Chapter 8 - Mount Trash Part 1
-Before-
Thankfully, the awkward silence was broken by the Hyperions running in. Rhys looked like he was panicking and speechless, and Vaughn wasn't that much better. Sasha looked to Fiona, but she just shrugged.
"What the hell's gotten into you?" Felix grew terse. "Now you're BOTH panicking?"
"B-bomb." Rhys said. As though his braincells fell out his ears and he was only capable of explaining things in one word sentences.
If that didn't draw their attention, nothing else probably would.
"Bomb? Where?" Felix demanded.
"In the briefcase. With the money." Rhys said between panicked gasps.
The stunned silence was palpable. Sasha came to a conclusion that sent a furious anger through her veins. She raised her gun. Felix, however, got there faster. He grabbed Rhys by the collar and thrust him up against the side of the camper so hard the whole thing briefly tilted. "YOU PUT A BOMB ON THE BRIEFCASE THAT WAS MEANT FOR US!? That-THAT IS NOW IN THE HANDS OF THAT BITCH, VALLORY?"
-Rhys-
"It's not… Like… It was meant… for you!" I struggle to get out while being held up by the collar and throat.
"Yeah, it was just a safety precaution!" Vaughn defends me. Fiona keeps Vaughn back, whether for his own good or to against him, I don't know.
Sasha mutters, "Typical Hyperion…" She actually looks genuinely hurt, like she expected better.
"Who the hell puts a bomb in the money that was going to be given in a deal to a buyer?!" Felix demands. "How stupid do you think I am!"
"I'll tell you who! Me!" Vaughn yells.
Felix keeps me pinned, but looks to Vaughn. I do too. My bro went from shaking and being a scared beetle to a guy who was yelling at people with guns having me by the throat. I realize they're angry, and probably feeling a bit betrayed that we were going to potentially blow them up after the deal. Vaughn continues yelling, "I'm a scared weezle half the time! I am easily controlled, I dreaded coming down here, I have done nothing but run, be taken hostage, and shot at. I scream like a girl. I took one look at how Pandoran bandits are, and activated a security measure to ensure that if anyone, except me, opens the briefcase, it would blow up. Smartest thing to do? Probably not. But I was too scared to think five steps ahead about you guys! I was too busy trying not to be sick at the amount of blood and death there was around me! Because we're Hyperion! Backstabbing people involves money, contracts, deals, viruses, and sometimes the less moralistic will hire assassins and hitman. It doesn't involve every person pulling out guns and shooting each other over who's shadow is longer!"
"Is that what you think of us?" Felix asks neutrally.
Felix's grip on my collar loosens enough for me to fall out of his grip onto the floor. He's a strong guy for being so old.
"Well, let me tell you something, Hyperion." Felix says, growing increasingly lower. Sasha lowers her gun and steps back, slightly scared of his temper like a rebuked daughter. Fiona isn't much better, but continues to stand between him and Vaughn. "Pandora was a simply colony world before you lot came here. We were colonists. We had families. We had farms and plantations and cities. Then you came here. These… contracts of yours? You exchange deals, and then hundreds of us die in your construction schemes. You make a wager, and then entire villages are uprooted and placed in toxic mines. Woman, children, elders. Doesn't matter to robots."
Felix walks up on Vaughn, and Vaughn loses what bravery he had and steps away from the towering elder with a barely controlled fire in his eye. I see a very dark past in there, a past yearning to break out on us, but won't, because at the same time I see he is very carefully controlled.
"Jack tunneled down nearly to the core of the planet." Felix says icily. "Your 'god' caused an explosion of eridium that eroded 1/9th of the planet. When anyone stood up against him, he bombarded their entire village from orbit while taunting them over the ECHO-net."
Vaughn falls back into the victim mentality I have struggled to pull him out of. Felix doesn't strike me as a bully, the guy is merely our enemy. But the effect his words have on Vaughn is much the same. Vaughn doesn't do well with bullies.
