Gravity of a Distant Sun

by R. E. Stearns

  However, Iridian and Adda had learned about the interstellar bridge after they’d kidnapped Dr. Björn. They had a lot to overcome if they were going to join the expedition to cross it. And they’d never have a chance of joining while Adda was in this clinic and Iridian was in prison.

  It was time to turn the conversation toward her next planned question. “What other resources does Dr. Björn have?”

  Pel’s eyebrows sank into visibility below his hair as he frowned at her. With her teeth clenched, she prepared answers for incredulous questions. To her amazement, he didn’t speak right away. When he did, it was at a slower pace than his usual rapid delivery. “I’ve heard that Captain Sloane’s following Dr. Björn’s project feed.” That was an excellent answer, from Adda’s perspective. If AegiSKADA was listening, multiple mentions of its supervisor’s name should raise this conversation’s priority and make the intelligence assess its implications.

  She smiled, just a little, and he smiled back and leaned toward his cam. He understood at least one level of the game they were playing now, she was sure of it. “It’s an important discovery,” she said. “Everyone should be interested in a new star system less than a lifetime away.”

  “Oh, definitely. If they could say its name, they’d be even happier. ‘Thrinacia system’ might be easy for astronomy nerds, but it’s a tongue twister for everybody else. People say Thryn-ache-ya, Trinaysha, Try-nakka, which, how even . . .” Pel frowned like this question she was asking him without asking was more of a puzzle. “Sloane’s crew is huge now. The fleet hardly lost any ships during the fight for Rheasilvia. The ZV Group’s back on the crew contract list too, so Sloane’s got an army and a navy whenever the captain wants it.”

  It was interesting that the ZV Group, a private military company, was still willing to work with a pirate captain who’d once stranded several of their squads on an abandoned shipbreaking station. However, the continued presence of the Oxia fleet—Sloane’s fleet, now—might mean that Casey, which had been developed to copilot a ship named the Casey Mire Mire, might still be near Vesta too, along with the other two awakened intelligences. “Hardly any ships were lost?” Adda asked.

  “All but about three stayed.” Pel’s new expression said that that was what he thought she’d been aiming the conversation toward, and he was sorry to deliver the bad news. So the awakened intelligences weren’t hiding in Captain Sloane’s fleet anymore. She swallowed hard. They might be anywhere, even in Ceres stationspace.

  She couldn’t ask Pel about the fourth intelligence. AegiSKADA was a zombie intelligence she’d granted permissions and access throughout Vesta’s two city-stations. As far as Pel knew, Iridian had destroyed every functional piece of AegiSKADA on Barbary Station. If Adda told him it was listening to this conversation, he’d panic.

  AegiSKADA had destroyed the eyes Pel had been born with. It was cruel of her to expose him to that intelligence again, but to leave the treatment clinic before the ITA wanted her to, she needed more help than Pel could offer. If she’d found a way to ask him if it was all right, he’d have said yes, eventually.

  “I hate that you’ll have to repeat all this news,” Adda said. “What if you forwarded me some articles? Through the account we set up?”

  His thoughtful expression returned. “Um. Which account was that again?”

  She shut her eyes, giving herself time to gather her patience, then opened them. “The Vestan account. Sloane can still access it, so be careful, but it’s . . . As long as it’s addressed to me by name at the address you’re talking to now, I’ll get it.”

  The account she was describing didn’t exist. If he contacted her through any Vestan account and AegiSKADA was still operating at the level of freedom she’d left it with, it would register her and Pel’s names and locations. Then, if supporting her was still advantageous to whatever priorities Sloane had given it, it’d find her. She and Iridian were absolutely stuck in their current predicaments, and nobody knew where Casey was, let alone what it wanted. To get herself and Iridian to the Jovian station where their enemies would be reluctant to follow them, she had to drastically change the factors involved. AegiSKADA would do that.

  “Five more minutes,” said her therapist through an intercom to Adda’s conference room.

  Pel glanced toward the ceiling. “They’re strict there, huh?”

  “Iridian has it worse.”

