“Several.” Adda said the word like it tasted sour. “I’ll deal with him.”
Iridian raised an eyebrow, because it was a little alarming just how fast Adda was adapting to death. After Iridian had taken down Rosehach and his bodyguards in the mine under Rheasilvia Station, Adda had looked horrified. Now she was calmly volunteering to physically move the body of someone they’d been walking and talking with half an hour ago. Of all the things she could be adapting to, Iridian wished it weren’t this. “Yeah?”
Adda shrugged. “It’s something I can do. I’ll feel better flying back in this ship knowing you made the repairs.”
“The heat did as much damage to the pseudo-organics as the EMP would’ve done,” Captain Sloane said on the op channel. “There’s no point in replacing this until we restore a healthy enviro.”
“Enviro controls tie into the AI, Captain.” Gavran must not’ve had much to do in his stationary ship. “Can’t control the enviro until the AI’s up. And the ITA is coming. On their way now, with their very long-range sensors.”
“We’re not leaving this ship for the ITA,” Captain Sloane said at a slow pace that carried clearly over the comms. “You can put that idea out of your heads now. If the ITA arrives while we’re still immobile, the Apparition will handle them.”
“We have enough people to work on both systems, don’t we?” Iridian said. “I’ll see if I can rig something with the enviro. We might have to go back to the bay and get replacement pseudo-organics, if we don’t have anything compatible. Captain, perhaps you can flush the dead stuff out of the tank? A suit might help, though.” Congealed sweat on the forehead could expand to cover one’s eyes, and then Sloane wouldn’t be able to see the most essential part of the ship.
Something about the captain’s smile looked like Sloane was accepting her challenge rather than her offered help. “I’ll return momentarily. In the meantime, run a scan of the hull. The EMP has probably killed the nanoculture.”
“Yes, Captain.” That was a good point Iridian hadn’t thought of. Without the nanoculture, the crew would have to repair minor hull damage themselves.
Captain Sloane had enough people angling to take the crew away without Iridian acting like she was too. She’d have to be more careful about how she spoke. She really didn’t want Captain Sloane pissed off at her. Shaking her head, she helped Adda shove the deceased pilot out of the bridge, then went in herself.
A truly disgusting amount of Verney’s bodily fluids floated in gradually combining and growing orbs above the console. Getting the atmo moving would be a good first step, but it was hard to tell what systems might respond without the AI. The AI had just about taken itself out by getting rid of Verney. “What the fuck were you thinking?” she muttered at it, even though it couldn’t hear or reply. Upon further consideration, she didn’t want to know.
While she popped panels off the console, she asked “Hey Pel, what are you up to?” over the op channel.
“Huh? What happened?” Pel said too loudly and quickly.
Maybe she’d woken him up from a nap. “You know what the proximity alarm on the Mayhem sounds like?”
“No.”
“Well, just let us know if anything starts blaring over the speakers that isn’t Lǜsè Is Live or Chaos Grave, huh? Gavran will be busy piloting.” Pel would know Lǜsè Is Live’s one big song even if he’d never heard of Chaos Grave.
“I’ll help him listen,” said Chi.
Iridian shut her eyes to block out the bridge for a second and smiled. “Woo, Chi does like them young.”
“We’re just talking!” Pel protested, while Chi chuckled and Adda groaned from somewhere in the prototype ship’s aft module. Pel sounded less afraid, at least.
* * *
By the time Iridian was too hungry and tired to test a single system more, they had the prototype ship’s cabin temp down to twenty-four degrees Celsius and its AI running through introductions and stability checks with Adda. It’d lost all of its records beyond a backup from four weeks earlier, which was lucky for them. That meant it didn’t remember how it’d killed Verney. It also meant that the AI and Adda would be learning the prototype ship’s undocumented eccentricities together, particularly if those eccentricities had developed during the past four weeks.
Interior lighting flickered from emergency to pitch-black to temporal, suggesting something like midmorning by the bright yellow light. Captain Sloane glanced over one shoulder, then adjusted something one-handed with the gold-gloved comp until the lights softened to night levels that matched the Apparition’s and Mayhem’s, which were still on Vestan time. The captain shut a panel on the bulkhead across from the passthrough. “Enviro feels healthier. How stable is it?”
