“You know what I just thought of?” The smile in Iridian’s voice was contagious.
“What?”
“We could’ve had somebody else design this for us! We could’ve paid them to do it!”
Adda opened her mouth to remind Iridian how expensive that would be, then shut it. At the moment, they had that kind of money. “Let’s get our families’ debts paid before we start paying people to do things we can do ourselves, all right?”
“All right,” Iridian said, but she was still laughing.
Adda kept having to stop to fend off automated, obvious threads of weak AI virus that wanted to share her work with unknown third parties. Maybe the doctors overlooked the intrusive clutter and information theft, but Adda couldn’t. After the fifth, she stopped work on the implant software to compose a routine to throw out the foreign intelligences without her having to review them all personally.
Once she did that, she had some mental cycles left over for the Björn kidnapping problem. The abduction didn’t seem like the place to start. It would be less traumatic for everyone involved if Björn was willing to leave vis job and take the Oxia one. There had to be some condition Sloane’s crew might create to cause that.
But Björn was an astronomer in one of the best-respected university astronomy departments in the populated universe. The dossier Tritheist sent indicated that ve had flown prominent secessionists to and from Mars during the war. People stayed near places they fought for, even in a support capacity, and Oxia wanted Björn to work at a Vestan facility.
Vesta probably had different observation focuses than the Deimos observatory did, which might limit Björn’s career, depending on vis area of interest. Ve already turned down this position and another on Ceres. Ve had no reason to take Oxia’s offer, and plenty of reasons to stay in Martian orbit. Adda would have to do some more reading to learn how to change Björn’s mind.
* * *
Uncounted time later, Iridian squeezed Adda’s ankle where it rested on the ergonomic workspace bed. “Pel’s in recovery now. They went ahead and did both eyes at once because they were both in shit shape and they didn’t want his brain to repattern a bunch of stuff for one eye and then have to do it all again for two.”
Adda watched the background processes whisk around her as golden leaves in wind until the saved confirmation appeared in the air before her. She stretched her virtual arms wide, enveloping clean blue text that she understood despite jumbled letter order, before sweeping her arms together and collapsing the virtual space with it. Her head ached fiercely, and her heart pounded too hard from one sharpsheet too many.
She scrambled out of the hospital workspace generator, which flashed behind her as its cleaning cycle started, and paused to let her blood get where it wanted to go instead of stumbling around while she was dizzy. Iridian rubbed Adda’s back. Although Adda was careful with her dosage, she was grateful for Iridian’s patience when Adda made mistakes and overdid it on chems. “Pel’s okay?” Adda asked.
“Yeah.” Iridian squinted and cocked her ear with the implanted earpiece. “Do you hear really faint static in yours?”
“It’s our system updating. I think I fixed the transmittable range. And I expanded the translation package, and tweaked the encryption a bit.”
Iridian wrapped an arm around Adda’s waist. “Thanks. Hate to think the wrong people might be listening in. Or, you know, not people.”
The awakened intelligences were listening. No encryption Adda could devise would stop them. But telling Iridian would just agitate her with no direction to point that agitation in, and it might make her stop using the implanted comms altogether. If the intelligences’ eavesdropping became a problem, Adda would mention it.
* * *
“Right now, they hurt like fuck.” Pel reached toward the bandages over his eyes. Adda caught his wrist and gently pushed it toward the hospital bed on which he sat. “Ow,” he said, although the motion couldn’t really have hurt him. “They say don’t touch them for a while, but it feels like rubbing them would help.”
“Do they . . . I mean, do they feel like they belong there?” Adda asked.
“Oh yeah, they feel like mine, all right,” Pel said. “ ’Cause they are mine. The doctors could’ve grown new ones, but those might not’ve grown into the same exact shape. These were shaped off of the originals, minus the scar tissue. I don’t even miss the old ones.”
