Barbary Station

by R. E. Stearns

  Iridian grinned hungrily and followed with steps slightly stiff from numbing agents or pain. “Yes, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Charges Accrued: Resisting Arrest

  The pillow nest had taken on a pungent version of Adda’s scent since Iridian left. Still, curled around Adda’s sleeping form was the only place in the universe she wanted to be right now.

  She was about two breaths from drifting off when someone banged on the door in the ceiling. “Captain wants a full crew meet,” said Chato.

  Her inarticulate grunt was apparently translated as affirmation, because footsteps receded down the hall. She checked the pocket of her one pair of pants, then shook Adda gently. Adda rolled over and wrapped her leg and both arms around Iridian, snuggling into her chest. “Let’s go, babe,” Iridian murmured. “We can come back to this later.”

  They weren’t the last to the common room, but most of the crew was there. Sloane, Tritheist, the two med team doctors, and Zikri conversed near the captain’s stateroom while Pel, Rio, and Tabs played with San Miguel’s boy. The two doctors stood in the hall leading to the entrance, staring at each other. Sergeant Natani, Chato, and Vick sat beside them on the floor, talking about module-to-module fighting against the Transorbital mercs. Adda drifted toward a corner as far from everyone as she could get.

  Iridian gave her hand a gentle tug to keep her in the middle of the room. “I’m so proud of how you outmaneuvered AegiSKADA, babe,” she said louder than usual. Her girlfriend’s face paled, and she glanced around the room like drones were coming for her. The pirates were looking now and Adda would kill her for this, so she’d better make it quick. “I want to help you hijack ships and circumvent AI forever.”

  Here we go. . . . She dropped to one knee and dug in her pocket. The ring was a strip of braided silver-and-blue microtubing from AegiSKADA’s control room. It was twisted at the ends, so she’d have to do some soldering later, but . . . “Will you marry me?”

  Adda blinked at her for a second. Almost too quietly to hear and at least an octave up from her usual register, she said, “Yes!” Iridian stood and hugged her as the pirates cheered.

  “Cute, but you’re not marrying into the crew,” said Vick.

  Sloane stood with crossed arms and posture tilted back, smiling a little like this was just an entertaining show. Beside the captain, Tritheist’s smile was more calculating. Adda said he had promised her part of his share for getting them off the station. It’d be convenient for him if she wasn’t around to collect.

  “Captain Sloane made us a deal.” Iridian caught herself gripping the knife in her thigh sheath and consciously let it go without drawing it. “We take care of AegiSKADA, we’ve got a ride and a job.”

  “So the ships that have never carried us before are going to start now,” said Tritheist. Gods, she and that sneering bastard would have it out sometime.

  The Casey had already carried her once. It’d probably do it again, although there was no way to be sure. All Adda said she’d done was announce into the docking bay that she needed a message taken to Iridian, the one telling her to bust through the walls instead of walking face-first into the turret outside the control room. Once the Casey heard Adda’s recording, it must’ve tracked Iridian down and picked her up on its own. Adda definitely didn’t tell it to do that.

  Iridian surreptitiously keyed her comp’s mic and directed its output to the docking bay below. If the Casey was willing to help her before, perhaps it’d help her again when it heard what the crew was saying.

  “They could leave with the fugees in the colony ship,” Sergeant Natani said in a voice pitched to placate a higher-ranking officer without antagonizing anybody else.

  “The hell they could!” said Pel.

  The sergeant had lost more than most on this venture, but Iridian wouldn’t let anyone stop her and Adda from getting what they’d earned. Not when they almost had everything they wanted. “So could you. We’ll send a couple of drones to help you find your way there.” Iridian turned to Adda. “Anything interesting going on in the docking bay?”

  Adda consulted her comp. “The Charon’s Coin just landed.”

  Iridian turned her wrist to display the red light on her comp indicating a live mic, grinning big as if she knew what the hell the Coin’s AI was doing there. “Even if you discount the fact that we already saved your asses from AegiSKADA, you still want us around. Those gods-damned awakened AI have been listening to every word of this.”

