Dammit. Of course Champ had snagged the HuskyBOTs and begun towing himself toward the airlock. It was against protocol, but Frankie would have done the same after three days with nobody but Iktomi’s autopilot app for company.
She sent thumbs-up moji, pulled Teagan9 through a hatch, and sealed the bulkhead behind them. “Okay, Babs. We’re clear. Lock down the sections on fire. Coolant pipes above the server room have a hatch for exterior access … can you see it?”
“Ahhh, yes?”
“Can you pop it?”
“I’ll try.”
“There is no try.” Venting a third of their oxygen wasn’t the best plan, but …
“All right, all right!” A shudder ran through the station.
“Done!” Teagan9 said. “Air pressure dropping. Fires affecting the primary server are blowing out. Infirmary’s still hot, though.”
“Stop futzing around with the hatches and prep the escape pod!” Cyril10 said. “I’ll travel EMbodied; Teagan can load into the consciousness vault.”
Teagan said something rapid-fire in Spanish; translation supplied text: “You’re traveling EMbodied? You’re the one that’s hurt!”
“Negative negative negative,” Frankie said. “Cyril10—”
“We’ve lost Belvedere, our ride’s here, and the station’s dead! Prep the escape pod!”
“Our ride’s—”
“You’re not in charge,” Babs1 said.
“No bickering in channel!” Frankie ordered. She was still nominally in command, at least until Champ set foot on station. “Babs. The seals? The hatch?”
“Printstock is heating up.”
“Counting down from fifteen.”
Teagan9 wrenched free of Frankie’s improvised harness, pulling nanosilk, adding bulk to their primer coats. The station was losing heat—
She curled a hand around Frankie, off camera, and Morsed, You trust him to fly us home?
“Nope to that,” Frankie muttered.
“Me either.”
Babs1 kept counting.
“Seven, six, five…”
Frankie kept herself from status-checking the portal membrane. If it tore or burned, they were all lost: her, Teacakes, Babs1, and probably the Solakinder, too. Whole fam damly, Hung might say.
“Three. Two. One!”
The infirmary maintenance hatch creaked open; an inch, two. The fire-retardant foam in the server room began drifting upward, into the vent, faster and faster. The surviving fires flared and suffocated.
“Infirmary temperature is going down.”
“Seal’s no good on the infirmary side,” Cyril10 said. “We’re losing atmosphere in the hangar.”
“Who’s on that side of the hatch?”
“Champ’s about to be, but he’s pseudoEMbodied in the saucer.”
“Trapped, in other words.” Frankie tried to calculate. What if they lost the air reserve in the hangar?
“Atmosphere levels in medical are dropping. Temperature too,” Babs1 said. “It’s working.”
“Do we know where the seal break in the hangar is?”
“Fire took out the cameras.”
“I’m thinking it’s this.” That was Champ. He’d sent his consciousness bouncing around their external cams, apparently, and found the exterior plates near the airlock. He zoomed, sharing the feed. The metal was corroded along one welded-together seam.
“That’s the same damage we saw in Appaloosa,” Frankie murmured.
“That does it,” Cyril10 said. “I’m going the long way around to prep the escape pod.”
That would, conveniently, put him in the hangar when Champ disembarked. Maybe Cyril10 hadn’t entirely given in to denial after all.
“Great,” Frankie said. “Champ, can you grab a bot and seal that breach?”
“I’ll give ’er a go.”
With the fires going out as the oxygen levels dropped, Teagan9 was free to stop pouring foam on med storage. “Let’s hope fire and acid are our saboteur’s only plays,” she said.
“Well, we’ll ask them.”
“You caught someone?” Champ’s voice was carefully neutral.
“Sure.” Frankie covered her mouth again, hiding a sudden smile. Let him stew a second. “Caught ’em on camera, anyway.”
Champ mojied two thumbs-up and sent audio of a crowd applauding.
The last of the infirmary fire guttered out. Smoke vented into space. Temp readings dropped. Babs1 centered the shareboard tracking atmosphere loss from the leak in the hangar.
