“Just ballpark me. Don’t bother with the orbital adjustments. Say we miss by an hour, what then? How much longer will the transit take? A couple hours, days?”
“Years.”
“Shit.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“With the evac pods…”
“My current systems will be stable until the three-fourths mark of our journey to Atrux, I will then have to power down my personality systems and anything not related to basic autopiloting and life-support functions. I cannot guarantee I will come back online if the window is sufficiently stretched.”
“You might die.”
Pause. “Yes.”
But Tomas would definitely die if they set out as-is. “Understood. Set course for Farion, then, we’ve wasted enough time dallying around here. I’ll go crack the news to Tomas, and see if he has any idea where the evac pods might be hiding on that station.”
She pressed a hand against the wall. “Don’t worry, Bero. I’ll scrub if we cut things too close. I won’t gamble your existence like that.”
“But you will gamble his?”
“Not exactly. I’ll find a way.” Just because they only had the makings of one pod didn’t mean she had to be the one to go into it, but she didn’t say that. For all she knew Bero would flip his shit and jettison Tomas at the mere thought of Sanda allowing him to take her place. For a spaceship, he could be awfully clingy. Kind of reminded her of an old girlfriend she’d had once, back in basic training. She really hoped this would end up better than that relationship had.
“Where is our spymaster, anyway?”
“In his cabin. I have only allowed him access to the mess and his private rooms.”
She snorted a laugh. “He must love that.”
“He understood, after I explained that I was uncomfortable opening any doors for him you had not first authorized.”
She recalled opening the research lab’s door to find Kenwick’s dead eyes staring at her, and wished she’d been a little less cavalier in her own door-opening adventures during her first few days on Bero. That sight had been a shock she’d never be able to scrub from her mind. The head may be gone, but that place still gave her the creeps. And was probably just the place to knock Tomas off balance, to see what expressions snuck onto his face when he was unsettled.
“Where’s Grippy?”
“Dismantling Tomas’s evac pod and testing the viability of its components. The hull is in better shape than yours, the benefits of being planted in place and not the product of a railgun strike. But the foam is depleted, as expected.”
“Never thought I’d want more of that crap,” she muttered. Sanda made quick work of readjusting her prosthetic, making sure to powder it properly this time and slap some antiseptic in there, then stepped out into the hall and thumped three times on his door.
“Who is it?”
“Real funny. Open up.”
A scuff of shoes against the floor, and the door dilated. “Hey. Feeling better?”
“Enough. Coldsleep headaches won’t shake, but it’s not so bad. Ignorable during mission time, if it comes to that.”
“Good to know. I felt Bero initiate thrust procedures a while ago. We underway?”
“To Farion? Yes.”
That lopsided grin came back, full force. “Then you believe me.”
She shrugged. “I’m willing to take a look, it’s on the way, and Bero’s convinced we’ll have five hours to perform the EVA. Which means you and I have gotta talk strategy, because I’ve never stepped foot in an Icarion station, and there’s no way you’re going in alone. I need to know what you know. Skills, intel—all of it.”
He inclined his head over his shoulder. “Want to come in?”
“Naw. I got another idea. Follow me.”
He raised his brows, an implicit question, but she only gave him her back in response and started her slow limp down the hall. That leg was really starting to ache. Double benefit of going to the lab, she guessed, she could work on repairs while she drilled Tomas.
“Welcome to Icarion’s research department,” she said, and slapped the door-open button, then stepped aside so he could enter. He must have sensed something in her tone, or her stance, because he crossed that threshold like a man sticking his foot in a piranha tank. Bero brought up the lights. It took Tomas’s eyes a moment to adjust.
It wasn’t the same gruesome display she’d encountered, but Tomas was no idiot. He must have realized the implication of what he was seeing. Must be able to read into the diagrams sketched all over the smartboards, the insidious history in the drawings of chips and skulls and nervous systems. The pillar that had held Kenwick’s head was empty, its bulk draped in a tarp Sanda had scrounged up out of one of the ship’s many cabinets, but its meaning was clear enough. Something important had been displayed there. Didn’t take a huge leap of logic to figure out what that had been.
“Oh,” he said.
She shuffled in after him. The ache spreading up her leg made her wish for Grippy to hold on to. “Yeah. This is what Icarion was up to on their state-of-the-art ship. Splitting my people open and trying to piece them back together to figure out how they worked.” She turned a pointed stare on him and arched a brow. “Think you would have uncovered this, in the course of your work?”
A professional distance masked his face, tension fading from his jaw as he surveyed the lab anew. “Maybe. I certainly would have tripped over it, considering The Light of Berossus results from their interstellar research. But I can’t say if I would have followed up on it. I would have reported it to my superiors, then waited for instruction.”
She had him on that perfect precipice between professionalism and distaste, the reality of what he might have had to research staring him dead in the face, and his personal disgust so palpable he was practically a caricature of himself. She aimed to put him on the defensive, and nudged.
“And would your superiors make you get involved, too? Are they that hungry for information to sell that they’d endorse your involvement in this?”
He stiffened. Point, match. “We’re just observers and information brokers.”
