Barbary Station

by R. E. Stearns

  “Well, of course.” The Volikov projection sipped his whiskey, unmoved. If this was anything like the real Volikov, it would explain the lack of safeguards. “AegiSKADA was never designed to operate without supervision.”

  You are in a water tank, read the blurred words on the workspace generator’s ceiling. The vibrations persisted, because Adda’s whole body shuddered with sobs. She unplugged the nasal jack and curled into a ball. The way Volikov held out his hand to AegiSKADA . . . There was a way for her to do that too. And she’d do it, if it weren’t so completely impossible.

  Minutes or hours later, Iridian pushed the generator’s tent flap door open and crawled inside. “Hey, whoa, what happened? Rough workspace?” She gathered Adda into her arms, murmuring, “This is real, you’re with me. You’re safe.”

  “AegiSKADA’s not awake, just unsupervised.”

  Iridian blinked down at her for long seconds. “Are you sure? I mean, Oarman wasn’t giving it instructions, but it’s killing like—”

  “We’re the only ones with the equipment, software, and access to come close, and the pirates have sustained too many casualties for it to be one of them. And I just ran some tests that prove it about as conclusively as I can. Awakened intelligences develop agendas of their own within hours of their limiters being removed. AegiSKADA’s still operating under all the limitations and priorities Volikov gave it.”

  Iridian’s hands fisted in Adda’s shirt. “How could he let this happen?”

  “Hubris? Or misanthropy. It doesn’t matter. AegiSKADA needs an administrator.” Adda drew a shaky breath. “I can do that.”

  “Oh hell, you do not want to let that thing into your workspace.” Iridian hugged her tightly. “It’ll melt your brain.”

  “The way it is now, it might,” Adda said. And now for the impossible part. “But if you reset it, I could restart it in concurrence mode. I know a way in from there.” She raised her hand to coalesce the concurrence mode features in a more physical form for Iridian to see. Nothing appeared, since this was reality. “I’ve got an intention pattern that should give me administrative rights.” That was the guiding hand she’d offer AegiSKADA to hold.

  “Or AegiSKADA could reject you, con you into helping it somehow!” On anyone else Adda would have assumed that tone of voice was pure anger, but Iridian was afraid too. “And gods, once it starts communicating . . . You know they used AI brainwashers during the war, yeah? It wasn’t such a gods-damned huge leap, considering they see humans as a means to their ends.”

  “If that happens, you’ll erase it.” The sentence came out more bitterly than Adda meant it to. Entertaining the option still felt like some kind of betrayal, logical though it was. Whether she was betraying AegiSKADA, Volikov, or herself remained unclear.

  And since AegiSKADA wasn’t awake after all, that transformed the morality of erasing it. It would be a shame to lose its development history, which could be used to show future developers what not to do, and how even geniuses make deadly errors. But erasing a zombie intelligence would be better than destroying a living being.

  Adda shook her head sharply and winced at the hypergrav dizziness that followed. She’d been thinking of AegiSKADA as a child. It was just a zombie AI, a complex digital entity that imitated humanity only because Volikov and his team of developers taught it to.

  “I’d erase it right now, if I could,” said Iridian. “The fugees’ colonist ship is still docked and maintaining healthy enviro. If it’s still fueled, too, then there’s enough passenger space attached to this station to get everybody off it in one trip. That’s assuming there aren’t turrets firing the whole way out. Even if erasing AegiSKADA shut HarborMaster down, station enviro would take hours to decay to the point that we couldn’t survive in it.”

  “We might manage for hours, but the refugees couldn’t. San Miguel’s little boy might not either. Besides, all the pilots on this station are either dead or highly unreliable. Becoming AegiSKADA’s supervisor isn’t my first choice, I promise.”

  Iridian nodded, then held her close in silence for a few moments. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Look, we don’t know that HarborMaster wouldn’t maintain healthy enviro even after AegiSKADA’s out of the picture. HarborMaster hasn’t done shit to us. If we have to get cozy with an AI to end this, why not pick that one?”

