Barbary Station

by R. E. Stearns

  AegiSKADA finished presenting mercenaries and pirates for her review and started showing her refugees. “Unless I already listed them as a threat, everybody in that docking bay is safe,” she said.

  “Even him?” The intelligence replaced the old refugee it had been asking about with the former pirate lieutenant, the one who the refugees called Oarman but who once went by Blackguardly Jack.

  The lieutenant’s long coat hung over a mismatched armored suit. The legs were orange, and the torso was a mix of red and black parts. He clambered through the refugees’ rubble barricade toward the last remaining group of mercenaries, moving slowly, turning frequently to watch the whole hallway for threats, and swearing, she guessed from his expression and body language, every time he encountered a sealed emergency bulkhead.

  “I don’t know,” Adda said.

  “I think he’s hostile,” said AegiSKADA. Dented and patched parts of Oarman’s armor lit yellow and red in the workspace. Estimates of the nature and recentness of combat that had produced the damage scrolled beside his image.

  A much clearer recording of the first captain’s attack on AegiSKADA’s security control room appeared before her. Brighter sections of the new vid showed where the intelligence had reconstructed it from partial data. AegiSKADA activated a function that once linked with law enforcement databases to match features and patterns between the younger Oarman and the one currently stalking through the station. The feature flashed unavailable messages now, among shivery black static that made Adda’s eyes ache. The feature would have been useful before the lead cloud, but now the cloud prevented AegiSKADA from linking out to any other database.

  The intelligence’s child figure was watching Adda, not the switching images. When Adda and Iridian met Oarman in the refugee camp, he’d looked angry enough with Sloane to kill. She wouldn’t risk getting the crew’s fighters all the way through the crumbling station only to have Oarman assassinate the captain.

  If the captain died, the crew would be dissolved. There would be no core group from which the captain selected operators for jobs. All of Iridian and Adda’s work would die with it. They’d be destitute, wanted, and alone in the universe, worse off than when they’d started this “adventure.”

  “What are your options?” she asked.

  An array of possibilities erupted across the workspace, each available to apply to Oarman in particular. Each showed a drone or turret applying the proposed solution and its projected effects on him. Most were messily lethal. It was another reminder that AegiSKADA had nonlethal options but selected the lethal ones in almost every encounter. Damn you, Volikov.

  “Use a weapon that won’t cause permanent damage, but stop him before he comes in visual range of Sloane.” She was too close to victory to take chances with Sloane’s life, even if Oarman just wanted to talk.

  “Okay,” said the security intelligence.

  Another question she’d wanted an answer to occurred to her. “Did you put that dispenser in the floor so I would find it and expose myself and the ZVs to your bioweapon?”

  “Yes. I knew you’d look. And you found it!” The child beamed like it had won a game. “We made a very efficient group exposure to the disease.”

  Remember what the child is. Adda nodded, mostly to herself, although the intelligence was correct. There were still problems left to solve. “Reconnect the station’s communication network.” Inability to coordinate in real time hurt the pirates as much as the mercenaries. Besides, reactivating the network would let her talk to Pel and Iridian.

  Iridian was the most competent and confident person she knew. Only one of those attributes applied to Pel, despite his claims to the contrary. AegiSKADA fed the sensor node data, amplified by the miniature nodes implanted in her brother’s eyes, into the workspace. He was hunched over with his arms wrapped around himself, coughing.

  The first time she shouted his name, he didn’t react. She waited until he inhaled a long, rattling breath. “Pel, it’s me!”

  “Sissy?” He twisted his head around like he’d misplaced his comp glove and wanted to use her voice to find it.

  “You’re talking through my speakers,” said AegiSKADA. It sounded . . . proud. It had hooked her into the station’s PA system without her request, which was more effective than a comp speaker. Just strong learning routines. Never attribute to sentience what you can attribute to design. As a developer, Volikov and his team may have visualized AegiSKADA as a child too.

