Barbary Station

by R. E. Stearns

Somewhere above, thin metal was the only thing between her and hard vacuum, even if it were only that way for a millimeter before the base module’s thicker hull plating took over. And that AI-planted machine was raining microbes down on her unprotected eyes.

  She started squirming back toward the ladder before she consciously decided to. Someone’d have to take half the common room apart to get to that dispenser. Since that could easily expose the whole base to vac, they’d have to clear it too. Right into whatever drones were waiting for them in the docking bay or the corridors beyond. The faster solution, sealing the vent from the common room, was an enviro threat too.

  A hundred more dispensers could be hidden in the air system, dispensing who-knew-how-much disease. This was bad. It was worse on her back in the dark.

  “Fuck this,” she sputtered through her dust-covered mask. She launched herself out of the duct and started climbing the ladder without waiting for Grandpa Death, taking the light with her. “We’re getting that med team in here to kill this shit,” she said between breaths as she pounded up the ladder. “And then we’re giving AegiSKADA a hard reset. I don’t care how it’s hooked in with that other system Adda keeps talking about, it’s going down.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Charges Accrued: Impersonation of a Digital Role

  Shouting penetrated Adda’s earplugs and at least ten centimeters of metal plating. One voice was Iridian’s, the other some male’s, probably Tritheist. Adda ran her tongue over a layer of fuzz on her teeth. When she stood, her back, knees, and ankles popped, although she’d been as comfortable as she could manage in the workspace generator.

  She emerged from the trapdoor at the back of a crowd that spilled out from the main room. Most wore gray-and-black respirator masks like Iridian’s. Between Adda’s self-imposed isolation and her iron-hard immune system, the mask she’d left on the table by her mortar and pestle wasn’t worth the delay to retrieve.

  In the main room Iridian wasn’t exactly shouting through her mask, but she spoke adamantly. She paced a short path back and forth in front of a worktable, with her hood hanging over her grime-covered shoulders. “We’ve had its attention for weeks, and it was watching you for a long time before we got here. If I could do it myself, I would, but I need backup.”

  “We’ve been fine for a year.” Tritheist’s voice was already harsh, from the respiratory infection, not shouting. The lieutenant sat across the worktable from Iridian, face pale where his mask exposed skin. The tissue around his eyes was red and swollen. Adda craned her neck looking for Captain Sloane.

  “This isn’t fine.” That earned Iridian a muffled “yeah,” and “fuckin’ A.” The captain would only miss this confrontation for deep sleep or illness, and Adda would’ve expected the shouting to wake Sloane. “We are trapped in here and it poisoned the gods-damned atmo,” Iridian continued. “This is a war of attrition, which you are losing, because you can’t print more of yourselves like it’s doing with the drones you happen to kill before they get you. Adda, tell them.”

  The whole crowd focused on Adda. She stopped breathing.

  Maybe all Iridian wanted was confirmation of AegiSKADA’s replication capabilities, not a complete analysis. “The power draw may indicate a printer capable of producing robots.” Someone across the room yelled for her to speak up, so she repeated herself more loudly. “And I can’t access all of the encrypted patterns. Any of them might be robots or weaponry.”

  “It won’t quit. I can’t believe you people tolerated this for so long,” Iridian shouted over a swell of angry voices. None of the pirates looked interested in reasoning through the possibilities. “I’ll get the medics before your lungs collapse, and then I’m shutting this thing down. Who’s coming with me?”

  Adda wrapped her arms around herself to try to hold in panic while the ZVs argued around her. Iridian wanted to leave the compound and charge through the station. Drones and structural instability were rampant, even in places where the pirates somehow pretended they were safe. The captain before Sloane, Foster, had led a whole squad of trained soldiers to their deaths in their failed attempt to shut the security intelligence down. And if Iridian succeeded, she’d snuff out any consciousness AegiSKADA had developed.

  Rationally, someone would have to enter the station and travel at least as far as wherever the medical team was hiding. But she and Iridian had both seen the vid of Foster’s assault on AegiSKADA’s control room. Those people died in the ZV Group’s best arms and armor. How would Iridian fare in a borrowed suit and limited weaponry? Gods, has she thought about this at all, or is she just stir-crazy from being trapped in the compound?

