The lab’s console requested valid N’gobe-Marvin Minerals employee ID verified via retinal scan before it would let someone interact with the printer controls. It also demanded typed input that could be pulled from a comm-enabled device the Ann Sabina’s crew might carry with them, like their comps. The easiest solution, then, might be grabbing the nearest Ann Sabina crewmember and finding out if the console would accept their credentials.
Even the manufacturers recommended high security on printers this size. Someone uninformed about their limits could cause a massive material spill that’d breach a hull.
A pristinely shaped feminine figure made of uniform ebony appeared in the workspace, close enough to Adda that their noses and chests should have overlapped, but somehow didn’t. Adda gasped and stumbled back. The figure’s head had no hair and severe cheekbones, and it was cocked to the side less by tilting the head and more by shortening the neck and shoulder. Diffuse white light illuminating this workspace made the figure’s inquisitiveness visible, despite its blank expression. In the depths of its eye sockets, sapphires glimmered.
Adda stood transfixed. “Casey?”
Yes, the Casey said without words or movement. It felt like Adda had remembered the word, instead of hearing it spoken. Ask.
Adda reviewed everything she knew about the printer itself (a lot) and the security protecting its controls (the basics), willing the gaps to form for Casey’s examination. Here in the workspace it no longer felt right to think of Casey as a ship.
Adda would have to be very, very careful with Casey’s workspace presence. The intelligence was holding Adda’s attention by focusing an unknown percentage of its own attention on her. Any human trappings it assumed were persuasive techniques designed to make her do what it wanted. Iridian was right: an awakened intelligence influenced people more easily than a zombie one could. In fact, now that Adda was thinking about it, Casey’s workspace figure looked a bit like Iridian.
“Karpe,” said a man’s voice on the command channel including Adda, Sloane, and Iridian and Tritheist on the Ann Sabina. That was Tritheist, she realized, and he sounded too annoyed for it to be the first time he’d said her name. “One of the escort ships connected passthroughs. It’s offloading people with guns, so hurry it up.” It was unlikely that they’d carry projectile weapons, according to the intelligence they had on the escort crews, but his point remained.
No time, the Casey . . . said? Thought, perhaps. The workspace figure’s full lips remained still. Its arm jerked away from its body, pointing straight behind and to the right of Adda. Every new position Casey’s figure assumed looked permanent, like an ancient statue’s. It was more than stillness. It was the stillness of years.
When Adda turned, the schematics of the module that contained the printer hovered in bright yellow lines between the spread arms of a second, more amorphous humanoid figure. It was dull silver, maybe polished steel, out of focus and flickering at its edges, like a solid version of the intermediaries Adda created to interface with intelligences outside of a workspace.
In a rush of the communicative certainty that meant the workspace had completed several processes simultaneously, Adda identified the new figure as the Ann Sabina’s intelligence. And Casey had brought it here, halfway into Adda’s own brain, without Adda’s consent, to show her . . . what?
The workspace began rocking back and forth in time with her rapid breaths. This was the first time she’d had two intelligences in her workspace before, and one was awakened. All her textbooks and teachers had advised against communicating with more than one intelligence in a workspace, and they’d been talking about zombie intelligences. “Casey, could you please talk to the Ann Sabina’s intelligence outside the workspace?”
Casey’s figure looked at her for a long moment, and then the Ann Sabina’s intelligence bent back over itself at a terrible angle, its spine rolling tighter and tighter, until it pulled into itself and disappeared from the workspace. That confirmed that the dark figure in her workspace was Casey. At least it was the only one she had to keep track of now. She shuddered. “Thank you.”
Then she spotted the big red button in a protective cage on the wall by the lab door, near where the Ann Sabina intelligence’s hand had been. In the workspace, the button flared yellow-white. She’d discarded this contingency in most of her plans because she would never have expected it to be as easy to execute as sending false sensor readings and pushing a button.
