Although Adda had no way of confirming it from her current position, the ship should’ve been approaching Biometallic 1’s cargo docking bay. The Shieldrunners’ ship was approaching the station faster than any ship Adda had ever been on. Maybe this was typical for a vessel that reported only one person onboard.
Adda, Iridian, Rio, and Wiley were in the cargo area, inside a shipping container that everyone except Rio and Pel had worked on to make it scan like a shipment of algae pallets. Extremely cheap algae was Yăo’s only export, so it was plausible cargo. Adda had typed up a story about using algae to feed pseudo-organic cultures, but the pilot would have to deliver it powerfully and quickly to stop anyone from thinking too hard about it. Thanks to the Shieldrunners’ combined efforts, only the algae and the pilot had shown up on every ITA scan they’d been through.
They’d had to celebrate Iridian’s birthday in that container, and Adda hadn’t even had a present for her. She had one in mind, but it was commissioned art that would have to wait until they sold what they stole from Biometallic. Maybe she’d find something on Biometallic’s servers that’d make up for the delay.
She’d look for that only after she found the source for the firmware her and Noor’s neural implant nets used. Since the idea was first proposed, she’d reconsidered Noor’s position. He’d been right in his assessment that it was reckless to waste their time waiting on Biometallic to solve their problem while Casey was searching for an opportunity to influence Adda. They, or Kanti, could be looking for the solution at the same time Biometallic did. And if Biometallic ignored Adda’s warnings, she, Noor, and Kanti would have to find the vulnerability themselves anyway. She’d take the source and anything else that her conscience would let her sell. Despite what Iridian said, the buyers could use every source in Biometallic’s library to hurt someone.
But that was a possibility, and Casey’s pursuit was an unyielding fact. If Biometallic ignored Adda’s report, Kanti wouldn’t rewrite the firmware for free. She intended to have something to pay with.
The ship jerked sideways. Adda shut her eyes as she was jostled against Iridian, who gripped her hand gently in an armored glove. They were making as little noise as possible, to reduce the chances of Ceres customs or the ITA differentiating them from algae. Armor for the other three and an enviro suit for Adda protected them inside the container, which was cold enough to stop harvested algae from rotting.
At the time they’d entered the container, Pel still hadn’t told them how he’d be getting them into Biometallic’s station. He’d already reached Ceres on a Ganymede passenger vessel his new fake ID allowed him to board. If he hadn’t gotten them docking permissions and a way into the firmware library, then they’d fight their way in and out, but he also hadn’t sent them any information about station security.
In addition to Iridian’s, Wiley’s, and Rio’s armor, each soldier had two long-distance charges, and everybody had knives. Even Adda had one, although it was sealed inside her enviro suit at the moment. She’d used everything she’d read about the station to create plans in which violence wouldn’t be required, but without more information from Pel, she couldn’t count on any of what she’d planned being useful.
The ship changed speed, decelerating, Adda hoped, and pressed them against the wall. She reached for her sick bag, but that was as helpful outside her suit as her knife was inside it. Biometallic kept the station’s environment healthy, so at least she had Earthlike gravity to look forward to once they docked.
It feels like we’re landing, Iridian subvocalized. When Adda opened her eyes enough to see her, Iridian wore one of her encouraging, brilliant smiles. Pel got this part right.
With one final shudder, the ship landed on a pad in Biometallic’s docking bay. Its engines whined so loudly Adda tried to cover her ears, but her enviro suit’s helmet was still on. Eventually the sound dropped below the range that the suit’s external mics picked up, and after a few minutes the pilot unlocked the container door.
Everyone’s comps blared alerts or buzzed as they reconnected to the Patchwork and updated themselves with everything that’d happened over the two days they’d been stuck in the container. Adda turned on the looping routine on hers, to keep anybody watching security cam feeds from noticing her. The ship had its own looper, which would take priority as long as they were in the docking bay, but she didn’t want to forget to turn it on when they left. The others had slept in the container when they wanted to, but sleeping while standing up in an enviro suit hadn’t been an actual option for her. At this point, she didn’t trust her memory for much of anything.
