“That was exciting,” said Captain Sloane drily. Iridian accepted the offered hand up.
“You might’ve mentioned that those spiderbots jump, sir. Captain,” Iridian corrected herself quickly.
“I admit to not anticipating their arrival,” the captain said. “We haven’t seen any in weeks. However, your heroics earned us a few points with our neighbors. And a favor for me.” Sloane winked at Tritheist, who rolled his eyes and turned his back on them. If one of them had explained what they’d bet on and the favors at stake, Iridian hadn’t heard the explanation. They didn’t always invite others to bet on whatever event caught their interest, so Iridian might not have heard about it even if a drone hadn’t just exploded next to her ears.
Louder and mostly to the woman who’d greeted them at the rubble barrier, the captain said, “These are our latest additions, Iridian Nassir and Adda Karpe. Treat them with the same respect you’d give any of my crew.” That resulted in a round of applause, but Iridian nodded in response to the captain’s stern look. She and Adda weren’t part of the crew yet, even if that were implied for the sake of publicity.
After more crew and fugees patted Iridian’s back, the pirates dispersed among the crowd. The fugees were retreating over the clear zone toward a small village of shipping containers hung with tarps. The woman with the chest piece bellowed, “Don’t stand around waiting to get blown up! The safety line’s way back there.” She pointed to the thick red line painted on the floor, and the civilians picked up their pace.
“Reconvene for a farewell to the fallen at Floor Two in three hours,” Captain Sloane shouted after them. The order to move away from the rubble barrier apparently didn’t apply to leaders. The captain, Tritheist, and Major O.D. stood conversing with the woman and another stranger from the fugee camp while the rest of the pirates and fugees walked toward the shipping containers.
Iridian opened her mouth to ask a question, but Adda had already stepped close to and wrapped her arms around Iridian, armor and all. Iridian hugged her back, as gently as the armor allowed. That explosion really must’ve scared her, for her to be this intimate in public. Adda usually felt like everybody was staring at them.
“I’m all right,” Iridian told her. “I say so, Zikri said so.” Iridian’s voice sounded weird to her, but neither Adda nor Pel reacted like there was something wrong with it. She waited until Adda nodded and resumed walking before she asked, “So, what’s so safe about the line, I wonder?”
“That’s the farthest in they’ve seen a drone,” Pel said. “Recently, anyway. Bots used to come all the way to the passthroughs, but they don’t now.” He held up his hands with his palms out to ward off Adda’s questions before they started. “I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I don’t know shit but what they tell me.”
“Have the drones entered the compound before?” Adda asked. “The ZV Group seemed very . . . prepared.”
Pel shook his head. “I told you, we’re pretty safe there. The ZVs train, though. They train for a bunch of different scenarios. I figured it was to keep them from getting bored.”
“No, training during downtime is just smart,” said Iridian. “That’s how the badasses become badasses. Practice.”
Parents came to thank Iridian for saving their kids. San Miguel’s thanks meant the most. It was good to have a ZV soldier solidly on her side, especially one who’d been on the right side of the war. In an ISV protecting those kids would’ve been the obvious choice, criminal negligence if she hadn’t done it. Outside an armored vehicle, it’d been a huge risk she’d taken reflexively. Iridian tucked her hands behind her lower back so the shaking wouldn’t show and returned San Miguel’s watery smile. If she’d had time to think, she still would’ve done it, but . . . Damn, that was ridiculous.
Between the two single-story entrances at either end of the docking bay, a passthrough stood open beneath a red N (“north” in English), C (“north” in Russian), and corresponding Mandarin and Japanese symbols projected onto the wall. Dogs bounded beside their owners, exiting a docked vessel too large to enter the bay. Cats sat atop some of the shipping containers arranged in rows over the empty landing pads. Even ants and roaches skittered through the shadows like normal bugs, not spiderbots. Though the insects were pests, they needed consistent food, water, and atmo to survive. The station and pirate base felt sterile without the occasional bug.