  “Who cares what they’re listening to?” said Vick.

  The grin on her face felt like the one from training when she missed a block and her sparring partner expected the hit to stop her. “Remember when all the fucking comms went down earlier? That was what AegiSKADA did when it heard journalists approaching the station. That was a minor gods-damned threat. The Casey Mire Mire’s awakened AI likes me.” More accurately, the AI liked what Iridian could do for it. These people must’ve gotten used to the monsters they’d created. It was about time they started treating the AI like the dangers they were. “What do you think it’ll do if I call it for help?”

  Every member of the crew started shouting. Although Vick and Tritheist were adamant and aggressive, most of the voices contributed comments like “If the Casey likes them, so do I,” and “They’re smarter than any eight of you arseholes,” and one or two “We’d have fucking died here if not for them!”

  To hide the lump in her throat, Iridian inhaled to get a few more points across, but Adda was staring at her comp like it’d dissolved into spiderbots. Iridian poked her in the side, which made her jump. “What?”

  “Um . . . We’re about to have visitors.”

  Sloane must’ve heard Adda despite the ambient argument, because the captain appeared next to them. “Who?”

  “Interplanetary Transit Authority,” she- said. “AegiSKADA picked them up on its outer buoys.”

  Sloane spun toward the arguing pirates and bellowed, “Quiet!” so loud Iridian’s ears rang. Everyone froze and looked to the captain. The captain turned to Adda. “How long until the ITA arrives?”

  Everyone started talking at once. “If they come straight in at, ah, healthy acceleration, an hour and thirty minutes,” Adda said. “They must have intercepted the Fugee News report, or one from those journalists.”

  “Pack up,” Captain Sloane shouted. “We leave for Vesta in one hour.” The crew crowded, cheering, into the hallway to the bunkhouse. Sloane grinned at Adda and Iridian like they’d passed the last of the captain’s tests. “You too. All of my regular crew are based there.” The captain swept out of the common room without waiting for a reply.

  Iridian’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit. I’ve got to go now.”

  “What?” said Adda. “Why?”

  “The Casey. I promised her a copy of AegiSKADA’s code, and I started the copy, but I had to leave the datacask with the code on it in AegiSKADA’s control room. If I don’t get the datacask back now, I won’t have it when we want to leave.”

  “You . . . The Casey wants a . . .” Adda stared in shock gradually shifting to delight. “Isn’t that interesting! Would you make one for me, too?”

  “No.” Iridian could’ve said that more kindly, but she didn’t have time or energy for the argument Adda would want to have over that particular horrible idea. “I only have the one datacask, and they take too long to print. If the Casey’s our ride off the station, then I’d better give her what she wants, yeah?” The pirates were only counting on her to get them off-station because she claimed the ships obeyed her, so she’d better make sure the Casey still liked her well enough to carry passengers upon request. That meant giving the ship what it wanted before trying to board. She gripped Adda’s hands in both of hers. “Will you be okay packing up your generator on your own?”

  The moment Adda nodded, Iridian kissed her and rushed to Sturm’s workshop. “I need an enviro suit that doesn’t leak much.”

  Sergeant Natani stopped her fast walk past the w
orkshop door with a pack dangling from one hand. “You’re going back out there?”

  Iridian eyed her while Sturm rummaged through his suit collection. “Yeah, why?”

  “You want backup?”

  She looked serious. In fact, she looked ready to drop her pack, pick up her weapon, and follow Iridian right back through the station . . . to the ship that’d killed Six. That was a terrible fucking idea. “Thanks. Really. But I’m good.” Sergeant Natani bowed, perfunctory in length and depth but the first she’d offered since Iridian had met her. Iridian’s back and side clenched with pain as she returned the bow, but it was worth it.

  In a few minutes she’d crammed herself into the least leaky suit and was running through the wall to the Coin. Every step beat the image of Six’s death into her brain, but this time the Coin’s door stood open. This was the fastest way to the other side of the station. She’d have to take it. Scuff marks and partial boot prints marred the passthrough bulkheads. Beyond the inner passthrough door, the cockpit had been remade as an extended pseudo-organic tank system. Massive tug engines didn’t leave much room for humans to begin with.

