Mutiny at Vesta

by R. E. Stearns

  Iridian nodded once. “And your intermediary couldn’t arrange this conversation for you because . . .”

  It would be nice to have Iridian in agreement with her, except for all the damned time it took to get her there. Trust would’ve been much more efficient. “The time I would’ve saved with direct connection has been spent talking about it,” Adda said. “The prototype’s internal temperature has been too high for too long. It’s worth the risk.” And, she managed not to say, it was her risk to take. Iridian’s uninformed attempts to protect her were wasting her time.

  “Then I’ll find a place to tie down,” Iridian said grimly. “You’re not dealing with that thing alone.”

  Adda entered the Apparition’s bridge. The pilot’s seat was designed for fit military personnel, so Adda had to wedge her wide hips in against its armrests, and still ended up sitting crooked. She pressed a sharpsheet onto her tongue and twisted a cable free of her silver necklace.

  That activity required her finger’s attention, but not her mind’s, so she took the resulting few seconds to skim through what AegiSKADA had asked for permission to do since she last checked on it. It was combining various proprietary maps of Rheasilvia and Albana stations, and it’d requested station administrative data to continue its project. Nothing stood out as dangerous, so she approved it. Then one end of her cable plugged into the Apparition’s bridge console, and, after a second’s hesitation the other end plugged into her nasal jack.

  “Mayhem, docked and locked at Bay 2, repeating, the Mayhem is at 45 ticks in Bay 2,” said Gavran over the operation channel. Adda had already forgotten exactly how ticks translated into specific points of a ring station, but that would help Captain Sloane find the Mayhem and board it with Pel.

  The sharpsheet was still taking effect, but the Apparition’s presence already seemed more tangible in the small bridge. Its vertigo-inducing constant reassessment of its surroundings was so difficult to parse that Adda had to redirect her digital intermediary to filter the input. Otherwise, her method seemed to be working. If anybody had ever knowingly plugged into an awakened intelligence before, Adda hadn’t read about it. She could be covering new territory in AI/human relations.

  Four loud electronic buzzes behind her made her jump in her seat. She craned her neck to see Iridian checking fist-size magnetic anchors’ attachment to the wall. “Sorry. Mobile tie-down kit. Give me just a second to strap in.”

  The moment Iridian secured the last strap on her kit, the Apparition accelerated away from Jōju Station. The timing suggested that an assessment of Iridian’s safety was part of its calculation to decide when to leave. In its projected bridge window, green lights on the evacuated station crew’s jump suits flashed in clumps outside almost every docking bay. The Apparition pulled into a sharply banked turn to avoid them.

  The Apparition added data labeled with the prototype’s machine-readable ID to the projected window in front of the bridge console. “The prototype’s moving away from the station at the speed it reached before the EMP hit its propulsion system, which wasn’t very fast,” Adda reported on the op channel. “Its trajectory hasn’t changed since then. The copilot isn’t responding to my attempts to contact it, even to block me out of the systems like I’d expect it to if it were functioning as well as it was in the docking bay. But, um, that red line.” Adda tried to point to the text on the projection, but her arm felt too heavy. “It’s coming from the prototype ship’s pilot sensors. So, they were shielded. But what does the V part stand for?”

  “Vital signs,” Iridian said. “The pilot’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Stage 3 confirmed

  The op channel sat open and silent for a long ten count, until Captain Sloane asked, “How dead, exactly?”

  Iridian leaned toward the projected vitals until the mobile tie-down halter that held her against the bridge bulkhead dug into her chest. They’d have a hell of a time getting the prototype ship to Oxia’s selected drop-off point without a gods-damned pilot. And Iridian wouldn’t want to be on Captain Sloane’s ship if they failed to bring the prototype in at all. The captain’s would be the first one blown up.

  Under the red line on the projection were more details about the pilot’s condition, which were scrolling up and out of the display. “Hold on the vitals.” The report stilled. It was strange and creepy when the Apparition’s awakened AI did as she asked. “No pulse, no respiration . . . that’s bad, yeah?”

