They followed the lieutenant out of the stateroom and into the hallway. After Captain Sloane’s door shut, Iridian said, “Not sure what you have for facilities, sir, but we could use those, too.”
Tritheist—should that be Lieutenant Tritheist? That sounds weird—frowned and raised the hood of his dark blue coat. “The room in use is past the lockside bunkhouse, this way. Ask a woman how, if that’s what you want to know.”
Tritheist leaned into the common room and addressed a guy with graying hair wearing one of the black shirts many of the pirates had under their hooded jackets, who was talking with Pel. “Death, get the gear they came in with.” The older guy placed Pel’s hand on one of the workbenches before leaving, so Pel would know where he was. Tritheist turned back and walked past Iridian and Adda, farther down the hall.
“Death, huh,” Iridian said. “That’s either a good nickname or a really bad one.” She let Adda walk in front and rested a hand on the small of her back. “Habitat directions: lockside’s nearest the airlock, homeward’s the opposite way,” she whispered. Even on Earth, Adda was shit with navigation.
The walls and ceiling lacked handholds, so the station spun reliably enough to maintain grav. Part of a ship hull curving out from one blue wall steadily narrowed the hallway. For half a meter the walls brushed both of Tritheist’s shoulders, and Adda turned sideways to squeeze through. The hull piece ended abruptly and a small alcove opened on the right. Someone loomed in the shadows there.
The unexpected space and proximity gave Iridian a whole-body startle. Her arms rose in a shieldless block to protect her neck and chest. The woman in the alcove had bronze skin and centimeter-long black hair. A wrinkled burn scar over one temple stretched when she frowned. Her gaze skimmed over Iridian’s shaved head, and the frown deepened.
“Sorry.” Iridian forced her arms down to her sides. “I’m new.”
“Oh, I know,” the stranger said. Interesting that she kept the scar instead of getting the skin regrown. Perhaps she was proud of it.
She certainly seemed proud of her hooded jacket’s orange-and-red circle of the Red Planet Militia beneath a coating of blue dust. Nobody would’ve dared to display that shit on Earth. It was the new, post-invasion insignia the secessionists had created to finish co-opting the remnants of a halfway-decent civilian defense group. Iridian got a good look at it when the woman leaned in and added, “NEU, right? Gotta be, if you’re shoving your nose someplace it wasn’t invited and expecting everyone to love you for it.”
Fucking secessionists.
Iridian had had her and Adda’s plans upended too many times today to put up with secessionist insults too. She pushed the woman away from her harder than she meant to, slamming her into the narrow hallway’s wall.
The woman reached for one of the pirates’ bowl-shaped weapons at her belt, but the push knife hidden at the small of Iridian’s back came free first. Iridian pinned the woman against the wall with a forearm across her collarbone and pressed the short blade’s point to her throat. That didn’t stop her arm moving, so Iridian jammed her hipbone against the woman’s belt to keep her from drawing.
The knife’s handle felt solid and strong between her fingers. If the woman freed her arm, Iridian was ready. She wasn’t going to stand still and let this gods-damned secessionist shoot her. She’d put her blade through the woman’s throat first. Since the woman’s hand and wrist were out of reach, it was the only way she’d be sure that the woman wouldn’t fire.
“That’s enough.” The stranger and Iridian both focused on the lieutenant, who aimed his own weapon at Iridian. The secessionist stilled too, so whatever the pirates’ handheld weapons shot had a good chance of going through Iridian to hit someone on the other side. And the secessionist believed Tritheist would shoot her, or at least risk her life taking Iridian out. “Let go,” said Tritheist.
Iridian’s instincts pushed her to finish the fight. People like this secessionist had started the war and people like Iridian ended it in blood . . . but that was over, three years over. She stepped back, which put her against the opposite wall but gave the secessionist room to do whatever she wanted, and looked at the woman’s Red Planet Militia insignia instead of her face. The knife was still in her hand, but with luck the secessionist would recognize the hab de-escalation signals Iridian was using.
