When she exited the workspace and got out of Kanti’s generator, Iridian grinned up at her. “Is it set up the way you want it to be?”
“Yes!” Adda checked the time on her comp while she sent Kanti’s payment. “We’re a little behind, though. Let’s go.”
“Aw, already?” Kanti’s comp buzzed loudly. They looked at the projection in their bright green glove and nodded.
“Yeah, sorry.” Iridian bowed, and Kanti straightened their spine a little to return it. “Great work, again. If we ever get out from under the ITA, I’ll look you up.”
“Down with the sister-fucking monkeys,” Kanti said amiably, which must have made more sense in Hindi, or in Kanti’s head. “Luck to you.”
* * *
They all boarded the Mayhem in another deep-space ship transfer hours outside the Ceres reliable routes. None of them would be going back to Ceres for a very long time. Adda had requested a location where she and the intelligences could talk without delays or ITA interruptions. While she waited for Casey’s reply, the Mayhem would reach an affordable top speed on the way to Sunan’s Landing.
“Now that Casey can’t manipulate my implant anymore, I need to speak to it in real time,” she told Pel. Adda felt no compulsion to reach out to Casey. Nothing scratched at her brain when she put it off. She just felt genuinely curious about Casey’s efforts.
Iridian had been talking to Wiley about Ceres, but when she overheard Adda’s explanation, she said, “Hold that thought” to Wiley. She caught Adda by the untattooed arm and hauled her into the residential cabin. After the door shut, she said “Why do you think you need to talk to Casey ever again?”
“I still want to know why it’s building a supercomputer, and where, and what will be different about this one as compared to the ones we have on Earth.” Iridian’s expression was too fearful to look at. Adda focused on a crack in the cabin doorway. “How would an awakened intelligence design one, and what does it intend to do with it? We have no idea what its priorities are, or even how it selected them. And how did it come to the conclusion that we’re the only people who can help it? I’ve read everything there is to read about Casey’s original development, when it was called something boring like ‘Espionage and Reconnaissance Copilot 5.1’ but in Korean, which just shows that out of the three development teams, theirs was the most successful at setting up the impetus to do whatever it’s doing, and . . .” This explanation had gotten louder and farther off topic than she’d intended. She toned her conclusion down to a reasonable volume. “I have to know what it wants with us.”
“You, not us,” Iridian said. “I’m pretty sure it only cares about me so far as I affect you.”
That wasn’t the point Adda wanted to argue. “We can’t just keep running. They’d even have found us beyond the interstellar bridge, eventually. Now that Casey can’t influence me so quickly, I want to see what happens when I talk to it. That’s what it wants too, I think,” she said wonderingly. “After my overdose it realized how dangerous it’d be to force me into doing what it wanted, especially where you’re concerned, Iri.”
“Yeah, if it wants you it’ll get me too, every time.”
“The next most expedient approach would’ve been to ask me for help directly,” Adda said. “I think it tried to do that on Ceres. My reaction reinforced its previous assessment that straightforward communication with humans never worked, because talking didn’t get Casey the results it wanted.”
“And then it had the Apparition shoot at the ZVs’ ship. It could do that again,” Iridian pointed out. “You know how bad Gavran is at dodging missiles, even when a gods-damned awakened AI isn’t running the targeting system. Or the Coin might just ram us and leave us drifting in some barren patch of nothing like the one we’re in right now.”
“The Mayhem has a much higher top speed than the Coin. Anyway, they won’t. They still think they need us.”
Iridian tapped the wall with her fingers, sending her drifting across the small room. At the next wall she tapped again, sending her drifting back, pacing without walking. “This is a bad idea.”
“I have to know if I can stop them from following us. If Kanti’s fix closed that vulnerability and didn’t open any new ones, there’s so much we can learn from them.” Knowing why the awakened intelligences needed Adda, and how that related to a structure that’d take up significant surface space on any ’ject, was more important to Adda than stopping the intelligences from doing anything.
