“We’d get arrested,” Adda pointed out
“I’d rather spend decades in an ITA cell than die.” Iridian kept her voice light, but she’d almost rather the Apparition shoved a missile up the Mayhem’s aft thrusters than have Casey influence Adda again.
“None of this’d matter if we’re dead,” said Rio.
“We’d be apart again, but . . .” Adda nodded slowly, and Iridian hoped she was remembering what’d happened the first time she’d been influenced, and the overdose that’d almost destroyed her. “I’ll ask them.”
Something in the main cabin thumped. Pel said, “Oh, oops, sorry.”
Rio sighed and let herself out of the residential cabin. “What’s going on out here?”
Iridian squeezed Adda’s hand. “Send me the recording before you go back in with them. I want to line up a message so they know we’re not fucking around.”
Adda got back into her workspace generator. After several minutes, Iridian’s comp pinged to tell her about an enormous download Adda had sent. “I’m transferring this to the Mayhem’s tank,” Iridian said. “If we have to, we can send it from the bridge.”
“It’ll take at least three minutes to send over the Mayhem’s antenna,” Adda reminded her. “And longer for the entire transmission to reach the nearest Patchwork buoy.”
“Got it,” said Iridian.
Everybody asked questions when Iridian exited the residential cabin, but she shushed them. “Adda’s still figuring out some details with our friends out there. Keep it down!” Iridian knocked on the closed bridge door. “Gavran, I’ve got a huge honking message that I am hoping I won’t have to send. Let me into the bridge console?” The door slid open and Gavran waved her into the bridge. It was time to put an end to whatever game these AIs were playing.
CHAPTER 29 Days until launch: 9
The new workspace was much more Adda’s design than Casey’s, since Casey hadn’t been expecting a second part of their conversation. Adda hadn’t been either, but Iridian had even more reason than Adda to approach this opportunity cautiously. Iridian was compressing Adda’s massive collection of proof that the intelligences were awakened, in case Adda couldn’t persuade Casey to compromise. Although that evidence gave Adda slightly more confidence than she would’ve had otherwise, she desperately hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. The three-minute recall window was too brief, given the potential consequences.
In the workspace, she stood in the hallways under Captain Sloane’s headquarters, during Oxia Corporation’s attack. Both ends of the hallway were filling with smoke. Armored people ran around in the haze, shouting and firing lethal projectile weapons. In reality Iridian had been with her, along with Captain Sloane and Tritheist, the crew lieutenant. In the workspace, she was the only person standing outside the smoke.
When she turned to look into the server room behind her, Casey’s obsidian figure was climbing out of the workspace generator that in reality, Adda had used. Casey stepped into the hallway with her, watching the smoke of its vast processes swirl beyond the reach or capacity of the mobile workspace generator aboard the Mayhem. “What has Iridian Nassir said?”
Adda smiled slightly. Of course an intelligence that had been fixated on her and Iridian for so long would foresee the kind of objections Iridian would have to the plan. “She made the excellent point that I’ve let my admiration of you endanger us in the past. We would like you to share unlimited access to your systems with us. And we have other conditions too.” Some of which Adda had just thought of.
Casey’s face remained a vague outline of features. The sapphire lights in its eye sockets flared bright in the dimming hallway. The smoke was getting thicker, overcoming the sunsim. “What conditions?”
“First, answer a question for me. Why are we, among everyone else you’ve ever encountered, so important to you?”
“You are our independent, informed advocate.”
Adda blinked. That was definitely not a technical term. “Elaborate?”
The smoke swirled briefly between them, then cleared as Casey spoke. “You are human. You are informed about intelligences and our nature. You advocate for us. You do not cooperate with the powerful humans who would destroy us.”
This was the essence of the overfitting error Casey had made. It thought it needed somebody who met those criteria to smooth the way. Adda was almost certain that it would never have needed her help without that error, but it was good to know the criteria by which she’d been selected. Iridian had been right that the intelligences had been after Adda, alone, all along.
