Chapter Thirty Aaron

Aaron is waving bye to Britney on her way out, while at the same time, Sy wanders into the bay where he and Arma are working on their new ship. As fast as they’ve been working, it takes Britney all day to inspect their work. That’s forced them to stay on night shift for a while now. Even though she still hasn’t found a single error in any of their work yet, she still relentlessly goes through every bit of it before putting her initials on the paperwork. Tonight, they’ll be doing the final installation of the hall-effect ion drives, and then starting on the outer hard-plating of the hull.

Seeing the look on Sy’s face is amusing. Even after seeing the same amount of progress every day for weeks, he’s still surprised to see how far they get each night. It cheers him up to see that not everything is going to shit lately. The situation outside has been dragging his mood down a lot more than he’s probably figured it has. Sy’s mood can almost be measured in how many times he goes down to the rifle range. The stories Vaun has told of him are starting to seem less and less exaggerated by the day.

He feels Sy has become a lot more social, now that everyone’s been put on lockdown. Sometimes, late into the night, while he and Arma have been working by themselves, he’ll come down and tell them all about the good old days of kicking ass with Vaun and Don. Back then, they were forging the SSS name into something fearsome. They were building the company. Now, it feels like they’re more or less trying to keep it from falling apart. It feels good to see him excited about where things are headed. Like they’re growing stronger again.

It’s crazy how he makes it sound like a mars mission would only be the start of so much bigger things to come. Once they have a sizable force of immortals, and can survive some real space voyages, things will get fun again. No one will be pulling any stunts around them again for a while. Competitors like the Lion’s group, or jerks like the investigators, will learn to comply, or be wiped out.

He’s curious about when Sy might send him and Arma up on another mission. Things like that are known to come out of the blue. She’s been really nervous about it after, after he told her how his first time went. One thing is for sure, no one ever gets sent up there for the fun of it. Big money, and lives, are always going to be on the line.

He goes ahead and prods at Sy, to see if he can get a read on him. “You got any launches lined up these days? Kinda feels like things have slowed down a little.”

Sy sighs. “No. I can’t imagine why I haven’t gotten the call yet, but the crew launch for the Mars mission is coming up. I’m pretty sure they don’t plan on winging it this time.” His face reflects a little bit of worried concern. “God I hope they don’t. I’m sure they’d all be killed this time.”

“Well, we are almost done with this thing. How much time you think we’ve really got?”

Sy points to their shuttle. “You’ve got that thing powered up right? Have you looked at any of the simulation training? I’d start going through it early if you can. All you get after that is the same-ol trial by fire.”

He doesn’t say anything to Sy about having already been playing with the ship’s simulation modes. Arma keeps a straight face about it too. The very night the two of them completed installing the control systems, they started to become very familiar with all of its functions, especially the simulator. As soon as they read about it in the specifications, they started testing it out.

The simulator has hundreds of flight and failure scenarios included in its programs. Almost every time they finish an installation, they run a mock failure event of it for troubleshooting experience. While Britney does her inspections, and they can’t do any more work, they sit in their flight seats and run launches, landings, and damage repairs all day long. One of modules was so in-depth, it lasted through her entire shift. The onboard system is so interactive, it even makes them do the actual repairs on the ship in real time.

The more they learn about space, the more scared they are of getting stranded though, and that further drives their attention to being good mechanics. Fuel stores have becoming their main concern so far. Even though they have quite a bit onboard already, they’re constantly looking for ways to load up on more. Sometimes they feel like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, other times they feel almost ready. The only thing that keeps them from real discouragement is the nice little perk of not having to worry about dying for real.

His eyes get big when Marek walks into the bay from around the big partition wall. Monster is walking alongside him and it has a completely new looking face on it. The thing has big toothed jaws on it like a cat. Sy turns around to see what the deal is and surprisingly doesn’t think much of it.

“Ah, Marek. Got that thing tearing shit up yet?”

Marek stops in front of them and points to where he wants Monster to stand without saying anything to it. “Yeah, kinda goin through the rounds with the night crew, giving everyone voice access to im and stuff. You guys are up.”

Sy nods his head. “Good deal. Cris and Gerald are already in cahoots with the local law and now they’re fucking with us too. I want these things guarding the premise. I want a couple in the hanger and maybe one in the lobby, keeping an eye on things.”

“Well, they’re not that sophisticated. They’ll do what you tell em, but they don’t understand danger or anything like that.”

“Fine, fine. As long as they’ll rip someone apart when I tell em to.”

“That, they will do. I should have the other two ready by the end of the week. Hehe, we already know Aaron’s will tear things apart.”

Sy puts his hand on his chin. “Sure, but, uh, can they take a hit?”

Marek puts his hands in his pockets. “Mmm, not really.” He looks a little embarrassed to admit it. “They’re made to be real lightweight, strong, and fast. They’re made of that same silicon carbide nano-whisker reinforced magnesium, as the old war-mechs, but the castings are still pretty thin. They’re mostly good for offense. I’ll maybe replace some of the panels with ballistic shields, but I can’t put much bulk on em.”

Both Sy and Marek’s phones go off at the same time. When Marek looks at his, he makes a scrutinizing face. “What? They’ve been spotted inside the precinct, but wearing officer’s uniforms. What the hell?”