Adda swallowed hard, in reality as well as in the workspace, and started checking what she knew about the Ann Sabina’s structural stability against how that safety system worked in the lab. Once her math confirmed that the whole module would maintain structural integrity upon separation, she pressed her fingers to the base of her thumb. Iri, we don’t see a way to get the printer out fast enough, Adda subvocalized. You’d have to go through every person on the Ann Sabina’s crew to find one whose eyes unlock that panel. Take the module instead.
“Say again?” Iridian demanded aloud.
Due to the serious risks inherent in a push-button-to-blast-yourself-into-space lab safety measure, Adda hadn’t bothered to discuss this contingency with the rest of the crew. It took a special kind of dedication to a new and unstable machine to put a button like that in the lab that was about to be detached. There was a second button in the hallway outside, at least.
A true-to-size projection of the printer lab materialized in a square, transparent pit below and to the left of Adda’s position in the workspace. Walls faded where they came between her and the infiltration team. The printer tech had climbed a ladder built onto the printer’s side and was doing something with a small hand tool near the top of the transparent heat shielding. Iridian blocked the doorway with her shield while the medic aimed steadily over Iridian’s shoulder and Tritheist stood in the hall, warped and dim as seen through Iridian’s shield.
None of the infiltration team was near the panel to start the module decoupling sequence, and Iridian was still standing there looking confused. “That printer lab is in its own module.” When Adda concentrated, she could speak at her normal volume in the workspace and only subvocalize physically. “Activate the emergency separation procedure, then hang onto something.”
Is she . . . she is! Crazy fucking Earther idea. Oh sorry, sorry babe, I mean it in the good way, Iridian subvocalized in the span of two seconds.
“I know.” When Adda concentrated, she could speak at her normal volume in the workspace and only subvocalize physically. She, and probably Casey, were too busy setting conditions in the printer and the lab to match the requirements for disconnecting the lab from the Ann Sabina.
This room isn’t built for space travel. Iridian subvocalized in a husky whisper that Adda was becoming very fond of. This exterior wall, maybe, but not the rest. Things will slam into all of them. It might not hold pressure when we’re changing directions. Damn it, this is . . . Okay, I’ll get it. Adda had learned subvocalization input young and didn’t remember a time when it’d been difficult, but it must have been a challenge at some point. We won’t hold up well during sharp grav shifts either, Iridian continued. It’ll take a big push to get this lab disconnected from the Sabina, and another one to get it moving toward the cargo hauler. And we’ll be vulnerable to the escort vessels the whole time if they take a shot at us. Which, you know, I would.
“With active threats from the Oxia ships, the lab should be a secondary target at worst. Besides, that really is a valuable printer. They won’t want to damage it. And Sloane’s whole fleet will be between you and them.” Adda would insist on it. “According to the schematics, the module’s designed to come off, to protect the rest of the ship if something in the printer melts down.”
The Casey’s engines are too low power to push anything besides itself around, and the Apparition’s . . . Iridian paused. The Coin’s out here too.
Adda looked up to count and identify the ships within a hundred kilometers of the Ann Sabina. The Charon’s Coin was
nearby, approaching the longhauler. Sloane hadn’t mentioned it, but must’ve noticed. Perhaps the captain thought she’d asked it to come. She hadn’t.
Adda had never had a two-way conversation with the Charon’s Coin’s intelligence, even though it was awakened like the Apparition’s and the Casey’s copilots. But the two most relevant facts about it now were that it communicated with the Casey, and it flew a tugboat that could move ships several times its size. It also handled higher speeds than the average tug, apparently, or it wouldn’t have survived following the Casey from Vesta.
“The Coin wasn’t supposed to come,” Adda admitted to Iridian, “but it’s not like I can stop it.” Stopping it would’ve required antiship weaponry or another awakened intelligence’s cooperation, and an awakened intelligence’s possible reactions to either scenario were frankly terrifying.