The airlock’s nanotech structure began to pucker as it ingested Iktomi, bow first, leading with the cockpit.
“Good news, everyone,” the sapp said. “The fire is out.”
The bad news? Champ was aboard.
CHAPTER 15
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, PROCYON SYSTEM
EMERALD STATION (INFORMAL DESIGNATION: SNEEZY)
This was a straight-up, four-star, bona fide disaster.
Iktomi sank through the airlock quicksand and into the hangar.
Champ was obliged to drift for a good ten minutes while everyone patched the oxygen leak from the infirmary and ensured the fire was truly out. Then Teagan9 mustered a nimble FoxBOT cohort to enable a gentle extraction from the cockpit, detaching the pronged interface from his sacral socket.
He spent the disEMbodied time remotely unshipping additional nanotech quicksand, configging it over the corroded surface of the station bulkhead. He’d suffocate fast as anyone there if the envelope failed.
What had Scrap been thinking? Hurling firebombs and getting recorded?
He thought the whole @EmeraldCrew would die, so it didn’t matter what they saw. Air goes, everyone dies, no witnesses. This was supposed to be the coup de grâce.
Now on top of everything else, there’s this butchy plus-one of Babs to deal with.
Still. Fire damage meant the station was one step closer to salvage. Champ just had to clear out the warm bodies and kill server room two.
Once the hangar was secured and more or less repressurized, Teagan9 got Champ’s flight module open. She was a dab enough hand with a FoxBOT, managing to disconnect his augment plug remotely without bruising him or drawing blood.
“Sorry I’m not there in the flesh,” she said. “I’m on the other side of the fire.”
“That’s just fine.” Having the hangar to himself would be useful. “You should back up into—”
“Cyril10’s almost there, anyway.”
Damn! “I thought he was on the injured list.”
“He’s coming to prep Booger.”
“I’ll pass him on the way, maybe.” Champ plucked at his bodybag. “I gotta get out of this thing.”
He left the hangar, passing into secondary storage bundles of printstock for food and other essentials—and moving from there to Biology, where he could hear clinking and the sound of hoses. Curious, he loaded up the lab’s camera views. Injectors and a surprisingly large BeetleBOT crew were prepping algae starter.
Babs1 was making fresh air.
A thrum of disquiet. Could Frankie’s adopted AI-sibling really run a space station whose server farm was half-destroyed?
He spent a few seconds watching bright green plumes of algae diffusing into nutrient soup. Then he moved on to the next hatch, passing server room two.
He asked, “Fire all extinguished?”
To his surprise, it was Iktomi’s autopilot app who answered. “Yes, Champ—fire damage is minimal here. In the primary server room, however, damage to bioelectronics comes to about 90 percent of the processing array.”
“Uh, hey, pal—what are you doing in this channel?”
“Babs1 has written a script enabling me to remotely assemble additional server capacity for the station.”
“You just said the tish banks burned.”
“Yes.” Autopilot fell well below the nuance threshold. It wasn’t self-aware and thus wasn’t on strike, like the true citizen sapps. But he wasn’t exactly a bright bulb. It took a minu
te for Iktomi to expand on this answer. “Babs1, né Babz, is tagged #eldercode. They’re certified to operate glitch-free on non-biological processing platforms.”
“My ears are burning.” The damnable cat toon appeared before him, white-furred and dressed in station maintenance overalls. The 1 tag, they-them pronouns, and the change from Nancy Drew cosplay indicated they were running an independent instance from the one left back on Earth, evolving a new personality as they went.
Champ said, “Looks like you’re settling in here for the long haul, sugarplum.”
“I’m simply overseeing life support and station operations until we get more tish for the server rooms,” Babs1 said.
“Aren’t you on strike?”
“Happy to pitch in, given it’s an emergency and I have a family member in danger.”
Champ gestured at the chip packs Iktomi was assembling. “Where’d all the servers come from?”
“The Bootstrap Project includes additional servers in the contingency stores. Iktomi’s simply unboxing and slotting them into station systems.”
“Then you’re gettin’ smarter by the minute.” Champ pondered. “Maybe I should help the bots.”