“Stable enough, Captain,” Iridian said. “I’ll be surprised if they all go bad at once, anyway.”
“Gavran, if you’d be so good as to double-check us?” Captain Sloane asked.
The crew pilot ambled around the prototype’s cabin and bridge with his boot magnets on, each precisely uniform step the length his pseudo-organic legs mandated for his pace and the micrograv. “Enviro isn’t ideal, but it’s on its way to getting ideal,” Gavran pronounced. “I’d take this one home with me, if I could. Kondakova would appreciate it. Long legs, long reach, if it doesn’t try murdering you. That AI’s dangerous.”
So the Kondakova colony on Quaoar was where Gavran hailed from. Quaoar was supposed to be so small that the parent company had built the colony around it instead of on it. Talk about the cold and the black, Iridian commented to Adda. No wonder he likes a ship designed for seriously long range travel.
“Will it get the prototype to the rendezvous point?” Captain Sloane peered into the corner of the cabin, within cable length of the bridge where Adda’s workspace generator was anchored with a mobile tie-down kit. Adda drifted inside, a soft-edged silhouette lit by a blocked projection angled to display on the bulkhead above the console.
“We’ve reached an understanding.” Adda sounded tired and distant. She had to have gone through three or four sharpsheets in the time they’d been working on the ship, and that was a lot for about three hours of work. “I think we can make it to Sunan’s Landing like this. I’ve designated it as the nearest port. We’ll mirror the Mayhem’s path and speed.”
“Let’s leave, then.” Captain Sloane looked around at the three crewmembers in the prototype’s cabin. “Iridian, I presume you’ll stay onboard the prototype?”
“Yes, Captain.” She sure as hell wouldn’t leave Adda alone on a ship with killer AI.
“Pel and Chi, I believe the trip will be more . . . comfortable aboard the Mayhem.” Sloane probably meant that they were less likely to get brainwashed into doing something violent to themselves or others there. That’d been the ship Adda had originally selected for their trip back.
Once they’d acknowledged that and Gavran boarded to get the Mayhem ready to detach from the prototype, Sloane caught Iridian’s eyes. “I expect this vessel to stay within three klicks of the Mayhem for the duration of our journey, and follow the prescribed trajectory toward the sun to blind Jōju Station’s radar. If the prototype goes farther afield, I’ll assume the AI has taken control and bring the Apparition to bear. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Captain,” Iridian said. The Apparition had worked for Sloane’s crew in the past, disabling other ships with almost no human oversight. The captain must’ve been involved in awakening it. It’d probably fire on the prototype if Sloane ordered it to. Damaging the prototype risked the mission, but so did out-of-control AI. And Iridian would rather be stuck in a damaged ship than one that was influencing Adda. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
“Good.” The captain smiled slightly. “See you at the rendezvous.”
* * *
Captain Sloane pinged Adda for updates every few hours on the way to the rendezvous point at Sunan’s Landing, where they’d get a new ID and a new pilot, then pass the prototype off to an Oxia contact. Adda spent the whole trip doing somet
hing with the prototype’s AI. “Making it harder for other intelligences to affect it,” was her explanation during one of the times Iridian talked her out of the workspace long enough to eat. “And harder for people to reset it like we did.”
“What if we need to take it down again?” Iridian was halfway inside the water recycler compartment beneath the main cabin, and had to shout so Adda could hear the question.
Adda sounded spaced out when she answered, “It should make an exception for us.”
Iridian would have to go back up to the main cabin and make sure Adda was eating instead of staring at a wall and thinking. “Tell me you’re also teaching it that making people kill themselves is bad.”
“We established that before we left the station,” Adda said.