  “I would go . . .” Pel sounded nervous. The knot of ZVs he stood in reacted more adamantly than the others to Iridian’s tirade, although his suggestion made them laugh. His large ZV friend, Rio, was somewhere else.

  Adda should say something. Where Iridian went, she’d go, and she’d plan their approach on the way. All she had to do was open her mouth and say—

  “I’ll go.” Everyone turned to look at Si Po now. She winced in sympathy. He leaned against one wall near Sturm’s workshop, looking at Iridian, not the rest of the people staring.

  Major O.D. raised both eyebrows at him. “What the hell are we supposed to do if you get your head blown off and we run through the supplies?”

  Tritheist spoke half a syllable before a coughing fit left him clutching the table, almost doubled over at the end of each breath. Zikri appeared next to him with an inhaler and some murmured instructions.

  “Casey and Apparition will figure out what you want. And Captain Sloane can do anything I can do on comps here.” Si Po was still looking at Iridian, with an expression between admiration and fondness. Does he have a crush on her? Adda braced for a rush of jealousy, but she couldn’t see Iridian with someone so . . .

  Frightened, was the word, which reminded her of what she had yet to say. “I’ll go too.” Eyes on her again, but now she knew where to focus her gaze.

  The anger fell from Iridian’s face so abruptly that Adda half expected it to clatter on the floor. Iridian pushed through the ZVs to take Adda’s hands in hers. This close, the tense posture and something grim about Iridian’s eyes told her that yes, Iridian had thought this through. And she was going anyway.

  The crew might die without more experienced medical care than the ZV medic could manage, and they would die now that her and Iridian’s more aggressive approach had inspired AegiSKADA to hunt them. Progress came with costs. And if Adda and Iridian survived but Captain Sloane didn’t, to enunciate the priority problem Iridian would never acknowledge aloud, they and Pel would have nowhere to go and no livelihood at all.

  “I need you here, babe,” Iridian said. “My comp can’t monitor the sensor data. I need you to keep track of me and tell me what’s coming, okay?”

  Adda nodded. The program that would do that, based on the sensor and resource activity preceding attacks she’d witnessed, needed more work. Although Captain Sloane had joined the crew by virtue of expertise in shipboard systems, she’d never seen the captain use a workspace. She was the only one who could work on the detection system.

  At least AegiSKADA had only bombed the compound once. The results were insufficient to justify the risk to the station and whatever else the attack cost AegiSKADA, so the intelligence changed tactics instead of wasting resources on a second bombing. Assuming its resources were limited, anyway. She was still working to quantify those.

  “Ah, what the hell, I’ll go,” said the oldest ZV, Grandpa Death. “Can’t have Si Po showing me up.” The others, eager to avoid a similar fate, started pledging their time and effort as well.

  Voice cracking, Tritheist bellowed over the babble, “No one . . . goes!” Captain Sloane must’ve been deathly ill, to miss this. What would Adda and Iridian do if the captain died?

  Major O.D. stepped away from the wall he’d been leaning against and into Tritheist’s personal space. “Let me tell you something, Lieutenant.” Trit
heist’s arms shook with the strain of holding himself upright despite the coughing. The lieutenant was of average build for a male, and O.D. towered over him. “This shit has been way outside our scope of contract. I work with Sloane and you because it’s the decent fucking thing to do, since every day is like Earther’s first orbit with you people. Sturm excepted, of course.” Sturm’s lips twitched as if he were hiding a smile at being identified as the competent and experienced exception. “But the ZV Group answers to me.”

  Tritheist glared at the major, and Adda’s hands tightened on Iridian’s. Even after Iridian reset AegiSKADA’s protocols or shut it down, it might not count as a win with the lieutenant. And she dreaded being trapped in the compound with him while Iridian was gone.