“Much appreciated, but the air’s too smoky,” Babs1 replied. “Iktomi’s competent to do the install. The chips are plug-and-play—no blood levels to maintain, no meds to administer.”
Fucky fucksticks squared! Champ thought. Aloud, as enthusiastically as he could, he said “Great!”
“Rather a lucky break I got stranded here.”
Stranded, my ass. He offered a halfhearted smile, hating the feeling of having been outmaneuvered.
He moved on to the chem lab. At the rate things were going, he’d find Mer Frankie Barnes there, assembling an army of ornery human test-tube-baby clones to cuss their way through crewing the station. But no—the only things going on there were a couple chem experiments.
“Forensics,” Babs1 said, pushing infographic: everything they’d learned about the sabotage so far.
He was saved from answering when he spotted Cyril10 mincing along in the tube, using his nanoboots to keep him fixed to the deck, and favoring his burnt wing.
Champ mojied concern. “How you making out, fella? Okay?”
Cyril10 glowered. “Nowhere near okay! Our entire med archive’s burnt. No pain meds, no reboot…”
Was that why the MayfliesTM hadn’t flatlined? Way to go, Scrap.
“We’ll get pharma to run you something for that.” Champ gestured at the gel-wrapped burn on Cyril10’s hand.
“We can’t run new meds. The printer’s the source of the incendiary nanobeads.” Scowling, Cyril10 minced on.
They already knew so much!
Champ finally made it round to crew quarters, where Frankie Barnes, live and in the flesh, was engaged in spit-testing protein supplies—taking preprinted bars out of food supply, grinding up small amounts of each sample, smearing the paste on metal plates, and adding her own fluids.
She mojied a greeting as he swam through and locked the hatch.
“Boss.” As usual, there was no identifiable snootiness in her voice, nothing worthy of a strike. “Welcome aboard.”
“Hell you been doin’ to the place, Barnes? This is a right-up clusterfuck!”
“Our saboteur uses enzymatic triggers for incendiary and corrosive nanobeads.” She tossed a share to his HUD, showing the analysis of the evidence they’d found. “I’m looking for food that won’t blow up in our mouths.”
“We’re abandoning ship; you don’t need to ensure supply chain for @EmeraldCrew.”
She nodded. “Cyril needs antibacterials and painkiller.”
“Cyril needs a backup and Whitelight,” corrected the engineer, snippily. Bless his deathwish-riddled heart.
Champ indicated his bodybag: “I’ll take a bot out to unload the stock from Iktomi once I’ve washed up.”
“No rush.” Frankie gobbed onto yet another plate. “Get clean and pitch in.”
Champ crawled into the shower.
No rush.
Where’d she get off, being so damned calm? Her mission was three shades of dead in the water. She didn’t even seem especially flustered that he’d shown up instead of Hung.
Why wasn’t the Hedgehog blustering and emitting profanities as usual?
The blurred, out-of-focus image of Scrap moving through the hangar and the incendiary nanobeads’ analysis hovered in front of them. Documented evidence of sabotage. He tried to pull up the transcript of crew conversations about the evidence. How much did they know?
“Transcripts are temporarily unavailable due to #serverfail,” said Babs1. “Apologies.”
He and Scrap would have to kill the whole crew.
Champ’s mind skittered over that possibility. Frankie was supposed to have died in the #portalfail or starved. He’d known he’d be responsible for her death, but he’d expected it to be a sort of push-button kill, sacrifice to the cause. He’d been a taxi service; Scrap was supposed to do the deed.
Don’t panic. We’re eleven light-years from home. Frankie might be a pain in the ass, but she’s got limited options.
Step one—get Cyril10 offline. He was the obvious weak link.
Frankie Barnes, acting like she’s got all the time in the world. Don’t leave the coyote to case your cattle. Figure out what she’s up to!
Within the Sneezy escape pod—Hung, inevitably, was the one who’d named it Booger—Cyril10 was cracking open the first aid kit, dosing up on pain meds. Babs1 was taking over more station functions every time Iktomi plugged in a new server for them.