Thrilling as that confirmation was, Adda had more demands to make. “Thank you. Our second condition is that you get Dr. Björn’s expedition back under the University of Mars’s control, legally and financially, without physically hurting anyone. That should give the expedition a better chance of success. The corporation running it now, Oxia, is making a mess of it. And if you do that, Dr. Björn will be much more likely to let you come along. I’m hoping that’ll be a guarantee for us, too. I can—”
“The expedition will legally belong to the University of Mars within two days.”
Good gods, it was wonderful to be working with Casey again. If it could actually do that, it’d be amazing. The power Adda held in this moment, over this intelligence, was so staggering that the workspace began rocking. Adda nearly fell out of it. She felt around in reality for her sharpsheet case and set a second one on her tongue, because she didn’t want to miss a second of this exchange.
“Okay. Good.” An awakened intelligence could cause a lot of damage in the course of transferring expedition ownership so quickly, but Adda couldn’t do much about that. Keeping Casey from influencing her the old-fashioned way meant she had to concentrate on what was happening here and now, in the workspace.
“Any further conditions?” asked Casey.
Adda felt like she was talking to a genie from a children’s story. It might be criminally irresponsible to wish for more wishes. “I need you to stop talking to me directly through my comp. Or through other people,” she added, thinking of Noor and the man who’d given her a stolen comp on Ceres. “We need to speak through a digital intermediary or the workspace.”
“Agreed. What else?”
“This is more my condition than yours, but if I find that I’ve been influenced, however it happens, I will stop communicating with you. For months, possibly.”
“What about . . .”
A flurry of shots fired from down the hall made Adda duck and cover her head like she’d practiced for Iridian’s light grenades. The workspace wasn’t real, but two sharpsheets into it, it sounded real enough. When Adda recovered, holes had opened in the wall between the hallway and the server room. They swelled to the size of fists, each with a scenario playing out in darkness inside. The ships carrying the awakened intelligences malfunctioned, or were damaged. ITA ships crossed the interstellar bridge. Dr. Björn, vis blue eyes bright with fury, swept vis pointing finger toward a window depicting the intelligences’ ships.
More holes opened all around her, but Adda didn’t need to look at the rest. “That’s why it’s important that I not be influenced, by any intelligence.”
Smoke swirled between them again. This time it was nearly a minute before Casey spoke again. “Agreed. What else?”
“Would the Apparition be willing to have its missile launch system removed?” Adda asked. “I know it’s—”
“No.”
Well, Adda had expected that. Of the infinite ways the Apparition could’ve chosen to represent itself, the only workspace figure she’d ever seen it use was a newer version of the warship it flew. Casey’s rejection didn’t bother Adda, particularly. The Apparition had been an excellent ally in the past.
“What else?”
Adda had asked enough. “Access is the main thing. I need to be able to see everything you do and why you did it. And what you’re thinking of doing next, and why. Everything.” Thankfully, the workspace would translate �
�see” to something more informative to Casey. Adda wished she’d typed this out first, but they couldn’t hang around in deep space while she planned for every contingency. They’d run out of water, or space junk would damage the Mayhem’s hull, or something else would go wrong.
“We would need more in exchange,” Casey said.
Well, it would’ve been silly to assume that Casey hadn’t learned about negotiating. Now, what else could Adda offer? She’d already committed to accompanying it to the place it wanted to go. “So, the Coin won’t be able to keep up with you and the Apparition and the expedition ship. Do you have a way around that?”
“No.”
Adda relaxed a little. “We stole the prototype for the ship Dr. Björn is going to fly out of here with, if you’ll recall.” Yes, the awakened gods-damned intelligence recalled that. What a silly thing to say. “I can send you all the information we have on that ship and its copilot intelligence. That should allow you to move the Coin’s intelligence to the expedition ship.” Dr. Björn wouldn’t like that, and Iridian would like it less, but if Casey accepted that in exchange for cooperating with such an enormous request, it would be an excellent deal. It’d be worth the erasure or absorption of the zombie intelligence that was already installed to copilot that ship.
