“Oxia’s fleet had better do what you say,” Tritheist grumbled. “It’s our asses if they don’t.”
Everyone on the Apparition and the Casey had joined the captain in a wager they hoped never to collect on: whether Oxia would kill them outright if they fucked this mission up, turn them over to the ITA, or take some kind of painful revenge before turning them in. Iridian’s money was on Oxia not wasting any more time on Sloane’s crew if they failed, and trading the crew to the ITA in exchange for overlooking some other slimy shit they’d done. Disturbingly, Adda bet on Oxia doing something nasty to them first.
Did you see the newsflash on the assassination Sloane’s crew supposedly completed for Oxia last month? Adda whispered through the tiny speaker implanted in Iridian’s ear. They killed the target and the target’s dogs. On purpose.
Iridian scowled. Before arriving on Vesta, all Iridian had known about Oxia Corporation was that it was big and sold just about anything you could pay for. Sloane had never mentioned doing jobs for them. More important, Sloane’s crew didn’t kill, and Sloane was otherwise occupied a month ago. Whoever Rosehach had gotten to pull that assassination was either desperate, or not one of the experts Sloane usually hired. That’s sick. Adda didn’t respond, leaving Iridian wondering whether her comment had reached its destination.
The Casey, carrying Adda and Pel, put a few million klicks between itself and the Apparition and Oxia’s ships over the first day of travel. It’d maintain that distance during the approach to the target, creating a comms delay and staying far enough away not to be shot at if the target’s escort was good.
Once the Apparition was ready to engage, the Casey would close to real-time comms range. Every ship was traveling under continuous thrust. They’d have the luxury of healthy grav the whole way, according to Adda’s calculations. Since her preflight research had answered most of her questions, she’d had time for recreational research like that newsflash.
I heard that, Adda whispered over the implanted comms.
Ah, shit. Did you hear that too?
About fifteen seconds later, Adda whispered, Yes!
The implants she and Adda had spent the trip to Vesta working on were functioning like they’d planned, picking up their subvocalized messages and transmitting amplified and encrypted whispers to the implants in their ears. At the moment, their signal was briefly hijacking shipboard comms for power and direction, but Iridian was playing with ways to make the implants more independent. Ten- or fifteen-second delays were just right for her and Adda’s current distance apart.
The hardest part of the setup had been processing everything the mics picked up to exclude speech, errant thoughts, and Adda’s comp commands. The transmitter’s gate was still too low, which made it send unintentional subvocalizations. They’d eliminate some of that with practice, but the software could use more work.
Adda was emphasizing words the way she did when she was happy, although it was hard to be sure. This was fun enough to justify a little metal next to their brains and spines. The composite they’d used barely met the definition of “metal,” anyway. Of course, Adda always talked to her comp this way, so she was much better than Iridian at only subvocalizing thoughts she wanted Iridian to hear.
You’ll get used to it, Adda whispered in Iridian’s ear. It just takes practice.
“Right. Practice. So now may not be the time to tell you what I want to do with you in that big fancy bed when we’re back on Vesta—”
“Oh my gods, it really isn’t!” Pel said over the Apparition’s speakers, which meant Iridian had said that out loud, over either the command channel that sent messages between Sloane’s ship and Adda’s, or the op channel that broadcast to Sloane’s whole fleet.
The captain was studying a projection on the bridge console, but the lieutenant wore a rude grin big enough for both of them. Iridian laughed at the situation and rolled her eyes dramatically for Tritheist’s benefit. “Fine, fine. You’re all missing out.”
“It is, however, a good time to review this.” Captain Sloane filled several walls with rows of numbers divided into apparently arbitrary sections with lines. “I’ve been looking over the crew’s financial records—which is to say, the funds set aside for our endeavors—and comparing them to what we can dig up for Oxia’s. Putting a megacorporation in its place requires money, you know.”
Captain Sloane glanced between Iridian’s and Tritheist’s blank expressions. One section of rows acquired a bright yellow overlay during the seconds of silence left for the statement to finish on the other ship and questions to be sent back.
