basic mechanism, operating in the same basic manner. One cracked your knuckles. One cut your fingers off.

She felt her leg catch something hard on the side of her thigh, scraping off it - and knew something had gone wrong. Her whole body continued to accelerate, even as she tried to get her mind ahead of herself, trying to bring her arm into the right place to catch Jet’s return strike.

Her shin cracked through something hard, ringing her entire body like a bell. She dropped into a ready stance, ground the momentum out by planting both her feet, bringing her guard back up still expecting a second hit.

Nothing.

Something hit the wall to her left. She glanced at it.

For one brief instant, came the dread idea that she’d taken Jet’s head clean off, the other cyber’s white helmet skittering back along the floor from where it’d ricocheted off the wall.

Jet herself lay on her back with her hair splashed across the stone

“Holy shit,” Lee breathed. Her whole body went cold in a way she didn’t think was possible anymore. Goosepimples crawled across skin she didn’t have anymore, a sensation like being covered in thousands of crawling spiders at once.

“You okay?”

Her voice quivered.

“Jet?”

A low groan rolled from Jet’s throat, her arms hinging slowly up into some form of broken fighting stance. She wheezed, trying to sit, reaching for a handhold that didn’t exist, but only her glazed eyes could see.

Lee reached down and grabbed her hand, dragging to the other cyber to her feet. She staggered, threatening to fail again before Lee took hold of her by the shoulder.

“You okay?”

Jets head turned towards the sound of Lee’s voice, her glazed eyes still staring at a point lightyears outside the rooms walls.

“Jet?”

Jet blinked, her eyes clearing slowly as her mind rebooted. She took a step, steadying herself on her feet. Her metal fingers probed at the left side of her head, where dark, thick blood had already begun to matte her hair together.

“... was a good kick.” she said. Her eyes scanned the room, her mind still finding its place. Jet helmet sat on the floor, the side of it caved in hard enough to pop the visor open. It’d obviously taken the worst of it. “I forgot to put your limiters back on,” said Jet, wearing an almost embarrassed smile.

Lee should’ve said something. She felt nothing but a hot relief that nothing serious had happened. The helmet gave its life to save its owner.

“Maybe we’ll call it there for the night.”

It was 11 in the morning.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“That was a good kick,” Jet said, again, still a little unstable on her feet. She took a breath. “I’ve had worse. Couple of painkillers and I’ll be fine.”

Lee started to feel a butterfly take flight in where her stomach used to be - maybe she needed to say something. Head injuries could be tricky like that.

“I’ve had worse,” Jet said, again, with a flippant wave of her hand. Don’t worry about it.

Jet seemed fine.

It wasn’t until after they’d finished cleaning up and broken for the day, that Lee realised her limiters had been left off.

–

A mix of Oxycodone and Ibuprofen soothed the ache in the side of her head to a dull throb, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. After about thirty minutes, she figured it would do. A dangerous injury would’ve had her on the way to the morgue by then anyway.

The bleeding had mostly stopped.

The whole side of her head still felt tender under her fingers.

The rule was, that if a person couldn’t complete their normal duties for two days after an injury, it had to be reported. There had to be an investigation. Another investigation just seemed like too much bother over something as simple as a training accident.

The helmet had taken the worst of it - shattering like her skull should have. She probably should’ve congratulated Lee on the kick.

Something felt strange.

She found herself wondering where he train of thought had been going as she found herself back outside the house, not entirely sure why she’d gone up there. The whole side of her head still throbbed.

Even most of the way to Jupiter, the unfiltered sun still had enough power to bleach and peel the paint on the old timber-frame house. Some of the windows had popped from their frames as the timber shrank. A strong kick would knock it over.

Her heartbeat pulsed in her ear.

Keeping it up seemed like it’d take far more time than Jet could ever spare. Eventually it’d collapse.

On some level she sympathised.

She blinked. A woman’s voice broke her train of thought.

“So what do you think?”

A moment's confusion as her world shifted around her. She found herself sitting in the grey room of the station council at her usual chair. Where a collection of weaponry had once been proudly displayed in the glass cabinets on the walls, now a collection of photographs of Earth and the solar system had replaced them.