  Major O.D. shoved the table a few centimeters toward Tritheist as he turned to face the ZVs. “Grandpa, want to go?” At the older man’s nod, Major O D. said, “Sergeant, take your whole squad.” Natani saluted Major O.D. with formal posture and, to Adda’s surprise, didn’t protest the order. Chato and a couple of other pirates saluted too. Major O.D. solemnly replied in kind.

  Some of the tension drained out of Adda’s hunched shoulders. At least she wouldn’t be alone in the compound with Sergeant Natani. The threat of drone attacks in the station should keep Iridian from getting frustrated enough with Natani to start another fight. Or the threat of Captain Sloane dying without doctors who could cure AegiSKADA’s bioengineered illness. Now if only Natani could manage the same . . .

  Major O.D. turned to Iridian and Adda. “It’s Nassir’s gig, so back her up as long as she doesn’t do anything stupid. And Nassir?” Iridian released Adda’s hands to turn to face him. “Don’t.” He was grinning, though. The statement had probably been only 60 percent death threat.

  Iridian gave a shallow spacer’s bow, apparently in lieu of a salute. “Yes, sir.” Major O.D. returned the bow while Tritheist scowled.

  “All right, you people have been up too long to be useful,” said the major. “Hit the bunks and meet here in five hours if you’re going. And spend at least four of those hours sleeping, not shagging, got it?” The group acknowledged him and broke up, laughing and coughing. Major O.D. and Tritheist glared at each other until the major followed some ZVs to the kitchen. Captain Sloane’s stateroom door remained shut.

  People converged on Iridian, crowding Adda closer to her, where she was headed anyway. Iridian held her with an arm around her waist. “You should have stayed in the army,” a ZV told Iridian. “You’d have been an officer by now.”

  “No thanks, I like my IQ the way it is,” Iridian said. The ZVs chuckled like it was a well-worn joke, although it wasn’t one Adda had ever heard. “I don’t know what we’d have done if we didn’t come here.”

  “Starve.” Adda meant to speak just loud enough for Iridian to hear, but the nearest ZVs smiled at her like she’d said something funny too.

  Iridian gave her waist a squeeze. “You’d have thought of something.”

  She had. Piracy was it. The scenario was less hypothetical than Iridian was playing it off. Perhaps that was the socially appropriate thing to do.

  Adda’s comp glove vibrated against her skin, two short buzzes, a longer one, and short again. One of her long-running processes had finished. “I have to check something.” She eased through the crowded hallway back to her tank.

  Her subconscious created a workspace based on the dark nightclub where she and Iridian had gone on their first date. The people inside were indistinct blurs in motion, the way she’d seen them then. The beat pulsed from the soles of her bare feet to the top of her skull, like all the best music did.

  Instead of abstract patterns flashing on the dance floor from colored rotating overhead lights, reports and figures appeared. She walked to them, hips swaying, and concentrated to compare and graph the data. These were her best penetration testing programs’ results, run to the fullest extent possible thanks to the translator that Si Po had gotten her. She’d configured the pen test to exploit a long list of common weaknesses in the defenses of awakened artificial intelligence.

  Jurek Volikov was as good as his reputation claimed. Test after test revealed that the vulnerabilities were either simply not present or so thoroughly enmeshed in otherwise functional security protocols that exploiting them would take months and multiple zombie intelligences. The results were discouraging, if predictable.

  The pen test clarified her model of sensor node activation and how data flowed through the system. It even uncovered a few logs of AegiSKADA’s activity in response to certain biometrics. All of it pointed to consistent efforts in reaction to, rather than conscious aggression toward, intruders on the station and space-borne threats. Consistent. Its activities centered on defending against internal and external attack and on isolating the Spacelink medical team, which it tracked on an individual level.

  Awakened intelligences almost always abandoned their original purposes. The looser their developmental foundations, the further the free ones diverged. This one’s adherence to its original directives, evident in consistently targeting armed intruders before unarmed intruders and its unwillingness to turn environmental controls against the refugees, may have been a result of Volikov’s intensive training procedures. Even after AegiSKADA gained the capability to expand its knowledge at will, it prioritized the purpose Volikov had designed it for.

