The student in the Phobos shirt kept glancing over his shoulder at Tritheist. “Dr. Wakefield, some people are here to see you.”
A workspace generator, the installed kind instead of the mobile kind Adda used, rustled in a corner of the lab. “Who?” A man demanded imperiously from inside the generator.
“Well that’s familiar.” Iridian poked Adda in the ribs, making her jump. Adda was too busy envying the generator setup to defend herself. It was older than the one in her suite at Sloane’s headquarters, but it’d be convenient to have on the Casey.
Iri, am I thinking about Casey a lot? Adda asked over her implants. The intelligence was millions of kilometers away on Vesta, watching over AegiSKADA, the intelligence she should really be worrying about.
Yeah, and you should be, Iridian replied. The Casey’s fucking terrifying, and you don’t want to forget about it. If we leave it alone long enough, it’ll try assembling AegiSKADA again.
While Iridian was subvocalizing that, Tritheist was saying, “Adda Karpe ring any bells?”
The generator had been emitting a low hum, which Adda hadn’t noticed until it wound down and went silent. The tent-flap doors spread and disgorged a white man in jeans and a coffee-stained semiformal shirt. He turned bloodshot eyes on his three visitors, looking less distinguished than tired in his advancing years. “You’re bigger than I expected,” he said to Tritheist.
Tritheist pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Adda. She gave Dr. Wakefield her best midlevel spacers’ bow, for meeting someone for the first time when neither of them were more famous or powerful. Iridian’s lips turned down at the corners, like Adda had bowed at the wrong depth or with bad posture. She had no idea how to recover from that. “Adda Karpe, on behalf of Sloane’s crew.”
“That I know.” He barely bowed at all. “You going to transfer the money to the account now? The number’s . . . Bee!” Adda startled and looked for the insect, but the student with the space potato shirt reappeared beside them instead. “Get that account number I wrote down and stuck . . . somewhere.”
“Yeah, boss,” said the student apparently named Bee. He walked slowly away from the generator in a series of arcs across the lab, peering at each projected note.
“Where is the evidence package you’re sending?” Adda asked Dr. Wakefield. After employing the most dangerous zombie intelligence she was aware of to pull that profile together, she couldn’t stand the idea of him losing it.
“In my comp, obviously,” he said. At least he hadn’t put it on some solid-state medium she’d have to keep track of. “I’ll send it just as soon as that idiot finds the number so you can pay me.”
The student seemed pleasant enough, and Dr. Wakefield had annoyed Adda since the first time she’d encountered him, in an anonymized community for University of Mars faculty. His insistence on being paid in person was especially aggravating and unnecessary. Adda started to ask Casey to find the account number, but by the time the intelligence received a request sent from Mars to Vesta, the student would have found it. And anyway, there were more practical, safer ways to get the number than asking Casey for it. Maybe I’m really not sleeping enough, she thought.
“So they’ll give me the department, after ve’s gone?” Dr. Wakefield crossed his arms and kept looking at Adda like he expected her to know.
“That’s the plan,” she said.
Sloane’s crew was paying Dr. Wakefield for delivering the criminal record that AegiSKADA had compiled and seeded throughout multiple source databases. Dr. Wakefield was a reputable source, and the potential for departmental leadership inspired him to persuade the university of the veracity of Dr. Björn’s history of corruption and white-collar crime that had “come to light.” It’d been the least complicated, least expensive, nonviolent way to make it impossible for Dr. Björn to keep vis position at the Deimos observatory. She had no intention of guaranteeing Dr. Wakefield a departmental leadership position, but that was what he wanted to hear.
“Good. It’s about damned time, is what it is.” Dr. Wakefield looked around the lab, faintly embarrassed. “Bee!”
“One more quadrant to search,” the student called from a patch of shadows between projected displays.
“Worthless, lazy gob,” Dr. Wakefield grumbled. “What’s your interest, anyway? It’s a strange thing to hire somebody to do.”
“Ve slept with my wife,” said Iridian. Somehow she turned the amusement clearly visible in that squint of her eyes into an angry growl. Her goggles enhanced the effect. Adda almost felt sorry for the man. “While she was a student here.”