“Observers? Please. If they asked you to figure out what was going on here you’re telling me Icarion would let you just hang out and watch? You’d be involved, if you were doing your job properly.”
“Involvement is not endorsement,” he snapped.
“Not exactly a condemnation, either. Who would they sell the intel to? You said this was a fishing expedition, sniffing around a hint of chum in the water, no buyer lined up. Seems a lot of expense and trouble to go to on a hunch. I wonder if your superiors had knowledge of what was going on here. I wonder if they were planning on using it themselves to do some advanced snooping on Prime Keepers. Cracking the Keeper chips would be a huge victory for an organization like the Nazca, wouldn’t it?”
His nostrils flared. The tendons of his jaw jumped, hands stuffed into the slit pockets of his jumpsuit. Then he grinned, blinked once, and shook his head with a soft chuckle. He tilted his head to look at her, sweeping her toe to head with admiring eyes.
“Oh. You’re good, Sanda. Got me worked up nice and tight. You could have been a pretty nasty asset for the Nazca yourself, you know. First-class emotional manipulation right there.”
“Can’t distract me with flattery, Tomas. It’s just you, me, and Bero here. Educated guess—do you think this is what they really sent you after?”
He turned away from her to take in the lab once more, pursed his lips, and nodded to himself. “I honestly don’t know. But the second I reported it, you can bet your ass this’d be my new objective.”
“And now?”
“Now? Now it’s irrelevant. By the time we make it to Atrux, there might not even be a Nazca. Or Prime, for that matter. Societies don’t sit still, and two hundred years is a lot of time for development. Moore’s law may be way out of date, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change.” He paused and gave her a
not-so-subtle side-eye. “I’m in this just as deep as you are. Atrux is a good choice for its proximity, but it’s also a hell of a risk. Small system, right? Not a lot of export going on there. Could be all dried up by the time we arrive. It’s only a gate jump from Ada. It could be blown to bits, too.”
She winced. “I don’t see another option.”
“Neither do I.” He laced his fingers together and cracked them outward. “You wanted to hear what I know? Then we’d better get to work.”
CHAPTER 27
PRIME STANDARD YEAR 3771
THE USEFULNESS OF SPIES
Turned out, Tomas knew a whole hell of a lot more than she’d expected. He gathered tablets and spread them across the table like a debris field, pulled up any old Icarion station schematic Bero had kicking around in that big brain of his, and made a lot of educated guesses.
“It’s an old spoke-style tube prefab. Really basic, really efficient. No telling what they stashed in each spoke, not without getting eyes on it, but when I was pulling research for this mission, the station caught my eye. It seemed like history an Icarion comms man should know about, right?”
“I’m curious, spymaster. How were you going to convince them you were on their side?”
His chest puffed out and he grinned a little. “Easy. Tell them exactly what I was. They were hiring in specialists to overhaul their systems and weed out leaks or redundancies. They needed an offworlder for that. A retired spec ops man fit the bill perfectly.”
“Not so retired, though.”
He shrugged. “Them’s the business. Anyway, this station’s got nine spokes of about six hundred fifty-seven cubic meters total volume, shouldn’t be too bad to cover in five hours, including ingress and egress. The lifepacks on this ship designed for that kind of time?”
“Yeah. High-end recyclers. We could be out there four days without pushing the line.”
“Oh, that’s gotta smell great.”
“Behold the glamor of space travel. Bero, can you mock up a map for our HUDs, update it as we go so we don’t miss a spot?”
“I will begin constructing the program now.”
“Thanks.”
“Bero, got anything for capture?” Tomas asked, glancing around the lab with a critical eye. She hadn’t cleaned it since she’d taken it over, and it looked like a bunch of rabid teens had been digging around for parts for their science project. In her dash to get the prosthetic handled, she’d left tools strewn across the tables, drawers hanging half out. Bad form on a space vehicle of any kind, worse because she’d been a sergeant and should know better. Some things lost their urgency when you thought you were the last one left alive in a whole star system.
She met his critical gaze with a hard stare, and he cracked a little smile, like he’d glimpsed the real Sanda beneath the hard veneer and was charmed. Their gazes stuck a little too long. She couldn’t help it; the way his eyes crinkled at the corners was devastating. Tomas cleared his throat and looked back to his schematics.
“We find some pods, we’ll have to vent them out, then grab them. Could add a lot of time.”
“No problem. Bero’s got two robotic arms. Limited reach, they’re supposed to be for maintenance and small vehicle capture, but we can jet what we want within range for Bero to snag. Can you handle bringing things on board while we rummage, Bero?”
“How do you think I retrieved you, Sanda?”
“I saw those dings on my pod.”
Huff. “They were already there.”
Tomas frowned at his tablet. “You got canned during the Battle of Dralee, right?”
“That’s right. And I assume your pod’s date was correct—you got packed up later?”
He nodded. “A week after the first bombardment, to be exact. I wish it’d been later. If I’d seen a little more of this system, then we might have a clearer idea of any resources out there we could use. I guess that’s why no one came to pick me up. Icarions must have gotten jumpy about security. Poor luck for me.”