It’s a killer, Iridian subvocalized. I don’t want to be in anything it’s pushing around.
It’d demonstrated its carelessness with human physiology on Barbary Station. But if the Casey or Apparition hadn’t wanted the Coin’s assistance with the operation, then the Coin would’ve stayed on Vesta. The other two had done nothing but help. They seemed to understand the operation’s goal, and they certainly understood the conditions required to keep humans alive in space. All three had safely transported humans, at least once since they’d awakened.
Adda trusted the intelligences, including the Coin, to take better care of Iridian and the rest of the insertion team than the Ann Sabina’s crew would if they broke into the lab. The intelligences would also take better care of Sloane’s crew than the ITA would if its cruiser caught up with them. “If you think of another way to get the printer off the Ann Sabina with that half-finished thing on the platform,” Adda said, “tell me.”
In the workspace reproduction of the lab created, in part, by the Ann Sabina’s sensor data, Iridian raised her voice. “Adda’s got a plan to get us out of here, but this place might be micced.”
“It is,” Adda confirmed in Iridian’s ear. “Conditions are set.”
Iridian explained Adda’s idea on an encrypted local communications channel, under a persistent bleating from the printer warning that it was about to lose containment on liquefied filament. That was one of the conditions required to separate the lab from its host ship.
None of Sloane’s crew on the Ann Sabina looked thrilled by the idea of riding the lab off the ship, but they grimly agreed with its necessity and helped Iridian secure the heaviest and sharpest lab equipment. In the workspace, Casey’s obsidian figure watched them, silent, head still drawn down on one side. When it looked over at Adda, Adda became aware that the Coin was closing on the Ann Sabina.
“Captain, the Coin is coming to collect the crew and the printer. And the room the printer is in,” Adda said on the operation channel. “Please make sure nothing happens to them.”
“I was about to ask why the Apparition disconnected from the Sabina with no one onboard.” Captain Sloane wasn’t on any cams Adda had access to, but she thought she heard a smile in the captain’s voice. “Well, this should be interesting. I’ll follow shortly, with our Oxia friends.”
“Here we go!” Iridian shouted in the lab.
She yanked the cage away from the large red button beside the door and slapped the button flat against the wall. A red emergency bulkhead slammed down in the doorway. The Ann Sabina rang with a new set of alarms.
CHAPTER 6
Stage 1 confirmed
The printer behind Iridian buzzed and hissed, jolting against her back when the platform changed position. Apparently being about to lose containment, or whatever alert Adda had set off in it, wasn’t enough to stop it in the middle of a job. Over the noise of pressing hot metal into place at high speed, the connections sealing the printer lab to the Sabina explosively disengaged with sharp bangs at regular intervals from right to left along the lab’s interior wall.
As the last one banged open, the printer lab went black and silent, then glowed in dull red emergency lighting. The Sabina wasn’t pulling them along anymore, but it’d given them enough velocity to keep them moving until they sailed past the Ceres refueling point, off the reliable route, and into parts unknown. The printer lab module on its own had much less mass but no engines, and it’d picked up a bit of rotation from being pushed away from the ship. Iridian shut her eyes for a second to get used to the motion without the visuals, and opened them when something small bounced off her shoulder and then the printer base.
She’d selected the printer’s base as their “down,” but grav was already shifting. Her boots locked magnetically to the deck, her arms were free for now, and her thighs, hips, and chest were pulled against the printer platform’s base by the mobile tie-down kit she’d brought for . . . not exactly this situation, but something like it.
If they were all attached to the printer and the lab module split open en route (which, between the explosive decoupling from the Sabina and the strain of moving an interior module through space, seemed likely), she didn’t want Captain Sloane to have to choose between completing the op and rescuing her.
The Casey and I would come for you, Adda whispered in Iridian’s earpiece. Iridian grinned, even though she’d sent those thoughts to Adda by accident, again.