  He shrugged, going for casual. His lack of eye contact and stiff movements told Adda that being separated from all their loved ones was hard for both of them to bear. “She’s military, she’s tough. She’ll be all right.” As long as Casey left her alone, at least.

  That reminded Adda of another question she’d wanted to ask. “Did you . . .” If he and Iridian had accidentally attracted the ITA’s attention while they were bringing Adda to the Ceresian hospital, then Casey wasn’t responsible for their capture. “When you were on Ceres, did you and Iri do something . . . noticeable?”

  Pel’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t think so. Iridian was working her ass off to keep us under the radar.”

  “All right.” Adda would have to rephrase that question and ask again later. If Casey had gotten them arrested, it knew where they were and it’d given itself plenty of time to find a way to influence her again. “Will you be?” she asked Pel. “All right, I mean?”

  He gave her an embarrassed smile. “I’m getting there. This is bad, but I’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Sissy.” He sniffled and looked away from the cam. “Ah, shit, that’s it, I’m going.” The projector’s Connection terminated notification meant that he’d severed it from his side.

  Iri, I just talked to Pel, Adda subvocalized. He’s putting me in touch with someone who can help. If AegiSKADA was listening to her and Pel’s conversation, and if it wanted to help. She was, perhaps, overselling her progress. Telling Iridian that AegiSKADA was the friend Adda was reaching out to would upset her. That sounded familiar, for some reason.

  Great, Iridian replied as the conference room door opened to admit Adda’s therapist. They’re telling me this trial is almost over, and it’s not coming out in my favor.

  Two sturdy-looking aides stood on either side of the unsmiling therapist. “Could you please come with us?” Frowning, Adda followed them into yet another medical examining room. The aides wouldn’t have let her do anything else.

  Once she was settled on the edge of the reclining chair/bed like a good patient, the therapist said, “We noticed some odd signal activity that follows you around. A review of your records suggests that, well . . . that we missed something.” The woman said it so gently that Adda tensed up. They’d found her comms implants, her only way to talk to Iridian. “You said some unusual things to your brother earlier. At this stage, any communications that we can’t oversee could push you to a higher influence stage. You’ve made great progress, but you’re still at what we call stage two.” Was she? She counted the weeks since she’d last talked to Casey. That was, she grudgingly admitted to herself, possible. “The wrong kind of input could delay your journey to freedom from influence. I know you don’t want that.”

  An aide stepped up beside Adda and injected her with something. Dizziness and darkness overwhelmed her.

  When she woke in her room, her neck, hand, and the side of her head around her ear were numb at her comms implant sites. She exhaled a long, slow breath while her heart thudded too fast and too hard. Iri? Can you hear me?

  Silence followed. It was possible that Iridian was busy doing something else, or that they’d moved her so far away that it would take time for the signal to reach her and a reply to come back. Iridian had always made time for Adda before, even if it was just to say that she was too busy to talk.

  At least there were no bandages. Whoever had modified her implants hadn’t cut them out. And if they’d recorded any conversations she’d had with Iridian, her encryption would protect the content. After an hour of listening for
Iri’s voice, Adda had to accept that the clinic staff had cut her only link to Iridian.

  CHAPTER 4 Days until launch: 72

  The Sorenson ITA Station that floated in Venus’s atmo was the prisoner transfer ship’s only stop. Since Iridian’s tiny cabin had no windows, the only thing she knew about her new hab was that its grav was healthy. Docking a craft this size in healthy grav must’ve been a challenge for the pilot. The speaker on the wall had told her to strap in over an hour ago and she was still lying in bed, waiting for the motion to stop.

  Iridian fidgeted with the straps and subvocalized, Can you hear me? into her throat mic. Like every other time in the past few weeks, Adda didn’t answer. Maybe she’d had another seizure, or the people at the treatment clinic had found her comms implants and deactivated them or taken them out.

  Gods, Iridian hoped that they’d just deactivated the implants. The last she’d heard from Adda was shortly after Adda had contacted Pel. The next time Iridian got the chance, she’d reach out to Pel too and find out what in all hells was going on. Iridian huffed an irritated sigh. She and Adda had missed celebrating the anniversary of their first date. Iridian hadn’t even been able to talk to her.