“I was there,” Bero said. “I was conscious.”
Tomas actually winced. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“You’re not. But I’m not angry with you. Did they have personality-emergent AIs where you come from?”
“No. The closest we use are voice packs for secretarial-type interfaces. Smarthouses, front desks, things like that. Nothing with the ability to evolve, or store its own memories. It’s, uh.” He shifted. “Kinda taboo, on my homeworld.”
“And your feelings on the matter?”
“Hey, if I’ve got the right to rub a couple of neurons together to make up my personality, no reason why you shouldn’t be able to. I don’t see the point in dumping you in a spaceship, but, well, I’m glad you’re here.”
“It’s size,” Sanda interjected. “Isn’t it? You need the storage space, the cooling. Ships and stations are perfect for personality-emergent AIs, as they’ve got a ton of natural heat sink around them at all times.”
“That’s correct,” Bero said. Tomas raised his brows fractionally in interest. “Icarion studies also proved a fifty percent reduction in accidents when captains could speak with their ship as equals. Being able to express what’s wrong with a ship in human terms is, apparently, a great deal more compelling to you than a readout of status and facts.”
“Nothing beats a couple hundred thousand years of evolution, eh?” Tomas grinned. “We can have all the data in the world, but talking through it makes for better decisions. They trained us that way in the Nazca, too. Data is just leverage to get people talking, that’s when you discover the truth.”
“Cute,” Sanda said.
He held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t say it was a nice method, just a method. Believe me, there are nastier ways to gather facts.”
“You trained in those, too?”
He flushed. She wondered if the embarrassment was calculated. How much of her personality had he already parsed? She couldn’t help but wonder just what he’d pieced together from listening to her talk. Those wrinkles around his eyes weren’t so cute all of a sudden. She had to remember who she was dealing with, not get tangled up in things like hormones and proximity.
“Yes. Though I prefer a subtler approach if possible.”
“Not helping your case much, there.”
“I’m not defending myself. You wanted to know what I know, and this is it.”
“Some things aren’t worth knowing.”
Grippy chose that moment to come squeaking into the room. Sanda wondered if Bero had put him up to it. That bot may have its own limited brainpower, but she knew full well it was in constant contact with Bero. His treads thrummed along on the metal floor as he came to a stop beside her and, without direction, offered his gripping hand.
“What a gentleman,” she mused.
“What,” Tomas said, “is that?”
“This is Grippy, Bero’s maintenance bot. Got a brain like a walnut, but he’s got some pretty slick intuition algorithms. Bero can boss him around, and he’s good at learning on his own. Must have noticed my leg damage.” She nodded to the dent in her calf. “He’s how I got around before I knocked this up. Don’t your people use repair bots?”
“Sure, but they’re about the size of crabs and scuttle around like roaches. Never liked the things. Grippy’s kinda cute, though.”
She grinned as if he’d complimented her pet dog. “Yeah, check this out.”
She snagged a stylus from the desk and held it at eye level for Grippy, just in front of his camera and sonar panel. “Grippy. See this?”
A double beep for yes.
“Good. Now fetch!” She chucked the stylus across the room. Grippy paused a moment, listening to it clatter, then wheeled around and set off at his fastest pace. His grip arm was a bit too bulky, so he took a couple of tries to snag the stylus, but he came back to her with it held out triumphantly.
“Good job!” She took the stylus and gave him a pat on the chassis. He beeped happily.
Tomas burst out laughing. “How long did it take you to teach him that?”
“Couple of days. He’s got a rewards system path, but it took me a while to figure out how to work with it.”
“I guess you had the time.”
“Ugh. You’re not kidding. Jokes aside, Cepko, this is your future, too. I hope you’re good at keeping yourself entertained, because even with two of us on this trip it’s going to get real boring. We’ll probably even pick fights with each other, and Bero, just for the sake of having something different to do.”
“Nazca,” he said, and tapped the side of his temple. “I’ve been trained to be amenable in all situations. This will be a strain, I’m sure, but I can adjust my personality to be less abrasive to yours.”
“See what I mean? I want to punch you already.”
His eyes widened. “Did I offend? I didn’t mean—”
“Oh no, don’t take the nice guy track with me. Wrong fucking path.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. I don’t trust you, and I don’t like all this spy shit. Telling me you can mold your personality to meet mine isn’t exactly a check in your favor, got it? Truest way for us to get along is to keep on being straight. No bullshit. Just, be yourself, if you remember what that’s like.”
That hit. He leaned back, sucked in his cheeks, and poked absently at the schematic on the tablet nearest his hand. It didn’t have any new information for him, he just needed something to do. Something to fiddle with when he—the real him—became uncomfortable.
“You might regret that request.”
“Don’t play dark-and-mysterious with me. There’s just us here for a long, long time. And sure, coldsleep is going to take up most of that.” She rubbed the back of her head. “But we’re going to be awake quite awhile, too. Popping up every so often to make system checks, refresh the pods, and make sure our muscles don’t slough clear off our bodies. You were a spy. Mister Dangerous. I get it. But, Tomas, what are you spying on here?”
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