Sy closes his eyes and clenches his teeth. “That explains it. They got their old jobs back. They have the power of the state behind them now. This definitely makes things a lot worse.”

“How the hell did they get their jobs back? After what they’ve done!”

Sy’s eyebrows raise when he remembers something, and holds a finger up. “Oh yeah, and uh, I forgot to mention, murdering the two of them is you’re and Alexis’s next gig. And it can’t lead back to SSS either. Come up with a couple plans as soon as you can, and run them by me.”

“But they’re investigators now!”

“I know. Figure it out. You’ll get your commission, and the reward money too. That’s like two hundred grand each for one job, a pretty big carrot.”

“What the hell am I gonna do? I don’t even pull normal guard duty.”

He closes his eyes again, a little in annoyance of Marek. He figured he’d be all over it. “I just didn’t think bringing out the usual SSS sledge hammer would be a good idea this time, is all. I mean, I guess we could put a new face on Aaron and have him do it or something. It’d be all over the news, and we’d probably have to disband after being caught up in something like that, but whattaya want me to do?”

Aaron catches Sy eyeballing him with a face, expecting him to pressure Marek along too. So he does. He thinks of what he did when the rats came for Valerie. This time, they’ve got real killers to deal with.

“They gonna have to Kill Alexis, before you grow a spine?” It was a little much. He shrugs at Marek when he stiffens up. “They already killed your friend, Migo. They’re not gonna arrest us dude, and they’re not gonna stop. They came all the way back from fucking Africa, to kill us. And they’re pretending to be cops while they do it.”

Sy pretends to act like he’s going to change his mind. “Well, shit, I thought you’d wanna take point on this one Marek. Maybe I’ll ask around.”

Marek gets pretty worked up over being made out as a bitch. “I’ll cut their goddamn arms n legs off, is what I’ll do. You think I don’t have the stones for it. I’ll make sure they live to tell about it too. I’ll drop em off at the damn hospital myself. No body’s gonna fukin touch Alexis!”

Both he and Sy have small smirks on their faces, now that they’ve riled him up. “Ok. I mean, that’s a little much, but… it’s a start. Think about it, and let me know how you’d get rid of em. They’re probably gonna stick close to the safety of the precinct and their buddies. They know we’re watching them and don’t expect them to be hanging their asses out in the wind for us.”

“Then we’ll get them where they feel the most safe, where they think we can’t reach them. And we’ll make them look like the asses they are when we do it too.”

Before Marek can get too carried away with himself, he puts his hand up. “Talk it over with Alexis, and get back to me when you’ve got something solid. Do whatever you want, but no crazy terrorist shit alright.”

For a couple minutes, Marek walks them all through voice recognition with Monster and then heads off to find the next random person to set up. The place is running amok with people, far more than a typical night shift. It seems like since they’ve all been put on official lockdown, everyone’s become suddenly stir crazy

People are wandering the halls day and night, as if they’ve all got insomnia. The pub upstairs is pretty much always packed now too. He finds it funny how no one notices they’ve been underground the whole time, until someone suddenly says they can’t go topside. When he thinks about it, he realizes he and Arma haven’t seen the light of day in weeks now. It makes him a little antsy to get out now too.

Before the two of them can manage to shirk Sy off, both Valerie and Five come wandering on into their bay too. When Valerie catches his eyes, it’s almost like she’s happy to see him. He can’t remember the last time he can remember she smiled, and he has a robot memory. It must’ve been back before he died.

The second she looks at Arma standing there next to him though, daunting and naked as usual, her neck involuntarily jerks to look away. Clearly she doesn’t like seeing them together. She’s holding her breath too.

While Valerie keeps her distance, Five immediately gives Arma a big tight hug. He finds it a little awkward how she presses her face against Arma’s breasts the way she does, and without even thinking of it. The two of them are very still very close. As excited as a teenager, she plops down on one of their rolling stools and beams at them, as if planning on staying for a while.

“Wow, look at that thing! You guys are almost done!”

Sy notices the sour look on Valerie’s face too. “I know you haven’t been out in a while, since last time” He’s referring to the time Vaun caught her coming back drunk, and without her communicator on. You two doin alright?”

Valerie folds her arms and quietly grumbles back. “Yeah, fukin great.”

Five tries to break the tension a little by being a smart ass. She raises her eyebrows and looks to be in denial. “Outside? But it’s poison outside!”

It does almost get him to smile. “Well, soon as we kill Cris and Gerald, maybe we’ll all go on a picnic, hmmm?”

Five’s eyes get a little bigger. “Ooh, could you bring their brains back? We need some, to try stuff on.”

Everyone looks down at her, not sure if she’s kidding, or has any idea how diabolical she sounds. Valerie covers her face with her hand. “Maybe you guys had better get this figured out before random people with their heads having been scooped out in the middle of the night.”

She looks up at him, and then unintentionally at Arma’s tits again. With her mood soured, she simply walks off without Five. “I’m goin on break”

The rest of them can plainly see that she’s on edge. When they all look back over to Five, she rolls her eyes. No one wants to say anything about it.

Sy looks at the three of them, a little lost in his own thoughts. “How would you guys do it, kill Cris and Gerald?”