"We get it." I reply. "We're Hyperion, born and raised. You're Pandoran, born and raised. But his point was that our way of fighting is different. You shoot and kill and are bloody. We are not used to things like that." I cough. "We're not getting into the politics of the war between us, that would only get us shot. You hate us. We hate you. That's not news. But Vaughn really is an easily scared person, and in this case, his fear advised him to create precautions that are firing back in your face."
"Security is a good choice with ten-million dollars on the line." Fiona comments.
"Just who's side are you on?!" Felix exclaims.
"Uh, the realistic one?" She raises an eyebrow. "It was stupid of them coming down unarmed, but at least they made some kind of precaution." Sasha nods in agreement. She did make a comment about that the other day when we met. "As many things have gone wrong, we can't really be surprised. When it rains, it pours, right?"
Felix seems to calm down a bit from this. Her argument makes sense to him.
Fiona continues, "But, at least one thing came out of this. They set the bomb, they can be the ones to turn it off."
"WHAT?" Vaughn and I both yell at once. The former in panic and the latter in less panic and more surprise.
Felix looks between us thoughtfully, and strokes his chin. He doesn't have a beard or a cheesy french mustache, but he would be stroking them if he did. He sighs and looks to me. "Fine… can you track the money? Its Hyperion, you're Hyperion."
"Uh, I'm sorry, but labeling everything with 'you're Hyperion' doesn't solve everything you know!" I argue.
"Can you or can't you."
I think about it a moment and shrug. "Well… Yeah, sure. If I had the hardware."
"Guess being Hyperion does solve it." Sasha smirks. I glare at her, and she just smiles wider. I swear, she is pushing my buttons on purpose. Not that I… actually have buttons. I may be a cyborg but… never mind.
"Okay… Then this is what we are going to do." Felix pauses a moment and shakes his head in disbelief. "We're going after the damn money."
I let the plan trickle through my brain cavity and process itself.
We're going after the ten-million dollars.
Maybe Vaughn and I can still salvage something from this and return it, and get back our lives. Somewhat. Maybe. We do have Hyperion security gunning for us if we show our face, not to mention Vasquez, but hey… it's a goal right? Then again… we are enslaved by a group of Pandorans…
I'll figure it out after we have ten-million dollars again.
Felix takes position in the chair and turns the whole camper around. He seems content to not say anything more of the time being, and I'm fine with that. There is a fury in him that needs to cool down. Vaughn set the guy off. Seems we need to tip-toe around Grandpa Grumpy.
Sasha taps my shoulder and gestures me over to a chest. She kicks the lid up. It is a mess inside, and I can't help cringing at the sight. There is a mixture of hardware, modules, clothes, junk, rotten food, and general junk inside. My revulsion might be from being part robot at this point, so it's like seeing your own kind with its head on a stake; but come on! There's a green pizza slice shoved into a USC port! You can't clean that crap out!
"Think you can do anything with this?" She wonders.
I gulp. "I… honestly. I have no idea." I stoop down and pull a few chips out. I check them over to see how good they still are. "I might be able to make something, but not the kind of device I would need to track the money."
"Well, then how about this?" She opens a drawer and pulls out a silver cylinder. It looks like the same one Vaughn found in the car a few days back. "I don't know what this is, but it might come in handy. We found it on you."
She hands it to me and I look it over. "You haven't been able to turn it on?"
"No."
I hit the button and nothing happens. I look it over further and find a part of the cylinder that comes together is loose. I tighten it and hit the button again.
IT'S A FREAKIN' LIGHTSABER!
If… you know… a lightsaber was 3 inches long and was very narrow. I hold the button in, and it suddenly extends to 8 inches long. Sasha's eyes widen dramatically wide, and for a moment I can't help smiling. It's not victory, per say, but its feels good to catch her off guard and be the one in control, even if it's just a moment. She is not hiding her emotions at all. She loves it. You can see the sparkles in her eyes.
"I think it's a plasma scalpel." I suggest. "Useful for all kinds of things. It's a handy tool to have around."
"Definitely." She agrees. Her eyes don't leave the device.
Something clicks in my mind. I feel a deal here.