Building something that big would be noticeable. The awakened intelligences knew they’d be shut down if people had proof of their existence. They were trying to do something amazing. If she could trust them to communicate with her without controlling her, maybe she’d want to help.
Iridian wrapped one arm around Adda and used the other to hold them in place with a wall handhold. She kissed Adda and pressed their foreheads together to look Adda in the eyes. Going looking for those things scares the shit out of me, Iridian subvocalized. I can’t lose you again.
The whole point of everything we’ve done up to now is to make sure you won’t, Adda told Iridian. “You won’t,” she repeated aloud. This was another promise Adda couldn’t be certain she’d keep, but she had to know what the intelligences were doing and what her role in that might be.
CHAPTER 26 Days until launch: 13
Now that Adda had a way to protect herself from the intelligences, and maybe even fight back, Iridian couldn’t blame her for wanting to do it right away. The prospect terrified Iridian, but she understood why Adda wanted to do it. The rest of the crew required convincing, especially regarding concerns about the ITA watching for the Mayhem at Sunan’s Landing.
Adda was so determined that she was defending her position herself, instead of waiting for Iridian to cover the basic arguments like she usually did. “The intelligences can handle the ITA. If they’re meeting me, I can’t imagine them letting a few humans in blue uniforms get in their way. They’ve been manipulating the ITA for months by feeding them information when it’s convenient. What other problems do you have with this course of action?”
“We’re worried about you, Sissy,” said Pel plaintively.
“The only way to prove that the update to my implant will protect me is entering a workspace and talking to Casey.” Despite how confident she sounded, Iridian could tell that testing the fix was the only way Adda would feel safe, too.
Adda glanced at Iridian, who shrugged. She trusted Adda’s judgment almost all the time. Adda’s plans usually worked out, even if the successful one wasn’t plan A. Besides, this was too important to Adda for Iridian to interrupt. “If the intelligences can’t control me and keep trying to coerce us into helping them anyway, then we’ll have to find a way to destroy them,” Adda continued. Iridian’s last attempt at that, when she’d tried to blow up their ships in their Rheasilvia Station docks, had gone nightmarishly wrong. Adda’s voice sounded choked when she said, “But we’re not at that point yet. If I can communicate with them without being influenced, then there doesn’t have to be any more violence.”
Gavran whistled as the funds Adda had sent him finished transferring to his account. Now the crew had about enough in their account for a last meal tastier than the ration packs in the Mayhem’s cargo hold. “Thank you,” said Gavran. “Many thanks. I’m not afraid of the ITA or the awakened copilots, so long as you pay what I ask. At this price I’ll take you to the ITA, the AIs, or any ’ject in the belt.”
“Not straight to the ITA, thanks.” Iridian turned to Pel, Rio, and Wiley. “You three don’t have to come with us. It’s safer if you don’t, actually.”
“I’ve spent weeks trying to make sure you two lovebirds get somewhere safe,” said Rio. “I’m not giving up now.”
“Let’s do this thing,” said Wiley.
“I wish you people would quit trying to ditch me,” said Pel. “Sissy’s not talking to the nemesis bots without me.”
Iridian wrapped an arm around Adda. “Let’s fin
ish this.”
* * *
The Mayhem continued toward Sunan’s Landing through the night. In the morning, Adda’s loudest alarm woke her. Adda grumbled under her breath to turn off the alarm. With her eyes mostly closed, she put her comp glove on and thrust the hand wearing it in front of Iridian’s face without reading the text projected there herself.
Iridian, who’d been awake for nearly an hour, read the message that’d set off the alarm. “It’s from Casey.”
Adda pulled her comp glove up to her face. “It sent coordinates, like it said it would. It looks like this is near the Mars-Saturn reliable route, just outside Patchwork range.” When they forwarded it to Gavran, he confirmed that the meeting location was relatively near both Sunan’s Landing and the Mars-Saturn route.