“Really,” said Dr. Wakefield. “That is interesting. I mean, terrible.” He’d have that bit of gossip all over the campus within an hour of them catching the Deimos shuttle back to Mangala Station.
Dr. Björn deserved to keep the dream position ve’d already earned, but keeping Sloane on the right side of Oxia seemed to be the only way for the crew to get out from under them. Oxia needed the astronomer badly enough that ve might have some negotiating power, once ve decided to join. And whatever ve did at the University of Mars had to be similar, because Oxia had asked for this scientist in particular.
“Please don’t mention any of this to Dr. Björn,” Adda said. “That will only complicate things.”
“Oh, of course, not a word.” Something was off about the way Dr. Wakefield said it. He was probably just distracted, searching a patch of wall that the student had already searched for his account number.
The student appeared from behind the pseudo-organic tank, clutching a slip of analog paper rather than a projector. “Here, boss.”
Dr. Wakefield snatched the paper out of Bee’s hand and offered it, much more politely, to Tritheist. Tritheist frowned and passed it to Adda. She’d already set up a shortcut for the money transfer, so once she entered the account information, another subvocalized word set the transfer through various proxies in motion.
“All right,” Dr. Wakefield said. “I have an appointment with the deans. If you’ll excuse me . . .” He walked them to the office door and left, whistling.
Bee stared down the hall after him. “I’ve never seen him that happy.” Adda hadn’t gotten the impression that Dr. Wakefield was happy at all. He hadn’t even smiled.
“He ought to be,” said Tritheist. “He’s about to get promoted.”
Discussing the details with random passers-by seemed unwise. “We need to get back,” Adda said. The ship ID for the Charon’s Coin was still active on Mangala Station, according to the traffic control system she’d had AegiSKADA access and seed with monitoring software. The ship they came on, the Mayhem, was still there too. The Coin’s intelligence was capable of capturing Dr. Björn on its own, but she couldn’t trust it to keep ver safe.
Also, she wanted to check on AegiSKADA again. She’d only skimmed her monitoring feed on its activity in the past hour, and her alert setup wasn’t perfect. If she didn’t read the activity feed carefully, she could miss something that’d put the people on Vesta in danger. She didn’t fully understand AegiSKADA’s priorities, and she couldn’t explain why the Coin had followed Sloane’s crew to Mars. She needed more information.
Speaking of which . . . Adda turned to Bee. “What does Dr. Wakefield’s schedule look like for the rest of the day? I want to . . . um . . . invite him to lunch?” This was her second time zone of the day, and there was no relationship between the one on the Mayhem and the one on Deimos. The campus’s interior lighting was set to either morning or afternoon.
“Lemme look.” Bee went back into Dr. Wakefield’s lab and Adda and Tritheist followed, while Iridian watched the hallway outside. Bee started a new projection over the desk and flipped through it with his whole hand. “Huh. He’s free for the next couple hours. Guess he got the wrong time for that dean’s meeting.”
“Yeah?” Tritheist glared at Adda like this was her fault.
“Thanks. I’ll text.” She managed to keep her clomping speed to a fast walk on her way out of the lab
. After the door closed behind Tritheist, she asked, “Is someone still listening in on Dr. Björn’s comms?”
Tritheist looked at her like this was a very poor question. “It’s mission-critical intel.”
Adda walked toward the airlock as fast as she could go in the magnetized boots. “We need to know if ve receives a message within the next few minutes, because I think—”
The operation channel buzzed through all three of their comps. “Ogir here,” a tense voice she’d never heard before said in triplicate. Captain Sloane’s surveillance team lead lacked Casey’s resources, but Adda had to admit that he seemed more reliable. She was about to find out if she were right about that. “Are Wakefield and Björn supposed to be talking? Because they’re talking. To each other. Right now.”
“Patch it to the gods-damned op channel where it fucking belongs,” Tritheist snarled.
“. . . you doing this?” said an agender voice that must have been Björn’s.
