“He’s leaving tomorrow,” Adda said.
Iridian hugged her. “Okay, now we just need one good pilot and one who won’t kill us.”
“Gavran seems fine.” Adda read the incredulity on Iridian’s face, apparently, because she projected a dossier on her comp and showed it to Iridian. “Look at all these missions he’s flown in. Sloane trusts him, and he hasn’t crashed anything due to error.”
Iridian tapped the projection on the back of Adda’s hand to sort the list by causes of crashes Gavran was involved in. “Missiles, sabotage, more ship-to-ship . . . so his problem is he can’t dodge?”
Adda shrugged. “I’d rather go with him than involve even more new people. We still need that second pilot to fly the prototype to Oxia’s collection point. I really don’t want one of the intelligences to do that.”
* * *
She and Iridian walked Pel to the dock the next morning. Adda mothered him the whole way. “You’re taking Transit 549 to Ceres, and then switching to the chartered ship to Jōju Station.”
“Oh my gods, Sissy, it says that on my tickets. I can read!” He opened his eyes wide and did an eyeball-shaking trick he’d discovered in their focusing functions. The eyes jittered back and forth in his sockets while his pupils stayed facing forward. Iridian chuckled.
Adda grimaced. “Gross.”
“So quit worrying,” said Pel. “I’ll be fine. This is a thousand times better than drinking twelve hours out of my average twenty-four. Hell, safer too.”
“Your comm messages will be delayed. Even texts.” She sounded a little desperate now.
“I’m used to that. We’ve only been talking in real time for like six months, remember? And yes, before you ask a-gods-damned-gain, I’ve got the pic of the pilot who’s supposed to leave on the chartered ship I come in on, and I’ll tell you when ve’s gone. Trust me, for once. I’ll. Be. Fine.” Pel hugged her and walked into the public terminal alone.
Iridian wrapped an arm around Adda’s waist and pulled her against Iridian’s side. “He’s survived some awful stuff already. If I didn’t think he could do it, I’d’ve said so.” Adda tilted her head until it rested against Iridian’s side. “We’ll be right behind him,” Iridian said. “Or at least a few days behind. Give him time to settle in and notify us of anything dangerous you don’t know about already.”
“And to give the Oxia pilot time to get here.” Repeating her plan aloud in case Iridian found any errors in it seemed to make Adda feel more confident in it, even though Iridian rarely noticed anything out of place.
* * *
The Oxia pilot was older than Adda and Iridian, with freckled, brassy skin, hair like a bright green lens flare all around his head, and more energy than Iridian had before her first run of the day. He bounded out of an anonymous chartered transport and crossed the terminal angled toward Adda rather than Captain Sloane. “Adda Karpe? Yeah?”
Iridian grinned. Adda executed a halfway decent spacefarer bow, which the pilot returned. “And this is Captain Sloane.” She held out an open hand toward the captain and failed to introduce Iridian, which was for the best considering Captain Sloane’s growing frown.
The captain had been letting Adda make a lot of the how-to decisions on ops, but she might’ve gotten more credit than Sloane wanted on the last one. According to Pel, Vestans were still filling their social feeds with the University of Mars hassling Oxia for poaching one of their more productive researchers, despite Oxia blocking most of the negative press about it. Conveniently for U of M, the details of Björn’s disgrace hadn’t been made public. Local rumors associated the discord with Adda, not Sloane.
The Oxia pilot whirled toward Sloane and just about put his nose on his knees to bow deeper to Sloane than he had to Adda. The implant jack under the pilot’s jaw flashed a white reflection of the terminal lights. “Captain Sloane, so sorry. I’m London Verney, test pilot with Oxia Corporation. Really great to meet you. Both of you, that is.”
One awkwardly silent tram ride later, Sloane said, “I don’t think I’m doing the crew as much good as I could be, supervising lawyers and being visible here. I’ll join you this time.” This last was to Adda, who nodded even as her eyes widened in alarm at having to revise her plans with Pel already involved.
You can do it, babe, Iridian thought at her.
