Something much bigger than an armor cracker hit the overturned tram with a resounding thud. The whole vehicle jolted several centimeters nearer to HQ and pushed her and Tritheist along with it. Whatever hit it would’ve punched through a regular public tram. Thank all the gods she’d found Sloane’s personal armored one. If the shooter kept hitting the same spot, though, they’d make it through eventually.
Tritheist lay limp against the tram. His eyes were half shut and he breathed like he was under heavy grav, even though the station’s spin had slowed if it’d changed at all. Iridian replaced his helmet and had her suit ping his to make sure he was breathing O2 from his suit’s tank instead of the smoky atmo. Babe, he’ll pass out and stop breathing any minute. Get Chi up here as soon as you can. Something Adda had said earlier clicked in Iridian’s brain. Did you say Gavran’s coming?
Something exploded to her right. She leaned over Tritheist on instinct, even though his armor was as good as hers. “Stygian sons of bitches!” somebody roared. “Only rancid assholes like you would lock a man’s ship in dock! Rancid.” Something else exploded while pieces of metal from the first blast were still clattering off Iridian’s shield and armor. “Assholes.”
Gavran emerged around the corner of the overturned tram with a body slung over one shoulder and a massive launcher loaded with something alarmingly rocket-shaped resting on the other. The weight distribution tilted his overly precise gait to the left, or that might’ve been caused by the melted appearance of his left leg. He wore the chest piece, left arm, and right leg of an Oxia stationsec uniform over his flight suit, although the knee joint on the leg was where the ankle piece belonged. Armor crackers studded the suit, but if Gavran had been drugged it wasn’t slowing him down. Scorch marks on the chest piece made it look like he gave up halfway through burning off its Oxia logo.
He’d singed the right side of his beard off too, which made his stim-crazed expression while panting in the thin atmo look even more wild. “Where’s the fight, Nassir? I was told there’d be a big fight.”
Iridian seemed to have forgotten every word she knew for one long breath, then found the important one. “Sniper!”
Gavran gently rolled the body off his shoulder and propped it up beside Tritheist, who didn’t react. Beaded dreadlocks clacked over gray-tinged dark skin badly swollen with bruises, which finally let Iridian put a name to him. She pressed her fingers to Ogir’s neck and smiled slightly at the pulse her glove reported on her HUD. “What happened to him?”
Instead of responding, Gavran reloaded his launcher. Up close, his melted left leg was more obviously a replacement for an organic one. It leaked pseudo-organic fluid where she would’ve expected blood. The other leg looked banged up beneath the armor, and it didn’t bleed either. She couldn’t tell if the prostheses hurt. He winked at her, then strode into the smoke from his previous explosions. A few seconds later, a roar and a whump followed by snapping energy weapon fire indicated that he’d engaged Oxia’s soldiers.
Iridian resorted to the command channel. “Adda.” She sounded tired and desperate, even in her own ears, and now she had two unconscious people to protect. Something twisted painfully in her leg. When she glanced down, a chunk of metal stuck out of her armor’s knee joint. Blood trickled down her calf. That’d better not keep me from running. “Babe, is the sniper dead, or not?”
A third explosion jolted the overturned tram against Iridian’s back. The sniper is trapped under a building across the street, Adda said. The five-story fall may have been fatal. It broke the turret.
“Chi, get up here right now, we’ve got casualties,” Iridian said in one breath and two seconds on the HQ channel. All the channel indicators were lit. Everybody had something to say and her comms filter resorted to transcribed text scrolling in her peripheral vision.
“On my way,” Chi said immediately.
Iridian’s head bowed in her relief, until her HUD pinged her to stay focused on the most likely angle of enemy approach, briefly highlighted in her faceplate with orange haze. “Hang on, guys,” she muttered to Tritheist and Ogir. “Help’s coming.” Neither one reacted.