There are two kinds of profit. Tangible profit, like money, contracts, inventory. Then there is intangible profit, such as goodwill, customer loyalty, browny points. Tangible profit is usually associated with an exchange of value, that is relatively even. A dollar spent to get a dollar candy bar, for instance. But intangible profit doesn't work that way. You often have to give things out for free in order to get them to like you enough to come later and buy from you.
My instinct may not involve me getting back anything, but considering where we are… the situation we are in… Vaughn and I could use some browny points.
"Here." I hand it to her.
The gesture catches her completely off guard, again, and were I wanting to get back at her and tease her, it would be a great opening. (SO TEMPTING! But I must resist. Must appear as genuine as I actually am!) "You-what-I?" She looks incredibly confused and looks between it and me. Okay. Perhaps getting a gift from Hyperion's is not what a Pandoran would expect for Christmas. Or birthdays. Or ever.
"Look… I think we got off the wrong foot, like…" I roll my eyes. "Ten steps back. I don't know. Feels like yesterday and forever ago at the same time. You shot grazed me, sure, but you did it to get a psycho from jumping me. And I'll admit it, your aim was excellent. I was just freaked out by how… the day… went." I can't help shuddering. Its hard to not fall into depression or sadness thinking about it. It was only a few days ago. "Worst day of my life…"
"I can see that." She nods. "But I did it because that little guy would have made a confusing situation worse. I didn't do it wanting thanks, or appreciation."
"Then doesn't that make it better when it is given anyway? Besides, there were a lot of small things as well. Getting your sis to help Vaughn, getting August to not shoot me and be on my side enough to get Vaughn out of death's grip, at least trying to make the deal go smoothly in the end. Making me breakfast." I smile. Must. Resist. Urge. To cringe. The breakfast was soooo bland! Sure, it was food. But it was sooo bad! "Here."
She narrows her eyes at me suddenly. "The deal, yeah. The CON, you mean. I think your reasoning is you putting bullshit out of your ass."
Must. Resist. Urge. To facepalm.
"Your purpose may have been selfish, but I… damnit. Have you never heard of first-contact scenario?!"
"First what?"
"Okay." I put my hands together and tap my fingers in thought a moment. "A normal thing, historically, when a new species is encountered, is that there is gestures of goodwill and peace. Gifts. The best example is in ancient history when native Americans would trade gifts with the explorers from another continent. You don't even have to understand each other's language, because the exchange of gifts is more sentimental than about profit. Its about… just some kind of understanding. Making a good start."
"Start. Right. Where it was all based on lies. Unless you mean further back when Hyperion waged war on us."
"Oh, for the love of Jack!" I curse. This time, I do successfully facepalm. "You're making this so difficult! Just take the damn gift already! I'm showing I appreciate the little things you have done for us! I am showing I want a fresh start! Consider it a peace-offering!"
"And I think-"
"Just take it already!" Fiona has her input.
"Fine!" Sasha barks back at her sister, snatches the plasma knife from my hand, and storms off. It's a small camper, so her version of storming off is exactly three steps. That's about as far as she can go.
Jack… just kill me already. These people are going to drive me insane! I run my hands through my hair furiously. With my hair successfully floosed up all over the place, I set to work on what hardware I can find in the chest. Considering the condition of everything, I focus myself on inventorying them in a file on my ECHO-OS, and general maintenance. Some of the chips and boards I can fix. Some I can't. There are things that can be salvaged, and a lot that can't. I gesture to the trash bin, and Vaughn pulls it over to me.
Sasha naturally has to be argumentative about every little damn thing I do. I had just dumped something in the trash. "Um, what was wrong with that one?"
"It had cheese in the wiring." I explain simply, trying to keep my tone from being abstinent and offense since the talk we had about ten minutes ago went oh so well!
Why can't she just accept a damn peace-offering?
Well… like Grandpa Grumpy said, Hyperion did kind of destroy Pandora more than anyone else… and the natives were just simple farmers and colonists.
Perhaps she… maybe… has the right to be angry. Not at me! But in general… at my bosses.
"So? Peel it off." She says dismissively.
"Do you know what goes through wires?" I ask. I'm elbow deep in the chest digging around again.
"Uh, electricity?"