The photo Noctis Labyrynthus on Mars called to her soul.

“Jet”. Kim Tchombe - reactor shift lead - waited for her answer. “The phase imbalance on TG-Two is affecting the grid. We’re at two percent,” she explained. “Any more and it’ll start to burn out equipment.”

Jet’s mind jammed in spinlock, trying to find its place

“It’ll trip TG-three on negative sequence and blackout the station.” Mellick was the turbine section forman. He still wore his orange jumpsuit overalls, even in the council room.

“What about generator one?” Asked Jet, stalling a little until she caught up. “How long until we get it up to temperature?” It might take a day to get the core running and up to steam temperature.

“We’re rebuilding it after last month.”

Obviously.

“Last month….” Jet felt her mouth goldfish open. What happened last month?

“After the turbine motored,” said Mellick. “We’re rebuilding the hydrogen seals. All the casings are off and the turbine is hanging from a crane thirty feet above it’s bed.”

“What?”

“....we talked about it ten minutes ago.”

“Are you okay?”

She looked at the six faces with their interrogating eyes demanding an answer. The implied threat if she was discovered didn’t need to be stated.

“Maybe I just zoned out for a bit,” Jet said, forcing herself to smile. “I’ve a bit of a headache.”

“Looks like a pretty bad headache to me,” Mellick laughed.

Jet gave him a tired look. “We need to…..” she stopped, wondering where she’d been going with that. “You know the right thing to do. You don’t need me to tell you.”

“Right,” said Kim. “Shut down Two. Spin up the backup generators.”

“And a System Alert?” Mellick suggested?

“Yeah. System alert,” Jet repeated. “And warm up the back ups.”

Everyone agreed with that.

The rest of the meeting seemed to run in circles, to everyone’s frustration. Jet muddled her way through, like getting herself through an exam she hadn’t really studied for, or a job interview she wasn’t really qualified for.

Jet thought she felt like being drunk and hungover at the same time. A little dazed, a little confused, along with a thundering headache, only without the fun. It seemed like decades since she’d been truly drunk like that.

–

Jet thought her head was ringing.

It was a Christmas bell playing from the speakers above the New Bermingham Company Store. It was a week until the big day.

She passed the Midoriyah. Kotono was there, with a tea and cake for herself, and a coffee for whomever she was waiting on.

Kotono said nothing to her. She didn’t wave. Just a shared glance to acknowledge each other’s mutual presence.

She guessed, on some level, that relationship was over. They hadn’t become strangers just yet, but it’d been so long since they’d spoken about anything.

The memory escaped Jet.

She went back to her house to find some painkillers to clear her head.

--
Her house was dead, and judging by the smell, it had begun to rot. Or was that the contents of the ruined fridge?

She turned on the lights. The breakers tripped with a snap. The cables must’ve broken. A beam holding the ceiling up had split, causing the upstairs floors to sag under their own weight.

The whole building would give soon. The collapse had already begun. It began weeks ago the moment the fridge went through a load-bearing wall.

Her head thrummed.

It could’ve been saved, if she’d bothered. If she could gather a few people and had the spare time. It’d be like embalming a corpse, and claiming it still lived.

One of the cabinets in the kitchen usually had something.

Mould had started to grow in some of the sauce bottles. The Chilli dated from 2017, when they’d first moved in. Nothing had been touched in nearly a year. A potato plant had begun to grow from a bag.

She found a pack, already opened and empty.

Her head pounded.

She’d have to go upstairs. She hadn’t done that since it became clear her weight on the floor had a chance of bringing it down.

It was worth it, just to clear her head a little and keep going.

The stairs always complained against her weight. This time they seemed to shift in her feet, threatening to pull loose from the wall. She steadied herself. A ring of lasers which replaced her inner ear had been knocked out of alignment. She’d have to rest to let it re-align itself. When she had less to do, maybe she could.

The floorboards had popped where they’d buckled. The panelling on the walls had seperated from the buckled floor. The walls had begun to sag. Cracks spiderwebbed across the plaster of the ceiling.

A quick flash from her jets carried her across.

She landed with an indelicate clunk. The building shuddered.

