Mutiny at Vesta

by R. E. Stearns

  “I did go to all that trouble.” Iridian’s burned finger still hurt, since she hadn’t wanted to open a whole packet of topical neutralizer to treat such a small burn. The ship’s printer might not have the material to make more. “I’d love to see how it works.”

  “I’ll go too,” said Chi from her couch.

  “Try to keep your legs under you this time,” Iridian suggested. Chi grinned and raised the back of her fist, a solid spacefarer “Fuck off.”

  “Hang onto something,” said Gavran. “Changing orientation, hold on, please.”

  Adda and Chi were still in their couches, but Iridian hadn’t found a safe place to keep the canisters. She shut the box and tucked it under one arm. With both boots locked to the deck and a hand on the bulkhead handhold beside the passthrough, she’d either crack both ankles or hang on until the ship stabilized. The bulkhead was rapidly becoming the overhead. With her luck, if she lost her grip on the box, Chi and Adda would end up covered in synthcapsin.

  The maneuver Gavran was pulling off now was complicated, especially if Björn was still trying to restart the skiff and shake free of the Coin’s hullhooks. The Mayhem shuddered, and Iridian clutched the box against her rib cage. The cartridges scraped against the padding around each slot.

  Iridian held as still as she could until grav stabilized low as all hells, with the new deck nearly but not exactly under the surface the passenger couches attached to. The bulkhead with the passthrough felt higher than the bulkhead across from it. The Coin was still accelerating, pushing the professor’s skiff farther from Mars, and the Mayhem was matching its slow speed to avoid tearing the passthroughs apart. This near the planet, Martians or stationsec could come sniffing around at any moment.

  Adda looked hopefully up at Iridian. “Could you talk to Dr. Björn? I don’t know what to say.”

  “Hey genius, we’re here to kidnap you?” Chi suggested.

  Iridian rolled her eyes and finished affixing her suit’s gloves. “Patch my helmet comms in.” The speaker beside her ear made a soft click. She drew in a long breath and pushed the torturer under Tritheist’s care on Mangala Station to the back of her mind. “Dr. Björn, this is Iridian Nassir.” Her eyes widened as she came up with an idea for how to play this. “We were heading to the Jovian reliable route and saw this crazy tug driver grab you. He’s still going. Are you hurt?”

  “I broke my arm. I didn’t call for a tug. I have no idea what’s going on. He didn’t even tell me who he is.”

  Station security is inbound, maybe ten minutes, Adda whispered in her ear.

  “Yeah, lucky he’s going out and not right into the station,” Iridian said. “Listen, let the red and blues get your ship back. Our passthroughs are hooked up, come on over before this fucker does something else.”

  The silence over the comm line had a sharp hiss, like they needed to boost the channel. “So you just saw me getting pushed around out here, and threw yourself into this out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “The NEU didn’t train cowards.” That was a risky assertion given Björn’s secessionist history, but this near Mars it’d be a common enough background for a spacefarer. Iridian liked to tell the truth, when she had that luxury. “But we can’t wait around. He does another sharp turn, we’ll both lose our passthroughs and anybody inside.”

  “Right.”

  Iridian shifted her grip on the box of synthcapsin canisters. “Our exterior’s already open. Come on through.”

  “Yes, give me a moment.” Björn left the channel open and rummaged through something in the ship.

  Iridian handed the box of canisters to Chi, who held it against her stomach with an expression that clearly communicated “Do not fuck this up.”

  “I’m coming out.”

  Iridian touched the shield at her belt. “Yeah, okay, good. We’ll open up the interior when the exterior shuts, you know how it goes.”

  “Sure.”

  The short answers seemed like a sign that Björn was getting suspicious, but ve also had a recently broken arm. Iridian carefully subvocalized, Leave the interior closed, disengage after the exterior closes, carefully run like hell once we’re disengaged. Adda relayed the message to Gavran.

  “Say again, those two don’t match,” the pilot said. “I heard ‘carefully’ and ‘run like hell,’ please repeat.”

  Iridian shut her eyes and forced her chest and shoulder muscles to relax. “She’s being funny,” Adda said seriously. “Get away as quickly as you can, without hurting anybody.”