"Right. Wires are made of various metals, usually copper or gold, that lets electricity travel easily. Guess how hot a spark of electricity is?" She doesn't know, so I answer. "A single spark can be as hot as 3000 degrees Farenheight, if allowed to go on long enough. Touch it with even the slightest bit of cheese, and the cheese is instantly melted to it as hard as concrete, then its fatty oils are ignited, corrodes the wiring and makes it useless."
I prepare myself for whatever else she has to throw at me, but she doesn't say anything more after that. Guess she realizes now the logic behind my choice. I don't know whether I was aiming to win or to educate. Perhaps a bit of both. I made a choice based on an education in an area she doesn't have, and she thinks she knows better than me? Please. She is better at some things, but I am as well. I know my stuff. I'm a cyborg! I 've done maintenance on myself! I had to know every detail of the field of science in order to do it properly and not accidentally blow myself up.
Given an hour, I manage to inventory everything into what is useable and what is not, followed by what they actually are. Meanwhile I let my thoughts go through a background process of how in the world to track the money.
The briefcase has a tracking device in it. Simple enough. Many Hyperion briefcases do. The problem is that we didn't turn that feature on specifically to keep Vasquez off our tail. So I need to somehow broadcast a signal to it in order to turn that feature on, so we can find it, and the broadcast would have to be large enough to cover many many miles. And not cause a zerg rush to come in the process.
I know the bandwidth the briefcase would work on. There are only a few accepted as standards for wireless transmission anyway. It would either be 5.1ghz or 3ghz. Broadcasting it is easy enough, broadcasting it over an area large enough to account for several days of August traveling in a vehicle potentially faster than this camper, and potentially in the opposite direction from where we started?
If we traveled one mile in this timeframe , for example, then I would need a device to cover two miles. Three miles, if he is faster.
Why don't I just broadcast across a hundred miles at this point? It might be easier to forgo making a device to cover a few precise miles, and just hack an antenna with a lot of that hardware already set that is capable of covering an excessive distance. It would account for any variables we would have to deal with.
Unless they opened the briefcase already and we just don't know it.
I really hope they haven't…
"Enhance!"
What the…
"ENHANCE!"
I turn to find Sasha waving my peace offering around and hollaring at it. "Enhance already!"
Fiora steps in, and rather than stop the stupidity, she encourages it by saying "Maybe it only works for certain pitches of voice tone. Enhance."
Vaughn shares a glance with me. He silently conveys he is just as dumbfounded by the scene as I am. No wonder these people didn't kill me. They are mechanically ignorant.
"Enhance!" Brick roars.
Rhys stops and stares at Brick.
"Enhance." Mordecai says casually, then checks under his hat to see if it worked. It didn't.
"I don't get it… why isn't it working?" Lilith wonders.
Rhys could only stare. He was past the stage of face-palming. He could feel his brain cells dying just from watching it.
In the end, I managed to inventory the hardware that looked usable. I stand and walk up to Felix. He looks at me with his measured gaze. I wipe my hands of oil and filth on a rag I plucked out of the bin. "So, can you make what you need?"
"No." I reply. "I can make very little. The best I can do is repairs on what we have already."
"I see. What will you need then?"
I scratch my head and calculate it in my head. "Well, an wide-spectrum dish that can broadcast certain frequencies in every direction is the most important. Then a transceiver to scan for GPS signals. If we can't do the transceiver, then at least a booster to allow me to get on the ECHO-net with a stronger signal."
He frowned. "A wide-spectrum… Why?"
"Yeah… we don't know which direction August went, and the distance would be far. If I am going to send a signal to the briefcase to broadcast a return signature, it will have to be an initial signal send in every direction for a fair distance at very specific frequencies." He stares at me blankly. I nod. "And you have no idea what I just said, do you?"
"I'll have to take your word on it, won't I?" He grumbles. "Those dishes, would you be thinking Hyperion grade?"
"I am used to Hyperion hardware, so it is what I have in mind. But I should be able to work with Dahl or Atlas standards if I can get my hands on decent ones."
"No, Hyperion will be best to make this work. I have a place in mind." He turns the chair back around so he is facing forwards and he changes direction slightly.