A defense installation stood in front of the open passthrough, complete with a guard tower like the one near the rubble pile and blast walls. The guard was watching Iridian and Adda, not the entrances, and he seemed more curious than suspicious. When he caught Iridian looking, he waved, and she waved back. She wasn’t going to trust some stranger to watch for enemies on her behalf anyway, so it didn’t matter to her that he was bad at his job. Too bad for the fugees, though.
The ZVs could do the job better. “So why are we out on the exterior, instead of staying with these fine folks?” she asked.
Pel sighed. “Yeah, that’d be nice. But AegiSKADA hates us.”
“We must be putting the fugees at risk of a drone attack just by being here,” Adda said quietly.
“That’s what Captain Sloane says,” Pel agreed. “As soon as we can go back, we’ll go.”
At regular intervals along the wall, about the height of the sensor node Adda had tapped behind the wall near the base, crushed sensor node casings hung empty. The AI would be blind here, or near to it. Maybe the guard really didn’t have much to watch.
Several unarmed fugees approached from the shipping-container village, shouting the virtues and prices of various things, mostly data transfers. “We already have access to all of that,” Adda muttered after Iridian shooed a seller away.
“Figured,” Iridian said. “It looks like they’ve got a barter economy, though. If we can’t get messages out reliably, we can’t transfer money out of our accounts. Not that we have money, mind, this is a general ‘we.’ ” Although they weren’t completely destitute, for once. They’d never paid Reis for his part in the hijacking. With luck they’d get a chance to find out if he had next of kin, and with a bit more luck, she and Adda would be able to pay them the dumb bastard’s share.
“I can loan you some,” Pel said. “I’m on the crew, in a limited capacity, so I get paid.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Iridian. “How much?”
He named a figure. She stopped walking. “I must’ve heard you wrong. Getting blown up always fucks with my ears.” He repeated it, smiling like a puppy getting away with something.
“For what?” Adda demanded.
“Hey, I do stuff!” he said. “I fetch and carry, and tell jokes, and recruit now.”
“Captain Sloane didn’t want you to recruit anybody,” said Adda.
“It’s not like they can’t afford it. They’ve got money coming out every orifice.” They walked a few paces in silence, and his expression got gloomier with each step. “The guy who died in the wall walk was a decent one. And I like . . . I liked Kaskade. We’re losing people fast.”
Abrupt shifts in topic seemed to be Pel’s style, and Iridian hadn’t been ready for the impact of remembering the crew members they’d lost in the past few hours. It was awful to lose even one member of your team so suddenly, let alone two. The pirates who knew them well must’ve been having a hell of a day. She swallowed a lump in her throat. “This place is gods-damned dangerous.”
“It’s not usually this bad.” Pel focused on sliding his feet as he walked, probably to keep from tripping, since he started walking normally when Adda looped her arm through his. “Before Xing and her family, we went almost four months without a single person dying. I mean, there were some spiderbots in the station that we ran from, but that usually happens when we go into the station. The ZVs keep practicing what they’d do if something did come into base, but I feel like that was the first time one did.”
Iridian grimaced. “That’ll come back on us, huh.” He nodded gravely. “It’s easy to blame people for what
happens when they take risks you don’t want to take,” she said. “And easier to blame the new people than the leader you admire.”
She almost followed that up with Secessionist cowards by habit, but she kept her mouth shut. Nobody wanted to die badly or sooner than they had to. Captain Sloane wasn’t waiting around for a lucky break that’d let the crew escape, or maybe for the captain, Adda and Iridian were it. Some of the secessionists on the crew, like Major O.D., Six, and probably Zikri, would back Adda and Iridian up. O.D. already did, by keeping Sergeant Natani in line. The others pissed Iridian off by threatening her, and worse, Adda, because they couldn’t think through their limited options. Who they’d fought for didn’t come into that.
Pel sniffed the air. “Hey, is there a beautiful girl with a goldfish tattoo around somewhere?”
A giggle came from behind one of the makeshift tarp-and-shipping-container shelters nearby. “How do you do that?” A girl a year or two younger than Pel turned the corner, smiling beneath a bright orange kerchief. Unlike the ones some female ZVs wore, hers was more decorative than functional. Her low-cut top displayed an iridescent yellow-and-orange goldfish tattoo that shimmered on rich brown skin even in the docking bay’s garish lights. A faint vanilla scent strengthened as she approached.