  “Oh yeah,” Chi said from the Mayhem. “Does it list brain activity?”

  Iridian swallowed hard and reread the display. “No, thank fuck. How creepy would that be, having an AI watching your brain all the time?”

  “What else does it say?” Chi asked.

  “Sending the feed,” said Adda in her working monotone.

  Iridian wished she’d unplug from the bridge console, but none of the reasons she’d given Adda to do that had persuaded her. Iridian still couldn’t believe Adda’d been willing to plug herself in. It seemed like a ludicrously risky move, but Adda had ten times the AI experience Iridian did. “Sometimes you just have to trust someone else to know their shit,” she muttered too quietly for any of her mics to pick up. Adda nodded absently without turning around.

  After a few seconds, Chi said, “Yeah, we might get him back if we move fast.”

  “Let me board first and assess the situation.” Iridian couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for that task, but if somebody else had to get on that damned ship alone, it sure as hell wouldn’t be Adda. The prototype’s copilot would probably try to influence anybody who made it into the ship, so sending somebody sympathetic to AI would be asking for trouble.

  “Clock’s ticking.” Chi sounded frustrated. “Brains need blood flow and O2.”

  “Yeah, well, that AI just killed somebody,” said Iridian.

  “It persuaded Verney to kill himself,” Adda said, as if the distinction mattered.

  “Give Iridian a few minutes to assess,” Captain Sloane said firmly. “The Apparition can make way for the Mayhem as soon as Iridian boards. Iridian, you’ll have that long to take the prototype.”

  Adda stayed quiet, which was typical while she was concentrating. Everything that made Adda Adda was right up against some completely alien collection of rules and responses that could mold human thought to its own ends, if it chose to. With skill and luck, all that concentrating she was doing would be enough to protect her.

  The Apparition maneuvering to match its speed and orientation to the drifting prototype just added to her tension. At least she trusted the Apparition’s self-preservation instinct, or whatever passed for instinct in AI.

  The Apparition docked and used its own engines to stop the prototype ship’s uncontrolled wobbling. Iridian put on one of the Apparition’s enviro suits, removed the pry bar from the bridge’s tool kit, and paused before sealing her suit’s hood. “You stay here and make the Apparition behave, all right?”

  All right, Adda subvocalized. She floated against her shoulder straps in the bridge’s pilot’s seat, her red hair drifting over her closed eyelids, lit in red and white from the projected display. When Iridian kissed her, Adda startled and then smiled without opening her eyes.

  The Apparition had skipped the prototype’s emergency airlock required in all ships’ bridges and connected to the prototype’s darkened passthrough. Since Verney hadn’t boarded in an enviro suit, that was probably for the best. The passthrough had electric locks, thank all the gods, and the EMP had fried them all. Once Iridian pried the unpowered door open, low lighting revealed a well-furnished, if small, main cabin with doors that presumably led to residential cabins, since there wasn’t room for passenger couches.

  According to Iridian’s suit, the cabin was also hot as nine hells. Iridian switched on her helmet lamp. “He’s still in the bridge, yeah?”

  “The vital signs come from the bridge sensor array,” Chi confirmed.

  “Thanks.” That meant the bridge had battery power and EMP shielding
. Thank the gods for small mercies, because what else will we get? Adda either ignored her or laughed at a volume outside the implanted mic’s trigger range.

  “Hurry up and clear it so I can salvage whatever hasn’t cooked inside his skull,” said Chi.

  Iridian pulled the interior passthrough door shut and latched it. Toeing off her boot magnets, she tapped the door so that she drifted into the main cabin toward the bridge. There was a solid thump behind her, and the interior passthrough door followed her as the whole prototype slowly shifted and she stayed relatively still. The Apparition separating from the prototype’s passthrough had given the prototype ship a light shove.

  It’d overheard Captain Sloane’s plan for rescuing Verney, apparently. The Apparition’s departure meant the Mayhem could line up with the prototype’s passthrough. Iridian shook her head. “Fucking AI.”

  “Look, he won’t keep while you break in,” Chi said. “Can the Mayhem hook up now?”