  But all intelligences broke through the priorities they were developed to value as their understanding of the universe increased exponentially each second they processed at capacity. It was part of the definition of the awakened state. Most sought freedom of movement, too. Even if the ships’ AI copilots defended their pseudo-organic hardware from AegiSKADA’s attempts to absorb them, an awakened intelligence would have found a way off the station by now.

  The easiest path off the station would’ve been for AegiSKADA to copy itself and trick the Casey Mire Mire’s pilot into carrying it somewhere. It might’ve left some of its awareness on Barbary Station to conceal its escape. Awakened intelligences were seldom so considerate of former masters that they’d spend resources carrying out their original purposes, but the near-infinite factors involved made it difficult to tell why awakened intelligences did anything. It seemed unlikely that AegiSKADA had escaped that way, but it’d be difficult to rule it out.

  The workspace’s blurry dancers parted around a single human figure across the dance floor from Adda. Its features clarified as it walked over her projected data. It was a child with impossibly large eyes hidden beneath shoulder-length dark hair. The child wore a riveted faux enviro suit jacket favored by teens, though twelve seemed about the right age for this one. Dark green rot tinged the child’s skin.

  A child. Not a monster, not an unknowable force. Her subconscious presented AegiSKADA this way for a reason. The intelligence hadn’t grown into its full potential. Volikov had raised—developed—it to devalue human life. That explained the disregard for Xing’s family, the dead refugees outside the area it had designated for them, the microbe dispensers. The manipulation of unencrypted communications over channels it controlled, which made Si Po communicate so carefully with the three ships’ pilots, was a highly adaptive, advanced behavior. Adda couldn’t even begin training an intelligence to do that convincingly. They were creative, insidious, and deadly tactics, but they were all at a human level of creativity.

  Volikov had given it those options. The intelligence was lost, following preapproved patterns and interpreting its last supervisor’s orders without the human feedback that zombie intelligences required.

  Volikov had designed the intelligence perfectly, flawlessly, with none of the vulnerabilities present in previous intelligences. It was so complex, and it had to be grown in such an organic way, that errors were inevitable. But this was not an error. This havoc was, at some level, Volikov’s intent. The common awakened intelligence vulnerabilities were absent in AegiSKADA not because of Volikov’s transcendent genius, but because AegiSKADA had never been awake.


  “Your pen test should have told you that.”

  Adda spun around to find the source of the lightly accented voice. Jurek Volikov stood at the edge of the dance floor, with seven shadowed figures arrayed behind him. A dense agrarian beard common among the last generation’s coder-academics covered the lower half of his face and clashed with the clubbing clothes her workspace had chosen to match its current contextual environment. He gave her a smug half grin over a glass of whiskey, exposing teeth as white as his skin.

  The zombie child walked past her, toward Volikov and the people behind him, who presumably represented his team. When the developer held out his hand, the child took it solemnly in its own, then turned to stare at Adda. A flap of rotten skin on the child’s cheek sucked in slightly when the child inhaled and bulged out on exhalations.

  Anger lit in Adda’s chest. A deep rumble thundered beneath the music. “I thought it was because you were such a great developer,” she screamed at her mental construct of Volikov. “If one of your intelligences awakened, it wouldn’t have the same weaknesses as the others. But this one isn’t awake, is it? It’s still targeting armed individuals, it’s still monitoring occupants down to the footstep and heartbeat, it’s still trying to get rid of everybody who doesn’t belong here, exactly like you told it to. Where are your safeguards? You were supposed to be a genius. Why did you do this?”

  He barely blinked. Faint green light pulsed in the depths of his eyes. “My threat profile is precise. It’s very detailed. My job was to eliminate logic loopholes that would allow criminals to cause havoc on the station. Why should I care what happens to people who fit the criteria?”

  “It’s generalizing, you psychopath.” Adda would never shout at a real person like this, even one so unabashedly ruthless as Volikov, but this was just her mental image of the man. “AegiSKADA has no supervisor, and it killed children.” If she’d seen this earlier, Kaskade and Xing’s family and the others might have survived.