Pel hugged her as enthusiastically as she hugged him. “Lozzie, this is my sister, Adda, and her girlfriend, Iridian Nassir.”
Lozzie’s eyes bulged. “Oh my gods, Pel, you’re the best.” She gave him a tighter hug and a kiss on the cheek that knocked his glasses crooked, completing his happily bewildered expression. “You two are engineers, right?”
“Mechanical and software.” Iridian pointed to herself, then Adda. It was easier to list their degree concentrations than to explain their real areas of expertise.
“Oh, perfect.” Lozzie beckoned for them to follow her around the shack’s corner without letting go of Pel’s hand. “Our printer’s broken, and we can’t exactly print a new one!”
Adda caught her eye, and Iridian shrugged. Neither of them had spent much time working on printers, but this one was already broken. They couldn’t do much more damage. “We’ll take a look at it.”
Lozzie’s container was one of about fifty scattered in a haphazard row across the length of the docking bay. Three more rows wound between the safety line and the passthrough. More people Pel’s age appeared from among the containers and led him off toward another area of the container village, shouting greetings to him and waving good-bye to Lozzie, who stayed with Iridian and Adda. In addition to the people, Iridian spotted more cats and birds on the periphery. This population was used to stable planetary life. Spacefarers preferred smaller, less mobile pets.
Someone had roped the printer off with red hazard tape, which Lozzie lifted for Iridian to duck under. The fugee watched from well outside the tape while Iridian gingerly pried the printer’s case open and Adda looked for the schematics in the station’s local library. “So are you in love with Pel,” Iridian asked Lozzie while she worked, “or just having fun?” Adda blushed three shades redder and lifted her comp glove for maximum face coverage.
“Oh my gods.” Lozzie giggled. “With Pel, it’s all fun. He doesn’t care where you’re going or where you’ve been! Ask anybody.” It took Iridian a moment to remember what the “where you’re going or where you’ve been” part meant on Mars: he’d fuck anything human and some things that weren’t. The fondness in Lozzie’s voice suggested she was calling Pel “nonjudgmental” in bed rather than the other interpretation, “sexually insatiable.”
Iridian grinned. “With a personality like his, he’s in no place to judge.”
About five seconds after she and Adda got the printer printing without threatening to explode in a toxic particulate cloud, another woman poked her head around the corner of a container. “Hi! Can you help us with an enviro unit?” She angled a thumb toward the passthroughs. The status projections over the bay’s three passthroughs indicated that a ship was connected to every one of them. “Deck Five goes down to two degrees during the night cycle, and we can’t warm it up.”
Several people got out of Iridian’s way to let her look the dock designators over. Sure enough, they were all labeled with the same ship name, the Voorspoed. It was another word for “success, well-being, and prosperity,” according to the translator in her comp. Typical colony ship name. “That’s a mother of a weight to be locked onto a ring station,” she said. The station engines were already spinning Barbary hard to maintain its hypergrav, and they were pushing a whole colony ship around with it.
“Are the Voorspoed’s engines running?” Adda asked the woman trying to get someone to improve the colony ship’s enviro.
The woman shook her head, and Adda and Iridian exchanged appalled glances. Those passthroughs were holding up shockingly well, considering that they’d been hauling the massive colony ship’s bulk around in circles for three years. “We’re afraid the station won’t like it if the engines come on,” the woman explained. By the station, Iridian guessed she meant AegiSKADA. The fugee woman smiled hopefully. “Besides, we want to save power. We’re counting on its enviro if anything happens to this docking bay. Like if drones come, or if the whistling coming from that wall gets louder. Right, Rashehd?” The fugee looked to a man standing behind her.
“That ship isn’t technically on the station,” Adda observed quietly.
It took Iridian a moment to make the connection that Adda had. “Like Captain Sloane’s base. So drones don’t go in there, do they?”
Rashehd shook his bearded head. “They haven’t so far.”