“Look, you’ve done some good work, sure,” said Dr. Wakefield. “But you’ve never done what it takes to make that project produce anything saleable. You know it, I know it, the deans know it. Even the students have seen you everywhere but in your office, supervising the project. The person running this department should keep it running at top speed. I’ve been saying it for years.”
“There’s nothing I can do at my desk that I couldn’t do on my comp,” Dr. Björn shouted. “What the hell gives you the idea that you’ve got anything the deans will even read?”
“First, of course they won’t read it. I’ll be presenting it and they’ll have a copy, which is the same thing,” Dr. Wakefield said. “Second, it’s the Oxia people in my lab who convinced me. They’re scouting you for something huge. I’m doing you a favor, really.”
“Ah, shit,” said Iridian. “How did he find out? I thought Vestan news didn’t make it off Vesta.”
“I don’t need your favors,” Dr. Björn said in vis micced conversation with Dr. Wakefield.
“I’d read that academic rumor mills were better informed than most, but I thought that was some kind of joke,” Adda said. She was used to not getting jokes. Somebody must’ve found out that Oxia had been working to hire Dr. Björn. Once that news reached Dr. Wakefield, he could’ve made assumptions about who was paying him to ruin Dr. Björn’s University of Mars career, but he wouldn’t have any evidence. Adda had disguised her identity in digital communications, the money had gone through a dozen accounts before reaching Dr. Wakefield’s, and she’d be erasing any records the campus made of her visit. “Where are they?” she asked.
“They’re out in the open between the satellite monitoring mod and one of the residential mods,” Ogir said over the op channel.
“Well, if anyone were going to pass up an opportunity like they’re offering, it’d be you,” Dr. Wakefield told Dr. Björn. “I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got a presentation to prepare.”
“We should be able to see them when we get out.” Iridian cycled the airlock, which didn’t involve vacuuming this time, and bounded into a cloud of kicked-up dust. Tritheist and Adda followed, pulling their goggles over their eyes as they went.
“Wait!” Adda said. “Let them go. This can still work.”
Iridian gave her an incredulous look and wiped dust off her goggle lenses. “Let’s get out of sight then.” She put the building that their goggles labeled Matsumoto Hall between them and the open area Ogir described.
“Wakefield’s leaving,” said Ogir. “He’s heading for the shuttle bay.”
“What’s Dr. Björn doing?” Adda asked.
“Ve’s just standing there. No, there ve goes. Launching a tracker . . . now.” Adda wanted to find out more about this Ogir person, because that was good thinking. Also, he was surveilling an innocent person without asking questions, or he’d gotten all the answers he wanted before he came here. “Tracker hit, stuck, and transmitting. It’s coming online. Patching to the op feed.”
Adda’s campus map acquired a small green dot. The dot was approaching the shuttles too, following Dr. Wakefield. “We should grab ver now,” Tritheist said. “If ve ends up planetside, we’ll never catch ver.”
The lieutenant’s impatience was one of his most annoying features. Something made putting up with it worthwhile to Captain Sloane, though, so she’d put up with it too. “It will take days for the proceedings and paperwork to be finalized. We only set it in motion today, and we don’t want to talk to ver until ve’s lost everything ve can lose. As long as ve thinks ve can persuade vis department to let ver keep vis job, ve won’t consider Oxia’s offer. That’s why I reserved us a place to stay until we can corner Dr. Björn for a conversation about this. That wasn’t, I don’t know, optional vacation time I built in.”
She was cutting it close with Jiménez’s viability as a participant in the operation, but the situation should transpire such that Dr. Björn would be frustrated enough to consider other options within the next four days. Jiménez would probably have some kind of meltdown on the way back to Vesta, but that seemed likely to happen anyway.
“If ve doesn’t consider Oxia’s offer, ve’ll consider Jiménez’s.” Tritheist snorted dust out of his nose.
Adda frowned. “If this can be vis choice, it should be.”
“Back to the ship, then?” asked Iridian.
“Ogir here.” The operation channel crackled with interference for half a second. “—tracker will only stick for two or three hours. It’s on vis shirt.”
