Gravity of a Distant Sun

by R. E. Stearns

  Adda still thought that carrying out that threat would’ve cost much more than she’d made selling Biometallic’s firmware for medical devices other than her and Noor’s implants. Once more potential buyers woke up, they’d sell the water they’d bought on Sunan’s Landing too. That’d disappear quickly after expenses and the split six ways.

  It would’ve been great to get the fuck out of the AIs’ range for a while, see some brand-new planets, and spend time with Adda where nobody would interrupt them. But they would’ve been separating themselves from almost every other person in the universe, a terrifying prospect even without the knowledge that if, somehow, Casey found them again, Adda was still susceptible to its influence. Protecting her was the most important objective. It was why they would’ve gone on the expedition in the first place.

  Maybe the whole idea had been an escapist fantasy they’d both bought into, one that was too impractical for reality. Like in every other fight Iridian had been in, they’d gather intel, gear up, and choose a battlefield where they could fight back. The problem of stealing the necessary gear, the Biometallic certificate in this case, was much easier for Iridian to wrap her head around than finding a way onto a fucking science expedition.

  In the meantime, Pel, Wiley, Rio, and Iridian found table space at the quietest of Pel’s usual haunts. It was a wide room with basketball hoops on two walls and spots in the floor which, when stepped on the wrong way, deployed poles for nets. The nets and the other sports equipment were long gone and the floor was scuffed and scratched, but the half of the overhead lights that worked still lit the place brighter than anywhere else on Yăo.

  Stacked crates with logos of corps that made sports gear formed a bar tended by a greasy-looking man who guarded the establishment’s sole paypad with a machete. The printer in the corner printed small cups you’d use for water in a normal hab’s gym. The family that ran the place lived in an extended hut under one of the basketball hoops. The trash on the hut’s roof suggested that people were still taking free throws.

  The table they gathered around had built-on benches that made metallic screeches as they sat down with their drinks. “So, Noor can’t talk to Casey anymore, but that’s a really slow cure for influence,” Iridian said. “And there are a lot of ways it can go wrong.”

  “Especially when he’ll make himself a new ID as soon as he gets ahold of a comp,” said Rio.

  “He’s resourceful, but his luck isn’t much better than ours,” Iridian said. “He hated the ITA brainwashing in Sorenson; he ran halfway across the solar system to get away from them, and then he gets influenced here. We have to pay for his influence treatment somewhere good, if there’s a charge for it. So we’ll need another job soon.”

  “Here’s a question.” Wiley sipped one of Yăo’s weirdly thick local beers. “Would getting Noor’s whatever-ware locked up against the awakened AIs get him un-influenced?”

  “Who knows? Nobody’s tried it before.” Iridian sighed over her own small and expensive, though effective, drink. “Securing it seems like it should help. It’d cut off a direct, secret comms line to his brain. AIs use the implants for other stuff too, Adda says, like changing electrical patterns in there. Without all that, it’d be easier to isolate him from AIs while his neurochemistry goes back to normal.”

  “Poor bastard.” Pel drank, and everybody else did too.

  * * *

  The water sold as well as Iridian thought it would, thank all the gods. When she and the others came into the Mayhem, Adda was sitting on the main cabin floor by the locked door to the residential cabin, talking to Noor on the other side. The banging and shouting that’d been emanating from the door when they left were mercifully absent.

  “. . . don’t have to tell me how it works, just how to access it. I promise I won’t take it apart and analyze it on-site.”

  Noor’s dark laughter from the other side of the door was singularly disturbing. “That’s not what I’m worried about, is it? I go, I get my share, I keep my trade secrets, or it doesn’t fucking happen. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  “Well, this all sounds fun.” Pel vaulted one passenger couch, threw himself into another, almost bounced out of it, and righted himself in a casual pose that could’ve been intentional. “What’re you up to, Sissy?”