Her shield was too small to protect three people from chunks of building exploded by a mad pilot without a ship. She squeezed between the injured men in a clatter of armor. Ogir wore some serious protection under his clothes, apparently. Her shield just barely covered all three sets of vital organs. The position was hell on her knee, but it hurt less than it probably should’ve. There was too much danger around her for her body to let her feel it.
Chi pounded through the exit door and bent over to make herself a smaller target as she ran to the three of them. Iridian expected her to go to work on Ogir first, but she started swearing when she saw Tritheist and shoved Iridian’s shield out of her way so she could get her comp near enough to analyze the problems. Iridian put herself between Chi and the end of the tram, in case the enemy got organized and flanked them. The overturned tram shielded Ogir.
“Nakano, get up here,” Chi shouted. A medic from Sloane’s crew security detail bounded out of the emergency exit door in a sweat-stained uniform that wasn’t a uniform. He crouched in cover and tapped at his comp, glanced between it, Ogir, and Tritheist, then went to work on Tritheist beside Chi.
The explosions were so distant now that they might’ve been in the neighboring module. Time dilated until Iridian’s shield shoulder and injured knee throbbed with pain and she lost track of how long they’d been there.
She startled when Chi gently pressed the shield down until its edge bumped Iridian’s thigh. Iridian’s impulse was to joke about it, but Chi looked grim. “We can’t do anything for him,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’ve got to move so we can help Ogir.”
Iridian stood on her uninjured leg and hopped a couple steps away from Chi’s patients. “You’re sorry.” She caught herself staring into Tritheist’s half-open eyes and shifted to face Oxia’s most likely route to their position. “Not half as sorry as Captain Sloane will be.”
CHAPTER 25
Test 04 unsuccessful, will not repeat
All the activity in the workspace had been overwhelming, but reality was worse. Beside the residential level’s formerly hidden exit, Adda clung to the wall with both hands, staring at her comp as people ran past her through the smoke. Her comp projection’s border glowed vivid blue-green and poured into the shadow beneath her hand in a neon waterfall. At the height of her inhaled breaths she popped out of the top of her head and looked down at herself, surrounded by four attentive headquarters guards. When she breathed out, she fell back into herself.
Casey channeled so much data through her comp, from Ogir’s various surveillance feeds and private security feeds all over Vesta. Casey was worming its way into the fleet intelligences, making small parts of them small parts of her. Her/Adda or her/Casey? It didn’t matter. Another sharpsheet tingled on her tongue.
She’d had to plug her nasal jack into her comp, which was terrifying while in contact with four strong intelligences outside the workspace. The Coin loomed as a huge and implacable intention in a corner of her mind, herding uncooperative ships above Rheasilvia Station. AegiSKADA had left the Vestan prison system, having gotten what it wanted there and turned at least one installation’s automated defenses on guards. That was within the parameters she’d given it. Evidence suggested that it’d tried a couple of different ways to get rid of them before resorting to violence.
AegiSKADA was becoming the best-informed security expert on the ’ject, which, for once, was a perfect generalization of the purpose it was developed for. And all of its resources were at Adda’s disposal. She felt satisfied and quietly proud of her supervision efforts. It’d taken a lot of time and attention, but it’d paid off.
The Apparition was still locked in its dock and it wanted to join the Coin in stationspace. Something the Apparition was doing had caught the ITA’s attention, before Gavran drove them out of the dock module. The AI’s want was digging a hole in her brain.
Casey was highlighting particularly relevant surveillance information. It brought Adda cam feed of a fire still blazing bright in the first floor of Sloane’s headquarters, which had merged with the second floor. The next floor down was Sloane’s most secure server space, where AegiSKADA was installed and where they’d stored their stolen information from Oxia’s datacenter. Take the emergency management network and put out the fire. A few seconds after she said it, she realized that she’d subvocalized to Iridian. She had to repeat it to Casey.
How? Iridian’s question echoed around and around Adda’s mind until Adda shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears. It kept echoing.
This. Building. Is on fire. That, she meant to say to Iridian. She could look up how much time it would take Iridian to get to the console where the station’s emergency management controls could be most easily accessed, but she would have to find it first. That’d take time she didn’t have, so she didn’t bother sending the console’s location to Iridian.