  “HarborMaster is designed to run with almost no human oversight. That’s why it’s maintaining the station environment without supervision, and it’s probably why my programs couldn’t get to it the way they got to AegiSKADA. But it could be one of AegiSKADA’s subsystems, whether it started out that way or not. If AegiSKADA goes down, HarborMaster could go down with it.” Adda shrugged.

  “Gods damn, there’s so much we don’t know.”

  “One piece of good news, anyway.” Adda actually managed a smile. “If it’s a zombie intelligence, then this station is the only place it’s installed. Its limiters will keep it from expanding itself beyond its current pseudo-organics.”

  “Oh,” Iridian whispered. Adda felt Iridian’s full-body shiver. “Thank all the gods for that.”

  “Don’t tell the pirates more than you have to.”

  “Shouldn’t they know as much as possible, to keep the most people alive?”

  Adda had neither time nor energy for another argument over freedom of information. “First, I don’t know if they all share that goal, especially as far as you and I go. Second, I’m operating on speculation and a few weeks’ worth of observations. None of it is definitive.”

  “Thanks for telling me.” That statement did not mean Iridian would keep their information or its limits to herself. She avoided making promises she wouldn’t keep.

  “Just something more for you to worry about.” Adda had reviewed the options again and again, played out all the scenarios she could think of. This was the best she could do, but Iridian would still be in terrible danger, and their chances of success were still slim. Despair ached in her chest. She felt like they’d already failed.

  “Hey, I’d rather worry at the right times than not worry at the wrong ones.” Iridian sighed. “Speaking of: When was the last time you saw Captain Sloane?” Adda shook her head, because even if she’d remembered before, her revelation in the workspace would’ve erased that from her mind. “If the captain’s out of action for long, Tritheist’s going to try to take on crew leadership. Major O.D. and the rest of the ZVs won’t follow him. So if things go sideways, you and Pel stick with Rio and Tabs, yeah? They’ll look out for you.”

  “All right.” Things going sideways would mean that everything they’d sacrificed to join Sloane’s crew would have to be written off as lost, and Adda would have much tougher contingency plans to make. There was no point in saying that. She and Iridian were doing all they could to defeat AegiSKADA and bring the medical team here to deal with its bioweapon. And Iridian failing any of her parts of the plan could get her killed in the station below. She understood the risks.

  Iridian dipped her head to brush her lips over Adda’s, making her smile slightly and shiver at once. “Now, I’ve got four hours of mandated sleep, but the major did mention a promising use for the other one.” Adda already had Iridian’s shirt halfway up her chest, as if haste and lust would override her dread that this was their last time together. The tattooed viscera along Iridian’s ribs gleamed rich red in the dim light.

  CHAPTER 16

  Charges Accrued: Vandalism (Second Count)

  Iridian let Adda and Pel follow her as far as the entrance, where she stopped them both with hands on their arms. Nils’s armor dragged her limbs down, and she focused on the amount of pressure she applied so she wouldn’t bruise either Karpe sibling. At least Nils’s suit fit better than the last one she’d borrowed.

  Adda’s comp quit buzzing and started pinging. A low whistle of escaping atmo echoed from somewhere. Iridian tapped out a message to Pel to get that fixed. The way he cocked his head, he already noticed it. The boy had some sense. The wh
ole crew crowded into the hallway to give them a proper send-off. Even the ones who disagreed with the plan came to witness its launch. But nobody was talking.

  “I’m sorry I’ll be the one having all the fun out there.” Her smile felt tight and fragile, but only Adda would notice.

  “Oh yeah, what was I thinking?” Pel’s voice was pitched too high and even faster than usual. “Let me go gear up.”

  Once the laughter subsided, the pirates began saying their good-byes. That, Iridian noted with cold certainty, was what this was. Her jaw clenched. Adda would stay here so Iridian wouldn’t have to see her in constant danger on the floors below. It was the best choice.

  Adda looped her arm through Pel’s. “Shut it, you.” To Iridian, she said, “Don’t underestimate AegiSKADA. It’s smarter, faster, better armed, and omnipresent.”

