The Neo-Metropol Heist

25: Artem

When Artem woke the next morning, it was 6am and he realised he hadn't brushed his teeth since leaving the city.
He found a travel-brush cap in his bag and popped it in his mouth, chewing the cap as it fizzed in his mouth, not as satisfying as a real brush, but it did the job.
In the kitchen, Artem cupped water from the purifier into his hands and scrubbed his face with it.
In the corner, Cad sparked into life, his long limbs folding out as he stood up.
"Morning buddy," Artem said, "sleep well?"
Cad nodded.
On the other side of the room, the door to the hangar opened and Harry's head appeared, his hair matted and his face dusty, but showing no signs of tiredness.
"Hey, kid, if you're done dozing, we're about ready in here," he said.
"Well, I was going to grab some breakfast from the breakfast bar and maybe get a massage before we head off," Artem quipped, stretching out his arms and rubbing his eyes.
Harry simply rolled his eyes and disappeared back into the hangar.
Artem found his clothes and swapped them with his bedclothes, a hooded jacket with black leather patches on the shoulders and dark jeans, finding his reflection in the grubby mirror in the kitchen, combing his hair back with his hands.
He took one last look at the camp bed that had given him a crick in his neck, then took his rucksack from Cad and went to meet Harry and Alan.
On the other side of the door, Bessie had been turned around on the turnplate it was sat on, ready to be pushed out into the yard.
Alan was on the far side of the room, although Artem actually much preferred Runs With Wolves, counting out and sorting through a pile of flexi-papers.
Harry was in the cockpit, messing with something. Artem noticed that the huge delivery crate had be moved from its place and was now sat half on Bessie's cargo-ramp, ready to be pulled into the bay.
"Hey, Foxe Junior, give me a hand with this?" Pigott said, gesturing to the hangar doors.
Artem nodded and tied the straps on his boots properly before crossing the room to help him.
The doors were manual, of course, and could only be opened with a huge chain. Artem stood behind Pigott, and between them, they pulled the heavy chain hand over hand.
The door groaned as it lifted, sending dust into the air and letting the early morning light come flooding into the darkened space.
When it was open far enough, they hooked the chain into its place on the wall, and the door settled with a heaving groan.
"Ready, Cain?" Pigott asked.
Harry nodded, then gave a huge thumbs up through the tinted window of the cockpit. Then he flicked a switch above him and Bessie roared into life.
The engine was much stronger than before, a strong, assured rumble from deep within. Whatever Harry had done, it had helped.
The VTOL thrusters, even in hover mode, gave out a kick that loosened all the dust in the room into a swirling storm that Artem had to shield his eyes from.
Designed to be just as capable at interior cargo-transfer across warehouses, the ship was precise and controlled, and as Harry tipped the thrusters forward, the ship leaned gently and scooped up the crate underneath it.
Artem stood back as the ship, looking much larger imbued with life, hovering out into the already high-sun.
"It's beautiful," Artem mused, "I feel like a proud father."
Pigott just looked at him for a moment, as though he'd heard somebody else say the same thing before.
Before Artem could question him, the little man was following Harry out into the daylight.
Cad came up behind Artem and they both stepped out of the hangar, Artem breathing in the fresh air, actually starting to enjoy it, strange as it was.
Bessie settled down onto the grass with a quiet groan, the wings dipped and the engine clicked and died.
Harry appeared from the cockpit, stripping off the thick welding gloves he'd been wearing and squinting in the light.
"Happy?" Artem asked.
Harry shrugged.
"As I'll ever be," he said.
They organised the delivery forms, gathered their things and climbed into Bessie, the cockpit slightly claustrophobic with the three of them, the majority of the ship reserved for inanimate cargo.
There was some debate over who would pilot the ship, with Harry instinctively trying to take the flight seat. Pigott gave him a look and the two men faced off momentarily before Harry finally relented and took the co-pilot's seat.
"That's better," Pigott said, gently tapping the console as he settled into his seat.
Artem settled into one of the flight seats next to Cad, buckling the straps across his chest.
The Righteous was 'docked' sixty miles off the coast, so they would go over the specifics of the plan then, which was due to the fact that they didn't actually have a plan beyond get inside.
Pigott flicked a few switches and exchanged some jargon with Harry, and then the engine burst into life and the ship began to hover.
It was a different feeling to being inside a jumpcar, even outside of the auto-traffic flow, because the technology was fundamentally different. The VTOL thrusters were capable of thrust hundreds of times that of of domestic lift engines, and even then, it could be felt.
The flight interface illuminated the cockpit, even in daylight, strange readouts that Artem couldn't decipher. Underneath their feet, there was a loud hum and a clunk as the cargo-bay door clicked shut.