“Stationspace.” Iridian hauled herself out of the crawlspace, feeling heavy despite the unhealthily low grav. She caught Adda pushing her rice around her bowl instead of putting it in her mouth, and settled down at the table folded out from the wall to watch her eat. “You’re only at the station while you’re docked or landed. When the ship isn’t moving with the station and the station’s still in unaided visual range, you’re in stationspace.” Adda’s eyebrows scrunched, probably at the variable and vague measurement, and Iridian quickly added, “I mean, there’s a distance in klicks, but I never remember it.”
“Stationspace, then. I got Ermine’s confirmation before we started moving.”
“Ermine’s the copilot AI?” Iridian asked.
Adda nodded, serious as hell, except the name was cute, and so was she, and if Iridian couldn’t enjoy a few moments between AI disasters, then what were they doing all of this for? She leaned across the table to kiss her.
* * *
“Since we’re handing this thing off tomorrow,” Chi said over the op channel a few hours later, “what are we telling Oxia about their dead pilot?”
“The initial report’s been made,” Captain Sloane said wearily. “An explanation was requested, but I haven’t composed a reply thus far.”
“What’s wrong with the truth?” Iridian asked. “It’ll be their ship. They ought to know what’ll be going with them to whatever patch of faraway nowhere they need this ship to get to.”
Adda’s exasperated sigh was loud enough to activate her op-channel mic. It seemed like she’d been slinging more of those around than usual during the past few weeks. Because she’s responsible for most of the op, Iridian reminded herself. And yet another murderous AI copilot.
“The copilot’s attempt at influence was typical for the kinds of tricks that intelligences try on new supervisors,” Adda said. “It’s remarkable that Verney let it happen.”
“It is, isn’t it,” Captain Sloane said contemplatively. “A test pilot is regularly exposed to new AI. And yet this one confounded him. Perhaps he was less skilled than Liu Kong implied.”
“Or it’s a dangerous fucking AI,” said Iridian.
It’s not much more dangerous than the Mayhem’s copilot, or any other intelligence I’ve studied. Adda probably would’ve whispered even if she were using her voice. If I’d been able to get more details about its development process, it would’ve been safer. Her expression said that she was still missing something, or regretting what could’ve been.
Iridian toggled the op channel off. “AegiSKADA was an outlier. There has to be a range of dangerous. It’s all the way at the end, maybe, and the prototype is between it and the middle.”
“Iri,” Adda said aloud in the most conscious, inflected tone Iridian had heard from her in days, “Please don’t tell me how to assess artificial intelligence safety.”
Iridian swallowed her first reply and said, “Sorry, babe.” Adda already struggled to get people to listen to her. She didn’t need Iridian pointing out that she never communicated her process in a convincing way. The process worked, most of the time.
Thank you, Adda subvocalized.
Um, how much of that did I say to you? Iridian asked.
How much of what?
Okay. Good. I’m getting the hang of it.
* * *
“Your incompetence caused this.”
Watching somebody dress down superiors Iridian admired hurt her like a gut punch. It was a hell of a thing to hear after two days in unhealthily low grav as the ships reached a top speed and stayed there, to minimize Adda’s contact with the prototype AI. After leaving the prototype at Sunan’s Landing they’d made it back to Rheasilvia Station in another two days, arriving early despite everything that’d gone wrong.
The accusation felt even worse when the person talking was unqualified to make that kind of assessment. Liu Kong still hadn’t even bothered to visit Vesta in person, as far as Iridian knew. And if the experience made her this mad, Captain Sloane had to be ready to explode, and it was a good thing that Tritheist was somewhere else.
“The prototype is in the dock you indicated.” The captain’s even and quiet voice raised all the little hairs on the back of Iridian’s neck. “I was not given the opportunity to vet your pilot, and of all of those involved only the pilot is dead. Please explain what part of this situation is evidence of my incompetence.”
If Sloane were talking to Iridian like a grenade without a pin, she would be looking for exits. On the projection stage in HQ’s conference room, Liu Kong just straightened his expensive fucking jacket. The interplanetary newsfeeds described Sloane’s crew as “the Vestan pirates” lately, even though the captain had only been back on the ’ject for a few months. Maybe the distance between Vesta and wherever Liu Kong’s office was made the CEO feel safe.
