The structure they stopped in front of was labeled VICE 七 on her comp, in even more vibrant text than the sign on its two-story exterior. The name didn’t hint at what the building was used for. The scantily dressed smokers lounging around the entrance and the people in the alley beside it were more informative. “Why did we come to a club, exactly?” Her voice woke Iridian, who sat up and peered at the projected window. Pel’s head rose from where it’d been resting on his chest.
Sloane straightened the coat the captain always wore and smiled wide. “It’s mine, for one reason. For another, only the uppermost section is a club.” Captain Sloane climbed out of the tram, followed by Tritheist and Pel. Now that the door was open, competing bass rhythms flowed in as different songs muffled by different buildings and distances fought for attention.
“Eyes up inside,” Tritheist said quietly as Iridian and Adda emerged from the vehicle. “The security detail ought to be happy to see us, but my money’s on there being some ingrates who don’t know an improvement when they see it. Oh, and don’t hurt the civilians. It’s bad for business and it’ll piss Captain Sloane off.”
Iridian unhooked her shield from her belt. “Are these people crew, or Rosehach’s hires?”
“The security? They started out as ours,” said Tritheist. “Sloane wants to treat them like crew until they prove they’re not.”
Iridian nodded and turned to Adda. “Stay behind us and keep track of Pel, okay?”
“Yes.” Adda looped her arm through Pel’s.
“Any pretty people to talk to while we wait to get shot at?” Pel asked Adda as they followed the others toward the front doors.
Most of the clubgoers had dressed and made themselves up so thoroughly that they all looked equally lovely. Some carried knives, and even one sword, openly, although most didn’t. The men looked . . . healthy, she supposed. “They’re all pretty. Could you talk to them after we know whether or not there will be shooting?”
Captain Sloane, Tritheist, and Iridian entered through the doors before Pel had finished complaining about that suggestion, so Adda hauled Pel forward after them. She stumbled to a halt inside the doors. “What’s happening?” Pel yelled over the music.
“It’s dark.” Adda’s eyes were still adjusting to the low light, but she was trying to find the safest place to stand.
The other three had stopped in front of her, and the dance floor was clearing, despite the ongoing, pounding music. Among the shouting and retreating patrons, about fifty armed people stood like soldiers, immovable, in their midst. They didn’t seem to be wearing armor, but their clothing was too plain to be clubwear. The weapons they carried were probably the low-velocity, electrical, or chemical kinds, which Iridian said would hurt people without damaging a station’s hull.
One of them raised a weapon to point at Sloane. “Rosehach . . . Did you kill him?”
Iridian had killed him. Adda clutched Pel’s arm until his elbow dug into her ribs, and he pressed his free hand over hers.
Iridian stepped forward. “I did.”
As the one with the raised weapon switched his focus from Sloane to Iridian, a lean woman with big black hair tackled him from the side. Club patrons gasped and exclaimed from the shadows around the walls. Both of the fighters crashed onto the dance floor, and two more armed people in plain clothes leaped to the woman’s aid.
A scuffle broke out, which ended with a second person pinned on the floor in a small gray cloud. Another security person, distinguishable from the dancers by the long sleeves and pants, practical boots, and plain colored clothes, held up a device with a loud fan. The person turned their head to the side and shut their eyes and mouth while the gray cloud swept toward them and into the device.
“We don’t miss the bastard, Captain,” shouted one of the people holding the men on the floor. “Thanks for coming back.” Tritheist chuckled, almost inaudible under the music. If he’d really put money on there being Rosehach loyalists in Sloane’s ranks, then he’d be pleased with the bet he’d won, now that nobody would die to settle it.
Sloane stepped up beside Iridian and said, “Thank you all. As the newsfeeds are reporting, I stayed away longer than I’d originally planned.” There was some laughter, but more surprised murmuring. The fact that Sloane hadn’t been staying on Barbary Station voluntarily must not have become agreed-upon public knowledge yet. That made sense, since Sloane had been making claims to the contrary. “This situation with Oxia is temporary,” the captain continued. “I’ll put everything back the way it was.” If the captain had anything else to say it was lost under cheers from security people and civilians alike.