  “Ve’s in,” Iridian called to Gavran. The exterior passthrough door shut and disconnected from the skiff’s passthrough. “Hey, how good are you with grav management?” As far as she could tell he was excellent, but if he had any doubts, it’d be best to hear them now.

  “I’m good. Very good,” Gavran said over the intercom.

  Iridian turned back to the passthrough. “Hang on in there, we’re backing off from that crazy tug.”

  “Wait, let me in!” The ship lurched away from the skiff’s passthrough and Björn thumped against the closed exterior door before grabbing a handhold on the bulkhead with vis good arm.

  Iridian gripped the handhold nearest her. It isn’t safe to leave ver in there for the whole trip back.

  Are you sure? Adda asked her.

  Gavran’s good, but you don’t want to count on everything being under the pilot’s control, Iridian replied. Especially not when the Coin’s involved.

  Over Iridian’s last few words, Chi asked, “We just leaving ver there? I don’t want to scrape ver off the bulkheads later.”

  “Just until we get away from the ships,” Iridian said. Then we should get ver out of there and talk about the job, she said subvocally. If we can get ver to sign before we get back to the station, Jiménez will have nothing to do.

  He might implode, Adda replied. Iridian couldn’t tell how much Jiménez’s impending mental breakdown bothered Adda. It shouldn’t bother her at all. He was a blight on the worlds.

  The Coin, whether playing its part and decoying the stationsec ships or on some mission of its own, kept pushing the skiff deeper into the cold and the black. Gavran was slowly bringing the Mayhem up to speed, leaving the scene as quickly as possible without slinging his passengers around and taking a very long route back to Mangala Station, where they’d pick up Tritheist and Jiménez and, with luck, drop off Björn after the contract was signed.

  Iridian pointed at the box of canisters on Chi’s chest and raised an eyebrow at the medic. Chi glanced at the closed passthrough and kept her hold on the box. “Bridge is locked, yeah?”

  “Yes.” Adda stood from her couch. The deck—grav hadn’t been stable long enough for Iridian to call it a floor—tilted slightly away from the passthrough, and Adda and Iridian leaned to accommodate the slope while the couches swiveled to match. Iridian took the canisters from Chi, carried them into one of the residential cabins, and stayed there.

  When the inner passthrough door slid open, Björn stood on the other side, one hand braced on the wall and the other arm held tight against vis chest. Ve was older than Iridian expected, and very white, even paler than the images they had. Iridian stepped away from the door so ve could come inside, and Björn stalked past. Ve stopped just across the threshold, taking in the wary eyes on ver.

  Chi was up and offering a helping arm in seconds. “Hey, you don’t look so good. My name’s Chi. I’m the shipdoc. What’s your name?”

  “Dr. Blaer Björn.” Ve accepted Chi’s offered and vacant couch, but ve was staring hard at Iridian. They had ten minutes, max, until ve figured out who they were. The newsfeeds didn’t show enough tall civvy women with shaved heads for Iridian to be mistaken for somebody else.

  Chi asked about Björn’s health generally and the arm in particular, and even slapped a vital signs monitor onto Björn’s uninjured arm, before strapping into vis couch and getting a kit from her residential cabin. She had an inflatable splint and some painkiller in it. Iridian would
’ve expected the painkiller, but the splint was a neat addition.

  While Chi applied them to Björn’s arm, Björn’s face was a pitiable mixture of relief, confusion, and suspicion. Nothing in vis body language was remotely threatening. The modified synthcapsin canisters would have to be tested another time. Iridian was almost disappointed.

  “Well,” Björn said, “I’m blessed that such a well-staffed ship came to my rescue.”

  Fifteen minutes until I’d expect the station security to confirm that ve’s no longer in the skiff and start looking for us, Adda whispered in Iridian’s earpiece.

  “Yeah, about that.” Iridian met Chi’s eye and the medic backed off as far as the next couch over to pack up her kit. Iridian leaned against the wall near the passthrough, with barely half a meter of space between her and Björn’s couch. “Oxia Corporation sent us. Turns out they don’t take no for an answer.”