Adda’s throat was buzzing like she was making a noise, and she was shaking, but she didn’t hear herself. She cracked one eyelid open to meet the worried glances of her security detail. Other security personnel hauled temporarily paralyzed Oxia soldiers into the exit behind her, away from the fire. The less lethal weapon effects should wear off within an hour or two, at which point Sloane or the HQ security commanders could decide what to do with the Oxia soldiers. She shut her eyes again.
Babe? Iridian said. I’m nowhere near the fire. Where are you?
Adda switched her comp’s primary output to the newsfeed. Suhaila’s announcement was in progress, and if the myriad of analyses Adda had tapped into were correct, it was swaying the public conversation in Sloane’s crew’s favor. Maybe whoever oversaw emergency services would agree. They needed to put out the fire.
Sloane’s crew needed to get out of the building.
Adda scooted along the wall to the hidden elevator and gripped its railing. The security people asked something unimportant. She met the nearest one’s eyes and he looked alarmed by whatever he saw in hers. “We should leave,” she said. “The building is on fire.” That statement should’ve been self-explanatory, especially with the smoke all around them, but he kept staring at her. She shrugged, set the elevator to carry her to the street-level exit, and redirected the intelligences rattling around in her head. The security people shouted to each other and followed her into the elevator.
Iridian’s armor made so much noise when she ran. Adda smiled up at her as the open-walled elevator rose toward her, but Iridian’s leg was bleeding red and reflective even in the smoke. The alerts to warn Adda about dangerous changes in Iridian’s health hadn’t been triggered, but there was a lot of blood. Adda reached out with her comp-gloved hand to connect it more directly to the suit’s internal monitoring system.
Iridian caught her forearm like she thought Adda was falling and asked urgent questions with no keywords Adda was listening for. “What took you so long?” was one of them. Iridian kept pulling her through the door and into the street. According to one of the suit integrity readouts, a piece of metal was in her knee. Adda would see it if she looked down, but she’d fall down the elevator shaft if she did that.
“This is too much,” she murmured, and even Iridian, who usually heard her even when she spoke quietly, would probably not hear her in the confusion outside.
Casey was still processing surveillance. Unless ships were involved, Adda would rather leave the Coin out of the action as much as possible, since it was so careless with humans. The Apparition just wanted to free itself from the dock lockdown, which it fired on with its short- and mid-range weapons. She only had one other intelligence at her disposal.
Take whoever’s contracted for emergency services and get them to put out the fire. Do not kill or injure . . . She checked AegiSKADA’s definition of “injure” as she composed the message to it. She’d have to adjust that sometime, because it left out some painful conditions. Only incapacitate people who are attacking Sloane’s crew. Leave everyone else alone. Do you understand?
She could practically see the nonchild’s face that would’ve lit up with delight in a workspace. I UNDERSTAND filled her comp projection in bright green for a second, lighting everything around her.
“Babe, what the hell was that? What is going on? Are you breathing okay?” Iridian was the one who should have been worrying about breathing, dragging herself and Adda around while bleeding on her armored boot.
You’re going to make your knee harder to fix, Adda told her.
Captain Sloane strode up to them, coat flapping over armor in the smoke and rising atmo pressure. Iridian stopped pulling Adda and stopped walking herself. She stiffened like the pain in her knee was worse, but Adda had given her armor feed a higher priority and the wound appeared the same as it was a few seconds ago.
Iridian straightened her back and said, “Captain . . . I’m sorry, I . . .” She almost always knew the right thing to say. This was a particularly tricky problem, although its details took a while to come to Adda.
Oh. Yes. The lieutenant was dead. Unfortunate, but all her predictions had indicated that some of the crew would die during an assault on headquarters. Adda did not expect to miss him.
“You were with him.” Sloane’s voice sounded choked, like the captain was in pain as well. Based on what Casey presented from the captain’s armor feed, Sloane was uninjured. “What happened?”
