Iridian searched for something to do with her armload of crap. Any radioactive material sample container she ever designed would include a shoulder strap. She scooped up the datacask with her helmet and brought it around for more detailed inspection. “So you won’t take me across until I promise to download AegiSKADA’s code to this?”
“Correct.”
The standard human response to an AI’s request for clarification, if they got it right. Cute. Awakened AI really did learn fast. “Why haven’t you sent a rover to do that?”
“AegiSKADA protects itself with turrets. Rovers lack sufficient armor. If it were installed, they would lack sufficient propulsion. Additionally, rovers can’t break through walls.”
Iridian glanced down at her armor. “I’m not sure this can take turret fire either.” The ship and its rover didn’t respond. Which was typical, because all the AI cared about was what Iridian could do for it. “Look, what are you going to do with this code? I can’t just take your word that—”
Adda’s voice, played out of the rover, interrupted her. “Casey Mire Mire, Charon’s Coin, and Apparition. It’s in all our best interest that you get this message to Iridian Nassir, the woman who came to the station with me. Iridian: the safest way is through the rooms parallel to the main corridors. Break down the walls if you have to.”
Iridian stared at the rover. So this was Adda’s idea, not the Casey’s. Adda she could trust. And Iridian was going to the control room either way. She didn’t have to decide about making or keeping a copy of AegiSKADA now. Once AegiSKADA was out of commission, she wouldn’t need the Casey. She could walk back to base. “Sure. I’ll download a copy.”
“Promise?” the rover asked in its original agender voice.
“What?” Artificial intelligence doesn’t understand fucking promises.
“Promise.” This time it sounded like a command.
Hairs rose along her arms and the back of her neck. That was the word she’d used a few minutes ago, and it already had the full context of that very human term. “Yeah, I promise.” She’d decide whether she really would later, when a less creepy AI controlled her O2 and grav.
She gathered up her stuff and stowed the datacask in a compartment of the armor. “Hey, where’s the head?”
The rover puffed over to the door on the right. It contained, sure enough, a micro-g toilet and shower. Two sets of wrist binders were bolted to the bulkhead on either side of the door. What the fuck is the Casey Mire Mire outfitted for?
The Casey started spinning and accelerating to station orientation and grav before Iridian was ready for it. Thank gods for thorough training. “En route elimination” drills were apparently not just hazing for recruits. They sure as hell repeated the process more often than necessary, but she kept her balance now, when it would’ve been messy otherwise.
The ship’s interior was all clean, if dusty, white, and warm orange. Except for the wrist binders in the head, it had a comfortable, civilian feel. During the war, something this lightly armed and armored would’ve made for one nerve-racking trip. Barbary Station was built this far from Earth to break down warships and long-haul supply barges. The Casey didn’t belong out here.
It took the ship longer to bring itself up to the station’s speed than the shuttles took. Iridian put her helmet back on. With the faceplate up and the O2 valve closed, she could take advantage of the free atmo while she explored. The Casey kept a steady spiral through direction changes, allowing Iridian to keep up with the changing location of “down.” Next to the head was a bedroom, with a separate processing console like the one in the pirates’ computer room.
Once the ship was traveling close enough to the station’s spin that grav pulled her toward the deck again, Iridian collected the case and her O2 tank and waited by the passthrough for the Casey to finish matching the station’s speed. The rover sat on its wheels in the entryway, still staring at Iridian with its implacable lens.
Something skittered across the rover’s back. She caught it in her armored glove and crushed it. The fragments that fell when she opened her fist were metallic, not organic. Those damned spiderbots were all over. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Remember your promise,” said the Casey.
CHAPTER 25
Charges Accrued: Endangerment of Minors
“We’re losing him!” Zikri shouted in a tone he must have heard in a drama vid. The two station doctors rushed across the pirate compound’s main room to where the ZV medic knelt next to Grandpa Death. The old pirate had collapsed, coughing and gasping for breath, in the middle of the main room.