  The lawyer had been apologetic about losing Iridian’s trial in Ceresian court. Without moving the trial to the NEU, which the lawyer had tried and failed to do, she hadn’t started with much of a chance. The ITA’s inhibition-lowering drugs had provided all the evidence the prosecution needed, anyway. While trying not to implicate Adda, Iridian had confessed to a lot. The ITA’s lawyer had made half his case by playing her recorded “interviews” in the courtroom.

  The one hope she’d had of a deal, describing the ships carrying the awakened AIs, had been useless. The AIs must’ve left Vesta by the time the ITA went looking for them. If Iridian guessed right, Captain Sloane had assured the ITA that Iridian’s report couldn’t be trusted. She was happy to have cost the damned AIs a safe berth, but the ITA was unimpressed. The rest of the arguments had been a formality.

  For the first few weeks she’d been vigilant for opportunities to escape while Ceresian law enforcement officers transferred her back and forth from jail to the courtroom, but she’d never gotten farther than a meter from her captors. The two attempts that triggered the nannite culture convinced her that she’d need outside help to find her way back to Adda.

  Still, escaping an ITA prison wouldn’t be the craziest thing Iridian had done to stay with Adda. Iridian had to believe that they’d be together again soon. The alternative would hurt too much to bear.

  Miss you, babe, she subvocalized to Adda. Maybe she was listening and couldn’t reply.

  The prisoner transport docked and Iridian’s cell door opened straight into a passthrough. A speaker clicked on. “You can walk out on your own, or—”

  “Or the nannites will make me, yeah, yeah.” She collected the spare set of clothes they’d left in the cabinet for her. The nannites slowed her pace to a shuffle, a new feature the culture had developed after it’d established itself in her nervous system. Other prisoners in the Ceres Station jail had confirmed that prison-grade cultures did that to everybody they infected. This was the farthest she’d walked in a straight line in days. She wanted to run up and down the passthrough a few times, but the way the nannites affected her muscles meant that her normal walking speed was now the fastest she could move. Even that took more effort than it should’ve.

  The passthrough opened on another room with no occupants. It closed as soon as she left the exterior doorway. Medical equipment filled one wall. Across from the passthrough was another closed door. This hab’s atmo processors were incredibly loud, like they were turned all the way up for some reason, although the atmo was as still as it should be in a sealed hab.

  She stood there holding her clothes and listened. Atmo processors this loud would take some getting used to, and she’d have to get used to them. If the enviro ever changed for the worse, realizing it and reacting fast might save her life. A hydraulic whine from the passthrough, almost lost under the atmo processors, signaled the transport ship’s departure. Maybe she was hearing Venus’s famous wind.

  Auditory directions walked her through a full body scan using the medical equipment. It asked for multiple passes around her head, neck, and hand, where the implanted comms were. It sent her through a deep decon cycle like she’d somehow gotten herself irradiated in jail, demanded that she recycle all her clothes, and gave her identical new ones. After she put those on, the med station prescribed a vaccination that hurt less than she’d expected it to.

  The far door opened. Five people in ITA blue stood at the end of a short hallway, watching her. Most of their armor looked light and easy to move in, but the helmets were so overbuilt that it was amazing they could hold their heads up. The faceplates were dark. Two of the agents carried shields, smaller than Iridian’s old one. The ITA shields looked rigid and heavy as the agents awkwardly hauled them into position at full height and width. Either the shields were new, or the agents didn’t train with them often enough.

  In the armored suit Captain Sloane had bought Iridian on Vesta, with the mech-ex graphene shield she’d built, she would’ve been able to take them. Unarmed in pants and a thin shirt, that’d be a losing fight. Besides, the agents could activate her nannite culture whenever they wanted. They might not even let her break her knuckles on their faceplates.

  “Nassir, Iridian. Yes?” one of them asked.