The rest of the crew was awake and in the main cabin by the time Adda and Iridian left the residential one. “So we’re going to our deaths, but at least we’ll have internet most of the way,” Iridian said around the meal replacement bar she was chewing.
“And minimal micrometeorite hull damage,” said Gavran. “Thank all the gods and the ITA for a low-impact route nearby.”
“Casey wants to influence us, not kill us,” said Adda. “It has nothing to gain by sending us someplace that dangerous.”
“Fuck this, I’m getting off at Sunan’s Landing after all,” said Pel.
“I wish you would,” Adda said. “It’d be safer.”
“Sissy, I was kidding. I already told you I’m coming with you.” He had turned himself sideways relative to the rest of the crew, who were using the passenger couches as a visual reference for “down,” like civilized spacefarers. “I kinda got you into this situation, didn’t I? I want to be there when you get out of it.”
“Is there any chance this is an ITA trap?” Wiley asked.
Adda looked to the overhead for a moment. “If the ITA don’t know that we’ve asked to meet Casey, why would they expect us to receive a location in the middle of nowhere with no context and say, ‘Sure, let’s go’?”
“They could be listening in on comms,” said Wiley. “When you send something through the comp, doesn’t it go through the ship’s antenna?”
“Mayhem’s encryption was fine before,” Gavran called from the bridge. “Her commsec’s fine now too.”
“We were good at avoiding them even before Adda got her implant fixed. Now she and the fucking awakened AIs both want to be at those coordinates. That’s why we’ll win this thing.” As Iridian said it, she realized this was the first time she believed it was true. Adda could do this. If anybody could beat three awakened AIs at whatever twisted game they were playing, it was Adda.
“And it won’t matter so much anyway,” Rio pointed out. “Outside the Patchwork means outside real-time transmission range for all the populated ’jects. Nobody will overhear us.”
Or hear us if we call for help, Iridian thought but did not say, not even to Adda.
* * *
Sunan’s Landing still had projected images of the god Dattatreya, menorahs, kinaras, and wreaths on every surface. Adda found a pack of her favorite sharpsheet brand on the vending comp. The crew got what felt like their last meal in the diner/bar combination that the barge’s cargo hold had been converted into. It had a stage with a newsfeed that covered, among other things, the slow descent of Yăo toward Jupiter. “Although some individuals refuse to leave,” said a newscaster whose holiday-themed figure, a Krampus complete with horns and a tongue as long as his arm, might have been applied by the projector stage, not the newsfeed. “ITA and private vessels are ferrying people off the station, which is projected to impact Jupiter within the month due to engine failure. On a lighter note—”
“Aw, they didn’t mention us!” Pel whined. “We would’ve been a heavy note.”
“That’s a good thing,” said Adda.
Iridian had never seen a civilian hab evacuate completely. Somebody always downplayed the threat, or missed the alarms, or decided to go down with their home. Sometimes the ITA found them and hauled them out anyway. She sipped at the water sack she’d bought and wished it were beer. “No mention of another break-in at Biometallic either.”
“So, we’re stealthy,” Wiley told Pel. “That’s something to be proud of.”
“Woo!” Pel yelled. “We’re the—” He yelped and glared at Adda, who was rearranging herself in her null-grav seat. Somehow he managed to loudly whisper, “We’re the stealthiest motherfuckers on the motherfucking ’ject!” Being the stealthiest on Sunan’s Landing wasn’t difficult. The hab’s other occupants either advertised their home hab or they were pilots whose job it was to make their ships visible and difficult to run into. He’d shut up sooner if Iridian let him have that description.
With a disturbingly large percentage of the money they had left, Adda printed a mobile workspace generator with the absolute minimum component and ingredient requirements. Afterward, they returned to the semipermanent refueling docks, where they stood looking at the Mayhem and the wide-open star field beyond. “You three get into more trouble than anybody I’ve ever met,” Rio said softly to the Karpes and Iridian.