  Iridian edged past two of the tanks so the passthrough could close. “I need to get to the other side of the station, to the broken shuttle passthrough. The Casey Mire Mire’s datacask is still in there.”

  The passthrough doors closed. Iridian dove for the pilot’s seat and strapped herself in over tubes and cables. The Coin rose and started an even faster departure pattern than the Casey’s when it had rescued her from the hub. These AI interpret much more than the voice commands the developers taught them. Not even a minute after the Coin was out of the station’s spin it was integrating on the other side, pulling almost five g’s. It took all of her g-tolerance training to keep from blacking out.

  Fighting serious déjà vu, Iridian let herself into the damaged module on a cable from the Coin’s emergency kit, the same method she’d used to exit the Casey when it’d brought her here from the station’s hub. She skirted the discarded thorium sample container on her way to the control room. Out of curiosity, she skipped the storage areas she’d punched through and jogged down the main hallway.

  Her headlamp played over an empty turret installation near the door. Long drag marks led to its current position outside the security control room. It had blasted a dent the size of both her fists in the security door. At that range it would’ve torn her apart in the control room, if it’d made it through. The turret kept pointing at the door, which slid partway open and jammed on its dented center. She squeezed past and went in.

  The control room floor was still mined. She climbed over the shelving much more easily with free hands in a thin enviro suit instead of the bulky armored one. The control room seemed smaller now. She dug through the cables until she found the datacask, then climbed back out with it. This time she used the hole she’d made in what turned out to be an office next door, bypassing as much of the mined floor as possible.

  She paused in the hall and keyed her mic. “Adda, do you still need AegiSKADA’s sensors?” Since Adda still wasn’t in communication with HarborMaster, she’d probably lose access to them once AegiSKADA was no longer facilitating her connection. Unless there were backups Adda hadn’t found yet, AegiSKADA’s absence would eliminate HarborMaster’s ability to maintain a healthy enviro. Atmo would stop circulating, the station’s spin would slow, and the enviro would get closer and closer to unlivable as the hours passed. If nothing went too wrong, the pirates and the refugees should all have time to escape before complete enviro loss.

  “I’m tracking the Transit Authority ships on the external sensors,” Adda said.

  “Can you do that from the ships?”

  “If they let me.”

  “I think they will.” Iridian drew a breath. “I’ve got the Casey’s copy of AegiSKADA. There’s no point in keeping the original intact.” Both the original and the copy had just been forced to watch a bunch of invaders prowl all corners of its station. And then they took over its admin functions in violation of its programming. Adda had to recognize the danger of leaving an AI in that state. At this point, the only reason Iridian even considered making the copy for the Casey was to make sure the ship would carry her, Adda, and the pirates off the damned station. Nothing else would’ve persuaded her to prolong the security AI’s “life.”

  “All right.” Adda’s sigh sounded more like grief than anything else. Even though she knew better, she’d always personified AI. “Good-bye.” The word was too final for it to be meant for Iridian.

  She reentered the office, grabbed the broken wall panel that had almost killed her last time, and shoved it through the hole in the control room wall. It bounced off the far wall and fell on a mine. The module was still depressurized. The explosion shook the floor and sent fragments of metal and wire flying. She flinched. She was wearing a gods-damned enviro suit. What idiocy. Weary as she was, she’d hoped to sleep before she was dead.

  When she got her breath back, she asked Adda, “Did I get it?”

  “It’s gone. We’re in the docking bay. Is the Coin coming back?”

  “Definitely.”

  She was so exhausted after she hauled herself up the evac cable that she took a second to realize that the ship she just boarded wasn’t the Coin. “Hello, Casey.” She leaned on a bulkhead while the passthrough pressurized. The inner door opened, and she held up the datacask. “Where do you want this?”

  All the lights on the pilot’s console turned on. That was clear enough.

  Iridian had to step over a pile of what looked like broken parts of more than one of the Casey’s rovers to get from the ship’s passthrough to its main cabin. Like the Coin, the Casey must’ve taken on mercs during the battle, and it hadn’t gone well for the rovers.