  “Where are you?” Pel’s throat sounded ripped to ribbons from all the coughing.

  “I’m still in the compound, but AegiSKADA is helping me. It’s ours now.”

  He grinned, though he still clutched his ribs. “I knew you’d do it.”

  “You look really sick. Let me point you back toward the refugees’ docking bay.”

  “No,” he wheezed. “They’re coming here.”

  “Who are?”

  “The fugees are setting a perimeter at their docking bay doors, and then they’re coming out to help us,” Pel said. “Well, they’re coming to help the Casey Mire Mire, but they felt like since we take care of her, they should help us too.”

  An AI with fans. That concept was usually much more literal. “What are you going to do?”

  “Something’s wrong.” AegiSKADA’s creepy little avatar (she couldn’t blame the intelligence for how her brain projected it, but she could blame it for exploiting that) frowned and hugged itself with thin arms. “This hostile is trying to break my sensor network.” As the child spoke, a vid of one of the mercenaries appeared in the workspace, and Pel’s image flickered out.

  CHAPTER 28

  Charges Accrued: Manslaughter

  At least nothing, including radioactive particles, was shooting at her. Iridian had ditched the sample case at the bottom of the broken shuttle passthrough. Someone could pitch it into the cold and the black in the course of repairs.

  The Casey hadn’t waited for her. Typical unreliable AI. Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with her own legs. Debris clogged the corridors downtick toward the pirates’ docking bay. She climbed up a level and headed for the fugee camp. That should be far enough away that AegiSKADA wouldn’t chase her down. Adda might not have the AI under her control yet, and Iridian didn’t want to make that more difficult.

  It’d be nice if HarborMaster did its job and gave her some atmo. Her armor’s O2 reservoir had enough empty space for the portable tank’s remaining contents.

  When she connected the O2 tank to her suit, her HUD reported that the suit reservoir had enough empty space for the portable tank’s remaining contents. She leaned against a wall. Projectors pointed at the ceiling created a rectangular window showing the other side of the station, across the ring’s center. The makeshift pirate construction stood out in white and light gray against the darker gray station’s hull. Stars spun at the frame’s borders. It didn’t do anything good for her nausea, but it was still comforting. Adda was just a few klicks away.

  Iridian had always hoped she’d get to keep living in space. That exponentially increased her chances of dying in space. She was all right with that, as long as she saw Adda first.

  A few meters after she abandoned the empty O2 tank, the wall on her left turned to a handrail. Beyond lay a two-story drop to the first floor. Enormous machines filled the room, most neatly shut down. Station personnel had unplugged some of them in the middle of processing metals for recycle or transport. They were nearer to her than they should’ve been.

  It wasn’t a full two-story fall to the factory floor. The station’s designers had raised the floor to level it, so they wouldn’t have to customize all that machinery to a ring station’s curve. The lowest-cost solution, no doubt.

  An emergency bulkhead drew her to a halt where the left wall reappeared. The other side might have healthy enviro. There was even a sensor node on the wall beside the bulkhead. Adda would open it with that, if the com network were up so Iridian could ask. She let her forehead fall forward un
til the front of the helmet clacked against the bulkhead.

  “What was that?”

  The man’s voice came from the far side of the bulkhead, faint but comprehensible. This module had weak atmo, apparently. She turned to press her ear to the bulkhead.

  “. . . big fuckoff drone’s . . . to open this . . . blast us like it did Sarvie . . .” Poor sound conductivity through her helmet and the bulkhead muffled several more words.

  “. . . are to go this way,” said a second man. “. . . ain’t going outside, and . . . floor down is full of crap. Set the damn charge already!”

  “Safer outside,” grumbled the first, who was also the nearest to the bulkhead.