Then, with a lurch that left Artem's stomach on the ground, the ship lifted into the air and shot away from the cabin.
They were higher than any jump-car was capable of flying in seconds, and yet still kept climbing. Artem chanced a glance out of the glass side-floor of the cabin and saw the ground rushing away and momentarily felt sick.
"Fifteen-seconds to cruise," Harry said, the ship still climbing, "keeping steady."
Artem was momentarily concerned that Harry had any doubt that the ship would be anything other than steady, he thought that was a base requirement for a machine that took you thirty-thousand feet into the sky.
The ship let out a rolling whine for a couple of seconds, almost as though it was shouting out, then it stopped and they were high above the milky white clouds, blue sky all around them.
Bessie levelled out, the VTOL thruster flattening with a hum and a happy ping from the terminal interface.
"Well, we're still alive," Artem said, "always a plus."
After a few more checks, Pigott flicked on the autopilot and the ship began to follow a set flight path eastwards, the engines settling into quiet normalcy.
The two pilots swiveled their chairs towards Artem and Harry flicked a switch that dimmed the windows, blocking out some of the healthy blue sky.
"Let's talk business," Harry said, swiping his hands and bringing up a 3D image of the Righteous in the centre of the cockpit. It was a long, military-grey floating island decorated with several other ships. Made up of five decks, shown by a coloured cross-section, and held aloft by four colossal VTOL jets, two on each side. The thing was a beast, even in a picture.
"With our shipping papers, we can get on board here, on deck four," Harry said, as a room lit up on the cross section, which Artem assumed was the hangar bay, "this is where all the low-priority cargo comes through so there shouldn't be a huge armed presence.
"Alan will fly us in after we get confirmation, and drop us off in the crate. A trojan horse."
"What about scanners, surely they don't let just anybody drop anything onto their multi-billion dollar war-machine?" Artem asked.
"Mr. Cain has requested that I activate a low-frequency disruption field to confuse the initial scans," Cad said politely, "it should protect us from initial detection long enough for us to move into the ship proper."
Harry nodded.
"They get too much cargo through to run thorough checks straight away, it'll be a basic scan for explosives. Easy enough to trick from inside," he said.
"Once you're in the hangar you're on your own," Pigott said, "I'm not hanging around to be shot out of the sky when they catch you. Your only way out will be this ship you're looking for, if you can't find it, you're screwed."
"Fantastic," Artem said, the ship shuddering from sudden turbulence.
"Speaking of the way out," Harry said, "we couldn't find any floor plans beyond best guesses and black market prototype plans, but we can assume the mark fives will have their own fleet deck on the bottom deck."
"Mark fives?" Artem asked.
"That's the production name, the Navy calls them the Mjolnir class but I think that's moronic," Harry said, "so we'll go with mark five."
Mjolnir was the hammer of the legendary deity Thor, and Artem thought that was quite an interesting name for a ship class, but he kept that to himself.
"So once we're on board, we just have to find the right hangar, then take the ship," Harry finished, as though the last task would be the easiest thing in the world to accomplish.
The picture of the Righteous switched to a 3D image of the fighter-craft itself. It was long and sleek, almost shaped like an obsidian wasp, with a narrow 'head' containing the cockpit, leading to a wide but impressively aerodynamic body.
The VTOL wings were a different model to Bessie's, flatter and designed to pull of wicked aerial maneuvers, and were dipped downwards in the picture, apparently also serving as landing gear.
In the past, when manned flight had been entirely in danger of dying out, the invention of technology that perfected clean-thrust VTOL technology re-energised it, and the close synergy of computer and human being had brought it back to the forefront of modern warfare.
The computers could run tasks that no human could, but the human could keep it in check and take over when necessary, bringing an entirely new aspect to aerial warfare.
"The ship itself has an alert period, the period that it will need to warm up for full flight," Harry explained, "as long as we can avoid getting noticed that shouldn't be a problem. We'll need to disable the other ships so they can't give chase, we won't have to worry about any of the other fleets on the ship, though. We'll be faster."
Harry looked at Cad and Artem.
"Cad can activate a targeted EMP burst that will shut them down long enough for us to get away, if you're sure the other ships won't be able to keep up."
Harry nodded, satisfied. The ship buzzed politely and Pigott turned back to the console in front of him, the windows opening to allow light in.
"We'll be on the carrier in a couple of minutes," he said, flicking through some terminal updates. For a man that had disowned all kinds of modern technology, he was strangely skilled at navigating it, "I swear, Cain, I was perfectly happy out of all this shit, then you turn up and drag me back in."
