This workspace was oceanic, with the data moving against her skin in stuttering currents. It was too dark at first, and her wish for light resulted in an iridescent bloom of orange glow in a stutter-smooth-stutter from below her. She was breathing, which made sense because she appeared to be a mermaid. Upward woman and downward fish. Her laughter bubbled upward too, toward an invisible sun.
Before she could help the V4V team look through what they’d stolen from Oxia’s datacenter, she needed to check on AegiSKADA. She summoned it via a harpoon gun that appeared in her hand, its barbed tip arrowing out to where the water grew dark and opaque, hauling a cable in its wake. The harpoon didn’t have to “hit” AegiSKADA in the workspace. It only had to communicate her desire for AegiSKADA to contact her.
Casey’s onyx-skinned humanoid figure drifted toward her, silhouetted against the orange glow below them. From the surface, AegiSKADA’s childlike figure sank toward her, trailing bubbles and the harpoon cable, its stylized enviro suit jacket and shaggy hair floating around it. It was already processing the Oxia data, which meant that Casey had given it access.
Her realization of defeat manifested in the workspace as the heaviness of a ship turning quickly. Gravity dragged all three of them down through the water. It was exhausting, all the effort she’d put into separating AegiSKADA from the rest of the universe, including Casey, while still making use of its capabilities. Exhausting and pointless. Of course Casey had found a way to expand AegiSKADA’s access without the help of AegiSKADA’s supervisor. Neither of the intelligences appeared aware of the others’ presence at the moment, but the safest assumption was that Casey was ignoring AegiSKADA.
Adda smiled slightly. The expression widened until she was laughing at herself, so hard that it hurt her chest, so hard that she had to be laughing in reality too. Tears, invisible in this workspace, leaked from the corners of her eyes. How ridiculous, how pitiful, thinking she could limit an awakened intelligence that’d been awake for longer than any AI in history. It’d reactivated AegiSKADA without Adda’s help. And Adda, a single human, had thought she could stop Casey from interacting with the intelligence it had reactivated.
She couldn’t meet Casey’s sapphire-glint eyes. It was impossible for her to estimate what Casey was capable of, what it was simultaneously doing even while it presented this avatar in her workspace. What must it think of my absurd attempts to direct it? Iridian wouldn’t have heard her question, but Casey might have. Since Casey could be doing literally anything else, Adda decided to appreciate its company in her workspace. It wasn’t like she could do anything to stop it.
Adda stopped laughing in a watery gasp that carried what turned out to be Oxia personnel records into her analysis queue. This was the first time both Casey and AegiSKADA had been in her workspace at the same time. When Adda tried to remember summoning Casey, a headache swelled at the base of her skull, and she had no time for that. She was the last person with a chance at finding the Thrinacia Project before they needed it on Vesta. After a moment to purposefully slow her breathing and terrified heart, she felt ready to work with whichever of the intelligences was here to help.
As she reached into the water in front of her, what she knew about Oxia’s secret project rose in her mind. Its cost, as Captain Sloane estimated using Oxia’s financial records, was chronologically first. The next spot she touched resolved into a summary of the external and internal efforts Oxia had made to hide the project and even its code name. Expenditures from the financial records that appeared to correlate with it matched to resulting projects in Oxia-sponsored colonies, many of which were in the Kuiper Belt. The Vestan expenditures were closest to the sun.
Associated consultants appeared next to these, without her prompting. They were academics, mostly astronomers. Oxia paid a lot of people. These, however, corresponded to more media mentions of Oxia’s hopeful future, fed by Oxia’s owned media conglomerates, and that was something, maybe.
AegiSKADA slapped away references to the “back to basics” initiative that Oxia had publicized, and Adda had to agree with that. As bad as the economy was, Oxia was weathering it well enough to satisfy its investors, without increasing resources funneled to customer service and front-line representatives.
