Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Publisher’s Notice
The publisher has provided this ebook to you without Digital Rights Management (DRM) software applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This ebook is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this ebook, or make this ebook publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this ebook except to read it on your personal devices.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this ebook you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: simonandschuster.biz/online_piracy_report.
To those who read all the books about Adda and Iridian. Love wins.
PRONOUNS USED IN THIS STORY
He
It
She
They
Ve
Him
It
Her
Them
Ver
His
Its
Hers
Their
Vis
CHAPTER 1 Days until launch: 99
A machine whirred and clicked beside Adda’s bed. It kept distracting her from the world. This hospital’s rooms were white and green. This was her . . . second? Hospital. This month? That was strange too. Gale-force air-conditioning rustled the antimicrobial curtains around her bed. She had a blanket, but she was still cold. The curtains covered only two sides. The other two were walls.
At least she had her family with her: her little brother, Pel, her wife, Iridian. A cam fed their images to rows of small projectors in the virtual window’s frame on the wall by Adda’s bed. Several stories beneath the window, Iridian crouched behind her shield next to a big cargo bot. It was stopped in front of the building across the street. Iridian frequently turned her beautiful eyes, so brown they were almost black, up to the cam that fed Adda’s window. Pel huddled between Iridian and the other building’s wall, with his arms crushing his curly hair against his head.
The part of the machine tracking Adda’s heart rate twitched and flashed new numbers that flickered into bright green starbursts. If someone else were in the room, they’d call the starbursts a product of Adda’s imagination.
The window wouldn’t show her what was scaring Pel, because she couldn’t reach the cam controls. Her comp was somewhere else. Without the comp, she couldn’t ask the artificial intelligence that managed the hospital’s environment controls to move the cam for her.
That—the intelligence, or rather, another like it—was why she was here.
Remembering was awful. Sometime within the past few weeks, she had let an intelligence trick her into trying to kill Iridian. Iridian had survived because Adda had overdosed on sharpsheets to stop herself. The overdose was why Adda was in a bed in a hospital, and why Pel and Iridian were . . .
Time slipped. Remembering was awful. Why are they in danger?
You’re awake! The whisper in Adda’s ear startled her, even though it was just Iridian talking over their implanted comm system. Adda must’ve subvocalized her question. The lump in her throat wouldn’t let her speak. Don’t worry about us, Iridian said.
On the street below, Iridian grabbed Pel’s shoulder with the hand not holding her mech-ex graphene shield. Her golden-brown skin glowed in the cam feed beside Pel’s white neck, which paled further when Iridian said something to him. The glow might’ve been in Adda’s head, but with sunsim shining pretend sunlight beyond the walls of her room, she believed in it. Iridian was speaking to Pel louder than the range her throat mic would pick up. Pel’s arms were thinner than they should’ve been. The three of them had been saving money by eating as little as possible since . . . ? Since. He took them down from around his head.
People on the projection stage at the end of her bed sometimes talked about her and Iridian. The nurses and doctors reacted when the figures said Adda’s name, so that wasn’t a product of her damaged brain. Maybe the newsfeeds had more information.
The pad that controlled the stage was next to the clicking machine, inside the curtains. She poked the pad until it put TAPnews on the stage. A familiar figure rose an arm’s length high, just beyond Adda’s blanket-covered feet. The figure represented a real woman, not a newsbot, dressed in fashionably iridescent purple that complemented her olive skin. Her dark hair twisted to hide itself behind her head until she turned toward the cam.
This correspondent was a fan of Sloane’s crew. That’d been Adda’s and Iridian’s crew too, until . . .
“. . . Suhaila Al-Mudari, here with the latest on the search for former Sloane’s crew members Iridian Nassir and Adda Karpe,” said the woman in the newsfeed. Adda had met her in person once. “They’ve been spotted outside Ceres Station’s Fortuna Hospital—”
In Adda’s ear, Iridian whispered, Babe, I’m getting Pel out of here. No matter what the ITA or the damned AIs do, I’m coming back for you. Do you understand? I’m coming back.
The Interplanetary Transit Authority. Awakened artificial intelligences, ones with wills of their own and no supervisors, were guiding the ITA toward Adda and Iridian, because they . . .
Because . . .
The machine blinked Adda’s pulse in red starbursts as her heart pounded in her chest. Oh gods, the ITA was here, and even the newsfeeds knew Iridian was too. She and Iridian had broken a lot of spacefaring laws with Sloane’s crew.
And Adda was stuck in this bed. Even if she had her comp, she couldn’t help Iridian and Pel. Every time she used it, she saw and heard and felt terrifying hallucinations. Sometimes she bled from the nose, which was what had scared Iridian enough to bring Adda to this hospital. She’d bled all over her face and her shirt last time.
On the street below the window cam, Iridian leaned to put her shaved head close to Pel’s brown hair, then gave him a shove. He stumbled away from the cargo bot. If she turned her head, Adda would see him out the window, but TAPnews had a higher perspective on the same street. The TAPnews cam drone rotated to offer an even clearer view. Suhaila was still talking, but it just sounded like noise. That happened sometimes, after Adda’s overdose.