What she could see of the station through the container’s open end was as different from Yăo Station as she could’ve imagined. Compared to Yăo Station’s wide-open port, the Biometallic 1 docking bay was tiny. The pad the ship sat on took up most of the space. Equipment and supplies around the walls were physically labeled and organized. A cargo bot sat silent in a charging hutch on one side, its body shining in the bright light and its job apparently finished, judging by the clean surfaces of everything else in view. The pilot wandered over to a rack of parts and selected something small that still required two hands to hold. She held it over her head to look at its underside, nodded briskly, and walked back to her ship with it.
Iridian, Wiley, and Rio had been in armor for two days, not the enviro suit and under-suit thermals Adda had on. Armor had convenient attachment points for tie-down straps, which let the other three all unhook themselves while Adda struggled out of a harness Iridian had put her into. Another advantage the fighters had was that armor was designed for multi-day wear. The under-suit Adda wore, thank all the gods and devils, was disposable. “Everybody look out the door for a few minutes,” Iridian announced.
Once everybody had turned around, Adda disposed of the under-suit, wiped herself down with some chemical cloths, and changed into boring black and dull purple formal clothes. Pel had insisted she wear the business attire for “a thing I’m setting up.” Whatever the “thing” was, Adda hoped it wouldn’t require the knife now hidden in her jacket. Even though Iridian had made her practice taking it out of the jacket without feeling around for it or snagging it on fabric, Adda wasn’t sure she could defend herself with it.
The pilot picked up Adda’s sealed bag of underthings and her enviro suit and sighed. “Two hours and I’m out,” she reminded them in a gruff professional tone that would’ve been believable if she hadn’t been so high when they’d met her on Yăo.
“Got it.” Iridian stretched her arms wide, bouncing on her toes the way she did when she wanted to go for a run. The armored helmet made her voice sound hollow and farther away than she really was. “See you in one.” It would take the ITA seven minutes to mobilize from Ceres Station, so if they made enough of a fuss to call attention to themselves, then it didn’t matter how long the whole operation took.
Adda’s comp vibrated against her hand, almost continuously, in the pattern she’d designated for messages. She shifted to see the projection window in the new, deep purple glove she’d had printed as part of her disguise. Hundreds of messages were pouring into the device, all with the senders obscured. Some were sizable enough to contain images or vid, and she didn’t have time to assess them all for veracity, let alone read them. The most recent one was plain text. “Stay in Ceres orbit. We need your help.”
Her breath shuddered out of her, and despite the docking bay’s well-filtered air, she couldn’t seem to get it back. She’d set her comp to identify messages that originated from intelligences, and it was doing that now, with priority highlighting and a tracing function it could finally use now that they were back on the Patchwork. Adda subvocalized Who is this? into her comp’s messaging system.
According to her comp’s assessment, it had to be either AegiSKADA or Casey. AegiSKADA would’ve answered her question. No more messages appeared.
The early stages of Casey’s influence had been marked by Adda lying to Iridian about the intelligences. If she resisted sym
ptoms like that, it should slow the progression of any influence Casey was exerting on her. At the very least, Iridian would know what was happening and do something about it.
I just heard from Casey, Adda subvocalized to Iridian. It sent me a whole lot of information. Too much to look through now. Casey always provided more information than Adda thought existed in answer to her questions. As terrifying as its obsession with her was, Adda missed being able to trust the information it brought her without running everything through tampering analyses.
Iridian swore and pushed past Wiley and Rio, who were checking their suits over. She ducked a little to look into Adda’s eyes. Whatever she saw there must’ve made her feel better, because she relaxed and pulled Adda into a loose hug. Her armor pressed wrinkles into Adda’s fancy clothes.
There’s no evidence linking visible eye features to influence, Adda told her. Although eye movement can indicate honesty or the lack thereof.
Oh. Iridian’s grip on Adda pulled tight again. Aloud, she said, “It must’ve been watching Ceres stationspace. We had to cross it to get here. Shit. I thought we’d have more time.”