“Let go already,” Pel said.
Adda released his arm. Deep wrinkles in the sleeve showed how hard she’d been holding on. “Sorry.”
“Make up for it by pointing me at somebody lonely and cute.” Pel sniffed the air. “Or whoever’s wearing the scent that smells like sweaty justice. That’ll be fun.”
“Don’t you want to know where your gear’s being taken?” Tritheist asked. “We have a few hours to sleep before Sloane’s ready to start taking back the ’ject.”
“I’ll track it down later,” said Pel. “Tonight I’m sleeping with whoever’s attached to that smell.”
He took the low step down onto the dance floor, and Iridian caught him as he stumbled past her. “Protection!” Adda called after him.
He ignored her and shouted, “Hey, help a blind guy out!” as he waded into the dancers who were returning to their previous level of cheer, hands outstretched. As was so often the case with him, somebody caught one of his hands and drew him into the crowd.
Iridian reached Adda’s side. “Sorry about earlier. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
Announcing her part in the change in leadership could’ve gotten her killed, but Adda had to admire her for doing it. “We. Um. Can we talk somewhere?”
“Yeah, let’s find a spot.”
They ended up against a shadowed wall beside the platform lift that raised people from street level to a second floor that covered about a fourth of the first-floor space. The lift mechanisms muffled the crowd noise and music from the dance floor. “We need to discuss next steps,” said Adda.
Iridian looked away from the dance floor to focus on Adda, although her foot was still tapping to the music. “Do we? I thought you’d decided to stay with Sloane. You put on a great show back there.”
“I thought through some options for the, um, robbery that the CEO proposed.” Somebody shrieked and Adda glanced around for a source, but it looked like one of the women at the bar was just having an exceptionally good evening.
“Liu Kong,” Iridian reminded her. Adda didn’t know what her tell was when she forgot a name, but Iridian recognized it every time.
“Yes. It was . . . less stressful than staring at all the weapons pointed at us.”
“I was scared too.” Iridian’s arm tightened around her waist, pulling her closer. “No plans for getting us out of a standoff like that?”
“I try to think a bit longer term,” Adda admitted. “But I’ll work up some scenarios.”
“Yeah, that’d be good. But back to this mess with the crew . . . I mean, this is a big shitstorm we’ve stepped into.” Iridian held up a finger. “We’re grounded, except for ships with fucking awakened copilots.” That was the least of their problems, but Adda kept quiet as Iridian raised a second finger. “Captain Sloane’s next to powerless.” She raised a third finger more emphatically. “The ITA has our IDs and probably records of what we’ve been up to, personally, you and me. Who knows where from, the ITA’s everywhere.” She let the fingers fall back to her side and sighed. “I could deal with one of those. All three sounds like a good way to end up dead.”
“Our alternative is repeating our efforts to join a less worthy crew. It’ll be harder now that our names and faces are more public and have criminal records associated with them.”
Iridian’s head rocked back as she looked at
the ceiling in despair. “Sloane wasn’t even captain for most of this crew’s existence.”
“No, but the captain has been the face of the crew’s operations for at least a decade.” Adda dug through old data on her comp for the summary she’d prepared before they made their initial attempt to join the crew on Barbary Station. As she suspected, it contained only a few tangential mentions of the crew’s previous captain. “The rumors were always about what Sloane was doing on Vesta, what Sloane’s people did to this or that ship . . . On Barbary, Suhaila and the other refugees might have met Foster, but they only ever talked about Sloane. People must have stopped referring to Foster as the crew’s figurehead long before Sloane actually took over leadership.”
“So far as there is a crew,” said Iridian. “I was just getting good with the ZVs and specialists on Barbary, and now the ones that aren’t dead have fucked off to their real jobs.” Iridian had gotten along well with most of the ZV Group, who were what she called a private military company and what Adda would’ve called mercenaries. Sloane had hired them for one operation that had lasted much longer than expected. “We’re surrounded by people we’ve never heard of and officers who manage their reputations.”