  “Wakefield was telling the truth?” Björn’s expressions cycled through shock and an instant of fear before settling on anger. “So all this . . . this,” Björn twitched the shoulder of her injured arm, now in a bright red cast with a white cross on it, “was because of that Oxia position I turned down?”

  “Yeah.”

  Björn glared, eyes still tight with pain, as color gradually returned to her face. “And that was you at the Deimos campus too, you and that . . . and Wakefield.”

  “Call him whatever you like,” Chi offered. “We’re not pals.”

  “They’re shutting my project down,” said Björn. “Eighteen months of work, huge discoveries that meant something, and they’re shutting it down because of you, and Oxia. Take me back to my ship. Now.”

  Iridian grimaced. “We can take you back, but you’ll have to sign Oxia’s contract first.”

  “I won’t sign anything,” Björn shouted. Ve tried to stand, but the couch’s harness held ver in place. Ve fumbled with the release with vis good hand until Chi gently but firmly pressed it back against the couch’s formfitting armrest.

  Björn jerked vis arm away from Chi, but Chi caught it again and said, “You should listen to her.”

  “Why? I’ve said no more than once. This is illegal. A contract signed under duress—”

  “Is still a gods-damned megacorporate contract, and any NEU or ITA officer would uphold it, no questions asked,” Iridian said. “You know it, I know it, so let’s not waste time with that.” The ship was accelerating too fast to maintain healthy grav, and Iridian felt dragged toward the deck. That suggested pursuit. “If we get back to the station and you haven’t signed yet, we’re not putting you off there. We’ll have to take you into deep space with a guy who doesn’t give a fuck about what’s legal, as long as you end up signing.”

  “So what, yours is the easy way and his is the hard way?” Björn asked bitterly.

  “That’s the shape of it, yeah.” And even though Iridian was pretty sure it didn’t show on her face, shame clenched all the muscles in her chest and stomach. This wasn’t what she’d signed onto Sloane’s crew to do. This op was supposed to be a one-time deal, but unless Sloane got out from under Oxia, she had no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.

  “I won’t do it,” Björn said.

  Gods damn it.

  Ve has to, Adda whispered. She stepped out of the residential module, pupils dilated huge in the brightly lit main cabin. She’d taken more of the drugs that let her use a virtual workspace. She held the handholds on the bulkheads the whole way around to a position where Björn could see her. “This. It’s bad. I’m sorry. We didn’t want to be involved, but we are, and the alternative to signing is really, really awful.”

  “So don’t be involved,” Björn pleaded. “Get me back to my ship. I don’t have to report this.”

  “We can’t do that,” said Adda.

  Although they could, if they were willing to throw away everything they’d worked so hard for, for a total stranger. “Have you even read the contract?” Iridian asked. “You should know what you’re passing on. Could be a good deal. I mean, are they even moving you to Vesta? Maybe they’ve got a deal with U of M. You could at least see how much they’re paying.”

  “I don’t care what they’re paying!” Björn shouted. “It’s about the work. I’m not interested in shipping route optimization or whatever they think they need me for. At the university—”

  “That option’s gone,” Adda said softly. She sounded genuinely sad about it, and she couldn’t act for shit. “Your departmental responsibilities have already been handed over to Dr. Wakefield, and the lensing anomaly study is being reviewed for termination.”

  Iridian blinked. Beyond noting that what Björn had been studying on Deimos sounded cool, she’d ignored the details. Adda had apparently read up on it.

  “Yes, you saw to that, I imagine.” Tears welled in Björn’s blue eyes. Vis good fist clenched around the armrest. “The most exciting development in astronomy in your lifetimes, and after Jacov steals its resources for his project they’ll ignore it. I hope you’re happy.”

  Adda held out a small datacask, the size of half her smallest finger and filled with milky gray-green pseudo-organic fluid. The Oxia logo, a stylized fan or maybe an oxygen molecular diagram in blue and green, was printed on its side. “We’re really not.”

  Björn bit vis lip for a moment, then snatched the datacask with vis good hand and carefully inserted it into vis comp, on the hand with the broken arm. Vis comp glove had a bright cyan and red nebula design on black synthetic material that shimmered slightly at the projection window’s edges.