"You were never really out of it, Alan," Harry replied, "if you live here, you're always going to be a part of it."
Pigott nodded in reluctant acceptance.
"I guess you're right," he replied, "I should've moved to Europe."
Harry didn't have a reply to that, but Artem was curious.
"If you wanted to get out, why didn't you?" He asked, leaning back into the couch trying to stop the safety buckles from slicing into his chest, "why stay here?"
Pigott turned to him and gave him the look again, a mix of nostalgia and curiosity. He was looking back through time and seeing another face.
"Why are you still here, junior?" He asked, "we could all get out if we wanted to, we have the contacts. Why do we stay?"
Artem realised Pigott didn't really have an answer to the question, but Artem knew he didn't have a justification for himself, either. Why did they stay?
Artem told himself it was because there was no better safe for a thief to thrive - a smart one could use the rife political corruption as cover and live a better life than any government parasite. But he didn't doubt there would come a time soon when the negatives would start outweighing the positives.
"And anyway, Europe isn't much better," Pigott said, "you go east of Iceland and you got forty-thousand square miles of edicts and conventions telling you when you can and can't take a piss," he grinned, "at least here they're honest about oppression."
There was another beep from the ship, more urgent this time, and on the front window an overlay appeared, magnifying a grey dot a few miles ahead.
In real life, the Righteous was staggering. A completely impossible construction in mid-air, a heaving, sleek leviathan of metal that had no place in the sky.
It was, essentially, what you'd expect an aircraft carrier to resemble, even out of the ocean. Long but also tall, with a flat top housing lines of jumpships, all watched carefully by the all-seeing eye of the flight control tower at the north end of the ship.
Bessie helpfully threw up scans and analyses of the beast - six hundred feet long, thirteen ships on the main deck, more below. It was giving a scan of the power output from the lift-jets, but Artem couldn't comprehend the numbers.
"How the hell does something like that stay in the air?" Artem asked, aware his mouth was open.
Cad leaned forward.
"The ship is constructed from reinforced ultra-light metals such as aluminium, carbon and exotics to reduce weight, and is powered by a multi-isotope radio-decay cell reactor generator producing enough energy to maintain constant altitude and velocity for at least ten years with regular maintenance," he said, the words a different language.
"Right," Artem replied, "cool."
"Your tax dollars at work," Pigott grumbled as he dipped the ship towards the carrier.
Then, the ship radio buzzed into life.
"... Beta sigma epsilon five five... Codename Bessie, you are approaching restricted RNS military airspace in an unidentified ship. Please identify your name and function or we will shoot you down," came a commanding female voice.
Pigott rolled his eyes.
"The military, always with the dramatics," he sighed, swiping at the reply switch, "RNS Righteous stand down, this is a cargo-delivery vessel with the correct codes scheduled for a delivery drop at oh-seven-hundred. Please check again."
As he flicked the switch off, he entered a code quickly into the ship computer and the delivery manifests and codes began to compile before their eyes. There was a few seconds of concerning silence, then the radio crackled again.
"Roger beta sigma epsilon, we have you tagged," the voice said, Artem breathing a sigh of relief that they weren't currently being pursued by heat-seeking missiles in the opposite direction, "please follow the nav-point on your interface to the cargo deck and take your place in the queue. Somebody will link you to confirm the delivery. Have your papers ready and cargo prepared for weapons check."
The radio cut off and Pigott began to follow the directional arrow and altimeter that had appeared on the screen in front of them.
"Aye-aye, ma'am," he said quietly.
Artem and Harry stayed strapped into their seats for another couple of minutes until the carrier was all they could see in front of them.
It was like a flying skyscraper, the engines on either side at least three-storeys tall, distorting the air beneath them like a tornado, swirling with an electric blue tinge.
"All right Harry, time to go back in your box, they'll spot you in their pre-scans," Pigott said.
Harry agreed and climbed out of his chair, ducking his head as he climbed into the cargo space through the hatch in the back of the cockpit to where the crate sat in the centre of the drop floor.
"I'll stay in touch on a private channel to your commlinks, but you won't be able to reply once you're inside, unless you like the idea of being thrown off the top deck by a heavy-set marine," Pigott said, not acknowledging them completely, too focused on manually directing the ship.
Artem followed Harry into the slightly more roomy cargo bay, which became less roomy when Cad joined them.
The crate seemed smaller than it had in the hangar, it was open at the front with one of the walls folded down to allow it to be filled. It didn't seem big enough to hold two full-grown men and a robot, but they were going to have to make it work.