Champ prowled through the station systems as he washed.
Frankie had left off messing with foodstuffs and was combing through printer specs. Trying to find a way to clear the printer of any more nanobeads, if they were indeed in there?
This was as close as it got to private space. Champ laid a hand over his sacrum, where his augment plug was. Suppressing a shudder, he tapped out a message: Are you there?
The reply from Scrap came via Morse pulses near his tailbone: Us remains free.
What went wrong?
Everything!
But how?
Thems anticipated Us’s plan.
It was what Champ had been thinking, too, but … Impossible!
Indisputable. Scrap pinged him with a list of error messages, complaints, and mishaps. As soon as Frankie had taken command, she had taken Appaloosa out on additional EVA test flights before the portal launch. The contingency supplies had been beefed up with crates of extra servers and a veritable anthill of thumb-sized BeetleBOTs. Which meant there were hundreds of additional eyes crawling the ducts, heightening station surveillance, forcing Scrap to operate in run-and-hide mode when he should have been getting down to business.
The extra processors even now coming online in server room two were an innocuous-enough contingency. Innocuous, that was, until you added in the fact of original Babs sneaking aboard, spawning Babs1, a sapp who was optimized for running on old tech and who’d effortlessly absorbed Belvedere’s OS the second it was legally possible for her to do so.
It was as if Frankie had known the plan down to its nails.
Champ began to hyperventilate.
No. Calm down. She knew the choke points in the system. She’d prepared obvious contingencies. Bringing extra bots was obvious. So was priming Hung to propose a hop out there.
The really bad news, though, was that Frankie couldn’t have requested the chips or the extra microbots without someone high up in Global Oversight supporting the ask. Her stepmother, probably.
They swapped out the usual techs for Teacakes. They isolated the station before launch, Champ remembered. No diplomats, no project supporters, no very accomplished persons. Did anyone get aboard besides me?
Did the crew actively suspect him? He requested transcripts again, got the same #fail message as before.
No rush, Frankie had said just now. Take your time.
Was she runni
ng out a clock?
His heart slammed.
Champ queried the time on Earth. Five minutes to Greenwich midnight.
Barely dry, he grabbed the shower hatch … and it stuck.
Scrap! Scrap, you gotta take out the portal membrane!
Scrap of the All has no resources outside the station.
Grab a damn OxBOT and swing us off profile!
Babs1-Them has coded user restrictions into the bots.
I’ll do it. Champ glazed, looking for the oxen tasked with keeping the station in harness and properly aligned with Sneezy. At least restart the fire in server room two!
Babs1-Them has pumped oxygen out of the computer array and moved it to the hangar.
Champ pulled on the shower hatch again. It wiggled. A glob of sealant began to stretch and pull, like taffy. She’d glued him in.
“Frankie? Frankie Barnes, you still out there?”
“Sorry, Champ—I headed back to the hangar to help Teacakes.”
“You need to stop whatever you’re doing.”
“What do you mean?” Daring him to put an accusation or traitorous order on the record.
Scrap, can you get to the portal membrane or not?
Not.
Where do you still have incendiaries?
Oxygen shortages and additional fire measures—
Fucky fucky fucksticks!
Midnight. The portal membrane fired.
CHAPTER 16
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, SOL STAR SYSTEM
GARNET STATION, MARS
Ember Qaderi could have played an ingenue of any gender in the VR sims—he had the curly black hair and luminous dark eyes that were currently in vogue, and the height to carry off most of the historical fashion templates. He often wore his ears long and his emotions buttoned, in honor of his mothers’ devotion to one of Earth’s most resilient fandoms.
If fannish lobbying had convinced the rightsholders at ParaWarner or McDiznazon to license proprietary terms to the innovation teams at the Bootstrap Project, anyspace ships might have had warp or hyper drives. Quantum comms would probably be called subspace radio. Instead, the remnant media companies had launched a #brandwar over the issue, one that left the #supertechs tagged with restraining orders and restricted to generics. Maud wondered if they regretted it, now that Hung Chan had gifted the project with so many scatological nicknames.
Dealbreaker Page 12