  “We’re discussing Noor’s backdoor into Biometallic’s firmware library.” On the other side of the door, a blanket on a bunk rustled. Adda looked at the door and sighed. “He wants to go with us to get the certificate, but that’s not an option. If we can’t reach an agreement, I’ll have to look over the access protocol on the pseudo-organic cask we took to Biometallic last time.”

  Noor snickered. “Good fucking luck.”

  Adda looked at Iridian mournfully. I already checked the cask. I’d need a workspace and a lot more time to analyze it to even differentiate the access protocol from whatever he’d done to create or find it in the first place. It’s not organized in a way that makes sense to me. And his comp’s encrypted.

  Pel beckoned Adda over, and Iridian reached out to haul Adda to her feet and help her balance in the low grav. When they got close enough, Pel whispered, “Can’t you figure it out without him?”

  Adda rolled her eyes and whispered back, “If Iridian could use a safe workspace generator and compatible development or analysis software, she’d have as good a chance of that as I do. It’s really hard to tell what we’re looking at without the environmental context of the surrounding system.”

  Getting back into Biometallic’s firmware library was Adda’s last gods-damned hope for protecting herself from Casey, but her climbing into Mairie’s workspace generator would be the same as asking Mairie or Casey to influence her. Did you blacklist him with the station AI? Iridian asked subvocally.

  No, Adda replied. The list is locked for supervisory access only. She scowled toward the passthrough, as if something in the port was to blame. Like you said earlier, he’ll just have to wait it out.

  How long will it take? Iridian asked her.

  Weeks.

  “Are you two secretly talking?” Pel whispered. “Because you’re staring at each other again.”

  “It’s not a secret if you whine about it!” Adda hissed. “We’re allowed to stare, anyway. She has beautiful eyes.”

  Iridian wrapped an arm around Adda’s waist. “Adda’s still figuring out how we’ll get that certificate for her implant, and Biometallic might still come through with a fix for her. While we’re waiting on them, I want to resupply. Wiley, Rio, since you know what to look for, I could use your help with that. And if we have to go back to Biometallic 1, I really want a shield.”

  Rio nodded. “I haven’t got anything better to do.”

  “Gods, I hope we can afford patch kits this time,” said Wiley.

  “Who will watch Noor?” asked Adda.

  “Does he even need watching?” Pel asked. “I mean, I can’t see him now.”

  “Yes,” said Adda, at the same time Iridian said, “Yeah.” Adda nodded to Iridian and gave her a go ahead wave of her upturned palm. She did that when she thought she and Iridian were about to make the same point and Iridian would make it more effectively. “He’s a thief, remember? That means he’s good with locks.”

  “Not my locks,” said Gavran from the bridge. “Nobody opens Mayhem’s doors without my say-so.” It was his ship, so he’d know, and he’d have a lot to lose if he was wrong. Maybe Iridian was getting paranoid.

  “Pel, Adda, Wiley, stay here and help Gavran with . . .” Iridian paused. If Noor found a way out of his cabin, he’d run Pel over on his way to the generator in the water treatment plant. Iridian was counting on Gavran to stop Noor, if it came to that. She turned toward the bridge. “What the hell do you do while you’re docked?”

  “Used to be, looked for my brother. Searching for family’s a full-time job.” Gavran sighed and turned his gaze toward some numbers projected above the bridge console. “Now, maintenance, keeping up with whatever
needs upkeep. Catching up on news and stories I’ve missed. Chasing off thieves, when they interrupt the facts and fiction. Not so much thievery here at the dock, but people go out into stationspace, so it’s not none.”

  “Got it,” said Iridian. “Help Gavran keep thieves off the hull.” She held her breath to stop herself from laughing at the image of Pel donning an enviro suit to defend the Mayhem in stationspace.

  * * *

  Before the ITA took it off her on Ceres, Iridian had carried a collapsible personal shield everywhere. The best version of the pattern she’d designed to print it was on her old comp, which the ITA still had. Iridian had spent the return trip from Biometallic 1 revising backup schematics Adda had found. They were good enough to convert to printer patterns. Iridian would make any changes she had time for while she assembled the pieces.