Pel groaned. “I think I’m glad I can’t see this.”
“If you paid more attention to your money, you’d have more to spend,” said Adda. “Now hush.”
“This is incorrect.” Captain Sloane circled the offending part of the projection. “Oxia lists it here as if it would fit into allocations for research and development, but their actual research and development totals over here”—a bright blue overlay appeared in another section—”are allocated to the projects listed on this other report.” The captain glanced around at the rest of the crew. “That’s a lot of missing funds.”
“Secret development project?” Iridian suggested.
“They had to have spent it on something,” Adda said about twenty seconds after Sloane had finished speaking.
“Sounds useful, doesn’t it?” Captain Sloane smiled. “I’m sending it back to the analyst who found this. I expect she’ll find more evidence. If Oxia is concealing funds from their own board, then we can use that against them.”
The analyst would have a few days to look. The intercept route they followed would catch their target, the longhauler NM Ann Sabina, on the sunward side of Ceres. They’d hit the Sabina after two days’ travel with healthy grav, before its scheduled flyby at Ceres’s fuel-launching station.
The N’gombe-Marvin longhauler and its escort ships would have minimal maneuvering capabilities due to their fuel limitations, which’d make them easier to catch. And if Sloane’s fleet had to disable a ship or two, the disabled ships’ crews would have the ITA nearby for a rescue. Not too nearby, but near enough to save lives.
The ITA’s continuous presence in the area brought up a question Iridian had tried to ask Sloane’s head of security, except that Sloane didn’t have one. Three civilian equivalents of company commanders led crew security. Now that Rosehach was gone, they reported directly to the captain and Tritheist. “Changing topics, Captain, if you don’t mind?” Sloane nodded for her to continue. “From what I can tell, you’ve got about three hundred people in crew security and a lot of experts like us on call, and that’s about it. With the ITA in and out of stationspace all the time, how did you hold the ’ject before Oxia?”
“We haven’t always enjoyed such a high profile,” Sloane admitted, without confirming or correcting Iridian’s estimate of Sloane’s troop strength. “Which meant we drew less ITA attention. Their presence can be advantageous, when they focus on rescuing ships in distress and clearing debris from the reliable routes. We simply purchase exclusive focus on those objectives. When we can’t, it’s often possible to redirect high-minded ITA agents toward the Ceres syndicate.”
“Ceres is always causing some shit.” Tritheist’s expression changed from its usual resting frown to a more active expression of disdain. “And they’re killers. We’re not.”
* * *
Two days later, Iridian put a hand on the cool metal bulkhead to steady herself before snapping her suit gloves onto the rest of her armor. Grav was barely over one g, but the Apparition’s speed would keep climbing as it arched through the last banked turn to line up with the target. They’d have to keep increasing speed to match the Sabina, which’d been accelerating since its launch and wasn’t stopping anytime soon. It was part of what made the trip out faster and more expensive than the trip back to Vesta, and Adda had budgeted to make sure they’d have the fuel for it.
“You’ll look like a
cargo convoy en route to refuel for another . . . five minutes, exactly.” Adda’s voice sounded flatter, farther away even though the Casey had closed the distance between itself and the Apparition to eliminate the comms delay. She was in a workspace generator, drugged and seeing things Iridian couldn’t even imagine. “Then the Ann Sabina’s intelligence will note the discrepancy—”
“And start waking people up, we got it.” Iridian pressed two fingertips to the meat of her thumb, where a tiny pseudo-organic pressure sensor integrated into her muscle tissue would register the action and shut off her “mental” connection with Adda. The hand was still tender from her implantation surgery, but Adda didn’t need to hear Iridian getting ready for a combat boarding, dreading having to make another snap decision like when she’d killed Rosehach and his bodyguards. She was trying out a piece from the crew’s less-lethal arsenal. Mid- and long-range weapons would be a hell of a lot safer than knives.