They weren’t merging; they were kidnapping and threatening top talent instead of attracting it legally. “No time,” said AegiSKADA seriously, and Adda agreed with that assessment as applied to both herself and Oxia. The megacorporation was developing something big, as big as sponsoring a new colony, and cutting every possible corner to do it fast. But what, and where? That’s what Iridian and the others were counting on Adda to find.
A mass of violet and red jellyfish drifted past. Each red animal represented a newsfeed mention of the break-in on Oxia’s datacenter. They know they know they know. The violet ones represented a news story about Oxia colonies and conquests, as well as major development efforts for the outer colonies. Either her subconscious or one of the intelligences identified these items as important.
Adda lashed the water with her mermaid tail to spread out all of Sloane’s crew’s heists: the printer, the astronomer, the prototype ship, the information from Oxia’s supposed allies. She sent a robot fish as long as her arm off to collect ITA personnel data related to those projects, specifically those who recently acquired a lot of money without a good explanation. The printer that maintained the Patchwork, the astronomer and vis gravity lensing phenomenon, the prototype longhauler that could travel for years, maybe someday without a human pilot . . . It all pointed outward, away from the sun.
All except Oxia’s attack on Frei, the one she’d overseen. That didn’t fit. The intelligences drifted closer to examine that operation from other perspectives.
A column of swirling water formed beneath her, pushing her toward the surface. It was information Iridian, Captain Sloane, and Tritheist had pulled from Oxia’s datacenter about Frei’s activity beyond the asteroid belt. “Show me how this operation applies,” she told the intelligences.
The intelligences looked at each other. Casey’s expression was unreadable, but AegiSKADA’s showed wide-eyed ecstatic triumph.
Adda shivered. This was the first time she’d observed their interaction. It was bad enough that they communicated without looping her in. It was dangerous for them to do it while sharing space with her mind.
“They were reaching out.” Casey’s voice was cool and crystalline underneath heavy, grating, digital noise. Still slightly above it, with Adda between them, AegiSKADA nodded enthusiastically, whipping its dark hair through the water around its childlike face. The applicable data spiraled out from Casey and collided with ripples from AegiSKADA to disturb the eddies around them in a complex but predictable order Adda could never have assembled on her own.
“Why would Oxia care about Frei’s colonization attempts?” Adda asked. “Oxia’s got some of the best territories in the system.” Frei’s few Kuiper Belt settlement claims bubbled around her. “These are crap. Everybody says so.”
But she was leaving out Dr. Björn’s research. It wasn’t that Frei was colonizing. It was, as Casey had implied, how far out from populated space they’d attempted to settle. And how far Oxia was planning to go.
The ocean around her exploded upward, carrying all three of them and the data with it, up, and up, until she was hundreds of feet above the data ocean and jolted out of the workspace. The workspace she’d been using dissolved, and she cut the workspace generator’s power.
If Casey felt the need to coordinate with AegiSKADA, it could do that somewhere other than the virtual space she needed between her mind and theirs. It’d taken all of them working together, but she had the Thrinacia Project now. She transferred the project data to her comp on her way to contact Casey’s passengers.
* * *
“The two parts I think are most valuable are the project, of course, and the HR data. We have copies of contracts and digital histories for a huge number of Oxia’s people and their families,” Add
a said a few minutes later to Sloane, Tritheist, and Iridian via the real operation channel, thoroughly encrypted. The group line she’d set up to look like an operation channel for her Oxia compatriots’ benefit was specifically excluded. In the Mayhem’s main cabin, Chi and Pel listened for the response from the ship’s speakers. “A surprising amount of data involves employees in Oxia’s Vestan fleet and the people close to them. And also, everything to do with this project is outside contract.”
Tritheist’s and Iridian’s curses melded into one bitter grumble beneath Chi’s and Gavran’s. Over them, Pel said, “That’s bad, right?”
“Oxia’s tracking their families and friends, and they’re not doing it out of a desire to protect them from, say, us,” said Captain Sloane. “Everything the fleet personnel have done related to the Thrinacia Project will appear to have been done, legally speaking, on their own volition.”