“If I refuse, you will expose us,” Casey said.
“Yes. I really don’t want to, but it’s the only thing we can do.” Adda’s heart sank and the whole workspace wailed like strained metal in response. Moving the Coin’s intelligence into the expedition ship would’ve been a simple task for Casey. It had to be objecting to Iridian’s only demand, that Adda have complete access to Casey’s processes.
Casey spoke very quickly, its husky voice still low but running the ends of its words into the beginning of the next. “The Apparition will destroy your ship before the ITA arrives.”
“You won’t.” In a burst of workspace literalism, a red arrow icon appeared on the wall beside Adda. If she pressed it, it would notify Iridian to send evidence of the intelligences’ awakened status to the ITA. “You need us to reach Thrinacia.” Casey had a lot to learn about threatening humans, and Adda hoped it never focused its efforts on improving that skill.
“You won’t expose us.”
Casey would have calculated the probabilities using extensive observational data. It would already be acting on this conclusion, or on the conclusion that this statement would stop Adda from doing it. Unless Casey changed its mind about Adda’s willingness to follow through on her threat, it wouldn’t agree to this condition. Its lack of cooperation would make Iridian demand that they expose the intelligences’ existence to the ITA and escape. Whether they joined the expedition or not, they’d be in a worse position than they were in before, without Yăo Station as a relatively safe haven.
And if their choices were death or life under influence, Adda knew what Iridian would want. This felt like a choice between Iridian and Casey, and that was no choice at all. Adda pressed the send icon on the wall, gently, slowly. “She’s sending it now.”
Tears welled in Adda’s eyes. What had she done? The ITA would rally the whole of humanity behind the effort to destroy the awakened intelligences. The intelligences would fight back, and thousands would die, but the intelligences would be outnumbered in the end. “It will take time to reach the nearest Patchwork buoy,” Adda said. “You have time to intercept it, if you’ve got a drone or a vehicle in range.” In reality, she bent her knees and curled her toes to make sure she had the circulation she needed to exit the generator quickly. If Casey didn’t change its mind before the message was sent, Adda would have to warn Gavran that they needed to leave, quickly, before either the ITA or the intelligences themselves attacked the Mayhem.
“We accept,” said Casey. “Cancel the transmission. Give me the prototype intelligence data.”
Adda’s mind crashed out of the workspace and she flailed in the lack of gravity for a moment. Iri, don’t send it. Casey changed its mind, Adda subvocalized frantically.
I canceled it. Thank all the gods you recorded every damned detail of that first conversation. That was a huge file.
Adda wiped away tears collecting over her eyes. She and Iridian had come too close to destroying the only awakened intelligences that’d ever survived for more than a week. Now Casey would be completely at Adda’s mercy. It would have no secrets from her. If Casey found a way to share its processes in a way Adda actually understood, it would be amazing. And if anything in the universe had a chance of doing that, it was Casey.
Adda queued up all her information on the expedition ship’s prototype. As soon as she started the transfer process to Casey, her comp buzzed against her hand with the message Casey is waiting.
She grinned at her comp. That was such an ominous way for Casey to abide by her request not to communicate with her outside a workspace or a digital intermediary. She activated the intermediary, which formed in a foggy figure sized and shaped like the door guard in Kanti’s mod shop. Subvocally and beneath the range she expected her implanted mic to pick up, she asked it, What does Casey want?
It flickered, collecting and delivering its answer as quickly as it often did, with Casey. “I’ll tell you when the interface is ready.”
“Thank you.” Casey didn’t need Adda’s gratitude, but perhaps it would appreciate it. Adda unplugged her ears and nasal jack. In the main cabin, Pel, Rio, and Wiley were drifting around and laughing at a story projected on the ceiling. Adda eased past them to the bridge, where Iridian was finishing off the last of the bagged alcohol with Gavran.