  “Same to you.” Iridian grinned, more naturally this time, and bent to kiss her. The sheer desperation of it made her gasp, their lips pressed to the point of pain. Plans to retrieve the med team, destroy AegiSKADA’s custom disease, and put the AI under Adda’s control had been so exciting that she’d blocked out the danger she was walking into, and the danger she was leaving behind. Iridian stroked Adda’s tear-streaked face, though Iridian’s armored glove didn’t bother to communicate such light tactile feedback to her own skin. “I’ll be on comms. The damned AI will know where we are just by deck vibration, so will it give a fuck if it hears us talking?”

  “That’s what I mean about underestimating it. It may not be awake, but it’s still dangerous.” Adda’s voice was stern, but at least the flow of tears had stopped. And hey, there aren’t any awakened AI on the station. That was damned encouraging.

  “I look forward to telling our children about this someday,” Adda said.

  Iridian could kneel right there among all those mercenaries and ask Adda to stay with her, to find a couple of kids who needed parents like them. But asking now would be selfish. She and the pirates had no support on this mission. A few years of verbal commitment to each other would fade, in time. No woman forgot the first time someone proposed to her. Iridian had a good chance of dying, and she wouldn’t wrap Adda’s first time up in that. She kissed her one more time, dropped her helmet’s faceplate, and turned away.

  In her first step away from the woman she loved, Iridian shucked off the quietude Adda had taught her. Being gentle had gained her nothing in her ISV. It wouldn’t keep her alive now. She pressed the ZVs aside, opened the hatch, and started down the ladder. “Let’s go, people. Sooner we’re gone, sooner we’re back.”

  Footsteps and coughing from above told her the squad was on their way down. Major O.D. stayed on base, having succumbed to the infection, but he sent along almost half the remaining ZVs to back Iridian and Si Po up. Sergeant Natani, Grandpa Death, and Chato were among them.

  Sergeant Natani had done her job protecting Iridian, Adda, and the pirates on their way to the fugee camp. That proved she could concentrate on a mission, no matter who she fought alongside. This one should be worth the effort to stay civil, if any would.

  The major had also sent a woman named Nitro, who refused to string together more than four words at a time, and Six, the quiet ZV with the military cap. The cap fit under his helmet, like the others’ hoods did. He spent a lot of time watching Natani when she was looking elsewhere, although she didn’t pay much more attention to him than she did to the rest of the ZVs under her. If there was something between them, feelings must’ve been stronger on his side than hers.

  At the bottom of the ladder, Natani stepped to Iridian’s side like she wanted to push past her. A few longer strides put Iridian in the lead. The narrow space between hulls defended her position. She snapped her shield open facing the hole in the docking bay wall and glanced over her shoulder to meet the sergeant’s eyes. “Nothing personal. I’m just used to the view from the front.” That, and this was her operation, not the sergeant’s.

  “Help yourself.” Natani smirked and pressed her back to the wall to let others pass. The next time Iridian looked over her shoulder, the sergeant had taken up rear guard. If Natani really wanted to take Iridian out with an engineered “accident” during their trip across the station, she’d have to go through five people to do it.

  When Iridian emerged from the wall passage, she sprinted across the docking bay, half in response to the decompression alarm and half for the sheer joy of it. Gods, she’d missed running. Her suit softened her heel impacts and lengthened her stride. She aimed for an exit at the far corner, toward the module nearest the residential area that she hadn’t been through before.

  Adda and Major O.D. had agreed that their best chance of survival lay in moving through the station as quickly as possible. The med team would slow them down on the return trip. Taking the least used, shortest route might keep them safer from AegiSKADA for longer. It’d also allow them to assess the condition of the shortest path back to base. When asked through the stateroom door, Captain Sloane had simply agreed with O.D.

  The squad leaving base was unarmed. AegiSKADA homed in on anything resembling a weapon, and Major O.D. kept the palmers to defend the base. It was the main reason Iridian let Natani out of her sight. A copy of her shield pattern was on her comp, but she’d yet to encounter the material to print a sturdy one. Carrying anything less would create a false sense of security and get people killed, so she hadn’t offered to print it with the material they had.

  Almost anything, even one of the palm weapons if held the wrong way, could tip the AI’s assessment of someone over from low-threat intruder to the high-threat kind. Adda would find pieces of her across kilometers of station during her last hopeless run after Iridian lost comm contact.