“So Oxia experiences none of the consequences for what they’ve done, and the ITA or NEU could arrest Oxia employees for it, whenever Oxia asked them to.” Chi clenched her hands around the Mayhem’s passenger couch armrests so hard that Adda wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d punched holes in it. It was the angriest Adda had ever seen her.
“Or Oxia could take care of arrests themselves,” said Gavran quietly. “Adda’s stolen vids proved that Oxia arrests their own, without notifying the ITA.”
“And after that falls out as it’s bound to, Oxia is under no obligation to pay them for their work.” The sharpsheets must not have worn off completely, because Adda heard the captain’s conniving smile. “I wonder if the fleet crews realize how much information Oxia’s been collecting on their friends and family? It would be such a disruption if that were to slip off our network and into the returning Oxia fleet. I trust you can arrange a few rumors? You may want to find out what Oxia’s been doing with that information first.”
“I will,” Adda said. “And then there’s the project itself.”
She tapped her comp to the wall projector in the Mayhem’s main cabin. Beneath Oxia’s logo, text and a few graphics summarized the project for executive readership. Chi leaned forward for an unobstructed view while Adda transmitted the feed to Casey. “About fifteen months ago, Oxia bought Dr. Björn’s unpublished research proving the existence of topologically closed space between our solar system and another star. The long number that keeps coming up is the star’s designation. The project name ‘Thrinacia’ refers to the researchers’, ah, pet name for the star.”
Iridian and Captain Sloane inhaled like they knew what that meant, and Gavran’s back thumped against the wall beside the bridge doorway like he needed its support to stay standing. “Holy hells,” the pilot said. “An interstellar bridge . . . But that’s a myth, science fiction. They can’t have found an interstellar bridge. It’s too rare to find.” Still, his face practically glowed with hope.
“I read the papers they cite,” Adda said. “Dr. Björn discovered it. All those Oxia university donations from the financial records were purchasing assurances that Oxia would be the first to know if anybody discovered anything they could use. I think they blocked all of these article publications, too, although I don’t have evidence that they’re responsible. Yet.”
“An interstellar bridge, huh,” Tritheist said. Her audience had apparently missed the grievously unethical academic chicanery of monopolizing progress toward a new solar system that the entire human race could benefit from, but she couldn’t blame them. Scientific discoveries of a lifetime took priority. “You travel over the bridge at just the right angle . . .”
“And your trip gets shorter,” Gavran said quickly. “The new solar system could be light-years closer than it would’ve been without the bridge.” Gavran stepped around Adda with his artificially precise gait to drag his hands over the projection on the wall, scrolling until they reached the navigation section. “It’s still a gods-awful distance to travel. Long enough distance that you’d hibernate through it, asleep for years. Oxia would need completely new, long-distance vessels with AI that could navigate that distance without human oversight. Like the ZAR-560Q prototype we stole, that new.”
“Exactly like it.” Adda hoped her smile hid how relieved she was that they were catching on. “And to complete the journey, Oxia would have to integrate a lot of systems with advanced pseudo-organic technology. That printer we stole would allow them to do that in half the time it would’ve taken a collection of less advanced ones. And with all of Frei’s experience and research in the colonies farthest from the sun, Oxia has a better chance than most of traveling as far as they want and surviving out there.”
Nothing could be more useful for a mining and infrastructure corporation than a shortcut between star systems. Oxia’s plan was to get to it first and make all applicable claims to whatever they found there. They were already testing the laws’ limits on Vesta, with the mine beneath Rheasilvia Station. They wanted as much NEU and ITA support as possible for their potential ownership of the new star system.
“And Oxia kept it all a secret,” Captain Sloane concluded, “so they can stake their claim to an entire solar system, before competitors or governmental groups have a say. A whole new set of ’jects for them to exploit . . .”
“Okay, when you put it that way, it’s fucking awful,” said Chi.