“Good point.” The pirates had thought the base was outside AegiSKADA’s area of influence, before the drone blew up one of the bunkhouses. Iridian was looking forward to reaching a safer place herself, but she’d be happier to send Adda there instead. She borrowed Velcro strips and strapped her armored gloves to her forearms since the suit’s storage compartments were still full of tools, gave Adda a kiss, and let her follow the woman into the Voorspoed. The guy named Rashehd led Iridian to the probable atmo leak.
Hours later a crowd of people were watching everything she did, waiting for their turn to ask for help. Without an understanding of the machines keeping them alive, they lived in a state of low-grade terror that something would break and kill them all. Iridian restrained herself from commenting on the possibilities while she worked. These poor people wouldn’t get the joke. Besides, some of the enviro system malfunctions were the well, this would’ve surprised you when you stopped breathing and didn’t know why, laugh-or-you’ll-cry sort of humor.
Maybe Iridian’s service here would reinforce her and Adda’s continued value as crew, even after Adda got the AI to stop attacking them. The pirates could just as easily see her willingness to do extra work with no promise of reward as a weakness to exploit. The crew had four or five people who could be offering their own technical skills, after all, and Iridian hadn’t seen any of them fixing printers and enviro controls. Maybe she was being paranoid. Captain Sloane acknowledged her and Adda’s value, and the captain’s assessment was the important one.
A man with pale skin and red hair he might’ve been born with pushed through the crowd. “Hey, I’m Kyr. My wife Suhaila . . .” Here he trailed off to allow for whoops and cheers from the fugees. A grin spread over Iridian’s face. What was all this about? It seemed safe enough. And she’d love to meet the host of the Fugee News feed she and Adda had listened to.
“Suhaila Al-Mudari . . .” One last whoop interrupted him, and he gave the person a quick wave of a pale hand. “Would like to invite you to speak with her on a live broadcast of Fugee News.” This time the cheers went on for at least ten seconds, which gave Iridian time to hand a comp back to its owner. If the owner could get a new part printed, someone could install it later.
After the cheers died down, Iridian said, “I’d love to!” Applause, to which she bowed. “I’ve got to meet Captain Sloane on the second floor somewhere later, thoug
h. Can my girlfriend come too?”
The listening fugees laughed along with Kyr. “Floor Two, you mean.”
“That’s what I said.”
“The bar’s called Floor Two. Long story about the name. That’s where the crew always meets. You can see the antenna from here.” Kyr pointed. Red and orange strips of tape hung from the antenna, which rose above the containers around it. “And yes, Suhaila would love to talk to Adda. Ask any fugee where to find WFUG!” He said each letter, but Iridian bit her lip while tapping a message to Adda to avoid saying the phonetic pronunciation aloud.
As they walked through the fugees’ colony ship, Iridian had to admire what they’d done with the place. Anything not required to keep the ship airtight had been rearranged to suit mobile, awake residents with stable grav. The company name plastered all over the fittings was Crowne, with a predictable crown logo.
More children scampered around the ship than in the docking bay, despite what felt like a late local time. Iridian, with armored pockets containing nothing of value, was as comfortable watching them as they seemed staring at her. “You don’t get many visitors, do you?”
Kyr quirked an eyebrow. “Aside from Sloane’s crew every few months, no. Which reminds me, if there’s time, Suhaila will cue a plea for aid from Earth or the colonies, wherever she thinks you have the most pull. A censored version goes out with the ships every few months.”
“Um, it’d be better if my name and face weren’t broadcast to NEU law enforcement.” The secessionist “governments” stayed in the asteroid belt and the outer planets, but the Near Earth Union might be mad or bureaucratic enough to come after her.
Kyr gave her a disappointed frown, but she wouldn’t offer to help in a way that’d bring trouble for the crew once they all got off the station. Hell, getting everybody off the station should be help enough. “The censor can make you a generic NEU ex-soldier, I guess.” He opened a door into what looked like a large closet lined with mattresses. Upon detailed inspection, it continued to look that way. Mattresses were also affixed to the ceiling, along with small mics like the kind embedded in corporate ship passageways for constant contact and monitoring.
Barbary Station Page 17