"Don't want to rush you, but you need to get in the box before we get any closer or they're going to know something's up," Pigott said, his voice coming from both the cockpit and their earpieces, which was slightly surreal.
Harry looked at Artem, slightly concerned for a moment.
"You ready, kid?" He asked.
"Yeah," Artem said, unsure, "it'll be fun."
Harry raised his eyebrows, then climbed into the crate. Artem climbed in after him and Cad made three. Between them, they pulled the hatch closed behind them and darkness enveloped them.
Then, they sat in silence, the only stimulation of their senses coming from the mechanical rocking of the ship beneath them as it docked with the Righteous. They couldn't see, only hear as Bessie landed, and a few moments later the drop-floor opened and lowered the crate from the belly of the ship.
"They're about to run the first scan," Pigott whispered over the radio, then silence. Artem hoped for a moment that Cad would be able to fool whatever machine they were using to analyse the crate. A few seconds passed, Artem's stomach in his mouth for every inch of it, and then Pigott spoke again, "you're in. Relax."
Artem heard Harry exhale slowly and realised that he was doing it too.
"That robot of yours is a thief's dream, junior," Pigott said, "shit, they're waving me off. You're on your own from here on in - it's been good seeing you again, Cain. Don't get dead. Good luck."
With neither of them unable to reply, the line simply clicked dead and Artem could only imagining Alan Pigott and Bessie lifting away and disappearing from view into the morning sun.
Now past the most dangerous point, Cad activated a tiny LED light on his chestplate, which revealed the faint outline of Harry's face.
The man shifted in the confined space of the crate, then gestured with his hands in a way that Artem took to mean 'wait here, be quiet'.
Artem nodded and Harry pointed to his eyes, and Artem raised an eyebrow, bemused, and then he deciphered what he meant. Artem tapped his earpiece twice and the holographic visor snapped out across his eyes, a formation of muted orange light that mimicked a true piece of glass.
It offered basic scans of the environment and overlays without obscuring his vision. It automatically connected to Harry's chip and immediately, Artem could see live footage of his own face.
Blinking at the surreal strangeness for a moment, the camera angle sifted as Harry moved to the front of the crate, awkwardly climbing over Artem's leg and unhooking the latch, lowering it quietly and leaning out.
Seeing what Harry saw, Artem quickly took in the hangar around them. He couldn't really see much until Harry stepped out of the crate completely, revealing a tall corridor of similar looking cargo crates around them.
Slowly, Harry crept behind the crate and out onto what appeared to be a balcony area overlooking the main hangar. He quickly took cover behind the low balcony railing and chanced a quick glance over.
The main hangar was colossal, the wall almost entirely open to the blue sky and at least five or six jumpships on turnplates on the main floor.
It couldn't have been fully staffed, but there was a skeleton crew running back across the floor in different directions, most of them in jumpsuits doing busy work. Others in full military dress and protective, blacked-out faceplates.
Artem didn't like the look of the huge assault rifles they held to their waists, either.
Harry moved slowly along the balcony, then stopped like a deer in the headlight. Peering out from behind the corner he'd stopped at, the camera focused and revealed a soldier, facing the other direction.
He stood with a spine like iron, his armour light but threatening, a pistol at his waist and a rifle in his arms.
Of course, Harry moved towards him. Unable to say a thing, Artem could only watch, holding his breath, as Harry was on the soldier in a second, his arm round the man's neck.
There was a struggle, but the man had lost the moment Harry had laid eyes on him. Holding the soldier in a chokehold just long enough, Artem watched as the soldier went limp and Harry lowered him gently to the floor.
A few moments later, Harry had dragged him off the balcony and back to the crate.
Artem leaned out from the crate and spoke quietly.
"Right, one down, like, a hundred more to go?" He said, "they probably have robots too, Harry. Can you choke a robot?"
"We only need the one," Harry whispered, beginning to pull at the buckles of the soldier's jumpsuit, strangely adept at removing the clothes of soldiers.
"Let's hope he's your size, Harry," Artem said as Harry slid the faceplate off, revealing a man with dirty blonde hair and a scar across his lip, still breathing, "this is so cliche."
After a minute or two of frustrated pulling in what Artem liked to call 'extreme dressing', Harry wore the black jumpsuit of the man he'd just knocked out.
He grabbed the man's pistol and rifle, and holstered them, picking up the faceplate and forcing it onto his head, it was obviously slightly too small, but Harry made it fit.
Artem looked him up and down, and had to admit, the plot could work.
"Aren't you a little tall for a stormtrooper?" Artem quipped, only to receive a stony glare from Harry, "wow, tough crowd."
Harry shook his head and lifted the stripped marine, with Artem's help, into the crate.