The medic, Chi, scowled at the arrangement, or at Iridian’s apparent pleasure at being launched sideways off a moving vessel. “This is shit. We’ll bruise like motherfuckers against this.” She rapped her gloved knuckles against the printer. “Or get crushed under something else.”
They both glanced at the spools of printer material secured, Iridian hoped, against one wall. Although they’d locked down everything sharp and heavy before launch, the small odds and ends sliding around the lab could puncture a suit if they were moving fast enough.
“I’m more concerned about what happens to the project up there when the printer’s battery runs down.” The printer tech, Danail, had his neck at an awkward angle to look at the project in progress.
Chi barked, “Look straight ahead if you want to keep your head on” before Iridian could say something similar. Danail faced forward in a hurry, looking confused, annoyed, and a bit guilty. The Coin was coming, but they didn’t know from which direction. It’d have to hit hard to arrest the lab’s momentum. That kind of impact was bad for necks.
The red emergency lighting flickered and died. By the time Iridian and Tritheist snapped their helmet lights on, the module was in a slow tumble. The printer blared some new alert above them, making them all jump. “It’s not designed for low-g,” Danail shouted over the alert. “It’ll cancel the job when that alarm changes to a solid tone.”
Small tools and trash clustered into a pile slid across the walls as the module kept tumbling away from the Sabina. Every time the pile clattered over consoles, workbenches, and spooled printer material, pieces launched into the still atmo. Iridian had appreciated the helmet intake’s filtered atmo while it lasted, but they’d all be breathing tank O2 soon.
“What will start flying around when the job stops?” Tritheist demanded. Above them, the alarm changed to the solid tone Danail warned them about.
“Depends.” Danail groaned as the lab module turned them upside down for a few seconds. “From what I saw, the extruder will clear itself, unless it’s designed to use grav for that. If it is, it’ll spread hot metal all over that case above us. Without power to run the cooling cycle, that might happen anyway. It’ll sever the filament, but the spool won’t lock—”
An enormous crunching clank emanated from above. He flinched even before a cable as thick around as Iridian’s forearm slapped into the overhead, scattering tools and cruft. “You mean that filament?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Danail tracked the growing length of cable with wide, frightened eyes.
“Karpe, what’s the ETA on that tug?” Tritheist shouted.
Nineteen seconds to contact, Adda whispered in Iridian’s ear. Eighteen . . .
“It’s h
ere!” Iridian yelled. “Fifteen seconds out. Brace.” At the speeds and masses involved, though, human muscle would make laughably little difference. This was the part most likely to cause a hull breach, and the Coin didn’t care much about human well-being . . .
The tugboat slammed into the opposite end of the lab from the printer, sideways to their tumble away from the Sabina. The harness securing Iridian to the printer base pulled her sideways without giving her head time to catch up. Impact padding inside her suit’s helmet and neck inflated with a bang. The side of her face slapped against the padding while her helmeted head slammed into the printer base first and then bounced off her shoulder.
Both of the lab’s far corners crunched inward. Built-in workbenches and shelving cracked, almost as loud as the original impact, dulled by escaping atmo. One of the Coin’s hullhooks had latched securely onto the lab’s single exterior wall, the one across from the door.
The second hullhook had punched partway through the lab’s former floor and interior corner on impact. Atmo screamed out around the massive hullhook’s ribbed steel surface. This was the nearest Iridian had ever been to an extended hullhook. It looked like a monstrous insect’s mandible. The pressure, or something in the cracked workbenches across the room, tore a second opening near the center of the opposite bulkhead and Iridian’s breath caught in her chest. A strip of the cold and the black opened in front of her.
The tear stopped growing midway across the bulkhead. The lab wasn’t about to split in half and dump them into a fucking ship-to-ship skirmish. Iridian sighed out her held breath as grav settled into a hard pull toward the Coin. Her ears rang from the impact and the deployed padding in her suit.
Mutiny at Vesta Page 9