  It’d been a long few weeks without Adda. Iridian grinned wider than she had any reason to, given the question. “If you don’t know who I am by now, then you people have bigger problems than—”

  One of the armored people activated Iridian’s nannites. She hit the floor on her side. Over her screams, the first speaker said, “We’re the ERT. Everything here in Sorenson ITAS looks real civilized, and you’re going to think it’d be easy to pull something. Don’t. If you try it, we’ll be there to stop you.”

  The nerve pain ended. Iridian had curled up as small as she could make herself, chest heaving against her knees. Breathe, breathe, oh fuck you, you assmongers, breathe, she thought, and hopefully did not say to Adda.

  “Get up,” said the guy who talked like he was in charge. “We’ll walk you to your cell.”

  Iridian wanted to snap at them, but she didn’t want it enough to risk him activating her nannite culture again. She pushed herself off the floor. The ERT squad, which she guessed stood for something related to emergency response, fell into formation around her. The clack of light armor was comfortably familiar, even though the people wearing it were her enemies, not her allies.

  The hab’s low lighting had the orange glow of a very late local time or a very early one. They passed more closed doors in the windowless hallway than Iridian could count. They turned more corners than Iridian was used to in a hab too. With cams near the ceiling watching every angle, the guards saw more than the prisoners did. The ERT people must’ve had cam feeds from every short hallway and cell pumped into their helmets.

  Eventually the ERT squad stopped in front of a door and opened it. This section of hallway had only six doors, three on one side and three on the other. The talker said, “Get in, lie down on the bed, and don’t do anything stupid.”

  The bed, strangely, was in the middle of the small room, with grav straps dangling from its sides to the floor. Grav here was lighter than would’ve been ideal, but only a little. She’d heard that was normal on Venus. This place couldn’t have been on Venus’s surface, though. Only specially designed equipment survived the weather down there.

  The room was too small for multiple beds, so she wouldn’t have roommates to talk to like she’d had in the Ceres Station jail. They hadn’t had anything interesting to say, but anybody would’ve been better than four blank walls and a solid door. A comp terminal with a projection stage was in one corner, and an open door leading to a small bathroom was in the other. She’d rented worse rooms than this. She got onto the bed before the ERT people fo
und another reason to activate her nannite culture.

  “Strap yourself in,” was the next order.

  Iridian did it even more slowly than the nannites would’ve let her. “How unstable is the grav here?” They ignored her question. Once she’d secured herself, she asked, “Now what?”

  One of the armored people, not the one who’d been doing the talking, stepped into the cell and checked her straps. The person did something beside Iridian’s head. The room and hall lights shut off. Iridian opened her mouth to ask what the hell that was about, and somehow . . . didn’t. The words didn’t come out.

  When the lights came on a few seconds later, the person who’d been messing with Iridian’s bed was back in the hallway. “What was that?” Iridian was relieved to actually be able to ask the question.

  “You can get up once the door closes,” a third armored guy said. “You’ll be locked in until you finish your psych evals, and then you’ll go in with everybody else. Just remember: you get out of line, we’ll be there.”

  “Great,” Iridian said sarcastically. “Thanks.” The door shut from the top down, solid metal impacting the plastic floor with a clack, while she released the bed’s straps. Grav had been stable since she’d arrived. Maybe that procedure was to protect the guards from her. Whatever she’d been expecting from the ITA’s prison, it kept surprising her.

  * * *

  According to the time stamp on the comp in the corner, the staff kept Iridian in isolation for two days, punctuated by more blackouts. Each blackout was signaled by a chirping alarm and auditory instructions for her to get into bed (or stay there, if she’d been asleep) and strap in. They’d been happening before all her meals, and at other times too. Maybe whatever made the pouches of flavored goo that they served as food drew a lot of power.

  Iridian wanted to know how bad the prisoners she’d be in with were, but the only people she talked to were psychologists running orientation and testing. One of them spoke like an AI in disguise. The interviews were conducted through the comp in her cell, which only showed her what the ITA wanted her to see. NEU internet should’ve been accessible from Venus’s orbit, but the ITA’s network was locked down.