I raise an eyebrow and cross my arms. "I doubt we will be able to get to Helios with this thing, or getting a delivery drop."
"We won't have to." He says mysteriously. "We will arrive there tonight. Get yourself tucked in, Hyperion." He waves me off dismissively and I get the distinct impression I am being treated like a slave.
The impression sends a furious boiling sensation into my veins. I clench my fists, but otherwise do nothing. I am truly a slave. I can't do anything.
"Enhance!" The girls continue trying.
-Two Days Later-
Another meal, another bland sandwich. I feel the overpowering urge to vomit taking a place next-door to my liver and my growing sense of helpleness. With nothing to do, I think. I'm at the beck-and-call of Felix, and am not allowed to do anything else than what he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants it. All I can do is lay on the floor (I no longer warrant a bed) and stare at the ceiling. I can feel every rock we ride over in my back.
I do the best I can. I put my hands behind my head, and fell into deep silent thought. Except that would be hard to do right now. My best thoughts involve plotting, planning, figuring something out, and I need a goal in order to do that. Right now, the only goal we have is get the money, which, I can't plot or plan towards without proper information. I'm not allowed to get information. The few attempts at conversation are quickly shut down.
I have trouble putting my finger on these people. Sasha, clearly a hot-head. She is the youngest in the group, yet being an adult with such a strong and independent personality in a group that seems to baby her makes her aggressive. But then it's how she treats me that I don't get. One moment she is helpful in a backhanded way, then she is genuinely helpful, then she is holding a grudge, then she has me at gunpoint, then she is back to being helpful in a backhanded way. She keeps going in a circle!
Fiona is much more calm and patient, wanting to think things out before stepping in. Practically the complete opposite of her sister. But Fiona too is confusing. She helps us in arguments that are death-threatening, yet is not on our side. Beyond that, I got nothing. Part of being silent, calm, patient, and only having input when necessary, is that it makes her hard to peg down. She hasn't expressed herself enough in enough ways for me to get any kind of feel for, beyond the obvious fact that she is a con-artist little b****. Even then, that only proves that what little she does show can't be trusted. Sasha at least seems more honest about her feelings and how they are expressed, even as confusing as they are.
Felix is a combination of the two. A con-artist by his past, so far as I have heard, yet is open with us about who we all are and where we all stand. Namely they hate us. He is hot-headed enough to take sudden action, yet patient and calm enough to control himself. If anything, this combination makes him more dangerous than either of the girls. Planners tend to not take action, while people who take action tend not to plan. Sasha and Fiona both have a potential weakness in that. Felix lacks that. Naturally its due to his experience. He is old enough to be a grandfather.
I sigh. I'm hopeless to deal with these three in any way. I'm not exactly the manipulator type either. The only understanding I have of psychology is what I have picked up in my experience of well… being a company man.
I blame my genes. Father had no social understanding whatsoever and mother was too kind-hearted to be anything short of completely honest and naive!
"I don't want to die… Please…"
I feel my pulse spike up as terror pierces my thoughts. By reflex I shake the thoughts away. I had allowed myself to think too far, too deep, into that. I shouldn't let my thoughts drift like that.
"You okay?" Vaughn wonders.
"Yeah, I'm fine." I sit up and stretch my neck. I hear a distinctive popping sensation.
"You sure? Your eyes suddenly widened in terror, and you're in a cold sweat."
"I'm fine, Vaughn… Just… not a good memory." I whisper. He nods in understanding.
One thing that worries me is time. Every hour that passes is another hour before August gets the briefcase to his mother. Due to the fact that Pandora is so big and this isn't a cheap 2-hour movie, it does take time for August to reunite with his mom, give her a Christmas present, and ho-ho-ho.
But how long?
I literally feel like I am sitting on a lottery wheel. Every hour I spin the wheel, and it has a random chance to destroy my life, a Pandoran gang lord, and 10-million dollars in cash. A sadistic part of me feels like it isn't completely bad. I am taking a Pandoran with me. But then… I would rather avoid the first part entirely.
"We're there." Felix announces. I look out the window to see we parked next to a mountain.