  Most of the supplies needed to make the shield were easy to come by, but she needed more mech-ex graphene. It was what kept the shield light and effective, so swapping it out with another material would require a prototyping cycle she had no time or money for. Iridian lost more time walking past sixteen scrap dealers selling partial spools of stuff labeled as mech-ex graphene that was, half the time, not even graphene, let alone a mech-ex composite.

  “Could you melt something down if you found it?” Rio asked. Wiley was buying patch kits for their suits, finally, along with some other supplies that shouldn’t require a physical confrontation to get. Even with Iridian’s barely functional helmet, both women were wearing much more armor than Wiley had left the Mayhem in.

  Iridian shrugged. “It’s possible, but I wouldn’t try it myself. When it’s already shaped, it’s hard to tell what else is mixed in there. Also, it changes composition with heat if you’re not careful. It can get brittle, which is about the last thing I want in a shield. At a manufacturing plant you’d just put some scrap in the machine and let a bot recycle it, but here? No thanks.”

  They eventually found something Iridian was almost positive was mech-ex graphene, on a partially used spool. It looked like there’d be enough for a shield if she didn’t make any mistakes during the build. “Really glad to have your help here,” Iridian said as Rio stopped the spool from rolling in front of a cargo carrier for the second time since they’d bought it. Even with the suit arms taking some of the weight, Iridian was loaded down with smaller spools and parts she’d need for the shield, and she didn’t have hands to keep the large spool on track too. Rio had her hands free, having already threatened one would-be thief until he changed his mind and ran away.

  The public printers were all guarded by various small armed groups that charged for printing. People had lined up around the one in the port, but one past the elevator to the temple had no crowd and only five people Pel’s age, armed with knives and maybe a dart gun. They watched Iridian and Rio approach with insolent indifference to the amount of armor the women wore.

  “All right.” Iridian set her stack of parts and spools down, careful not to dent the filament. That’d cause printing errors. “Here’s the deal. I spent all my money on this shit, and I’ve got practically none for you.”

  “Then no print!” One of the jerks was sitting on the printer housing, grinning down at her.

  “Or . . .” Iridian grabbed the jerk’s ankle and pulled him off the printer. He yelped as he fell, and the other four drew blades. Iridian knelt on one of his arms and didn’t even feel the armor digging into his bare flesh as she brought her knife down millimeters from his eye. “You can all back off, and we don’t have to blind any of you.”

  “Fuck this,” said one of the older ones clustered around the printer. The people still standing backed away. A few sheathed their knives. “Pay what you can, yeah?”

  Iridian sheathed her knife and pulled the guy she’d knocked down back to his feet. “Thanks. I have better things to do with my day than cleaning blood out of my gloves.”

  * * *

  The pieces printed and were loaded into boxes, which Iridian stacked in her arms. Now she needed someplace to put them together. The temple was on the way back to the Mayhem, and Shingetsu knew just about everything there was to know about Yăo, so she’d know where to find tools Iridian could borrow.

  The hem of Shingetsu’s red robe swished along the floor tiles after one of the other religious people had found her for Iridian and Rio. “Hello again, Shieldrunners,” she said, although her expression suggested that their presence was an alarming inconvenience.

  Iridian raised her chin to speak over the stacked shield parts she carried. “Where’s a stocked workshop I can use? I’ve got a project to assemble.”

  “I see that,” said Shingetsu. “Well. When we need something assembled, we take it to the Apostolovs in Dock 33.”

  “What’re Apostolovs?” asked Rio.

  “They’re a family,” Shingetsu explained. “The parents and grandmother are all excellent technicians. I’m not sure what their background was before they came here. Their oldest is making a great deal of progress too. Just don’t bring any harm to them. I don’t need to know the nature of your project, but—”

  “It’s safe,” Iridian assured her. “No electricity, nothing explosive. Hell, it’s even legal, most places.”

  Shingetsu’s face relaxed into the first true smile she’d given them since they arrived. “Good.”