Iri, she subvocalized through the mic implanted in her throat. Drones. If the newsfeed was using them, then the ITA and Ceres Station law enforcement would be too.
Damn, said Iridian. How can I get them both out? Sometimes Iridian subvocalized when she didn’t mean to. The small version of Iridian on the projection stage yelled something at Pel. He ran down the street in the opposite direction of whatever was happening on the other side of the cargo bot.
Something hit Iridian’s shield and knocked her back a half step. She had a gun, a cheap projectile weapon they’d bought during their flight from Sloane’s crew and the ITA. She only held her shield now, though, with both hands, in a constricted stance Adda had never seen her use before. Crammed into a doorway in the building across the street, Iridian looked small and alone.
A drone the size of Adda’s head swept into existence on the stage. The motion flickered in the corner of her eye too. Up! Adda clenched her hands in the foam mattress beneath her and hoped she’d actually said that to Iridian.
Iridian pivoted to put the shield between herself and the drone above her while she pressed her hand to the pad beside the door. The door stayed shut
. She leaned against it. The doorway only hid a few centimeters of her. She drew the gun, finally, and shot at the drone. It bobbed in place.
The door to Adda’s room opened to admit three stern people in blue ITA armor, their faces projected in three greenish-white dimensions against the black backdrop of their helmet faceplates, glowing through the curtains around Adda’s bed. A nurse came in behind them and pushed the curtains open. According to the time stamp on the newsfeed and what Iridian had told Adda on the way to this place, she’d only been in the hospital overnight. In those dark hours, the ITA had found them.
“This is her?” one of the ITA people asked the nurse, who nodded. “Gods, she’s drooling. But she’s looking at us, right? Can she understand what we’re saying?”
Adda hadn’t noticed herself drooling. Lately, her muscles had been very unreliable. She was almost used to it. They’re here, she subvocalized to Iridian.
“Yes.” The nurse frowned at the ITA intruders and crossed his arms in a rustle of white, easily sanitized fabric. The nurse didn’t even look at the clicking machines. A medical intelligence solved the machine problems. The nurse was there to fix people problems.
On the projection stage, something small and round bounced into the doorway Iridian was hiding in and stuck to the door. Before Adda could subvocalize a warning, the round thing turned into a small gray cloud. Iridian dropped to her knees. She said something outside her mic’s range, and then her whisper came through the speaker in Adda’s ear. That was a nannite grenade. Iridian was looking up at the cam that fed Adda’s window, so Adda tilted her head to watch Iridian through the window. Sorry, babe. I don’t see Pel. I think he made—
The nurse and the ITA people were talking. Iridian’s shield and gun fell from her hands as she bent in half, arms wrapped around her stomach, showing all her teeth. Without her comp, Adda was locked in her mind while people hurt Iridian. She couldn’t even access the Patchwork, which passed for internet this far from Earth.
Patchwork access had caused that last nosebleed, the one that’d made Iridian bring Adda here. Adda had opened a Patchwork connection to check on AegiSKADA, the intelligence that’d killed a lot of people but that was now under control. Not her control. Captain Sloane was supervising it. The pirate captain was doing all right with it, as far as Adda had been able to tell.
Her brain and the neural implant net that rested on top of it had been strange ever since other intelligences had influenced her, when . . . When she’d hurt herself, and almost hurt Iridian. This was the first time she’d allowed her intelligence assessment software to access her neural implant and the Patchwork since that night. Thus the blood. Gods, she wished she could sit up.
The ITA people and the nurse had been watching the newsfeed instead of looking out the window, since the cam drone had a better angle than the stationary cam on the hospital’s outside wall. Blue-uniformed people in the street approached Iridian with weapons raised. Iridian just knelt there, curled over herself, like she was hurting.
“They’ve got her,” said one of the people in blue armor in Adda’s room. “About damn time.” Outside, two ITA people dragged Iridian away. Her eyes were shut tight and her mouth was open like she was screaming.
Adda screamed too, a wordless howl at her damaged brain, at the people hurting Iridian, at the ITA. Tears stung her eyes. The nannite culture the grenade had exposed Iridian to must’ve reached her nervous system. Immobilizing nerve pain was considered humane treatment. Even if it weren’t, nobody would stop the ITA from using it. Theirs was still the biggest fleet in the solar system. It shouldn’t cause permanent damage, but gods, it must’ve hurt Iridian so badly.
At some point, Adda had stopped screaming. The nurse was talking to the ITA agents at a normal volume. “Yes, but do you have to do this today? Stress isn’t what she needs right now.”
“She should’ve thought about that before she took out twenty-nine Vestan security corpsmen,” the ITA man told the nurse. To Adda, he said, “Adda Karpe, you’re under arrest for—”
There were plenty of things she might be under arrest for. She tuned him out and subvocalized, I’ll see you soon, Iri. I promise. Somehow, she’d get them both out of this.