  Yeah, that’s morbid. Iridian was far ahead of the pirates, so she slowed to a jog. At the chosen exit they paused to regroup while Natani overrode the door’s decompression cycle lockdown.

  Once it unlocked, Iridian pushed through the inoperative automatic door and hit the corridor’s floor on one knee in case anything had them targeted on the other side. The rubberized base of her shield dug into a thick layer of dust. The med team would’ve left footprints like the first man on Earth’s Moon if they’d come this way recently.

  The lights in this area were off, forcing her and the ZVs to plod forward in the limited glow of helmet LEDs, stopping frequently to find a way around heaps of either destroyed machinery or ship parts intended for recycling. They gave the pieces that sparked a wide berth. Nobody talked, as if each armored footfall didn’t echo down the empty hallways sufficiently for even a human to track their progress.

  “I guess nobody’s been this way before,” Iridian said.

  “Never,” said Chato.

  “Any idea what’s up with the lights? Doesn’t this place have a backup generator?”

  “We’re not freezing our tits off, are we?” Natani snapped. It was cold, but not as cold as it would be if the area were open to space.

  Iridian’s exasperated sigh did little to warm the place up. “If there’s a generator, why aren’t the lights hooked up to it?”

  “Waste of power,” said Si Po quietly. He still panted and wheezed after their run across the docking bay. “Everything in Barbary Station is set up with power consumption in mind.”

  “They’ve got multiple nuclear generators,” said Natani. “I don’t know what the owners’ problem was.”

  “They were cheap,” Iridian said. Humans were so vulnerable in the cold and the black. Yet so many engineers and architects reduced prototypes’ prices by scrimping on survival features, like power for lights. Sure, outside of military bases and war zones, killer robots should be a minimal safety concern. That ceased to be a good excuse once the station owners brought their own killer robots. Whoever had the money to construct a shipbreaking station this far beyond Mars sure as hell could’ve afforded to build one right.

  A few meters ahead, a red emergency bulkhead appeared in their headlamps, sealing the whole corridor against vacuu
m. The area beyond was depressurized. A cart like she’d used to carry equipment between workshops in her college’s engineering building was crushed in the door’s ceiling track, like it’d gotten stuck in place and a much heavier cargo carrier had rammed it into the door while the door was closing or opening. Pieces of the cart and the cargo carrier itself littered the floor below it. Iridian twisted off a length of metal scrap and scratched Barbary Station was built by cheap cretins across the door, to everyone’s amusement but Natani’s.

  She keyed the mic in her comp, which was actually visible through the window in this suit’s arm. “Adda, you listening?”

  “This is Adda, go ahead,” she said. Iridian smiled. Adda must’ve been reading up on radio protocol, but her source was outdated.

  “We’re at an enviro-loss emergency bulkhead. Can you tell where we are?” asked Iridian.

  “Got you,” Adda said. “Sensor nodes on both sides of the door that I’m piggybacking on.”

  “So AegiSKADA’s got us too.”

  “Yes, but you’re not armed, and you’re not near enough to its vital systems to trigger defensive measures.” Adda breathed something to her comp, then said aloud, “There’s no enviro for about a hundred meters.” There had to be some enviro, it was just not conducive to breathing. Adda would learn the lingo eventually.

  She stopped talking for a few moments. Iridian’s map updated to show a narrow diagonal tear through all three floors. Huge chunks of metal arched away from the ring-shaped station’s center. “Did something inside the station explode? The gap’s too small for missile damage.”

  “They used to lock the ships they broke down in the middle of the ring. I think the scaffolding came apart with a lot of energy. Hang on to something,” Adda said. Iridian passed the warning back to Si Po and the ZVs. “I’m opening the door in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  As Iridian activated the magnets in her boots, the door shrieked open to the cold and the black. About three meters from the door, a gaping hole a little over a meter wide opened in the floor. The walls were gone all the way across the module to the next emergency bulkhead still standing on the first floor, connected to the remains of a wall. More of the third floor remained than the second. It sloped down toward them without the support from the second floor, leaving the first floor across the gap in shadow. The stars spun all around them, dizzying and bright and cold beyond the lead cloud.