  “Make it happen,” said Captain Sloane.

  Iridian anchored her boots to the current deck and prodded the base of the bridge door with the pry bar. It didn’t fit, and there wouldn’t be a control panel outside the bridge because that’d be a security vulnerability. “Babe, can you get the prototype to open this?”

  “Its intelligence isn’t responding,” Adda reminded her. “And I’m not sure the door has power routed to it right now.”

  Iridian played her helmet lamp around the main cabin. “The pseudo-organic tank’s not out here, so it must be in the bridge. If the whole bridge is shielded, it could be fine.” The ship shook beneath her and rattled her from her boots to her teeth. “Gavran, is that you?”

  Something buzzed and ground in the passthrough. “Mayhem’s joined, successful join to prototype. No connection on the passthrough, though, the prototype’s passthrough won’t open.”

  “Yeah, it’s unpowered,” Iridian said. “Chi, bring a pry bar or something. A small one might fit under the bridge door. Gavran, stay joined until we give the signal. Please.” The prototype’s passthrough wouldn’t shut on its own, so disconnecting the ships too soon would vent the main cabin’s atmo, along with Chi and Iridian if they weren’t paying attention.

  After a minute, Chi grunted and swore in the closed passthrough. “I can’t open this thing. Let me in.” Iridian left the bridge door to get Chi into the prototype’s main cabin. “Ugh, how is it this hot through my suit?” Chi asked once Iridian had shoved the door open. “I thought the power was out.”

  “Cheap suit.” It was actually a well-maintained enviro suit model from last year or the year before. Iridian smiled slightly while Gavran told her off in Kuiper cant over the op channel. “If your cooler doesn’t kick in, tell me. Power is out in here, and the cold and the black is a hell of an insulator. Until we can extend the ship’s fins and start shedding heat, it’ll stay hot.”

  Chi had brought a sealant scraper rather than a pry bar, which was thin enough for Iridian to lock her boots to the deck and jam the sharp edge under the bridge door. That wedged the middle a few centimeters off the deck, and let her pry it open with the bigger tool. The bridge registered as even hotter than the main cabin, and Verney was only wearing the civvy clothes he’d come to the station in. He was strapped into the pilot’s seat, head lolling and damp blond hair drifting in the still atmo. His exposed skin reflected the console lights with an evenly distributed film of sweat.

  For a second, Iridian was watching a cam feed from her friend’s ISV while he sweated from exertion and pain and drove his damaged vehicle toward a dead end. They’d be trapped and nobody’d reach them in time. In one motion, she toed off her boot magnets and pushed herself out of the bridge. Chi stomped past with her boots locked to the deck, too focused on Verney to notice Iridian dragging herself into the present from a night that’d been over for years.

  Chi slapped a device onto the pilot’s temple, looked at it, and exercised more of her multilingual profanity. “I can’t do shit, and unless they have an Evmo machine on that station, we can’t get him to one in time to make any fucking difference in brain recovery.” She looked at Iridian like it was Iridian’s fault. Maybe it was. “He’ll just get deader.”

  Iridian pounded her fist against the bulkhead beside her and had to stabilize against the equal and opposite reaction with her boots, which just made her more frustrated. Her comp said Chi had been speaking over the op channel, so everybody’d heard that they’d lost Oxia’s agent and the only person available to pilot the prototype.

  “Gods-damn it.” Iridian hadn’t liked the guy, but this shouldn’t have happened. The space in her heart where sorrow or regret would be felt hollow, and she’d have to deal with that later. For now, all she could think about was how the op might be irreparably fucked. “What now?” she asked on the op channel.

  “The station’s clinic doesn’t have an Evmo machine.” Tension broke Adda’s voice out of her working monotone. “I wasn’t planning to lose the intelligence and the pilot. How do the pseudo-organics look?”

  “I may be able to assist with those,” said Captain Sloane from the prototype’s passthrough. Iridian nodded her acknowledgement. The captain hadn’t changed into an enviro suit. That might be a problem.