CHAPTER 2 Days until launch: 99
When Iridian could concentrate on anything other than the nannite culture tearing into her nerves, two men in blue ITA armor were dragging her along an otherwise empty street. Even the bot tracks were empty of bots. The transport ahead of them was so heavily armored that it was one bump away from scraping its chassis on the street. That design had been effective on the colonial front lines, where grav was lower than it was in Ceres Station. Full-noon sunsim made the ceiling’s projected stationspace fade to gray. The ITA must’ve gotten some hilariously exaggerated intel about how well-armed Iridian was, or how many allies she’d have with her.
She’d gotten Adda to a hospital before the AI-influenced brain damage killed her, and she’d given Pel a chance to run after the ITA arrived. All that, and Iridian was still alive. She smiled, grim though her satisfaction was. That she hadn’t been able to escape was a definite drawback, but she’d hit all her objectives. Adda was the planner. Iridian preferred to act first and work out the details as she went.
The next detail to work out was how to avoid getting locked in that armored transport. The ITA had sent a dozen agents to take her down. If she’d had the backup she’d enjoyed while running ops for Captain Sloane, that number would’ve been laughable. If Adda had been alert and talking to the local station management AI, the two of them might’ve gotten away. Alone, twelve agents had been too many for Iridian.
Some of the ITA agents had gone into the hospital. The ones with the drone were somewhere behind her, looking for Pel. Five agents had stayed on the street outside the hospital after the nannite culture took Iridian down. Two of those were dragging Iridian toward the transport by her bound arms. The remaining three stood around the transport, far enough apart not to all get caught in the same blast if somebody else brought grenades to this party. They watched the street like they expected Pel to come back with an army. That wouldn’t happen. He, Iridian, and Adda were out of favor with almost all the standing armies.
The ITA agent on her left held her with a one-handed grip under the armpit while he read out her list of charges projected in the square hole in the back of his comp glove. Her own glove was sticking out of his pocket, on the side away from her. He’d gotten as far as “Desertion, draft dodging, interference with NEU military microbiological research . . . How the hell did you manage that?” in a Ceresian accent that Iridian had to concentrate on to understand.
That must’ve happened on Barbary Station, last year. Maybe he was talking about the bioweapon AegiSKADA had used on Sloane’s crew. If the agent was listing her offenses chronologically, then he had a lot of charges left to get through.
When only a few meters remained between her and the transport, she kicked the knees on either side of hers. Her boots clacked against armor beneath their uniform pants. The joints bent instead of bracing against the impact like fully mechanized suits would’ve. The agent reading her charges shouted in surprise, and both men fell. Adrenaline hit Iridian’s bloodstream as she landed on the street and the two ITA agents landed on her. She scrambled out from under them on her knees and elbows and ran for the mouth of an alley.
Her whole body tingled like she’d become weightless. By the time the sensation went from uncomfortable to unbearable, Iridian was already falling.
It was a more comprehensive agony than the first time the ITA agents had activated the nannites, seconds after the grenade had infected her. By now, the culture of pseudo-organic machines had dug into her nerves. She’d never hurt this much before. She didn’t know it was possible to hurt this much. She curled over on her side, begging “Stop,” over and over in a whisper she had to force from her throat. It was all she could do not to piss herself.
They left the nannites on until after they’d tightened th
e restraints binding her neck, arms, and ankles to her seat in the transport. She sagged against the straps as the vehicle rocked into motion. Whatever the nannites did to her nerves had made all her muscles contract. Now she ached like she’d just finished a marathon with no training period to work up to it. Her mouth hurt with a brighter pain from face-planting on the street. She licked blood off her lips. And she’d been free, although still restrained, for about three steps.
The ITA agent across from her finished reading her list of charges and scowled. He sat with his leg extended and angled to keep it out of her limited reach. “Lady, you’re a piece of work. There’s no way the ITA’s giving you up to the NEU after this.”
Iridian smiled without any real humor and rocked her head left, right, and center. The neck restraint was firmly anchored to the vehicle’s wall. The only strategy she’d learned for dealing with law enforcement outside a combat situation was to shut up and let an officer or a lawyer talk for her. If she did that, she couldn’t say something in legalese that she didn’t understand. Without Adda at full mental capacity and by Iridian’s side, Iridian wondered if she’d ever feel confident she understood anything again.
Lunawood fiction had taught her everything she thought she knew about her legal situation. In the stories, if the ITA declined to risk your home hab doing a shit job of reintegrating you into society, they kept you in their own facilities. Both of those were where the ITA operated: in the cold and the black, or near enough that the distinction didn’t matter, secure as all hells.
The important thing was that Adda was alive in a hospital that’d keep her that way. With luck, Pel was still free. And, hell, Iridian’s circumstances could’ve been worse. She could’ve been working for a law enforcement megacorp a million klicks away from her loved ones, like the assholes sitting across from her.
Gravity of a Distant Sun Page 1