“You always find a way to work with people. Anyway, check our account balances before you claim that Sloane’s success as a captain is only reputation management.” Adda seemed to be the only one thinking about her and Iridian’s finances lately. She’d combined their accounts so she could filter their newly earned wealth through secure channels that it would’ve taken her too long to explain to Iridian. She was fairly sure that didn’t make her the accountant for both of them.
“We did get paid, I’ll give the captain that, and we didn’t have to fight the officers for it.” Iridian ran her hand over her close-shaven scalp, front to back, which was what she did when she was reconsidering her position.
“Since we’re staying in Sloane’s headquarters and expenses are paid—which we couldn’t count on with another crew, by the way—we can pay off our and our families’ debts,” Adda said. “A few more payments like this and we might be able to start saving.” It still sounded like fantasy when Adda said it, but she’d set up the accounts herself. “Sloane has Liu Kong’s support, so I wouldn’t say the captain is powerless.”
Iridian grinned, wrapped her other arm around Adda, and rested her chin on the top of Adda’s head. “Figures that the awakened AI are the one major problem I’m stuck with.”
“So we’re staying with Captain Sloane?”
“We’re staying,” Iridian confirmed. “Now, you want to party with Pel, or go figure out where we’re supposed to sleep tonight?”
“Sleep, thanks.” Or at least, staring at a quiet ceiling and thinking. Adda had a lot of new contingencies to work out.
CHAPTER 4
Satellite impact site: Latitude 10.3 ° Longitude 52.1 ° (near Drusilla Crater)
Cause: Externally transmitted course correction—SatTracker, installed and customized premium edition
The Casey came and went over the next six days, but it maintained a creepy semipermanent link with Adda’s comp. Every time Iridian asked where it was, Adda had an answer and evidence that the damned AI was telling her at least some of the truth. She kept telling Iridian not to obsess over it, but Iridian had seen what an AI acting on its own twisted logic did. Yeah, she fucking obsessed.
“I don’t know why,” Adda had said while they sat on a ridiculous couch/table arrangement in Sloane’s HQ. Around them, the mirrored floor reflected a sky-blue ceiling with animated white clouds drifting over its surface. Lapping water and birdcalls played at the edge of hearing. Sloane’s idea of a lobby was bizarre, multiple AUs away from the nearest blue sky and liquid surface water, with a dance beat thrumming overhead from the club on street level. It gave Iridian worse vertigo than the station’s grav acclimation tunnel.
“The Casey knows we know what it is,” Adda continued. “In the interest of survivability, it would’ve been logical to let AegiSKADA kill us on Barbary Station. Humans have not historically welcomed awakened intelligences.”
Iridian pulled her a little closer on their cushioned seat. “According to history, the awakened AI causes a huge amount of damage fast, and then we kick its nonexistent ass. Of course, those lucky bastards before us only had to deal with one at a time, not three.”
“The Casey’s different,” Adda said slowly, like she was still working out what that difference might be. “Maybe it’s not confident maintaining itself yet, or it needs trustworthy humans nearby to conceal its nature. But it could use holographic figures in most instances . . .”
“You could guess forever. Just assume it’s up to no good, and we’ll figure out what kind of no good later. Like Oxia and that sleazy CEO.” Iridian and Adda had earned Sloane’s trust, so far as that went, and they couldn’t afford to start at the bottom of another crew. The way their luck ran, any new crew they joined would be in even more trouble than Sloane’s.
“That CEO owns everything here.” Adda shook her head, looking disgusted. “I haven’t found a single station service contract that isn’t fulfilled by Oxia or one of its subsidiaries. Law enforcement and defense, alga- and entoculture, communications, finance, health . . . it’s all theirs, in one way or another. I can’t even tell what the people on the councils do, aside from running reelection campaigns.”
“It sounds like Sloane had opinions on a lot of it,” said Iridian. “When the captain got stranded behind the lead cloud on Barbary, the councils would’ve had to actually govern instead of playing politics. It must’ve left a perfect power vacuum.”