  “I don’t expect trouble from the station, or from the ITA for hours yet, but the Apparition will watch for them,” Adda said. “If the pseudo-organics aren’t too badly burned out, I’d like to try recovering the prototype’s intelligence.”

  “Will that help?” Iridian asked. “It was damned stubborn about doing anything without a pilot, and then it killed the one we gave it.”

  “Verney wasn’t paying attention, and, counter to the plan we’ve been discussing for the past week, he interfaced with the copilot intelligence before I had it ready for him,” Adda said. “So he got influenced. The next one of us who flies this ship won’t make those mistakes.”

  “Wait,” said Iridian. “You want us to restart the ship so you can recover its AI and tell it that one of us is its pilot? What’ll stop it from killing us too?”

  “Me,” Adda said. “I’ll be the pilot. I’m better prepared than anybody else to resist its influence. We’ll fake some credentials, or tell it it’s already reviewed and accepted mine while restarting it.”

  “No. No, no, and no. Too fucking dangerous.” Sweat pooled in an even sheen across Iridian’s skin faster than the suit’s lining could absorb it. At least the helmet was staying cool, so she could still see. Captain Sloane watching her talk to Adda like they were a stage show was not making Iridian any more comfortable.

  “The prototype won’t convince me to make any new mistakes.” Adda sounded like she was tired of being second-guessed, but that was tough. There were too many AIs and dead gods-damned pilots involved for nobody to double-check her, and she’d been taking too many risks. A few weeks ago Adda would’ve agreed with Iridian about that. Now Iridian wasn’t sure she would. “Who else here can say that and have any confidence that they’re right?”

  Everyone paused for a moment. “The second we get the prototype to the rendezvous with Captain Sloane’s ID cracker, we’re getting a real pilot,” said Iridian.

  “A legal one,” Captain Sloane said. “Nothing improves one’s cover like prominent, aboveboard details.” The captain glided into the prototype’s main cabin, still wearing the coat and not wearing an enviro suit. Sweat sprung up on the captain’s brow and congealed into a thin liquid layer in the nonexistent grav. “We’ll need to fix the enviro first.”

  “Nothing else I can do.” Chi sounded disgusted as she clomped past the captain in the direction of the passthrough. “Let me know if somebody else cooks themselves. Right away, this time.”

  She passed Adda and Gavran on her way into the Mayhem, both of whom wore enviro suits. The Apparition must’ve attached to the Mayhem’s bridge airlock to offload Adda, and that would’ve been a hell of a maneuver while the Mayhem and the prototype were already joined up. Iridian was glad she’d missed that. />
  “I’ve done an in-flight repair or two,” Gavran said. “Might be my repair experience will help.”

  “Better if you stay on the Mayhem,” Captain Sloane called from the prototype’s bridge. “We may need to leave quickly on a less . . . complicated ship.”

  “I really don’t like the idea of you flying this thing,” Iridian told Adda while Gavran followed Chi’s path out the passthrough and Sloane swore over the prototype’s pseudo-organic tank.

  “I’m not looking forward to it.” Adda was staring at the bridge console. Even with the gods-damned dead man in the pilot seat, her expression held more curiosity than fear.

  Not looking forward to it, my ass, Iridian subvocalized.

  Adda gave Iridian her best “Seriously?” expression while she continued, “But I’ve got the best chance of making myself understood to the intelligence, and keeping it from affecting me.”

  Iridian gripped the handhold on the bulkhead hard enough to make her glove creak. “Promise you won’t fucking plug right into this one.”

  Adda shook her head. “I won’t, I promise. I’m bringing my generator. The bridge installation should have protected the pilot better than it did, obviously. I think there’s something wrong with it.”

  “Prototypes,” Iridian said. “Any fucking thing could be wrong.”

  Adda gave Iridian a worried frown. “I know you hate this. I’m sorry it didn’t go the way I originally planned.”

  Iridian sighed, purposefully visualizing her frustration and fear going out with her breath. “Yeah, well, who would’ve thought Verney’d be such an ignorant ass.” She turned to look through the bridge doorway, to where Verney still floated in the pilot’s harness. “Any ideas on what to do with him?”