Adda had predicted that they’d have a few hours before the awakened intelligences found them, but that was only because they hadn’t reached out or sent any ITA agents after them during the trip from Yăo Station to Ceres. Maybe they wanted her to be on Ceres. It was where the ITA had put her for influence recovery, and that would explain why they hadn’t interfered with the crew’s travel plans until now.
I can only guess what they’ll do, Adda told Iridian. Sometimes I’m wrong.
Adda’s comp buzzed twice, then spouted, “Hey, did you mean the awakened AIs are watching us?” in Noor’s voice. When the Yăo pilot had dropped Noor and Pel off on Ganymede, Noor had met up with a contact who took him to one of Ceres’s many ratholes. Well-equipped underground rooms were hidden across the ’ject, outside the station’s protective dome. Intelligence operatives on both sides of the war had built hundreds throughout populated space. Noor had discovered this one, and he said it was rarely used now.
If it was like most ratholes, it’d have a workspace generator that was less than ten years old, and a satellite connection to the Patchwork. He’d be watching the armored suits’ cam feeds. Being observed made Adda uncomfortable, but she appreciated that somebody was watching for trouble while she was busy. And, since he’d already found a way into Biometallic’s systems, he could remotely solve any security problems they encountered.
“It was one of the awakened AIs,” Iridian said. “Watch out for the ships Adda told you about.”
“Yeah,” said Noor. He and Adda had put together a routine to spot the awakened intelligences, and it would alert him if one appeared in Ceres or Biometallic 1 stationspace. “And we’ll meet back home when this venture goes to all the hells I bet it does.” Home, for the purposes of this operation, meant Yăo Station.
Adda pushed herself away from Iridian and tugged at the business suit to smooth out the wrinkles. After weeks in influence recovery and Yăo Station, she’d forgotten how empowering it felt to wear clothes that fit and didn’t smell like sweat, multiple recyclings, or industrial-grade detergent. The warm once-over Iridian gave her was a delightful bonus.
“This doesn’t change the plan,” Adda said. “We’ll just keep watching for them like we have been.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Iridian purred. She’d gotten Adda out of that suit as soon as she’d put it on to test the fit on Yăo, but all four of them had been in very close quarters for over a week since. It was nice to have something to look forward to when they got back to Yăo.
“And we’ll be watching out for anybody they influenced, too,” said Rio.
Pel’s whispered “I’m waiting” transmitted over Adda’s comp with the operation channel’s buzzing signal. “You coming or not?”
“We’re coming.” Iridian caught Wiley’s eye in his helmet’s projection of his face, then shut her own projector off, turning her faceplate black. Wiley and Rio shut off their faceplate projectors too. “Eyes up, Shieldrunners.”
The bay’s loading dock, which led to the rest of the station, was smaller than the ones Adda had seen on other stations. Because it was so close to Ceres Station, Biometallic 1 received smaller and more frequent shipments than most other places in the universe. The schematics she’d downloaded showed a passenger passthrough nearby, although it wasn’t connected to the docking bay.
The loading dock’s door opened before Iridian reached it, and Pel grinned at them through the doorway. Adda hadn’t taken good notes on his cover story because she’d been finding a textile printer on Yăo capable of producing business-appropriate fabric. Usually Pel passed himself off as an intern, graduate student, or low-level administrative aide. Whatever role he was playing this time required neater hair than Adda had ever seen on his head and business attire, which was rumpled despite his insistence that Adda look professional upon arrival. “Come on in,” he said. “I actually know where we’re going.”
They followed Pel into a storeroom lit with bright afternoon sunsim. Somewhere beyond, Adda’s and Noor’s neural implant net firmware was in one of the station’s server tanks. Noor had put together a backdoor to the library. When Adda plugged in the datacask she’d brought, the backdoor would install itself. That way, if Adda didn’t find her and Noor’s firmware this time, he would let them back in later.
“You found somebody who can get us into the firmware library?” Adda asked Pel.