  Chi’s comp beeped and she looked between her projection and Björn. Whatever was off with Björn’s health made her frown, but she left the rest of her medical kit where it was. Iridian caught Adda’s eyes. Find out where stationsec is. It’s safest to get out of Martian space as soon as we can.

  They already know where we are, Adda said over their shared comms. They’re just not sure who we are and what we have to do with this yet. The Coin can hide its own records, but the skiff might not be able to.

  Iridian sighed and steadied Adda with both hands on her forearms. “If it’s important, you’ve got it, yeah?” Iridian murmured to her. Adda smiled and disappeared into the bridge cabin. The corner of her mobile workspace generator stuck through the residential cabin’s open doorway.

  Maybe she’d already tried talking to the skiff’s AI directly, and she still thought it’d share everything it knew with stationsec. It seemed so much safer to try to get the skiff’s zombie AI copilot to take the vessel back to the station on its own, stationsec be damned, but if Adda didn’t know how the Coin would react to that, then nobody knew. Iridian just hoped that she was using all the filters in her workspace to protect herself from the Coin’s influence.

  Grav rose dramatically, still pulling Iridian toward the deck. “Now’d be a good time to belt in,” Chi announced while strapping herself into the couch next to Iridian’s. “You start feeling like you can’t breathe or you’re about to pass out, let me know,” she added to Björn, who nodded without looking away from the projected contract.

  Grav yanked Iridian toward the intersection of the deck and the bulkhead with the passthrough. The mobile workspace generator thumped onto the new deck in the residential cabin. Metallic rattling made Iridian’s teeth clench. The box with the destabilized canisters was still loose in there. She ran into the residential cabin and stuffed the box into a drawer full of clothes built into the bedframe, where it’d be cushioned as well as it could be. The extra effort in high grav had her panting by the time she climbed into a passenger couch in the main cabin.

  Beneath the creak and shift of objects rolling and couches readjusting for grav changes, Björn kept making “hmm” noises. Apparently nobody else had gotten as far as convincing ver to read the contract. Adda crawled out of the bridge and into the last remaining main cabin couch.

  “Seeing anything you like?” Iridian asked Björn hopefully.

  “It’s better than I exp
ected,” ve admitted. “Longer term and with more penalties for talking about my work than I expected too, and the anticompetition section will make collaboration difficult.” Ve lowered the comp slightly, and although the couch’s position kept ver from making eye contact with Iridian, she was pretty sure Björn was addressing her. “Can you take me to somebody I can negotiate terms with?”

  “Our orders are for you to sign that thing the way it is,” Iridian said. “There isn’t an ‘or something else’ for if you don’t like it.”

  “Not a good one, anyway,” said Adda.

  “You mean the man you’d leave me with if I didn’t sign?” Björn looked over at Chi since Adda and Iridian were behind ver in the couches’ current configuration. Chi must’ve looked sufficiently grim for all three of them, because Björn said, “This is wrong. Oxia shouldn’t get everything it wants because it can. I won’t sign.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Stage 2 confirmed

  Adda had known that convincing Dr. Björn to sign the contract once they had ver would be the hardest part of the assignment, if she wanted to keep the astronomer’s mind and body as whole as possible. Perhaps approaching honesty would make the desired impact. “This is Oxia’s business strategy. We’re as trapped in our captain’s contract as you are in yours.” Technically she and Iridian had more freedom, since Sloane had made sure that only the captain had to sign, but building solidarity seemed helpful.

  “We signed on to stick it to bastards like them, not work for them,” said Iridian.

  “So go to the authorities,” Dr. Björn said. “I’ll minimize your part in it.”

  “What authorities?” Iridian sounded more angry than desperate. “The NEU might fine Oxia for this maneuver so close to Mars, but Oxia’s moving its business out to the colonies, and out there they are the authority in any given colony. Oxia’s buying whole damn habs out from under people. Even if Oxia decides to cut everything with all of us because we screw up that badly, which, by the way, would be the end of our ability to make money doing anything remotely legal if they happened to let us live, that’s just the end of us. Oxia will find somebody else to get you signed on quietly, and they’ll go right on screwing over everybody and taking all the money they can grab.”