Her love for him felt like a tangible thing, swelling in her chest, pressing on her lungs. She gently pulled him into a hug. Important as putting the captain back in complete control of the crew was, Pel wasn’t under any government’s protection. That was up to Adda.
CHAPTER 8
AI assemblers delivered via aerosolized nannite culture
Adda went straight to their suite in Sloane’s headquarters, where she reconnected to Sloane’s crew’s well-protected internal network and started what she expected to be a two-day research binge on Blaer Björn’s life. There didn’t seem to be room for Iridian to help with that, so she changed into workout clothes and left for the security personnel training rooms. Judging from the subvocalized comments that rattled around Iridian’s head while she ran a virtual track with Sloane’s security people, Adda wanted to know everything about the astronomer, not just the information that might enable a kidnapping.
The virtual track took Iridian and the security people through a densely built hab that seemed to be a condensed version of one of Rheasilvia Station’s residential mods, maybe before its last major repair cycle. Rheasilvia wasn’t a new station by anyone’s estimate, but its residents had spent what it cost to keep up with modern hab safety standards. It was aging gracefully.
One of the HQ security company commanders who reported to Sloane pushed her pace to approach Iridian, but she couldn’t quite catch up. Iridian slowed until they were running side by side. “Bermudez,” the lean femme with big hair and sharp eyes said. Iridian nodded at her. Although it’d been dark in the club during her first night on Vesta, she was fairly sure this was the woman who’d tackled Rosehach’s supporter when the guy had threatened Sloane.
After another few steps, Bermudez grinned. “You like this shit?”
It took Iridian a second to interpret the statement through Bermudez’s thick Ceres accent. “What? Running?” The others’ footsteps faded as they fell farther behind. “Kind of addicted.”
“Not me.”
Iridian glanced at her as they dodged a tram crossing their virtual path. The crew security people showed Iridian an uncomfortable amount of deference, even during training. Under the deference some trusted her more than others, and she couldn’t blame them. In a way, Rosehach’s disrespect toward the crew, murderous habits, and megacorporate bootlicking had worked out well for Sloane. The captain, and by extension Iridian, was a very positive change in leadership. “Come up here for the competition?”
Bermudez panted through a grin that was a bit on the manic side. The run hadn’t been that long by Iridian’s standards, but it looked like Bermudez was already moving mostly on willpower. “Came up . . . to ask you . . . a question.”
Iridian had already won the endurance competition on this run. She slowed and gave Bermudez a few steps to catch her breath. “What about?”
Bermudez dragged in a few more lungfuls of atmo. “Heard you made an impression. Kept everybody alive on the last job.”
“Yeah.” Iridian cheerfully made herself sound less winded than she felt. “That’s not a question.”
Laughing apparently threw off Bermudez’s breathing pattern and it took her several more steps to return to it. It was good to find an officer with a sense of humor in this little army. “Question is: You really caught Tritheist falling out of a ship and pulled him back in?”
Iridian could’ve corrected her about what Tritheist fell out of, but she’d been running hard for forty-five minutes and the explanation felt like a waste of O2. “Yeah. Seemed like the thing to do.”
“And one ot
her thing,” Bermudez said. “Printer you stole. Heard it was making a bot when you took it. Self-repairing. Pseudo-organic. Collects material from the cold and the black, makes buoys for the Patchwork. That true?”
Bots repaired the buoy network, which people called the Patchwork because of its haphazard construction across borders to bring internet to all the big habs from Mercury to Uranus. She hadn’t heard that bots were extending it too, but it seemed logical. “Oxia has the pattern now?”
“That’s the rumor,” said Bermudez.
“Huh. Been too focused on the new op to think it over. Could be.” After a couple paces, Iridian added, “Hey, while we’re asking questions, I’ve got one for you. How many of Sloane’s crew are on Vesta now?”
Bermudez’s brows furrowed and her fingers wiggled like she was counting on her hands. “About to have four hundred in sec. Don’t know about experts. Must be at least a dozen here. Counting you and Karpe. Couple, ten more . . . in Albana.”