* * *
Chi and Gavran weren’t big exercisers, so even though Iridian would’ve preferred to introduce them to Verney on the track or at the gym, the VIP room at Sloane’s club had to do. The digital bartender was back, a beauty of indeterminant gender and race whose full lips were fixed in a small smile. The human bartender was on the second floor, where Captain Sloane was holding court again.
The VIP room contained a few scattered individuals in widely varying clothes and gear, drinking and looking at their comps over black tabletops bathed in golden light. Iridian made a point of introducing herself whenever she spotted a new person. Adda had found every VIP room patron Iridian asked about in Sloane’s roster of experts on call, and the ones who felt like talking always had a fun, or alarming, story about past ops. Sloane had inspired the kind of loyalty that drew people in from as far as the Saturnian colonies to welcome the captain back. Hell, experts from the Kuiper colonies might still be on their way here. That seemed like a good sign for the longevity of her and Adda’s positions in Sloane’s crew.
Adda had stayed in her workspace generator, revising her plans to accommodate Sloane’s participation. The thicker mat Iridian had slipped into the generator during Adda’s fretful few hours of sleep hadn’t even garnered thanks. It was possible that Adda hadn’t noticed the difference. Iridian was redirecting herself when she felt ignored, because Adda was carrying most of the op logistics, but the whole same-plane-different-orbits relationship dynamic was becoming tiresome. After they got Sloane out of the Oxia contract Adda would come back to her, and it couldn’t happen soon enough.
In the VIP room, Iridian, Chi, and Gavran had barely gotten through pleasantries with Verney before Chi caught Iridian’s eye, drew the word “Hey” out for two long beats, and followed it up with “Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure.” Iridian stood and wandered to the side of the bar with the projected floor-to-ceiling window showing the dance floor. Chi followed.
“The hell is going on?” Chi asked at the perfect volume to be heard over the music while not carrying to Gavran and Verney. “I get we need two pilots, but him? Oxia’s pilot, and an Earther too?”
“Adda’s an Earther, and she’s doing all right out here.”
“She’s not the damned pilot. What does Captain Sloane think of that?”
Iridian shrugged. “The captain’s coming along to supervise.”
“Ah, great.” Chi’s tone said that the captain’s participation in the op was unwelcome news. She glanced over her shoulder at the pilots. “I don’t mind saying, I’d rather run one of your ops than Tritheist’s. He asks the captain before he does every damned thing, and you and Karpe just handle it. I respect that. But I haven’t been on a hab-based op with Captain Sloane in years, and those were bad times. And now Oxia’s picking our crew? Something you want to tell us?”
Iridian quit half watching the dancers and turned toward Chi. “Captain Sloane wouldn’t be coming unless . . .” Why was the captain on this op, anyway? “Unless there was something to be gained by having the captain along. Good local press, maybe?”
“Or Vesta’s coming apart from the inside like they always say it will, with two spinning stations and all that new Oxia mining equipment under us.” Chi turned away from the dance floor, toward the VIP bar.
Iridian followed. “The captain wouldn’t leave Tritheist here if that were happening.”
“And that lawyer. You know they’re taking Sloane’s lead council to bed, yah?” Chi grinned.
“No,” Iridian said, in a way that meant “I don’t believe it because it’s too good to be true, so tell me everything and convince me.”
That topic meshed poorly with “Oxia’s gods-damned secret police. Secret police disappear people, and so does Oxia, so, same thing.” Gavran was drunkenly adamant about this point, and too far into the Oxia pilot’s personal space.
“Look, I don’t know a thing about that.” Verney leaned away from Gavran. Nobody else watching the exchange looked like they’d step in, and somebody should. Iridian approached with her hands open by her thighs and near her shield, her pace casual and easy to follow, and her head up in her best de-escalation posture.