"Why does he have to come with us?" Artem asked, packing the man in like a game of human Tetris.
"Because if we leave him here he could wake up and blow the whole thing," Harry replied, "you stay in the crate and keep an eye on him, I'll find a dolly to move it and we'll find a way down to the right deck."
Artem thought the whole thing sounded amazingly simple, which meant it most likely wasn't going to be.
Climbing into the crate with the unconscious soldier, who was much more compact passenger in comparison to Harry, Artem pulled the door behind him as Harry went off and found a hovering cargo-dolly to move the crate.
Now disguised, Harry could freely push the crate out onto the balcony and down onto the main floor. Through the video link, Artem could see him wading through the sea of soldiers and workers with barely a passing glance from any of them.
Out of the main hangar, they were now in a wide corridor, utilitarian and coated in brushed metal like the interior of a submarine. It didn't help allay the claustrophobia Artem was currently experiencing inside the box.
The corridors were mainly empty, and every so often words were stencilled above doors to give general direction. Harry was following an arrow to an elevator somewhere further up the corridor.
Then, ahead, a soldier appeared from around the corner, no face-mask and an officer's uniform. He called out.
"Aitken!" The officer called.
Harry froze and Artem's heart lurched into his chest.
Whatever Aitken sounded like, they hadn't had a chance to speak to to him before Harry had knocked him out, and it was highly improbable that Harry could take a wild stab in the dark at an impression and get it right.
Then, Cad piled it on.
"Artem," he whispered, "I believe he is waking up."
In the darkness, Artem heard a faint groan from the unconscious guard. On his HUD, the officer inched closer. Harry released the dolly and stepped out to meet him.
Artem was sure that Harry would be sensible, they couldn't take any more risks.
"Harry, it's already tight in here. No vacancy. Be nice," Artem whispered.
The guard shifted, then lifted his head and found Artem's face with rolling eyes. Artem nodded at him.
"Cool underwear," he said, "I've got a pair just like that."
Then, Cad put a gentle hand on the man's shoulder and sent enough volts through him to knock him out cold with a flash and a crackle.
Outside the crate, the officer that had been striding towards them stopped abruptly and looked down at the box, an eyebrow raised.
Artem froze like a deer in the headlights, as though the scraping of his clothes was as loud as a train.
"You hear that?" The officer asked Harry. The camera turned from side to side as Harry shook his head.
"Cat got your tongue, Aitken?" The officer asked, suspicious. The name that the stolen uniform would have automatically register on his HUD could only go so far towards fooling him.
Speak, Harry, Artem though, not speaking is going to be worse than speaking. Say anything.
"Where are you going with this?" The officer asked, his eyes narrowing accusingly. Artem clenched his everything.
"It's a supply crate for the crew down on bottom decks," Harry said, finally, the suit's voice synthesiser masking his distinctive tone, "the Mjolnir guys, sir."
The officer raised his head, his eyes still suspicious. Harry had made his voice higher, and the synthesiser did a good job of distorting his voice just enough to make it generic and without any real intonation.
They just had to hope that there was a big enough disparity between the officers and grunts aboard the Righteous that he wouldn't have any idea what Aitken even sounded like.
Then, the officer seemed to relax.
"Deck four?" He asked, "you sure? You know that deck's off limits until we haul anchor."
"That's what I was told," Harry said, as casually as possible.
The officer frowned.
"You won't get inside with your clearance level, not as long as we're docked, somebody obviously fucked up here," he said, checking a terminal nonchalantly, "you need to go up and speak to Sergeant Schwartz. She'll be able to get you in."
"Damn, not Schwartz," Harry said, taking a risk.
The risk paid off, and the officer grinned.
"Yeah, lucky you. Try her office, B46," the officer said, and began to walk away. Then he stopped and turned back, "huh, you know, I always thought you were Scottish," then, he was gone.
Artem could hear Harry panting with relief momentarily before he regained his composure.
"Those acting lessons really paid off, huh Harry?" Artem whispered.
"Shut up, kid," Harry growled back under his breath. After checking around to make sure the corridor was empty, he said, "do I need to make a detour or is there another way around this? Tin Man?"
In the darkness of the crate, Cad's faceplate became illuminated as he spoke.
"It is unlikely that I would be able to hack the system without alerting the main security mainframe and without sufficient time to place a feedback loop code-string to mask my activity," Cad said, "it is also likely that there will be a local risk of detection making the task more difficult."
"He means no, Harry," Artem confirmed.
Harry sighed.
"Ah shit," he said, "looks like we're making a detour to find Sergeant Schwartz."
"Oh goody," Artem said.