In the Apparition’s crew quarters, Iridian strapped into a bunk designed for soaking high g. The bunk she chose was between the two experts Sloane had selected to board the longhauler, find the printer, and neutralize any of the twenty-five crewmembers that the Sabina’s AI woke up. One was the civvy printer technician brought in to disconnect and move the PR800i printer. The tech, a curly-haired and light-skinned male named Jefferson Danail-Mussorgsky, who went by Danail, smiled nervously at her. He’d done more reading than talking on the trip.
On Iridian’s other side, a medic in her early fifties snored softly in her bunk’s restraints, her dark complexion blending into the shadows in the dim light. Chioma “Chi” Aku-Chavez was Sloane’s first choice for medic when a full paramilitary unit would be overkill, and she was a hoot when she was awake.
Danail asked a short question in some Earth dialect. Iridian turned her implants back on. “Say again?”
When he repeated himself, her implanted speaker translated in a delayed whisper: “We’re close?”
“About five minutes. What language are you speaking?”
“Greek.”
Iridian smiled at all the effort put into designing their implanted comms without the rare Earth languages in mind. “Ah, you’re kidding!” Adda’d rigged up a small addition to connect their comps’ translation program to their personal comm system’s earpieces, but Greek would be a long way down the access list.
“And you always speak English?”
“Yeah, Earth’s own, accented all to hell. Family hasn’t lived there in generations.”
Danail glanced at her ears and twisted in his bunk to look for the earpiece. It was subdermal, and the incision hadn’t scarred. “Your translator’s excellent.”
“It’s fine for now. There’s a delay.”
“Greek’s comfortable,” Danail said in the spacefarers’ English Iridian and most other English speakers in the cold and the black used. He sounded nervous enough to need a bit of comfort.
“Speak whatever until we leave the Apparition, but then English would be better.” Danail’s anxiety made him sound like Si Po, a nervous friend Iridian had recently lost, and her statement came out harsher than she’d meant it. “Otherwise everybody will have to get a translation of whatever you say.”
She returned to the topic at hand before she made Danail even more nervous. “So, this printer we’re getting for Oxia. It’s big, it’s delicate; you need to disconnect it before the transfer team moves it. Any last-minute details you want to share?”
Danail shook his head and inhaled to speak, but the Apparition dropped out from under them for a long half second, pressing them against their harnesses and then thumping them into the foam bedding. Danail yelped and Sloane’s medic snorted awake. “Time to go?” she asked as calmly as she would’ve in a stable hab.
Iridian liked her for it immediately. “Yeah, we’re here.”
“I forgot to ask,” Chi said through an enormous yawn. “Do either of you have tracking cultures?” The nannite cultures that monitored convicted criminals would ping any law enforcement ships that came within signal range, ITA included. When Iridian and Danail both replied in the negative, Chi said, “Good” and resettled herself in her harness.
“The Ann Sabina’s intelligence puts its and the escorts’ crews on accelerated wake-up cycles,” Adda announced throughout the ship’s intercom.
Outside of stationspace, ships were supposed to stay a lot farther apart. As Adda had predicted almost to the minute, the Sabina’s AI had noted that the class descriptions Sloane’s ships were broadcasting didn’t match what it saw on cams. The escort crews would engage soon, and the insertion team would have to deal with an awake and relatively alert crew on the Sabina.
The Apparition fell out from under Iridian again. This time it followed the short fall with a left-right jag that tied a knot in her neck muscles. The g’s climbed painfully as the ship banked to begin its approach on the Sabina.
Well, the Apparition’s on target or it’s wrecking itself, she thought. “Babe, can you get the Apparition to show . . .”
She left her request to Adda unfinished because the Apparition lit its overhead projectors and showed two views from cams focused on their target, the mobile science lab NM Ann Sabina, with bright blue and gold lights glowing at points along its hull. It hung still as four heavily armored escort ships slowly maneuvered around it, which meant that the Apparition had already matched the Sabina’s velocity.