While Iridian explained the turret and the glaring software vulnerabilities in Tritheist’s armor as if relating a tragedy, Adda and Casey surveyed the impact of Suhaila’s broadcast about Oxia’s human rights violations and the discovery of the interstellar bridge joining the solar system and the star described in Project Thrinacia. People talked about it over family channels, public political feeds, social feeds, and wide-broadcast media feeds. Early and informal polls reported that public opinion was turning against Oxia harder and faster than Adda had dared to hope.
The NEU had yet to make an official statement, but the Callistan government had already publicly supported Sloane’s efforts, identifying the captain by name. That could work against public support from the NEU. Worse, Sloane’s depredations along the reliable routes between the Martian and Jovian orbits, both before and after Barbary, had been too significant for the ITA to ignore. Their attempt to ground Sloane’s ships in the docks proved that. The captain needed to move fast to reach an agreement with both the NEU and ITA on docking and refueling fees, and that deal had to be good enough that both organizations would want to keep the captain in control of Vesta.
Overhead, drones’ low-pitched buzzing engines converged on the fire and joined the nannite culture repairing the hole in the ceiling. Adda smiled. The crew would have the last of Oxia’s security forces in Rheasilvia Station corralled within the next few hours. The prisoners she’d had AegiSKADA release from Oxia’s prison in Albana Station were holding their own there. According to the Coin, the fleet ships that had stayed loyal to Oxia were leaving the system. The Apparition had finally torn itself free of the dock, most of which was not on fire.
She’d won.
The captain and Iridian were still talking about Tritheist when the Coin sent news that the captain might appreciate. “Remaining Oxia personnel are evacuating,” said Adda. “The Coin and the Apparition will escort them out of stationspace.”
The captain stared at her for several moments. She internally replayed what she’d just said, and it sounded clear enough. “We’ve . . . won,” the captain said finally.
“Vesta is free claim, physically if not legally,” Adda confirmed.
It was even more confusing than usual, whether the captain’s expression and stance meant that Sloane was going to hug her or hit her. This should’ve been good news. The best possible, in fact. The crew could have anything Sloane thought they could get away with now. It didn’t show on the captain’s face. She shifted her weight closer to Iridian.
“Vesta . . .�
�� Sloane drew a long, trembling breath. “I should make a public statement, or rather the station councils should. I have key phrases to deliver, if we want to hold this place in the coming weeks. And there are messages to send to the NEU and the ITA. Agreements to finalize . . .”
“This would be a good time,” Adda confirmed.
Sloane’s eyes widened a little, and now Adda was certain she was in more danger of being hit than hugged. “Ogir will arrange public feed access once he’s recovered.” So he wasn’t dead, then. That was convenient. Sloane kept looking at her like there was text on her face that the captain could read. “I’ll find out what happened in those last minutes.”
Adda half opened her mouth to tell Sloane how easy it would be to send vid records, since she had access to almost every signal on Vesta now, but she stopped herself. On a vid, it’d be obvious that she’d prioritized station structural integrity and AI management over watching out for the people in the street. Sloane would’ve spent more effort protecting Tritheist, and the captain might react violently after seeing how she’d handled that. Her headache flared just thinking about it. Instead she just nodded, and the captain stalked away to claim Vesta for the crew.
The operation hadn’t gone perfectly, but Sloane’s crew had the ’ject now. Oxia was abandoning Vesta. Its remaining strength would be in the mines below the station, and although loyalists would remain, they would no longer enjoy council support.
With Suhaila’s report on Oxia’s attempt to hide the interstellar bridge from the rest of humanity, and Sloane’s crew’s role in its publication, people would see Sloane’s crew as their champions rather than predators. From there, Sloane would have a strong position to negotiate with the NEU, ITA, and any essential colonial parties to assure that governments beyond Vesta would tacitly support Sloane’s claim. The Vestan station councils would have no choice in the matter, but they hadn’t had since the war, so they’d manage.
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