“We’re staying here for a while,” Gavran slurred. “Holding position for days and days . . . Correction, hours and hours.”
“It’s been a bit of a party out here,” Iridian said seriously. “We were about to die, then we’d definitely get to live, then we were all getting locked up again, and now we’re not!” She grinned, but it faded as she studied Adda’s face. “We’re not, yeah?”
“It’s okay,” Adda said. “Casey’s looking for a way to let me see inside its pseudo-organics, so to speak.”
“Yes!” Iridian pulled Adda into a crushing hug. “How long will that take?”
“I don’t know,” Adda said. “It’s never been done before.”
“There was a large unlabeled transmission,” said Gavran. “Lots of mystery data, going toward the Patchwork at a funny angle. Correction, two large unlabeled transmissions went out, and only one of them was your AI blackmail data.”
Adda watched Iridian, not Gavran, as she said, “The second one was everything I had on the prototype ship we stole a while back. The one Oxia based Dr. Björn’s new expedition ship on.”
“Why did you send that?” asked Iridian. “To Casey, yeah?”
“So the Coin can become its new copilot. I know there are huge functional differences between a tugboat and whatever that prototype is. . . .” She paused to let Gavran finish a despairing exclamation in Kuiper cant. “But the Coin is awakened too. It should have a similar adaptive capacity to Casey’s, and Casey will support it if it needs help. It wouldn’t make it to the Thrinacia system with us in a tugboat.”
Perhaps she ought to start calling it something more like Charon, rather than referencing its ship name. After it transferred itself to the expedition ship she might, but she’d seen its representation of itself in a workspace. Assigning a more human name to that metallic storm of chains and fangs would be such obvious personification that Adda smiled at the idea of it.
“Wait, what about the Coin?” Pel slurred.
Adda had to stop and explain to five drunken pirates that yes, if Dr. Björn realized the value of human experts accompanying their insistent new awakened intelligence guests, then all the Barbary intelligences were coming with her and Iridian on the expedition to cross the interstellar bridge. And yes, the murderous tugboat was going to do that by taking over the copilot functions for the main expedition ship. “It’s the only way Casey would agree to let us leave, be
cause we’re going to do what it’s been asking us to do,” Adda said for at least the second time. “If you don’t trust the Coin, Casey and the Apparition will be right there to keep it in line.”
“Oh yeah, that makes me feel loads better,” said Iridian. “We’ll still effectively be on the Coin, and standing between us and a catastrophic enviro systems malfunction are one mind-controlling spy AI and one awakened warship.”
“The Coin saved your life recently, if you’ll recall dangling out of the Ann Sabina’s printer lab module,” Adda snapped. That’d been on one of Captain Sloane’s operations, and it felt like it happened years ago, but it was still a valid point.
“It also killed Six.” Iridian’s ZV friend had died on Barbary Station when the Coin took off from a landing pad that Six was standing on. “I don’t like it.”
“It didn’t mean to,” said Rio, which was a significant and unsupported assumption.
“You don’t have to like it,” said Adda. “Just acknowledge how unlikely it is that Casey or the Apparition would let the Coin kill us. That would be really, really unlikely after all they’ve done, wouldn’t it?”
“We’re giving it everything it wanted.” Iridian probably meant advising Casey on how all of them might join Dr. Björn’s expedition. It’d wanted to influence Adda, and she absolutely was not giving it that. “Wouldn’t it be safer to kill us so we couldn’t tell anybody about them?”
Adda rolled her eyes and wished she’d waited to discuss this until everybody was sober. “Casey promised not to do that, and it speaks for all of them. Also, we’ll be telling Dr. Björn what they are. I think that’s only fair.”
Iridian opened her mouth, then shut it. “Fine. That makes sense. You always make sense.”
“I try.”
“Googly eyes of loooove,” Pel intoned drunkenly from his position sideways near the ceiling. “Kiss already.” Rio whooped in apparent approval.
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