“They give me something new to fly, and I fly it,” Verney said. “Besides, Oxia’s the best thing that could’ve happened to this chunk of rock, stationsec included. The ’ject was a seething mess of barely functioning crap before they took it over. And the only person I know of ‘disappearing’ is that UM astronomer, when you people rescued ver from that runaway ship. Lazy maintenance can’t very well be blamed on—”
Iridian saw the punch coming, and Verney just sat there talking. Gavran’s windup was big enough for her to get her mostly deployed shield between the pilots. His fist thumped against its center. Verney yelped in surprise, Gavran in pain. One of the loners at the tables pulled her—his?—knife, met Iridian’s eyes, glanced at the shield, and sheathed the blade again.
Iridian pulled Verney off his stool and pushed him onto the one next to it so she could sit between him and Gavran. She raised an eyebrow at Gavran through the fully deployed shield. “I’m done, I’m done,” Gavran said. He shook out his hand and winced.
Iridian grinned and lowered the shield without collapsing it. Drunk moods changed quickly, but she trusted him not to throw another punch in the next few seconds. “You really meant that. I’ll have to check the shield over before we leave.”
Verney leaned around her to glare at Gavran, and she mirrored his posture to get in his way. “I don’t know which of his drug-sucking friends fell down which mineshaft,” Verney said, “but Oxia Corporation—”
“Shut it,” Iridian snapped at him. If Gavran had lost someone like the argument implied, then he sure as hell didn’t need Verney’s crap about it. Hey babe, can we put the Oxia pilot on one of the Barbary AIs’ ships for the trip out? They could let him think he’s flying it.
The Apparition’s the one coming, Adda replied. It’s the one fueled and docked on Vesta while Casey and the Coin come and go. But it’s too long a trip to leave him alone with the Apparition’s intelligence.
While Adda was subvocalizing, Verney was saying, “It’s not fair that he—”
“Keep it shut, or I’ll fucking punch you,” Iridian said once Adda finished. She was right. The first time he talked to the copilot he’d figure out it was very different from any other copilot he’d flown with. That’d be trouble.
Chi settled on the last stool in line on the other side of Gavran to look at his hand and scowl over his shoulder at Verney in sharp, randomized doses. After a couple of those, Verney found a woman near the cam that fed the window projection and watched her like she was dancing just for him.
Iridian smiled slightly, and commented to Adda, Nothing brings a group together like throwing in an outsider.
People are ridiculous, whispered Adda.
* * *
A few hours after the Mayhem and the Apparition left Rheasilvia stationspace for Jōju Station, Pel’s first scheduled vid recording arrived. “I’m in! Ha, I’ve always wanted to say that.”
He glanced around, and Iridian commented, “I wouldn’t have recorded where I thought I’d be interrupted.” Adda’s frown meant “Shush” in this context. They stood together in the Mayhem’s residential cabin, watching Pel confirm that his first progress report on infiltrating Jōju Station’s prototype ship project wouldn’t attract the attention of station personnel.
“The local test pilot’s gone. I said the stuff you said to say about the docking bay, and they think I know what I’m talking about, but they also gave me a huge honking file to study. I’m sending that to you . . . now.” Pel tapped at his comp. “They’re all completely head over heels for this prototype ship. They barely know who’s in the room with them most of the time. This is going to be cake.” Pel winked at the cam and shut it off.
Adda shook her head. “I don’t like it when he says that. He’s usually wrong.”
“Did you hear what he said about the station personnel?” Iridian asked. “That sounds bad too. Do you think the prototype copilot’s influencing them?”
“It’s possible, but it seems unlikely.” Adda sounded like she’d checked out of the conversation and was already thinking of some other project on her comp.
“It’ll be unsupervised until you change the pilot designation over to Verney,” Iridian pointed out. “That’s a great chance for it to take over the station or something.”
Adda sighed impatiently. “As long as people don’t access the ship’s internal systems or try to fly it, the copilot shouldn’t be able to interact with station personnel. It has to interact to influence them. It’s an easily preventable problem. Besides, the station management intelligence’s supervisor is still on site. Part of that person’s responsibility is keeping people from getting influenced by any intelligences in the facility.”