“Thanks.” Iridian had noted some new faces around HQ, and that’d be why. Now it was 400, not 350. Captain Sloane was hiring on more security and expecting trouble, maybe from Oxia, maybe from the ITA. Either way, that was a lot of new people for Iridian to meet.
Bermudez waved and dropped back. “Two for two!” she announced to the security people huffing and puffing behind Iridian. “Pay up!” The grumbling that followed suggested that Sloane’s security people took their bets as seriously as the captain and Tritheist did.
It’d be interesting to see what Oxia did with a bot designed to build and place network buoys. For the trouble it took to get the printer for them, it’d better be something good.
* * *
After the run, Iridian went back to her suite to shower and drag Adda out of her workspace generator for dinner. Even outside the workspace, Adda obsessed about the next op. “Dr. Björn has habits,” she commented as if she were talking about a colleague and not a stranger whose life they were about to ruin. “Undergraduate students avoid ver for assigning too much homework and ve’s tolerated by faculty and staff who described ver as ‘obsessed’ and ‘aloof.’ ”
“That sounds like nobody I know.” Iridian nudged Adda’s plate toward her, since she was staring at her bitter-smelling noodle and sauce meal instead of eating it. It was good that their next op wasn’t upsetting Adda, and her detachment was probably some kind of defense mechanism that kept her from feeling the guilt that Iridian did, but it seemed like she ought to at least be angry about the situation.
Adda took two bites of noodles and talked around a third mouthful. “All of vis published work was on various astronomical phenomena’s effects on space travel.”
“So, not popular enough to get a grav apartment on Mangala Station, but making the university plenty of money by studying stuff people pay to know about,” Iridian said. “Ve sounds like a hardass, but maybe signing on with Oxia will get ver paid what ve’s worth.”
Adda went quiet, which meant that something Iridian had said had sent her on a mental tangent. She let Adda follow whatever connected those two topics of conversation until Adda stopped eating again. Iridian prodded the bowl of noodles and, to get her on another topic that might be compatible with eating, asked, “Has Sloane been . . . I don’t know. Acting strange, after the last op?”
“Strange?” Adda picked at the noodles and looked, predictably, surprised. Human behavior rarely caught her attention.
Iridian shrugged. “Something about the way the captain is while talking to us. It’s different from the treatment Chi gets.”
“Oh,” Adda said, as if that answered the question. “Sloane trusts Chi completely. Us, not so much.”
Iridian stared at her. “What do you mean, Sloane doesn’t trust us? We’ve followed every order on the last op, which we were specifically fielded for, by the way. Hell, you basically ran it yourself, and you’re running this one too.”
“It looks that way.” Adda still sounded distant, as if something in her head were more interesting than the conversation. “We’re gaining a lot of attention with the people Sloane works with. And we’re obviously Liu Kong’s first choice of replacements if anything happens to the captain.”
“Whoa, no, Tritheist is the next highest ranked.” Iridian felt like the conversation had slipped out from under her. They relied on Captain Sloane for every level of security, from food and shelter to protection from two law enforcement agencies and counting. “Anyway, the captain doesn’t need us the same way we need the positions here, but that doesn’t mean Sloane doesn’t trust us.” Adda had to be misreading the captain’s intent. She wasn’t good with people.
“Liu Kong knows that Tritheist lacks the skill range we have,” Adda said. “And Chi doesn’t make major decisions. On the Ann Sabina, we did. For the most part we do things the way Sloane would. But if we decided to do something different, Sloane would have a hard time stopping us.”
Iridian sagged against the back of her chair. “We’re not trying to take the crew away from Sloane.”