“Hey, don’t group me in with them,” said Pel. “They overthrew the corporate owners of Vesta and pissed off the richest pirate outside the Ceres syndicate. I just drink too much.” He had drunk too much on Sunan’s Landing, and also spiked his drinks with something Iridian had never seen in a real hab’s catalog, marketed as “calm in a bag.” He was as scared as any of them.
“Ships are coming in and out of here all the time, if you change your minds about following us into this,” said Iridian.
“No ship like Mayhem,” said Gavran. “No vessel comes near this beauty.”
“I would hate to part with her,” Wiley said, earning him a surprised and pleased smile from Gavran. Wiley shrugged. “Tash always talked about how important it was to have a reliable ship under your boots.”
“And you’ll never make it out of this mess without at least one ZV.” Rio was wearing a black-and-yellow ZV shirt that she’d designed herself. The letters weren’t quite on the same line.
“Come on,” said Pel, “let’s go already.” He grabbed Adda’s hand and pushed off a bulkhead and into the Mayhem’s passthrough much harder than he needed to, even with their combined weights. Adda squeaked as he dragged her along, and Iridian launched herself after them. She’d be damned if Pel’s bad null-grav manners gave Adda a concussion and left Iridian to cut a deal with three awakened AIs.
CHAPTER 27 Days until launch: 9
The Mayhem created just enough gravity pulling away from Sunan’s Landing to make Adda sick again. She’d been running and hiding from the intelligences without time to catch her breath for months. Now she was on her way to meet with Casey, and she had time to think about every detail she had left to sort out.
While Iridian’s crew was leaving Sunan’s Landing, Adda finally received a reply to one of the messages she’d sent Dr. Björn. The last paragraph left her staring out the window into space, wondering what might’ve been. “In regard to your request to join the expedition team, we have sufficient crew and are not accepting further members.”
She was still reviewing her observational data on Casey and the other intelligences two days later, in the bed she and Iridian had claimed in the Mayhem’s residential cabin. She was excited to talk to an awakened intelligence again, even though Casey was terrifying on a number of levels. What would it do when it realized that she was in a workspace but it couldn’t affect her mind through her implant the way it used to?
It felt like a tidal wave of possible mistakes still loomed above her, and if she looked over her shoulder she’d see them all crashing down on her. That imagery would create a disturbing workspace to hold the conversation in. She had to calm down.
She wrapped her arm and one leg around Iridian and smiled a little when Iridian pulled her closer. You okay? Iridian subvocalized.
Yes. Perhaps Adda should’ve been afraid. She wa
sn’t. This was the only way to test the implant update’s protective potential, and she had so many questions for Casey. She’d just expose the implant to Casey through the workspace while she was asking questions. Casey would attempt to use the patched vulnerability to do whatever it’d done to her before. The correction would solve the influence problem or it wouldn’t. It was simple. The only way she could make a mess of it was by backing out too soon or overthinking it, which would make her too cautious.
“I’m just getting into a workspace to talk to Casey. I’ve done that before. It didn’t always end terribly.” Casey had protected her and Iridian from Oxia Corporation when they’d first arrived on Vesta, helped them in several operations for Sloane’s crew, and on Ceres, it’d tried to talk to her rather than influencing her immediately, even though her implant had still been vulnerable then.
Iridian held her and, for once, said nothing. Adda hoped she wasn’t reliving the last time on Vesta, when Adda had nearly killed her. This time would be different.
The ship slowed as it approached the coordinates Casey had given her. The ship was still on Sunan’s Landing’s local time. Late morning sunsim seemed to be giving Adda even more nervous energy than she already had.
She set up the mobile workspace generator in the residential cabin, where nobody would distract her. After a lot of rattling and dropping things that drifted into the main cabin instead of falling on the floor, she hooked part of the generator frame to the bed frames. That kept the generator still without gravity to pull it toward the floor. The window was off. She didn’t want to look through the transparent generator ceiling and see nothing but empty space and stars.
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