  In the port mod, they met a gruff older woman, two younger ones, and four kids. One was a teenager and the rest of them had to be under ten. Two little ones had some color in their skin, but the rest of the family was bone white beneath a uniform layer of grease and grit. Iridian haggled for workshop time while Rio played with the kids.

  Children were fascinated by how big Rio was, and Rio loved to get down on the floor with them, even in full armor. These kids called their parents “Mama Yuliya” and “Mama Dionne.” How, Iridian wondered, would “Mama Adda” and “Mama Iridian” sound? Difficult, probably. Kids had trouble saying Iridian’s name. Besides, at the rate she and Adda kept running from disaster to disaster, there was no way they’d be able to do right by kids. On Vesta, under Captain Sloane, they might’ve managed it.

  She shook the daydream out of her head and got to work. If they’d found a way onto Björn’s expedition, they’d have had time to plan for a family of their own while they kept scientific equipment running in a brand-new solar system. Iridian had even downloaded troubleshooting material and schematics for spectrometry equipment, imaging equipment, and astronomy drones. She might still look them over after she got off this station with its damned CO2 headaches.

  Since she’d found the damaged components in her helmet during the trip back from Biometallic 1, that didn’t take long to fix. Once she confirmed that the cheap components wouldn’t try to light her on fire again, she started on the shield, and a couple of hours and several heavy test thumps later, Iridian was satisfied with that too. In a workshop of her own, she’d have taken time to figure out why the new shield didn’t shake her whole arm when she deployed it from its collapsed configuration the way her old one had. Maybe the mechanism in the original model had been overbuilt, or maybe she’d slowed this model down a little, or the lock wasn’t locking right . . . Unfortunately, she’d used almost all the workshop time she could afford.

  “Cool,” said a voice from behind her. The oldest Apostolov child was staring with frank appreciation at the expanded shield in Iridian’s hand.

  Iridian grinned. “Yeah. I gave your grandma a copy of the plans. Make your own, if you like it.”

  “Yeah,” the kid said. “I want to.” Her eyes looked so big, Iridian realized, because the rest of her was too small. The whole family was too thin, but on this one it stood out. Iridian discreetly took her last expired MRE out of her pants pocket and left it on the workbench she’d been using.

  Iridian was showing the kid, whose name turned out to be Phoenix, how to test each panel of the shield for flaws when Adda’s subvocalized whisper said, Noor got out. We need help.

  CHAPTE
R 23 Days until launch: 21

  On our way, Iridian subvocalized over the implanted comms. She said something else, too, but Adda missed it because Wiley and Gavran were fighting to hold Noor down just outside the Mayhem’s passthrough. In the main cabin, Pel sat on the floor, bleeding heavily from a deep cut at the junction of his neck and shoulder. After Noor had gotten out of the guest cabin, he’d taken Pel’s knife and run out of the ship, attacking anyone who got in his way.

  Since the ship hadn’t been swarmed by Mairie’s Odin Razum gang, Casey was still relying on Noor and intermittent messages through drones to exert its will on Yăo Station. At some point Casey would disconnect itself from the Patchwork long enough to subsume Mairie. Either it hadn’t found a way to get Galilean shielding installed to protect its ship from the unique conditions around Jupiter, or it was still unwilling to disrupt its flow of information. While Noor had been locked in the residential cabin, he and Casey’s influence had been contained together.

  Pel’s health was her immediate concern, though. In the residential cabin Noor had just broken out of, Adda pulled a spare shirt out of a drawer in the wall and folded it until it was the size of the cut in Pel’s shoulder. When she pressed down, the fabric started soaking up blood and Pel said, “Ow, ow, ow” in her ear.

  “Sorry,” Adda said. Outside, people were shouting, and it wasn’t just the crew’s voices. Their neighbors had come to see what was happening.

  Pel squirmed, but Adda held him down with pressure on his wounded shoulder. “We can’t just sit here!” Pel said.

  The struggle had moved away from the passthrough and out of Adda’s view. “Yes, we can. That’s exactly what we can do. Iridian and Rio are coming.” Iridian would know what to do.