Iridian could second-guess her all day, but Adda had years of study and hours of lab time on what AIs generally did. Even though Adda had an answer for everything, Iridian couldn’t help wondering what else might go wrong. Insufficiently tested prototype AIs had to be almost as dangerous as the awakened ones, for the same reason all AIs were dangerous: no human really understood what the AI was thinking.
CHAPTER 15
Test 02 connection established, calibration initiated
A couple hours later, the Mayhem passed the outer buoy of Jōju Station’s network. The Apparition stopped outside stationspace. Before Adda could investigate why it’d stopped, Pel pinged her comp. The message’s local timestamp was 9:40 a.m., within half an hour of what she expected for Jōju Station’s local time. Less than a minute later he recalled the short message with the word “lonely” in it, as if he’d changed his mind about sending it. This was the signal they’d agreed on to indicate that he’d set the EMP mine and the prototype ship could be shielded from it. Nobody was following him. Nobody was even suspicious.
He was surprisingly on top of that communication, and he’d installed the comms duplicating routine the way it was supposed to be done, so that she’d get anything Jōju Station sent out as a call for help. He was taking his role in the operation seriously.
“He’s ready,” Adda told the crew in the Mayhem. “Go on as scheduled.”
The comms duplicating routine would let her track the ITA’s response to automated notifications the station’s intelligence would send after the EMP went off. Her schedule had the pirates well away from Jōju Station before the ITA’s rescue party arrived to help the station residents repair the damage, but it paid to be informed.
The station guided them to a passenger terminal, and Adda led the way out of the Mayhem’s passthrough with all but Gavran and Chi following. The ring station’s Earthlike gravity was a relief after all the gravity adjustments while they docked, even though the sensation of her internal organs sinking into their usual positions was deeply and literally unsettling. The increased gravity also made the bag of gear she carried heavier than she’d expected, but that was normal for interplanetary travelers’ experience with their luggage. Projected messages on the terminal warned them about nondisclosure policies and various dangers inherent in shipyard experiments.
When Adda was about two steps from the doorway to the rest of the station, Pel burst into the terminal. He threw his arms around her like he hadn’t seen her for weeks instead of days. His eyes were purple with dark blue pupils, because of course he wouldn’t try to make them unobtrusive while undercover. He felt tense and wired in her arms. “Sissy! I’m so glad you’re here, finally.” He lowered his voice to add, “This wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be. These people ki
nda remind me of you.”
If she’d never met Iridian, Adda might’ve developed ship intelligences in a place like this. Sloane’s crew could’ve been stealing her years-long project. She hugged Pel tighter and whispered, “Almost over.” If she’d worked for the corporation that owned this place, there would have been too many managerial demands on the intelligence’s development process to do it in a way she’d be proud of.
“Well, let’s have a tour!” Captain Sloane said loudly and with frankly alarming good cheer. “We can settle in later.”
Iridian had rigged up a small, wearable cam disruptor that Adda hid beneath her silver necklace. Whenever she came in range, the disruptor replaced the cam’s live feed with a loop from twenty seconds before she was in view, and held that until she left transmission range. It was much safer than finding her way through a strange station while interfacing with the local intelligences. They’d come a long way since their first hijacking.
Her comp pulsed in the pattern she’d set to notify her if AegiSKADA did anything other than precisely what she’d asked it to do. Earlier, she’d asked it to analyze Rheasilvia and Albana station security data. It’d found standard practices that’d help Adda defend headquarters against a station security assault, if it ever came to that. The notification had alerted her that AegiSKADA was requesting Casey’s access protocols for ITA databases, which meant that Casey had told it about those protocols.
Now that Casey had seen AegiSKADA’s request come across Adda’s comp, it’d already be in the process of teaching AegiSKADA everything it knew about ITA data structure. Or, as was equally possible, it’d ignore the message because it had something else it’d rather do with its resources. Adda approved AegiSKADA’s request. She had no control over Casey, and she was already working with more intelligences than was healthy. She didn’t need AegiSKADA’s notifications distracting her from getting Verney accepted as supervisor of the prototype ship’s AI copilot.
Mutiny at Vesta Page 23