The woman finished removing her weapon from her belt. Before she could raise it, Tritheist leveled his at her, scowling like both of them disgusted him. “The captain gave them a task, Sergeant Natani. They can’t complete it if they’re dead.” Perhaps he was loyal to Captain Sloane, but he clearly didn’t think much of the crew.
Iridian had been on base ten minutes and she’d already assaulted an officer. Get a gods-damned grip, Nassir. Sure, the woman was a secessionist, but Tritheist used her rank like it meant something in the crew. The sergeant glared and pushed past Iridian and Adda to storm into the common room. Tritheist lowered his weapon but didn’t put it away as he continued down the hall. After a few steps, the old guy named Death came up behind her to return her knives, her shield, and her and Adda’s packs. She sheathed all the blades before following Adda and Tritheist.
They stopped at a low, slanted doorway with a dingy white towel hung over the opening. Outside it, the orange lights strung along the hallway ceiling were missing bulbs every few sockets. They cast as much shadow as light. Several blue and yellow bulbs created a pirates’ attempt at Earth dusk. Tritheist knocked twice on the wall beside it. “Coming in.” After some rustling from inside, he held the towel away from the door.
While her eyes adjusted to the dark, he said, “Pick two bunks without pills, porn, flasks, or bodies.”
Fifteen bunks were stacked three deep in the small room, with the lowest flat on the floor and the highest less than a meter from the sloped ceiling. None of them were far enough apart to sit up in. They were bolted to the walls and one another, padded with a hodgepodge of foam bedding from various shipping lines. Tie-down straps for sleeping in micrograv dangled from some bunks, but not others. Sleeping men and women, most of whom weren’t strapped in, occupied five bunks. Like the lack of handholds in the walls, that spoke well for grav consistency on this station.
All but three of the other bunks had people’s possessions in them, and none of the empty ones were near one another. “One’s fine,” Iridian told Tritheist. If she and Adda were going to be sleeping among strangers, she wanted Adda close enough to touch. They’d rented a classmate’s bathtub for a few weeks in college, when Iridian’s veteran benefits got delayed and that was the best shelter they could afford. This bunkhouse was a hell of a letdown compared to the luxury they’d looked forward to on Barbary Station, but it beat sharing a bathtub as a bed.
“Damn,” Tritheist said.
Iridian raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s the problem?” He didn’t talk like an ignorant colonial shithead, and colonists were the only people who still acted like sex that didn’t make babies was some kind of sin.
“Lost a bet,” a man grumbled from a bunk against the wall across from the door. Tritheist grunted in affirmation or disgust and stalked away.
Iridian chose an empty one on the top level beside the doorway and lifted their packs onto it. “This doesn’t seem . . . secure,” said Adda.
They climbed out of their enviro suits and Iridian folded them under the packs, because they were light enough to disappear. All the bunks crammed into the tiny space left no room for containers that locked. So much for prevention. A broken nose or bruised rib should discourage any thieves Iridian caught. Nothing incapacitating. “I’ll take care of it after I find out which room and what sort of bag we’re expected to piss in.”
That took a few minutes and the assistance of a golden-skinned woman named Xing, who had the letters ZV on her shirt and a lighter-skinned infant balanced on her hip while demonstrating the way the crew handled excretory activities. “Kimmy, my best mistake ever,” Xing said fondly when she caught Iridian staring at the b
aby. “Shit happens when your birth control runs out before your alcohol does.”
When they emerged from the room at the end of the hall designated for the purpose, Pel was leaning against a wall. If he was telling the truth about his sight, then he couldn’t see Iridian scowling at him. “Sissy, did you bring—”
“Just one gods-damned minute,” Iridian growled. The baby whimpered and Xing hushed her. Iridian started again in a calmer voice. “Pel, we need to talk, somewhere private, if there’s a place like that in here.”
“I . . . um.” Pel’s Adam’s apple bobbed when he gulped. “If you brought your tent, Sissy, there’s a place where you can set up. We can talk there.”
“It’s a workspace generator, not a tent.” Adda paused mid-dramatic-eye roll, which he wouldn’t see.
“Everything okay, Pel Mel?” Xing asked behind them. Iridian flattened her back against the wall so mother and baby could pass, but the woman was watching Iridian with cautious eyes and stood her ground instead of heading to the common room.