  Iridian backed down the walkway, deploying her shield and reveling in the return to a solid two-handed brace stance now that she wasn’t carrying so much crap. The men had no idea what was on the other side of the door, but they were fine with blowing a hole in it. Those weren’t fugees, ZVs, or space natives. She braced, because the timer—

  She had a halfway decent stance about four meters from the door when it blew. Station atmo rushed toward her through the hole in the bulkhead. As soon as the big pieces of the bulkhead hit the walkway, Iridian charged. At least two people waited on the other side. The hole would only allow one to come through at a time. Something in her HUD was pinging.

  The second one to speak said, “Enviro’s out in there. Helmets, faceplates, and oxygen, people.” The additional atmo made the words easier to interpret. Iridian tensed and set one boot against the wall behind her. They must not have heard her footsteps. Someone stepped through the hole sideways, facing her but ducking to get his bulky suit through.

  Before he regained his balance, she pushed off the wall. The shield drove him back to the railing. He shouted something. The two of them were too far from the bulkhead for voices to carry well. She backed away and flipped the shield up and over her shoulder. The bottom edge smashed into the man’s helmet near the neck joint. One strike of her armored elbow to his face, with most of her weight behind it, sent him over the railing.

  Maybe his armor saved him. She turned, and the mercenary who had just come through the hole was drawing a weapon and yelling. She brought her shield down to catch an impact. High-powered lethal projectiles? On a station? What the fuck is wrong with these people? There’d be new hull breaches all over after this.

  She retreated with the shield between herself and the ones shooting through the emergency bulkhead. She keyed her mic. “Adda, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I could use some backup!”

  A shot slammed into her foot. She heard and felt the boot crack and dropped into a lower stance. The second person walked toward her, firing. This wouldn’t last long. With enough mercs firing, somebody’d get another shot past her shield and kill her.

  Two steps from Iridian, the approaching merc refocused toward something on the other side of the railing. She glanced over her shoulder. One of AegiSKADA’s big drones, the kind it’d sent after her when she repaired the base, hovered above the machinery, silent in the weak atmo. The pinging she’d been ignoring was Adda’s drone alarm.

  Everything around her was metal. All the bot had to do was zap the floor. Unless their boots were well insulated, she and the mercs would all be out of luck. In desperation, she launched herself shield-first at the nearest merc.

  The bolt struck while she was still in the air. White light seared her eyes. She closed them as she tackled the mercenary in a cacophony of clashing armor. The suit she hit rattled like plastic rather than clanking like metal. The merc’s knee crashed into the side of Iridian’s helmet at about the time the electricity reached her. She tasted blood.

  The merc under her spasmed, then went still, at least from the armor out. Iridian got to her knees, putting her weight on the merc’s legs just in case, and searched for the drone.

  The red emergency bulkhead was scorched black at its base. Wispy soot trailed like frozen smoke across its length from the darkest spot. One soot trail crossed the hole the mercs had made. None of the mercs peered through now.

  Movement drew her attention back to the factory. The drone rotated away from her and sank toward the first floor. Adda must’ve gotten AegiSKADA under her control. Otherwise the drone wouldn’t have left Iridian standing. Maybe it’d even timed its attack so that the merc would take the hit and Iridian wouldn’t.

  Assuming that an ally guided a drone that was behaving abnormally was a good way to get killed, though. As soon as the drone’s matte-black chassis disappeared beneath the walkway, she collapsed her shield and dashed through the hole in the bulkhead. She’d ask Adda about it later, and thank her if that’d been her idea.

  Half a dozen electrocuted mercs sprawled on the hallway floor on the other side of the hole. She crouched next to one of them, her breath loud and fast in her helmet. The first armor pocket was empty. Her glove clattered around inside the second, which contained D-MOG. She kept that, but left a small punch injector with an evil clown face on the label alone.

  The third held a patch kit, and she broke the small lid off while opening it. While the patches hardened on her glove and boot, she peered into the merc’s faceplate with her headlamp on. Blood trickled from the woman’s unmoving nostrils. Thirteen confirmed dead. It felt like an appropriate number for her lifetime kill count.