“The pilot was my chief research and development officer’s nephew,” Liu Kong said. “This is a massive inconvenience. You should have been as careful with my people as you are with your own.”
“It’s interesting how little supervision capable, experienced people require,” Captain Sloane said. “Or, perhaps, uninteresting, as so little of my attention is needed.”
There was that delay, again, although it was shorter than it had been the last time they’d talked. Liu Kong was still on some other ’ject. “This tells me that you’re careless with your own resources, but they look after themselves.” The Oxia CEO sounded like he’d just discovered that his new overpriced wrench provided the same torque as the standard issue model.
“I allow my people to work without telling them how it should be done,” Captain Sloane said. “And as a result, we recovered an AI on a ship that’d been subjected to an EMP, a ship of a model only a hundred people in the universe have ever seen. We recovered the ship intact, without a pilot and without massive casualties, and Oxia’s name was never associated with the endeavor. Which of your special projects groups could have done that?”
“Perhaps I should hire them.” Liu Kong looked over Adda and Iridian, who stood slightly behind Captain Sloane. Iridian wondered what they looked like on his projection stage. Adda shifted half a step toward her like there was something Iridian could do to stop him.
And she supposed there was: “No, thanks.”
“I’m sure you could coerce them into a contract,” Sloane said at a faster clip than the captain had used before. Maybe Iridian should’ve kept her mouth shut. “But if my crew would have thrived in a corporate environment, they’d be there now. Even our continued involvement with your organization has been a limitation. We could be of much better use to you—”
“Yes, I’m sure you prefer out-of-contract work,” said Liu Kong. “That option isn’t available. Now, your next assignment is somewhat further afield, but I think you’ll find that your crew’s . . . independence will provide some advantages.”
Captain Sloane’s posture shifted forward slightly. “Our target?”
“Frei Interplanetary.”
Iridian bit the inside of her cheek to give herself something to focus on other than her impulse to terminate this transmission. Frei Interplanetary was the only other megacorporation with colonial reach that literally anybody would rec
ognize by name. Of course that was their next target. Liu Kong would get them killed.
CHAPTER 19
Albana and Rheasilvia systems integrated: 558
“This is our chance.” Captain Sloane’s hushed intensity drew Adda in with the rest of Sloane’s regulars, gathered around the captain’s favorite VIP room table at VICE 七. Adda and Iridian had only had time put their luggage in their suite after the meeting with Liu Kong before Tritheist arrived at their door to summon them. The captain hadn’t wanted to take chances with digital surveillance overhearing a longer distance conversation, apparently. Adda hoped to all the gods and devils that the extra security meant Sloane had found a way to get free of the contract.
The frenetic pulse of dance music beyond the room’s thick doors and the cool tabletop beneath her fingers helped Adda concentrate on the physical world, rather than the intelligences’ activities. “We’ve tracked Oxia Corporation’s cash diversion,” the captain said. Who constituted “we” was unclear, but Tritheist must have been working on that while the rest of them had been traveling to and from Jōju Station. Sloane set the wrist with the gold and black comp glove in the table’s cradle. Ogir, the dark-skinned, dreadlocked leader of Sloane’s personal spy network, leaned closer to examine the resulting projection in more detail.
A security cam composite image expanded up from the projector, depicting a large room containing very large tanks of something. A lot of tanks. “Are those pseudo-organic servers?” Adda asked.
“They are,” said Captain Sloane.
“Then is that . . . the Oxia Corporation datacenter?” She’d been so busy with the intelligences that she’d almost forgotten to look for it. AegiSKADA had been following up on a lead she’d discovered, but it hadn’t found anything like this.
“I believe so, because whatever Oxia’s hiding is in here.” That triumph in Captain Sloane’s voice usually followed winning a particularly contested high-stakes bet. “And we have the code name associated with those missing funds.”
Adda’s comp glove vibrated against her skin, its buzz lost beneath the club music’s bass. THRINACIA appeared on her hand an instant before Sloane said the word aloud, in the red shade she’d designated for Casey.
Mutiny at Vesta Page 27