  “I’m not sure how much of this you understand, but the ITA is coming to arrest Sloane’s crew. We need to leave the station.” The Casey might’ve already figured out that the pirates were about to flee the station. Si Po had taught the AI well. “Can you and the other ships carry us somewhere? Say, Ceres Station?”

  The console flashed again, which was less informative this time, but the Casey did move. Iridian strapped in before it spaced her. The Casey projected windows onto its main cabin bulkhead as it returned to the pirates’ docking bay. The pirates stood well out of the engines’ range while it landed, then rushed forward when the passthrough opened. Adda, leading Pel and followed by Tabs, Rio, and San Miguel and her kid, were near the front behind Tritheist and Sloane.

  The captain strode onboard and looked around. “I like this one. And the others are coming?”

  “The tug doesn’t have room, Captain, but the Apparition is coming. I think,” Iridian said. The console lights flashed. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “The spy ship it is, then,” said Sloane. So that was what the Casey was outfitted for. That explained the shackles by the toilet, sort of. “Tritheist, Adda, Iridian, Pel, this is our flight,” Sloane continued. “Our destination is Rheasilvia Station on Vesta. We’ll sort out your back pay on the way.”

  Iridian grinned at the beautiful words “back pay,” despite having to board the Casey again. For the first time since Iridian and Adda met, they’d be together without constantly strategizing about how to buy shelter and food.

  Major O.D. held up a fist with the back of his hand facing his soldiers, signaling that they stay put. “ZV Group, we’re taking the next one, to Mars.” He shrugged apologetically at Sloane. “You’re too hot for us right now.” Being caught with a notorious pirate and colony ship hijackers would reduce the legal jobs the ZV Group was offered. It was good business to keep that option open.

  “We’ll go to Mars too, if it’s all the same to you, captain,” Sturm said, apparently speaking for himself and Chef, who stood beside him. At Sloane’s nod of assent, they joined the ZVs.

  Pel gave out a lot of hugs, but eventually Adda got him onboard and strapped down for transit. Chef and the doctors waved and headed off
in the direction of the refugees’ ship. Sergeant Natani hung back until the other ZVs passed her in the same direction. The corner of her mouth stretched up ever so slightly as she saluted Iridian and Adda.

  After all they’d been through together on the station, that was the biggest surprise Iridian had had yet. She’d been more willing to believe that she, Adda, and a bunch of ZV Group mercs could beat a station-size AI than that Iridian and a secessionist would ever truly fight on the same side. She was so surprised that she almost forgot to return the salute.

  San Miguel’s kid started crying as the passthrough doors shut. Tears fell from Pel’s scarred eyes too, and Iridian punched him lightly in the shoulder on her way to the console.

  She plugged the datacask into the console. The Casey’s AI copied the contents to its pseudo-organics in a whirl of data on the console’s display. What the ship meant to do with a station’s security AI, Iridian couldn’t imagine. She wrapped an arm around Pel and Adda as grav pressed them against the bulkheads across from the window.

  The bomb-damaged exterior of Barbary Station spun in a glittering cloud of its own debris. It shrank, slowly at first, then faster as the Casey picked up speed. In a few minutes, the station was just a dark spot in an ocean of flickering stars.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Navah Wolfe and Saga Press, for making this novel bigger, better, and more awesome than I’d dared to hope. Thank you, Hannah Bowman, for being an advocate, thoughtful reader, and all-around great agent. Thank you, Greg Stadnyk and Martin Deschambault, for bringing Barbary Station to life on the cover, and thank you, Bridget Madsen and Tatyana Rosalia, for your efforts as well.

  Thanks also to Suhaila and “Kyr,” for lending names and personality traits to unexpectedly important characters; Rebecca, Jennifer B., Vanessa, and Jennifer G., for support and excellent company; the critters at Critters.org, whose short-story critiques helped make Iridian and Adda who they are today; and Mur Lafferty, whose inspirational podcast regularly reminded me that “I Should Be Writing.”