Adda was breathing well enough to get back to her tank. Patients sprawled on the floor, tripping hazards for the med team scrambling around the dying pirate. They could probably use an extra meter of space to work. She hauled herself down her tank’s ladder and applied her concentration concoction. The mushrooms were shriveling, but she didn’t want to stop to hydrate them. It was more important to find out what was happening in the rest of the station.
Her brain and the workspace generator slammed together. She staggered in a huge, round room full of movement and voices and far too much information. It might have been a reproduction of a state capitol building she’d visited as a child. AegiSKADA and HarborMaster were activating sensor nodes all over the station. This was the workspace’s response to her desire for all the data, now.
Her consciousness tumbled back into her body. At first it felt like instinctual recoil from information overload, but then she registered pounding above her. “Bitch, open this fucking door!”
That sounded like Vick. “What do you want?” The question rasped through her aching throat. She shuffled to the ladder. The trapdoor stayed shut and locked.
“What’s taking you so gods-damned long to stop this? We’re dying here.”
Another hard impact on the door made Adda bite down on an exasperated sigh. Theatrics must motivate some people, but they wasted time she didn’t have to spare. “I work faster without interruptions. I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Fuck him.” Vick’s volume dropped a few notches. “I don’t want to be next. You’d better have some good news when you come out of there, or don’t come out at all.” Boots thumped away down the hall.
Without her comp’s comm systems to call for help, she was going to be in her tank for a long while. Vick was twice her size.
I could fret, or I could do what I came down here to do. This did eliminate distractions, at least until her body required something other than sleep. She crawled back into the workspace generator with one topic in mind, to limit the flow of information. “Pel.”
He appeared across a much smaller round room in a blueprint on the first floor of the station, walking with one hand dragging along the wall. “Oh, gods damn you.” He must’ve thought he could still do something to help the fugees, although Adda couldn’t imagine what, and of course he hadn’t asked her, or anybody else, before he left. He’d reach the refugees’ docking bay soon. Although the sensors still tracked him with ease, he was alone.
If AegiSKADA labeled him a threat, he’d die as soon as it brought drones to bear on him. But it hadn’t so far, and since he never carried anything resembling a weapon, she didn’t see any reason for it to single him out. It had to have a reason, though. Intelligences always did. She’d keep watching for clues to why it was so interested in Pel while she made sure Iridian, who it actually had identified as a threat, was safe.
She confirmed that her drone trackers would give her plenty of warning, then switched targets. “Iridian.”
Iridian was climbing down a rope or cable in an area Adda hadn’t seen before. Although the ZVs who’d returned without Iridian had said that Si Po was with her, Iridian appeared to be alone as well. After Iridian and Pel were safe, she’d have to look for Si Po. Adda found Iridian on the station map near the security control room and put the visual feed beside Pel’s, overlapping disconcertingly at the edges. I can’t believe the last thin
g I said to Iri was swearing at her for not being clear.
Adda had to focus, or she’d lose her grip on the workspace. The nodes around Iridian were spaced widely and randomly due to unrepaired damage. She kept disappearing in expanding concentric circles of noise. The ripples were thick yellow-brown like melted skin, and Adda turned her back to both feeds to fill the opposite rounded wall with pretty much anything else.
Most of the drone activity she mapped onto the wall surrounded the refugee docking bay, where Transorbital Voyages’ mercenaries pointed weapons at a crowd of refugees. She shivered. Pel would have to walk through them to get back to the refugee’s ship, but it was still a much shorter distance to travel than returning to the pirates’ compound at this point. Gods, she hoped AegiSKADA kept classifying him as a nonthreat. None of the accessible menus included the criteria for that status.
The program she would insert after Iridian shut AegiSKADA down was filling out well. She concentrated on being recognized as the intelligence’s administrator upon a hard crash and reboot to concurrence mode. Code swirled before her, clarifying contingencies as they came to her.