Ford’s bedroom door had crept open as the doorframe shifted. The bed still hadn’t been made. Mackie’s room had been disturbed – the floor had buckled on that side of the house.

It’d go soon enough. Maybe in a few days.

Jet felt nothing more about it than a vague, ‘So it goes’.

Her muse popped up another message in the back of her mind. The McRopus tribunal continued with yet more revelations – Nehallaneia’s council had been pulling the same funding and coverup tricks Frigga’s had for years – something her barrister wanted an urgent meeting to discuss, and to try interview AzubaJuban’s councillors for the same reason.

The Eucatastrophe that might save everyone’s bacon, if only they acted now. The journalists covering the clusterfuck demanded comment.

Stingray still needed its usual administrative sign-offs, details and discussions with an increasingly concerned board wondering just where Sylia had gotten to and why she wasn’t showing up in person. Elon Musk thought Sylia Stingray wasn’t ‘Hardcore enough’. If only he knew the truth. It took a cyber to work a 30 hour day.

A dozen minor issues on Frigga begged for her attention alongside – the things that could be solved quicker ‘If only Jet knew’.

Ford’s room remained empty.

Jet pushed the door open and stepped inside for the first time in a year. The faintest echo of the scent of Ford’s favourite deodorant remained. Almost everything else had gone back to Chicago. Only the bedsheets and the furniture remained, along with a single print of a photograph of the pair of them together, grinning like cheshire cats the day the Highway Star broke a landspeed record.

One momentary flash at joy.

A long time ago. When Ford had first warned her about burning out.

It struck Jet like a diamond bullet in the brain. So. That’s why she left it behind.

She took a breath. “I really have been a fool, haven’t I?

The photograph didn’t answer.

At least Jet knew. The only person she could blame for it all, was herself.

Jet shut down her interfaces, then sat herself down on the timber floor beside it. Maybe tomorrow, the lesson would finally take and she might do something different.

That thought carried her to sleep, with her face resting against a soft bedsheet that smelled faintly of happier times.

---

This is not the end..... but it's where I've gotten too.

Spoiler

Dartz · (This post was last modified: 06-11-2024, 04:25 PM by Dartz.)

And I just realised I forgot to post this bit:

----

In: Boards >> System >> News >> Current Events
From: Needtocomeupwithaname (Fenspace Gargoyle) (Original Poster)
Posted on November 18th, 2025: Today at the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Irregularities in Governance on Space Station Frigga:

Jet Jaguar herself steps up before Judge McRopus, and speaks in her defence. To the great surprise of everyone, she speaks coldly, clearly and with evidence of great preparation. Those who’d been expecting a Giulianian meltdown and rant at the dark forces arrayed against her are left disappointed. What ever manner of fool Baron Frigga is, she has enough of a mind to trust in her Barrister to save her cybernetic ass.

After walking through her career with Great Justice, establishing her background, bona-fides

She confirms a lot of what we already knew or suspected. She calmly explains the why, the how and what made her actions necessary. As if she’s delivering a Troubleshooter’s report to Great Justice, and not trying to talk herself out of a very hard slap on the wrists.

The Frigga Project should have been a complete disaster. A project sold by the Kayabuki government to the electorate of Venus as solving the raw materials crisis at the heart of the VTP delays - and half the price of settling a virgin rock, should have ballooned in cost five times over.

It did. And none of it appeared on Her Majesty’s books.

Kayabuki needed the project to succeed at its original budget. The loyal opposition, needed the project to fail.

And trapped in this Catch22, Jet Jaguar and the Station Council take a third option. They have the control of the means of production, after all. So they overproduce and sell on the open market, usually to other mines that lead a little help in meeting contracts. In direct violation of an agreement Her Majesty’s Government had made with Greenwood to get out of their supply contracts early. Amusingly, at least three of their customers were stations in the Greenwood orbit, who had shortfalls on their quota while conducting maintenance.

But even that didn’t come close to covering the costs.

Enter, the Moxy Fuel project. Building three new power reactors on Frigga to produce a mixed oxide fuel for Blackbird engines – a fuel which didn’t rely on a production process that could be subverted to making nuclear weapons.