“I’ve been saying that since the last battle on Barbary Station. The message is being interpreted as a move in a game I’m not playing.” Adda finally made eye contact again. “If Sloane decides we’re no longer worth the risk, there’s a low-orbit Jupiter station. Sloane will know about it, but the planet’s magnetosphere makes it digitally secure and it’s well outside the captain’s zone of influence. At least one crew is based there. They cause a lot of damage in populated areas, so they’re not my first choice. I’m more interested in contacting one of the Saturnian crews. With what we’ve already accomplished, we could start over in any of those crews, if—”
“If what? Are we really talking about Captain Sloane betraying us?” Iridian shook her head. “That’s called paranoia. It’ll take more than veiled threats from a damned megacorporate CEO to make Sloane turn on us. The captain gives a fuck about the crew. That’s part of why we chose Sloane’s crew over the others, remember?”
Adda raised an eyebrow to indicate that of course she remembered, Iridian was being unreasonable, and the conversation was over. Usually Adda was the trusting one, and Iridian had to tell her how people really were. Maybe Adda had come a long way since they’d been out in the cold and the black, or maybe she saw something Iridian didn’t.
CHAPTER 9
“What the attack means, to clarify for my colleagues across the solar system, is that Captain Sloane is back. And trust me, Sloane’s powerful friends will make sure that the captain stays back. Vesta, thank all the gods you know and love for that.”—Suhaila Al-Mudari, TAPnews correspondent
When Adda returned to her workspace, Casey’s ebony figure stood in a doorway of white stone that opened onto an avenue of calm water. Despite Adda’s best efforts to keep it out of her systems, it proved it was still watching her workspace activity by sending her all the information on where Dr. Björn had traveled in the past few years, along with the most likely related events at vis destinations. Apparently only family life changes and scientific conferences inspired ver to visit other ’jects. Which was convenient, because Sloane’s crew was about to change a significant part of Dr. Björn’s life.
But before she could do more work on that problem, she had to deal with Casey. “Who else do you spy on besides me?” Adda hadn’t expected an answer to that question, although it would’ve been a nice surprise. Casey stared at her as the sun in the workspace set, bathing the water-bound city’s stone and brick walls in amber and gold. The sapphire glints in Casey’s eye sockets flashed like distant beacons.
Adda breathed in slowly and exhaled just as slowly, trying to clear the emotions that could interfere with her next question. “What do you want from me?”
“We need your help.”
Adda already knew that. “To do what?” And there was the silence she’d expected.
She sent her notes to her comp and let herself drift gently into waking life. This workspace generator was the latest permanent installation model, with
soothing gray-green fabric walls and a projected map of her and Iridian’s suite on its ceiling. When she opened her eyes, its blue user icon showed her where in the suite she lay. After a long time in a workspace, the reminder helped ground her in the present. Sometimes she studied the map for several minutes before she moved, just in case it changed into birds and flew away. Workspaces were tricky like that.
She’d shuffled toward the kitchen to make coffee and read what Casey had found for her, but her comp buzzed to notify her about a message Pel had left while she worked. She played the audio on her way to the coffee machine. He was talking because he was bored, so she ignored most of it. At this distance, it was hard to tell how he really felt. She printed a lid for the coffee mug.
In the tram on the way to the hospital, she turned the implanted comm system on. After she talked to Pel, she’d change the mic and earpiece toggle settings so she could easily turn off the mic and keep listening. I’m out of the workspace and I’m going to see Pel. Want to come?
Just a sec. Iridian’s words were quick and the signal was weak. Several minutes and a few epithets later, she subvocalized, Yeah. Meet you there. Been training with Chi and some of Sloane’s security detail. The captain’s got about fifty armed people at HQ at all times. Actually more. They’ve got three shifts and they’ve been hiring. Did you know that?
I did not. That was logical. She’d noticed fit-looking people in practical, nondescript clothes—she was passing one now, on her way to the lobby—who loitered in the same parts of the building for hours. Apparently they worked for Sloane directly, like she and Iridian did, rather than contracting with the captain through a bigger company. Given the captain’s insistence on complete control of everything relating to the crew, that was a logical choice.
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