And the Apparition was apparently eavesdropping on her conversations with Adda, unless she’d said that out loud, in which case it’d just listened in on the cabin mics. To test just how consistently the infernal thing was listening, she said, “Can you patch us—”
The audio feed of either the op channel or the fleet channel blared out a speaker near the overhead. “Sabre engaging Iron, point three, dis, three zero to con,” said an intensely focused femme on one of the nearby Oxia ships. All three humans in the Apparition’s crew quarters winced at the volume.
Swords versus metals? Iridian subvocalized to Adda. Somebody didn’t think those code names through. Adda’s laughter must’ve been outside her implant’s transmission range, as it should’ve been.
The Oxia ship designated as Saber loomed in the corner of one of the projected windows. It was smaller than the Sabina’s escorts, but it looked huge this close to the Apparition. Its running red lights gleamed against its red, gold, and black hull. The design was ostentatious with a solid undercurrent of menace, which was how the captain liked a fleet meant to be carrying Captain Sloane’s crew. There wasn’t a drop of the blue and green shades associated with the Oxia Corp brand. The only feature that’d hint at Oxia’s involvement was the money it’d cost to get it here.
“Katana engaging Cobalt, point two nine, dis, two zero to con,” said someone who sounded too young to be a comms officer. The channel went quiet. The other four Oxia ships must’ve already announced their intended targets and distance to contact.
“Is this normal?” Danail wheezed.
“More info than I usually get.” Chi’s voice was tight, but not as breathless. Her and Danail’s lightly armored enviro suits must not’ve been much protection against the grav pressing down on their chests. “Nice to be working with Captain Sloane again.”
“If we had, oh, three more ships, we’d be able to handle this opposition easily,” said Captain Sloane over the op channel.
Iridian had never been on a boarding run before. The infantry shield vehicle she’d piloted during the war was too tall for passenger passthroughs and needed at least a third of a g to function. In an ISV, her mission was simpler: find bombs, defuse or contain bombs, move forward, block explosions.
With a sharp jolt and simultaneous roar from the other end of the Apparition, her current mission plan moved forward. “Missile away,” said Adda in her dull, preoccupied voice, confirming that she and the Casey were under a million klicks from the Apparition, receiving the Apparition’s feed with almost no delay. Oxia had given a voice to the AI that they’d trus
ted with ship dispatch and routing, but the Barbary AI seemed content to use Adda’s. Iridian hoped Adda was tracking her sharpsheet intake carefully. Taking too many at once could damage her brain.
The Apparition slammed into a new configuration, and somewhere at the angle of Iridian’s left wrist to her right knee was now “down.” The bunks stayed still instead of rotating to compensate, but her harness held.
“Missile impact,” Adda said in monotone.
Iridian hung in her harness for a few seconds to see if the Apparition was on a stable course, then released the harness clasps and let herself drop to the former bulkhead and current deck. The medic landed next to her and reached out to catch herself on Iridian’s armored shoulder. Between the two of them, they wrestled the printer technician to the deck.
The Apparition changed speed in a burst of engine rumble, dumping the three of them in a pile outside the crew quarters’ door, but not splattering them against a bulkhead like it could’ve done. As a warship, the Apparition’s consideration for its passengers was the most persuasive evidence of its sentience. It would’ve been safer for the ship to change its speed as fast as it could, but so far it’d been fairly gentle with the humans it carried. “Thanks,” Iridian muttered to the AI.
“The Apparition’s docked. Positions, people.” As usual, Tritheist imbued every order with unnecessary haste.
Iridian helped the medic and the printer tech pick themselves off the floor and lifted Danail’s gear bag so he could settle it on his back more easily. Chi was already in the hallway to the Apparition’s passthrough, pack over one shoulder and not yet snapped into her suit’s clasps. Grav was healthy again, which made the bags heavy.
“Do we actually need all this stuff?” Danail asked. “If we have to use a mobile tie-down kit, won’t we already be in trouble?”
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