And handshake agreement between Jet and Ben Rhodes got it done. Frigga gets the energy, the jobs and the payments for maintaining the equipment. Atalante gets the fuel.

For an unrepentant Cyberpunk, aghast at having to be The Man, it almost plays to her strengths. She’s punching up, breaking the unjust rules imposed from a distant, uncaring government.

Frigga’s station council reports the impossible to The Ministry of Finance. Everything is on budget – Everything is fine. The Ministry, reports this as fact. The entire Kayabuki administration relies on it to be true – even if they suspect its impossible. A little Vranyo to keep things moving.

Technically, the agreement with Greenwood is with the Tokyo government and – so long as they can claim to be completely in the dark – it wasn’t them that broke it

And then, the reactor blew itself apart – triggered by a design flaw nobody had any idea was present in the core - threatening to upset the entire balance.

And in the centre of it all, almost lost on the juicy details and the justification is this one hint at her true motivation.

“If the truth came out, then, Her Majesty’s Government might have to decide that The Natives weren’t capable of governing themselves.”

With those words from Jet’s testimony do we have Prime Minister Kayabuki’s true legacy. After years of coslifing as The British Empire, why should they be surprised that someone took them seriously on it?

Now that’s not a comfortable thought, is it?

So the secret is kept. Because Kayabuki would have the justification to act on what she almost certainly knew. And then everything would fall apart. The most damning thing of all is that it worked.

A year later, Frigga is a successful, working settlement. The Moxy Fuel Project is approaching first criticality in April 2026. The streets and corridors are vibrant with life. Frigga has become an important waystation in the Belt. Deliveries to the shipyards at Bristol are met on time.

And now the screaming begins. The Knives are about to come Out. The Loyal Opposition is already winding up for a motion of No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government and shows all the signs of a scandal truly worthy of the Parliament they have spent so long pretending to be. Her Majesty is rumoured to be pretty pissed at Jet for kicking this off – because Jet was appointed to her position and that little fact drags the Crown into it. Public opinion in fandom has already cracked.

There’re those pale and stale ones for whom rules and order are sacred traditions passed down from generations hence, and must be respected at all costs (At least, by those we need an excuse to dislike).

And those for whom rules are really just guidelines to be fit and adapted to the situation as needed. (At least, by those we like).

I’m in two minds over all of this.

We came up here to get away from this bullshit. We thought we were better. We thought we were the enlightened ones. Freed from the shackles of the mundane politics and its bullshit, we could finally do things the *right* way - the *better* way.

We know better now. The last ten years have taught us as much. It’s enough to make one lose heart.

At the other end, there is an earnestness about Frigga’s council going to these lengths – not for personal gain or wealth, but to make their home work. Nobody got rich. Nobody siphoned off a million and built a yacht or three. Even Kayabuki, in her defence, is just playing to her base as the leader of the party of rules and order, and her belief in those rules being the foundation of society.

And the simple fact of population that means the smallest ward in Tokyo has more MP's than the entire archipelago combined, despite the importance of the Archipelago's resources.

Nobody is a Rudy Giuliani.

That, in the end, is something we can all be comforted by.

The solution to this all, in the end, may be simply to state what happened, and then let the Millenium electorate decide

For a dissenting opinion: “Can you believe these morons are in charge of people?”

----

-----------------------------------

It says a lot that I've been able to chew the cud on the same feeling for five bloody years - and still haven't changed a damned thing

**robkelk** · 06-17-2024, 02:55 PM

Thanks for pulling this together into a single narrative, Dartz.

Dartz · 06-18-2024, 11:44 AM

There's 1 more post to be done, with 3 segments to bookend everything. Gimme a year to put it together Wink

It probably needs a few more interstitial interludes to lighten the mood a bit - or flesh out what the hell is going on on the other side of Sammiedom. Given the vibrant discussion in the Fenspace forum, I suspect that'll be that.

---I did get an excellent description of Jet from another forum

Quote:Oh, Jet, you beautiful wreck in motion.

Thought for the Day: Politics - it's like Game of Thrones with less murder. But significantly more backstabbing.

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