It blew away like ashes amid horrified screams. She turned and ran toward the overhead view of the refugees. The image retreated from her along with the wall, and she snapped, “Zoom in!” That only blurred it.
“What happened to his fucking shoulder?” one of the mercenaries demanded of a terrified refugee. Blood spattered the side of the mercenary’s helmet. Next to him lay a body missing an arm, half its face, and a large chunk of chest cavity. The body wore blood-soaked cloth, not armor plating. Adda sucked in a horrified breath that rattled around her lungs.
“I don’t know!” the frightened refugee shouted back. “That just . . . happens, sometimes! It’s the station’s security AI.”
The mercs swung their weapons and heads around, looking for an attacker. The big drones still lurked in the corridors, according to Adda’s map. Pel had a clear path between them to reach the refugees, but two of the drones were near enough to worry about if HarborMaster or AegiSKADA decided to open the emergency bulkheads she’d shut earlier.
A lot of the tiny drones’ IDs were scattered throughout the docking bay. Damn, damn, damn, how long have they been there? One small drone ID tag was already among the mercenaries, and the rest were coming closer. They stayed near the edges of the tarp and shipping container homes.
The mercenary who seemed to be in charge grabbed a gawking refugee child and pulled her in front of him. Adults shrieked and screamed at him to let the little girl go. Adda couldn’t find a good angle to see what he held in his other hand, but she could guess. “Call it off,” the mercenary yelled, voice tinged with fear. “Now!”
One refugee spaced her words out for emphasis. “We can’t.”
A mercenary rushed her. This time Adda saw the serrated blade before he buried it in the woman’s throat. Some refugees ran toward the dying woman; others fled to the refugees’ colony ship. “Tell us how to find the pirates!” shouted one mercenary. Another swung her weapon from one side of the crowd to the other, firing too rapidly to aim. One of the refugees who fell looked about five years old.
Pel stalked in from the docking bay exit, his feed flashing sickening green as it merged with her existing view. Even from this angle, Adda recognized his deep scowl and the way his shoulders hunched when he was furious.
He fell over rubble near the entrance, but scrambled to his feet fast and put a row of closed shops between him and the mercenaries. With his fingers trailing along the shipping containers, he crossed the docking bay without drawing any of the spiderbots toward him. When he entered the refugees’ docked colony ship, Adda’s—AegiSKADA’s—sensors lost him. She couldn’t help smiling, despite the chaos among the refugees. Pel was as safe as he could be now that he was inside the docked colony ship and technically off the station.
She tested a hypothesis by backing out of the docking bay sensor nodes cataloging activity near the colony ship’s passthrough. The nodes stayed active even when she wasn’t using them and nothing dangerous was happening there. HarborMaster, AegiSKADA, or both were obsessed with Pel.
He would feel obligated to help the refugees, somehow. But what could he do alone? If the pirates kept cowering in their leaky fortress, everybody in that docking bay might die. It was time for the crew to get out into the station and join the fight.
Sloane’s crew had sent countless surplus supplies to the refugees, used their newsfeed to shape the crew’s image, and run to the refugee village when the compound was attacked. Captain Sloane would send the ZV Group out to defend them, assuming the captain understood the situation.
And Adda could explain it, if she could reach the captain without Vick beating her to death. She left her workspace and poked her head out of the generator. How long was I in? Vick had upset her and she hadn’t set a timer. The wall lights were too dim to blind him, even if she shoved one into his face. The table was too big to carry, and she refused to risk her generator or mixing equipment.
But her ingredients . . . They couldn’t stay on the station much longer, with the water running low and drones attacking everywhere. She still had enough in her bloodstream to stay in a workspace for the next few hours. And while she stayed hidden in her water tank, Pel was trapped in the colony ship and the refugees were dying. She ground up her last few drying mushrooms and carried her mortar to the trapdoor. The door’s rubbery seal made a shushing sound as it opened.