“And Oxia filled it, with Rosehach’s help, before the NEU or the Ceres syndicate could take advantage. Oxia’s smart and flexible. They don’t even keep their primary datacenter on Vesta. I don’t know where it is yet. I’ll find it.” Adda met Iridian’s eyes, her soft face set in a determined frown. “After all we’ve done, we are not going to be . . . theirs. If Captain Sloane doesn’t find a way out of the contract, then I will.”
“If Oxia tries to make us sign on with them directly—”
“I won’t allow it.”
Goose bumps rose on Iridian’s skin. When Adda set her mind to something, it happened. Iridian lowered her mouth to Adda’s and whispered, “I believe you.”
* * *
Six days later, Iridian boarded yet another a ship with an awakened AI copilot. The Apparition was a blocky missile-armed warship, longer than it was wide, with a blunt front module and oversize engines like it’d collided with a tugboat and stuck. It’d carry her, Captain Sloane, Tritheist, and a couple of specialists she’d met that morning to the location Adda and Sloane had selected to intercept the target longhauler. Beginning a job out of contract like this felt like a mistake, but Sloane had already paid them out of contract once. If nobody was making her sign anything, Iridian wasn’t about to volunteer.
The Apparition sped out of stationspace, but it settled into comfortable acceleration soon after. They rode the launch out in its military-style crew quarters, strapped into dust-covered bunks numerous enough for a crew twice their size. The previous occupants’ fingertip-size projectors still stuck to the walls, although they’d lost the battery power to display whatever they used to project.
After they left Rheasilvia stationspace, the Casey, with Adda and Pel onboard, paralleled the Apparition. By comparison, the Casey was small and fragile, which was why it’d stay a long way away from the target longhauler while the Apparition’s passengers broke in. Leaving Adda in the Casey’s care was nerve-racking, but Iridian would’ve worried more if Adda were alone on Vesta among strangers, or in harm’s way at Iridian’s side.
Six disguised Oxia Corporation ships mirrored the Apparition’s route. They were all NEU crafts: four XA-91 fighters from the Martian assembly docks, one of the overbuilt Kamov fighters designed on Earth, and one cargo hauler that might’ve been Martian too. The fighters were about the same size as the Casey, but armed and
armored. When they reached the longhauler, they’d engage the larger and less maneuverable escort fighters and keep them away from the Casey and the Apparition. The cargo hauler was for the printer, and the people and bots needed to move it out of the target ship without breaking it.
Once the Apparition brought the grav down to one g, Iridian followed Captain Sloane and Tritheist into the Apparition’s bridge. She’d been in the Apparition before, but it’d always kept its bridge locked until now. The Apparition’s bridge was more utilitarian than the Casey’s. Gray bulkheads beneath its projections looked thicker and made a better projection surface than the Casey’s warm beige ones.
The default projected interface included a busy overlay tracking all moving objects anywhere near them. Low lighting made it easier to focus on the projected information, but it also made the Apparition’s bridge feel smaller than the Casey’s, more like Iridian’s old infantry shield vehicle cab than a ship’s interior. Also like an ISV cab, the Apparition’s bridge had an airlock in one bulkhead that opened straight into the vac. Useful for emergencies, bad when an awakened AI might decide to open the door while you’re standing next to it. That was one of the things she missed about her army days: ISVs had practically no AI.
The projection above the bridge console showed the Oxia ships falling into formation around the Apparition. It’d been a long time since Iridian saw that many ships together this far out in the cold and the black. “Captain, when you say ‘crew,’ do you usually mean ‘flotilla?’ ”
“When I say crew, I mean highly skilled individuals who will do what I ask, when and how I ask that it be done, because they want the universe to know that they did it for me.” Captain Sloane smiled languidly and shrugged on a long red coat made of thick enough material to spread the weight of its armor plating across the captain’s shoulders. “Today I have the conditional obedience of more individuals than usual.”
Mutiny at Vesta Page 6