  In her ISV, during the war, putting numbers to her personal death toll gave her the minuscule mental distance from her action required to keep her running. She’d killed twelve people on the Jovian front. And her thirteenth was here, practically in NEU territory. The one who might’ve been saved by his armor didn’t count as hers, and neither did the one AegiSKADA’s drone had electrocuted. She hoped to hell her count didn’t get any higher.

  Blue on the side of the merc’s neck caught Iridian’s eye. It was the crest of a wave tattoo. The design was popular in the military, among Earth natives. They were so proud of their aboveground fresh water. Earthers fought for secessionists so rarely it made the news. This woman used to be on her side.

  Iridian waited for the avalanche of horror. It was coming. She deserved it. All she felt was cold and wired.

  Fine. I can work with that. She took the merc’s weapon even though she hadn’t been to a shooting range in years and started toward the fugee camp at a run.

  The ZVs’ calisthenics didn’t compare to a long run. Even through the nausea, it felt so good to stretch her legs. Her armored boots pounded the floor. The exoskeletal boosters that kept the suit from weighing her down added centimeters to each step. Her chest swelled as her lungs sucked in station atmo that blew into her face when she opened her faceplate, and she realized she was smiling, despite everything. She was finally moving at the right speed again.

  Five klicks was what she had run when she was sick. As the adrenaline rush ebbed, her stomach felt pretty bad. But she’d be around the station, through the fugee camp, and back to Adda in no time. Or she would if she didn’t keep encountering closed emergency bulkheads. It was like someone or something had locked down most of the paths back to base.

  She followed the reverse path that parts from disassembled ships took through the station’s processing modules. Corridors opened on walkways over massive sorting equipment, then cutting and melting, all shut off and still. Lack of civilian traffic should’ve made all the closed-off hallways unnecessary.

  Panicky shouts and blasts from more damned projectile weapons echoed out of a hallway. A label projected on the wall pointed the reader toward PACKAGING. The opposite wall was reduced to rubble, opening on a small warehouse module stacked with shipping containers two deep. A squad of mercs was arrayed in front of one, firing into it at intervals and laughing.

  She took a long step over an unarmored body lying near another. The tail of the girl’s goldfish tattoo was the only part of the design not covered by blood. Iridian’s lips curled off her clenched teeth, remembering how happy Lozzie had been when Pel recognized her by smell. The poor girl had survived being run
off her planet and being stranded on a dangerous station for years, only to be shot to pieces when she was almost free.

  If Pel’s friends were here, he might be nearby. Iridian put a shipping container between herself and the mercs while she caught her breath.

  Something hard pressed against the flexible band connecting the upper and lower parts of her suit. The band was designed to protect against energy weapons and blunt force impact. A knife would go right through the band and into her kidneys. “Hands out to your sides,” growled a low voice.

  “Oarman.” Iridian followed his instructions. Her heart thumped like she was still running. “What are you doing?”

  He removed the merc’s weapon from her belt socket and clicked it into his own. “Told you and your girlfriend to start looking out for yourselves, didn’t I? This is what taking your own advice looks like.” He chuckled, lurching when she tried to throw him off, like he fought his scarred back as well as her. Even so, he kept a solid grip around her collarbone, and she stilled before he stabbed her. “You didn’t take any of my advice, and I’m not getting left on this crumbling dung heap. Turns out Transorbital has a ship of their own coming.” He grabbed the rim of her faceplate and twisted her helmet off. “Time for you to help me get on it.”

  Oarman shoved her, swearing at him through her gritted teeth, around the corner of the shipping container. The mercs stopped firing and looked her over. “Who’s that?” one asked.

  “One of your hijackers. Now, wait a minute,” he said as they pointed their weapons at her. “If you’ve got one alive, you can have the other one however you want her. Be patient and I’ll give you both of them, just like I said.”

  The fucker thought Iridian would let him use her to capture Adda. Well, her armor was banged up to shit, and what did she need two kidneys for anyway?