“Kind of?” Pel waved them down a hallway, also lit in afternoon sunsim, while he looked down the hallway in the other direction. There had to be cams everywhere, and Adda’s feed looper should be hiding all five of them. She turned off the sound on her comp. Three people in full armor would look suspicious, but the hallway had been empty so far.
“Keep talking,” Iridian said.
“So, what I told my ‘mentor’ was that I’m inviting my rich, eccentric big sister and if ve wanted vis lab to get a big chunk of her financial backing, ve’d better clear the place out and let Sissy have a look at everything. She’s eccentric, see?”
“Oh gods, ve bought that?” Wiley asked.
Pel grinned. “The way I’ve been talking and fucking, ve did!”
This set off a wave of laughter among the armored folks. “Tash would’ve loved this,” said Wiley.
“You will use any excuse to get your dick into an op,” said Rio.
“If that’s the only part you use, then you’re doing sex wrong,” said Pel, setting the other three laughing again.
Lying to scientists and engineers about funding projects they cared about was truly awful. If she could, Adda would see that the victim of Pel’s con got paid. Where she’d find the money and time, between securing her implant from the intelligences as a short-term solution and getting away from them as a long-term one, she didn’t know.
“So this place is empty all the way there?” Iridian asked Pel.
“Yeah, that’s what ve said! Oh, and you’re all Sissy’s bodyguards, by the way.”
Wiley and Rio nodded in unison and Iridian said, “Got it.”
I’m going looking for the station intelligence, Adda told Iridian. Iridian’s jaw set in a hard line. She’d been adopting her combat mode since they stepped off the ship, broken only by Pel’s description of his activities on Biometallic 1. Her mission-focused state of mind would keep her calm while Adda reached out to an intelligence for the first time since Mairie had influenced her on Yăo Station.
Adda had run out of prescription concentration aids. Since she couldn’t afford the ingredients to make her own, she was relying on a case she’d selected from a Yăo Station resident’s dented lockbox. It wasn’t the most reliable brand, but it was so affordable and common that the case she bought seemed likely to contain the real stuff. The red tab was sour on her tongue and took over a minute to kick in. It’d been so long since her last dose that she hardly noticed the delay.
When the sharp
sheet hit her brain, Biometallic 1’s hallway went gray. Everything on her comp projection sharpened and slowed, giving her plenty of time to process the latest news from Ceres stationspace while she activated her digital intermediary. It formed beside her, a dark gray outline as tall and muscular as Iridian, without her defined features. With Adda’s pulse pounding in her ears, she sent her intermediary out into the station network, looking for one of two ways this particular intelligence would allow itself to be contacted by someone other than its supervisor.
“Noor’s asking how you’ll get us into the firmware library,” Iridian said to Pel. “I want to know too.”
“Let’s see,” Adda said slowly, “if Ficience will help.” This station management intelligence was much newer than Mairie. Although Ficience was far from the most trustworthy intelligence on the market, it was powerful and one of the most secure. It had its vulnerabilities like everything did, but her intermediary was still searching for this particular installation’s faults.
“Can we call it Fish for short?” Pel asked.
Adda dragged her consciousness away from her comp and intermediary to smile at him. “Maybe.” Thanks to that question, any workspace she got into would probably express itself in oceanic imagery.
“If that doesn’t go through, what’s the plan?” Iridian asked.
“The lab comps have to access that library, is what ve said.” Pel shrugged. “So . . . just plug in that datacask, right?”
Adda’s intermediary brushed the edges of Ficience’s network. The feedback gave her a full-body shiver. Even outside a workspace, the intelligence’s density and implacable processing were intimidating. The majority of this one’s focus was in stationspace, nowhere near her.
She was still sighing in relief when she considered just what might distract it. Station admins had approved her visit. Thanks to her feed looper, none of their group had provided biometric data, not even gait or voiceprints. Their comps’ ID broadcasts were turned off. Clearing out two whole modules of the small station should’ve attracted at least some of its attention. Why wouldn’t a station intelligence track visitors like them?
Gravity of a Distant Sun Page 24