“But they’ll get there.” Gavran scrolled through more of Adda’s summary and into the first of Dr. Björn’s unpublished papers. “If this all goes like they say it will, they’ll be there in just ten or fifteen years. Humans, in the light of a new sun, in under a century. If Oxia can adapt the prototype’s components and invent better life support equipment that their new printer could print, we could leave here and actually get to the new star system. Not our grandkids, us.”
Pel stood up and patted Gavran on the shoulder. “It’s a big deal, huh?” To Adda’s surprise, Gavran grabbed Pel around the shoulders and burst into tears.
“It’s a big deal, yes,” she confirmed for those listening in on the Casey.
“All those generation ships . . .” Iridian shook her head. Three had launched amid humanity-wide hope and wonder while she and Adda were growing up, with destinations in Alpha Centauri, before the war made such extravagances impossible. Secessionists had destroyed two during the war, but one made it out of the solar system. It would still be traveling well after Adda’s natural life was over. The passengers had given their lives to expand humanity’s reach and experience farther than their ancestors, gazing up at that same destination star, thought possible.
“And Oxia’s trying to keep a whole new solar system for themselves?” said Iridian. “To make money off it and buy Liu Kong’s fancy suits?”
“So it seems,” said Adda.
“Like hell they are,” said Iridian. “What can we do to stop them?”
CHAPTER 22
Emergency-level bandwidth consumption resulting in ten-minute interhab comm outages across Rheasilvia Station; no catastrophic source event identified
“Nothing,” Captain Sloane said evenly.
Iridian looked up from her comp’s projection summarizing Oxia Corporation’s interstellar bridge project. “What do you mean nothing?”
“My priority is getting out of my contract to Oxia.” Captain Sloane shifted in the Casey’s pilot seat to a position that could be better physically defended. Iridian leaned back against the wall beside the passthrough and let her arms fall to her sides, to show that she wasn’t about to attack. Physically, anyway. “I fully expect that a condition of my release will be to allow them to proceed with this project unmolested. The alternative is full and complete annihilation. They have the resources to become an insurmountable problem for those of us whose goal it is to make a living. Therefore, we do nothing to stop this Thrinacia Project.”
“Captain Sloane, with respect,” said Gavran, “the possibility of reaching a new star in a single lifetime cannot be left in the hands of people like Oxia. We cannot allow Oxia to keep something so im
portant to, ah, humanity, captain.”
Tritheist stood beside Sloane with his hip in the barest contact with the seated captain’s shoulder. “Fuck them.” Captain Sloane laid a hand on Tritheist’s thigh and gave him a look that clearly communicated he shut it.
“Gavran, let humanity look out for itself,” Captain Sloane said. “There’s nobody else ensuring our survival, as a crew or as individuals. Once it becomes impossible to hide what Oxia has accomplished, the NEU or one of the semi-independent colonies will launch a successful coup of their own. And they are in a much better position to do that than we are.”
“I disagree,” Adda said over the op channel.
Captain Sloane’s scowl would’ve terrified Adda into silence if she’d been onboard. But she was on the Mayhem. Aboard the Casey, Iridian managed to stop herself from grinning before either officer noticed, while Adda launched into her argument. “We have everything we need to mobilize the Oxia workers, as well as inform the scientific community and any governmental groups we think might help, before Oxia has solid stakes in the new star system. If we act soon, I believe we could prevent Oxia from ever gaining full control of the new system.”
Adda spoke like she didn’t see the enormity of what she was proposing, or the advantage over Oxia that they’d be throwing away to do it. Usually Iridian was the one holding the moral high ground, and damn the consequences, which Adda was quick to point out. Then again, their topic of discussion didn’t usually involve scientific research. Adda cared about the biggest possible picture when it came to capital S Science.
When Pel whooped and Gavran laughed aloud, Adda must’ve jumped out of her skin. Iridian exchanged an incredulous glance with Chi. Nice idea, babe, but I’m about to disagree too, Iridian thought at her, and hoped that the mic conveyed how much she meant that it really was a good, if naive, place to start toppling Oxia’s empire.
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