Vick was standing right beside the ladder. He looked down and met her eyes. She panicked and flung the whole mortar at his unmasked face.
He yowled as the heavy bowl bounced off his forehead. Blueish-brown powder covered his face, coated the inside of his hood, and smeared over his shirt. The mortar shattered on the floor. He reached for the ladder’s top rung, but Adda closed the trapdoor and locked it.
“What the fuck was that?” At least the door’s seal muffled his voice.
When one first learns to mix and take concentration aids, one makes mistakes. She’d spent many nights controlling overdoses to finish her homework before succumbing to wavy lights and nausea. All she’d had to do to stay calm during an overdose was avoid focusing on negatives. The alternative had been raw, overpowering terror. The experience should be intense enough to get Vick to leave her alone. “Poison,” she shouted through the locked door. “And dirt from the floor.”
“What—Why would you—You bitch!” Vick pounded on the door some more. He was a big guy, with a compromised respiratory tract. She couldn’t tell how much powder he’d inhaled or gotten in his eyes and mouth. It might take seconds or minutes to affect him, if it affected him at all. She hadn’t cut it with stimulants. He was focused and energetic enough.
Another man asked, “Vick, what the hell are you doing?”
“She fucking poisoned me, sir!” That would make the first speaker Major O.D. “Whatever she’s doing down there, it’s not helping us.”
O.D. snorted. “That looks like ceiling dust. Don’t hurt her for pulling a prank.” Adda smiled a bit at the officer’s mistake. The part of the mix that she’d thrown at Vick did resemble the blue coating on the ceilings and walls. But why couldn’t Major O.D. order Vick to stop threatening her? Adda sighed, exasperated and fearful for Iridian and Pel. This was wasting valuable time.
Vick groaned. “I’m going to Zikri. He’ll fix this, and then you’re going down.”
She stood under the door until the big man’s steps faded down the hall, and then she climbed up. He and Zikri were talking in the main room. She’d have to pass them to get to the captain’s cabin.
When she entered the main room, most people sat against the wall instead of lying on the floor. Something the med team had done was working. Vick’s eyes were open so wide they could fall out, and Zikri was laughing. “You need to calm down, man. Just sit here and wipe yourself off.”
“No . . . no, you don’t understand.” She waited until he focused on the medic, then cross
ed the room at a quick walk. Vick kept looking between Zikri and his own boots with growing terror. With no built-up resistance, the concentration drug hit Vick’s system fast and hard.
Tritheist leaned on the wall outside the captain’s door and raised one eyebrow as she approached. “What happened to Vick?”
Adda stood straight and imagined Iridian’s face in a bad situation she knew she could handle. “He threatened me. I took care of it. He’ll be fine.” The explanation didn’t include an estimate of when he might be fine. Her mixture would wear off someone his size in a matter of hours. He’d have interesting nightmares from now on, though.
“Fair enough,” Tritheist said. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to speak to Captain Sloane. Things are coming to a head and we need to take action if we want them to go our way.”
“And you know better than the captain what needs doing?” Tritheist smirked.
“I have the most current information. If the captain is serious about getting out of here, we need to act.”
“The captain’s caring for—”
The door swept open, revealing Captain Sloane. “The whole crew.” The captain wore a white hooded jacket unbuttoned low in the front, plain tan pants that fit perfectly, and a massive necklace with a matching bracelet. Adda couldn’t maintain that level of style when she was healthy. “Let’s adjourn to the computer room. Tritheist, find someone trustworthy for this door. The sergeant, I think.” Frowning, the lieutenant headed for the main room.
The captain entered after him with a flourish that spread the white jacket wide. The ZVs who were paying enough attention to notice cheered at the captain’s appearance upright and looking confident, if not entirely well. Vick sat against the wall staring at his feet, tears streaming down both cheeks. Adda felt much safer, and more proud of herself than she probably deserved.
Barbary Station Page 35