“Oh yeah, no worries.” Pel reached for Adda’s arm and missed. On the second try, he caught it. “Always kind of weird meeting your sister’s significant other, right?” He laughed nervously.
Xing pointed a warning finger at Iridian and mouthed, “Go easy on him” before she turned sideways to carry her daughter past the three of them and down the hall toward the common room. Baby Kimmy grabbed at Adda’s purple-streaked red hair as they passed, and Adda ducked out of reach before she lost any of it.
“Come on, I’ll show you where to set up.” Pel pulled Adda toward the common room too, while dragging one hand along the wall. “It’d be good if you got Captain Sloane some new info by, like, yesterday.”
“What’s the rush?” Iridian held her voice and breathing steady to stay calm. Pel knew the kind of danger he was inviting his own gods-damned sister into. The vid message he’d sent Adda on the way to the station confirmed that. Sure, she and Iridian needed to become valuable additions to the crew as fast as possible, but they also deserved an explanation.
“Thing is, the captain didn’t know I asked you to come here.” Pel’s pale face gained color. “Sloane yelled for an hour after I mentioned it. All ‘We’re barely surviving as we are!’ and ‘It’s so dangerous!’ ” He extended “so” to an unlikely length and pitch range. “But now you’re here, and if you get spaced for uselessness, so do I.”
“Better and better,” Iridian muttered.
Adda said, “I should have known you’d get us into something like this.”
“Okay, I panicked, all right?” he said. “Anyway, I tried to tell you not to come. But wait until you see this spot I found. It’s perfect for you.”
The common room, where the entryway and all the other hallways led, was the largest enclosure Iridian had seen in the base. Instead of windows, small projectors stuck to the wall displayed attractive people in various stages of undress alternated with looped vids of cities and stations. Atlantis, the entertainment station of debatable legality on the dark side of Earth’s Moon, was an obvious choice. A couple of projectors showed unofficial station communities that grew around refueling points on the Martian and Cytherean routes.
The room’s floor curved up slightly on the sides closest to and furthest from the entryway, and flat flooring was typical on stations with consistent grav. “Hey, are we inside the station, or outside?” Iridian asked.
“Outside,” Pel said. Adda stopped walking, dragging him to a halt too, eyes wide. “Oh my gods, Sissy, it’s fine. This is the only place on the station where AegiSKADA doesn’t see everything you do, and drones hardly ever come out here.”
“Drones, huh.” Iridian shook her head. “Damned bots.” After the war she’d have been happy if she never saw another drone outside a dock module or stationspace.
“We can lock them out with the front door,” Pel said quickly. “So we’re safe here! Sometimes things come apart, but not that often, and we’re good at fixing them. Well, they are. I hold stuff.”
“So this base is anchored on top of the inner ring? Outside the hull?” Iridian clarified. Barbary Station was a spinning ring of on-site recycling, docking, shipping, and residential modules, with an enormous scaffold in the center that secured ships for dismantling. Now she was really curious about how the pirate base looked from the outside. The pirates either couldn’t spare the cams for windows or the cold and the black wigged them out. Given the stark living conditions she’d seen so far, the former was more likely.
“Yep, right on the inner ring,” said Pel. “Since we’re not technically in the station, AegiSKADA doesn’t bust in and try to kill us, most of the time. The tanks and stuff down below mess up its sensors, too.”
“Eh-ji-skay-wha?” Iridian rhymed her question with the word she was asking about.
He laughed. “The security AI. The first part of the name’s a kind of shield, because security. The second part’s about control systems or something. The acronym’s got Russian in it. Anyway, AegiSKADA’s what you’re going to beat.”
Adda’s face scrunched up thoughtfully. “In English we have S-C-A-D-A intelligences. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. I wonder if it also ran the station’s shipbreaking and recycling facilities. That’s the type of thing the SCADA development path usually prepares intelligences for. Isn’t that interesting.”
Pel grinned. “I knew you’d say that.”