“Still, it was a good idea,” Adda said. “You’ll follow Dr. Björn anyway?”
“Ogir here, will do. Out.”
“Back to the ship,” said Adda.
* * *
Whether Dr. Björn went to vis apartment on Mars or the orbiting station, everyone had to use a shuttle to leave Deimos. Adda pulled up the Charon’s Coin’s location on her comp while the crew headed for the Deimos shuttle complex and bought passage back to Mangala Station. The Coin had stayed close to the Mangala Station dock where Dr. Björn stored vis ship.
Dr. Björn’s shuttle passed the Mangala Station approach route and continued toward the planet. The Coin held position in stationspace. Adda released the breath she’d been holding.
“What’s up?” Iridian asked.
Adda glanced at the other passengers in their own shuttle. Everyone else was as absorbed in something on their comp or projected over their eyes as she’d just been. “I was worried the Coin would try to stop Dr. Björn’s shuttle, but it didn’t.”
“Well, that’d be something,” Iridian said in a tone that implied something hilariously bad. “Every newsfeed in the system would run that as the priority headline.”
“It’d save us time,” Tritheist said.
“Do you want to hand the doc over to that freak?” Iridian asked.
“It’s the safer bet,” said Tritheist. “You give ver to him, he’ll get ver to sign anything, literally anything, if he’s got enough time and neither of them kill themselves first. What we’re doing here is a risk, and what we’re risking is the captain’s position and life. So yeah, I’d rather get Jiménez’s part over with.”
“He’ll fuck ver up.” Any effort Iridian had been making to hide her anger dissolved into faster breaths, louder speech, and a scowl that made her freckles look like shrapnel from an explosion. “Ve may never be able to do anything for—” Adda leaned sideways to grasp Iridian’s arm, to stop her referencing Oxia’s name in a shuttle that was almost certainly micced “—them, after Jiménez finishes with ver,” Iridian said a bit more quietly.
“They hired us to get ver to sign,” said Tritheist. “What happens after ve signs isn’t our problem.” Iridian looked angry enough to punch the lieutenant. Fortunately, she sat diagonally across an aisle from him. She dug her fingers into the tie-down straps across her chest and glowered at the seat in front of her.
“I wouldn’t expect the captain handing over a barely functional wreck who can’t do the work to be . . . apprecia
ted,” Adda said. “They’re interested because ve’s the best in vis field of expertise. It follows that they want ver to retain vis capacity to work at that level.” She resisted a powerful urge to look away from Tritheist’s scowling face. “Please. Just a few more days.”
* * *
Their shuttle from the Deimos campus docked at Mangala Station. They spent two days in a microgravity hotel there, listening to Ogir’s surveillance team on Mars follow Dr. Björn through vis daily routine. Dr. Björn was particular about laundry, apparently, because the tracker got destroyed the evening ve returned from Deimos. The main thing they’d been able to confirm before the tracker went dead was that Dr. Björn kept at least three rats as pets, all of whom had greeted ver noisily upon vis arrival. Ve was also a regular exerciser, and practiced what the surveillance team had identified as some variant of kung fu.
And, as Adda had warned the captain ve might, Dr. Björn had contacted Oxia. Captain Sloane sent a message extremely early local time on the second day, which Tritheist forwarded for their perusal in a station diner near the docks later in the morning: “The hiring manager for Oxia’s Martian branch received an irate message from Dr. Björn earlier. She didn’t know what Björn was talking about, of course, since she hasn’t dealt with Björn’s case in several months.” Sloane chuckled. “Surveillance error, or something else? Let me know. I need Ogir’s most reliable operatives on Mars. Border zones are always interesting, and I must be up-to-date.”
“Border zones,” Iridian huffed. She kicked a tethered low-grav chair into the path of somebody who’d been angling for one of two tables she, Adda, and Tritheist had taken over. The chair snapped back into its place at the table, trailing straps to hold a diner patron in place, on the downbeat of a guitar and tapping drum song playing over an old speaker near the door. Adda’s implant translated disconnected lines of lyrics until she turned the earpiece off.
Mutiny at Vesta Page 17
