⚒️ Tension in the Spring

⚒️ Tension in the Spring

by Joel Glover

Tick, tock, went the tension in the spring.

The watchmaker’s job is a trying one. A job that can only be done by a man, or a woman, with steady hands and an inventive mind.

Tick, tock.

There were cogs, an axle, a cam; a rat’s nest of wires; a photovoltaic cell and other power sources beside. 

Tick, tock.

A watchmaker slows their heart right down, breathes deep and low. Rhodri had learned from the best, or a woman who claimed she was the best at least. She was obsessed with yoga when she wasn’t working, contorting herself into ever more improbable positions, breathing in through one nostril and out through the other. He hadn’t copied her obsession, but he had copied her habits.

In through the left. 

Tick, tock.

Out through the right.

Tick, tock.

There was a payload wrapped in cerulean blue, and covered in tamper warnings in every language its original owners could fit onto the packaging.

Rhodri was sure they were more worried about copyright theft than its potential use as a munition.

In through the left. 

Tick, tock.

Out through the right.

Tick, tock.

There was someone talking, quiet as a spider’s hiccup in the audio channel in his helmet. He turned them down, always, to do his work. Not all the way down, but down below the sound of his breathing and the noise of the mechanism. If his team started screaming he’d hear them well enough. If things went wrong beneath his fingers there wouldn’t be time to scream for anyone.

The mechanism gave its last tick before he closed the wire cutters around the purple thread in its heart. 

In through the left. 

Out through the right.

It came loose from the hill with a satisfying hum. The magnet, which had been clamping it in place, deactivated along with its more lethal potential. 

His weathervane Ada was waving her hands around, a mix of instinctive semaphore and asteroid miner gestural cant. Her voice kept coming through the voice channel, and he thumbed the volume up so he could hear more than her faint grumbling.

“Interventionists. Appers and Circle/Bar.”

Circle/Bar was the ronin outsource of Nissan keiretsu’s internal security. They had their own name, of course, but nobody used it: instead people referred to the brand that their employees burned into detainees skin with acids and lasers. The inhouse security for APA had an equally unpleasant reputation.

Someone had put the bomb in the cargo bay. It was impossible to say if their plan had been to blow a hole in the ship and steal the cargo, or simply to slow them down enough so they could be overhauled by inimical others. Rhodri took another deep breath, warm suit air wafting up his left nostril. It sat in his chest, calming his mind, helping him keep the door closed with tension and panic.

It did not matter who put the bomb there, or why. The only thing that mattered right now was getting away.

Lean-to was piloting, when human intervention was needed, and it was needed now. The AI core would respond to requests from bonded ronin with immediate compliance, and unbonded ronin had long since learned how to trick the gel and mycelium substrata hiding within the quantum tanks. A hard decouple was the only solution, slamming a non-conductive gate through roots and hyphae and causing permanent, if repairable, damage. 

“Can we go?” Lean-to’s voice echoed through the helmets.

“Yes, go, we are clear!”

You cannot feel a ship accelerate when artificial gravity is engaged. You can hear it though. Atmosphere rushed back into the compartment Ada and Rhodri had sealed off around the bomb. With it came the howl of engines pushed to maximum, ejecting plumes of hot gas to thrust their sluggish ship through space.

“Guys, I need to turn off AG.”

Lean-to only turned off AG when things got really tricky. Ada and Rhodri scrambled for crash seats, slamming helmet visors shut and submitting to the clutch of robotic fingers that connected hoses and buckles faster than any human could. They hadn’t been serviced in at least six months, and Rhodri watched as Ada tried to suppress a panicked flashback to Super-fun having his leg torn off by a glitching clamp. The ship bucked under them, convulsing the way Ada did when they made love, with Lean-to whooping in their earbuds as he made the tanker dance in a way it was not designed to do. Something screamed in torment, alarms sounding across the ship as critical systems failed.

“Talk to us Lean-to!”

She was panicking. The weathervane needed to be the most nervous member of the cell almost by default. If the watchmaker got the jitters under pressure then things tended to go bang. There wasn’t a fighter pilot born who wasn’t a grade A sociopathic adrenaline junkie. Weps was Weps, and Scavs got guns pulled on them most days they went out to make a trade. Leaving only the weathervane to be jumpy. Their deal was Ada gave the go and the stop, because the rest of the cell all had issues with overconfidence. And, in Ajax's case, what appeared to be a death wish.

“Give me a tick.” Lean-to sounded like he was enjoying himself. Something else squealed as the ship yawed and pitched. Rhodri bit his lip, teeth punching through the flesh as he rattled within the slightly too loose grip of the clamps. He’d lost some weight, he realised. They hadn’t been eating enough, down on Nouveau Lyon. “Clear.” As Lean-to said it the AG kicked back in, hugging Rhodri back to his seat.

“Clear?” Ada’s question was laced with relief.

“They crashed.” Adrenaline over, Lean-to was indulging his taste for the laconic. “Into each other,” he concluded, answering the inevitable second question.

“Good job.” Jean-Marie’s voice came down to all of them, Frencher than anything on Nouveau Lyon, Frencher than snail-stuffed frogs legs in garlic butter. “Did you salvage the munitions, Rhodri?”

“I did,” he told the Weapons Officer.

“Good, good. That’ll save Ajax time on our next job.”

Apparently it was time for everyone to be laconic.