They ducked down the second hallway, each step thumping hollowly over the space between the floor and the station’s hull. This hall opened almost immediately on the left to a room with tables, chairs, and the scent of spices. A large woman with straight black hair that a red headband held away from half-moon eyes was wiping down an industrial-size oven. Another darkened room with a towel over the doorway was on the right a step later, and soon after the hallway narrowed to an off-center corner.
A trapdoor panel in the floor was situated in front of the dead end. Pel shuffled his foot around until the toe of one of his oversize boots bumped its edge. He released Adda’s arm to crouch and open it, revealing ladder handholds built into a passage the size of a wide duct. “It’s nowhere near as long a climb as Mount Everest. That’s the one you took coming in.” He disappeared down the ladder.
Nothing hissed or whistled like an atmo leak, but anything else could be down there, presuming a healthy enviro. And she’d have to approach it feetfirst, with both hands occupied. But Adda was already climbing down, so Iridian followed, lowering herself with two feet and one hand to keep her shield arm free.
Pel’s boots hit something solid after only a few steps. He reached down to open a second hatch, climbed down another couple of meters, and slapped something on the wall. A push light flickered on, illuminating a room shaped like a giant oblong pill. Stacked boxes of printing material smelled of dust and aging plastic. Loose spools in a box gleamed like copper alloy.
The surfaces were clear of blue powder. The best-case implication was that the full water tanks around them did a sufficient job blocking radiation without the blue stuff. The worst-case implication was that the pirates couldn’t be bothered to treat this area, and it was the most vulnerable spot on base. And now that Iridian was looking up, she spotted the joins between the hulls, the pirate base, and the station interior. The tank they stood in was inside the station, not sitting on the hull like the rest of the base.
“This was a water tank, but it’s got a bunch of leaks. Don’t worry, it’s not leaking atmo. The holes work kind of like ventilation now.” Enviro science was not this kid’s best subject. Iridian shook more grains of mental salt on everything he said. “Then Sturm turned it into a storage space. We might bring more down, thanks to the haul you got us! That was awesome. Everybody’s talking about it.” Iridian grinned. That was the reaction they’d hoped for. At least something in this mess of a mission had gone as planned.
Adda stepped toward the middle of the floor. The whole tank lurched a little in the same direction. Somethi
ng outside groaned like metal under stress. Both women froze in place.
“It does that,” Pel said. “It’s welded to a big ledge next to some others, but I guess the ledge moves?” He shrugged.
“Is the pump off?” Iridian was surreptitiously recovering her breath. She’d have to inspect this whole damned place. No way she’d let Adda spend time down here otherwise.
“Yep, it’s off! Hasn’t run in months and months.”
“Okay. Fine.” Iridian climbed the ladder far enough to reach the hatch and shut it, then returned to the tank’s floor. “Now, you want to explain what the hell you thought you were doing, asking Adda to come to this AI-infested, falling-apart station?”
Pel tilted his head down and his shoulders rose toward his ears. “Aw, come on, it’s not—”
“Oh, yes, it is that bad,” Iridian said. “Your message sounded just like all the newsfeeds, like you were inviting us to some kind of pirate paradise. That’s not the same as being stuck two hundred fifty million klicks beyond the Mars orbit with an intelligence that wants us all dead.”
“Iri,” Adda pleaded, “I would’ve come to help him even if he’d told us about the intelligence.” If Adda were going, Iridian would’ve gone too, but that wasn’t the point.
“That’s why I asked you to come,” Pel said quickly. “I kind of panicked when I first got here, so when you said you were joining a crew after graduation, I just had to tell you about this one.” He turned toward Adda. “You always get me out of trouble, and, I mean, AI, right? You know all about it from college, so—”
“So you thought, ‘Why should I mention the killer AI at all?’ ” Iridian shouted. “ ‘I’ll just lie to her instead.’ ”
“I’m sorry.” He hung his head again. “I was so scared. I had to know she was coming, or I don’t know how I would’ve . . .” He took an unsteady breath. “I went back and forth about it a lot after I sent it. And I tried to send that vid to you a couple of times, asking you to wait, but stuff kept happening, so it didn’t get carried out of the lead cloud.”
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