“You talked to Karpe?” Tritheist asked from the seat beside her. “What’d she say?”
“Session’s still in progress.” Iridian sipped a beer that’d warmed in the hours they’d been sitting there, in case somebody was watching. Ogir and Adda had both warned the crew about the possibility of Oxia and ITA spies. Chi was stationed at the first-floor bar, and Gavran was testing the Mayhem’s shipboard systems in a dock conveniently near the Oxia fleet ships Adda trusted. All three awakened AI ships were out there too.
And all of them waiting for a contract to be voided. Iridian smiled into her glass. “We’ll feel damned silly if Oxia decides to cut its losses and play nice with Sloane.” To be fair, the megacorporation had done an impressive job protecting Sloane’s crew from the ITA for the past few months.
“Oxia won’t play so nice that it gives up the stations, no matter how far ahead the captain puts them in megacorporate competition,” Tritheist said. “And keep that on the command channel. You’re not the only one who needs intel.”
Iridian stopped her eyes from rolling by watching the dancers on the floor below. “Isn’t that why Ogir and his team are lurking outside the talks? And the undercover ITA and NEU are listening in too.” No amount of bribery could keep the Vestan contingent of the ITA away from a negotiation that could change the political structure of the ’ject. It wasn’t ideal, but Ogir had assured Sloane and Adda that his team could work around the government agents. She chuckled. “Can you imagine? Half of that building is full of people trying not to look dangerous.”
Tritheist looked pointedly at the beer in Iridian’s hand and back to her face. She snorted. “Yeah, right, us too.”
“Ogir here.” Tritheist’s comp played Ogir’s tinny but calm voice a little louder than the dance music. “The negotiation comm feed disconnected.”
Iridian set the beer on the bar and shifted her shoulders to confirm that the collapsed shield hooked to the back of her light-armor jacket would come free quickly when she needed it. HQ security had stashed her and Tritheist’s armored suits in a hidden cabinet in the VIP room on street level, where they were inconspicuous but convenient. Background clicking on the comms indicated that a lot of “ready” signals would be appearing in Adda’s workspace. Iridian thumbed her implanted mic back on and tapped her status on her comp, although Tritheist would’ve reported that HQ was ready by now.
“Lads and lasses, we are back in business for ourselves.” Captain Sloane’s voice confirmed the victory across the op channel. Every member of HQ security, a dozen combat specialists, and about twice as many sneaky surveillance types than Iridian previously thought Ogir had were on the op tonight.
Iridian grinned wide, and Tritheist slammed his beer on the bar and whispered, “Yes.” The crew in and around the club stopped watching for trouble long enough to nod or exclaim over their local channels while the clubgoers danced around them.
Pel must’ve had his comp speaker on at his observation post in one of the dockside bars. Even though the mic was practically in his mouth when he shouted “Congratulations, Captain!” he was barely audible beneath the whooping and clapping around him.
Those people sounded as proud as Iridian felt. No more doing Oxia’s dirty work. It was time to go back to sticking it to the megacorporations that used people and discarded them, that hid scientific discoveries which all of humanity had a right to. That was what she’d signed on to Sloane’s crew to do. Well, that and make a fortune, but if they kept earning at the rate they were, she and Adda would be well on their way to that. First they’d have to survive the repercussions of giving Oxia what it deserved for messing with Sloane’s crew.
“Signal sent to publish,” Adda said over the command channel, confirming to Captain Sloane and the rest of the crew leadership that the truth about Oxia’s Thrinacia Project was about to be broadcast throughout populated space. No joy from her yet. She’d still be working for hours, tracking ITA, NEU, and Vestan reactions with the AIs, but humanity would not appreciate being kept out of the scientific discovery of the century.
She’d only managed to get a message to Suhaila yesterday, so there was still a chance that some technical or security issue would keep the message from going through. Adda would be watching for that, though, and she wouldn’t let anything stop it for long.
Once Adda and Suhaila publicized the secret interstellar bridge project, Oxia would go from the crew’s biggest ally to their biggest enemy, followed by the ITA and the NEU. Captain Sloane had made inroads with the latter two groups, but neither had committed to anything resembling an alliance against Oxia.
In the meantime, Oxia’s fleet presence in stationspace trapped Sloane’s crew in Rheasilvia Station, because Adda expected an unknown number of Oxia ships to stay loyal when it came time to choose sides. Adda and the captain had decided that defending HQ from a ground assault was more survivable than trying to fly themselves out of missile range, and HQ security had prepared accordingly.
“Ogir here. Captain Sloane is out of the Oxia building and returning to HQ. We’ll follow as able.”
“Fleet is launching,” Commander Qasid grimly announced on the command channel.
Either that’d taken longer than Adda had predicted, or Qasid had delayed before reporting it. All of humanity was about to find out what a despicable company he worked for, and he’d have to fight former friends over it. It wasn’t news Iridian would rush to report, if she were in his position.
“Close the club and clear the people out.” Adda’s voice on the op channel was a thoroughly drugged monotone.
“Give me five minutes to get there, then clear it,” Captain Sloane corrected firmly, using the command channel this time. “Cover coming in would be nice.”
Iridian frowned. That hadn’t been part of the plan. She made sure her mic was off, then turned to Tritheist. “Oxia won’t hold fire just because Sloane’s surrounded by civilians.”
“The captain will be harder to hit that way.” Tritheist rested his hand on the synthcapsin launcher at his hip. His expression warned her that he’d leave her on the floor of the bar rather than risk Sloane’s safety by getting the clubgoers out of harm’s way sooner. She kept her seat and counted down the minutes. Adda would’ve set a timer.
“Clear the club,” Adda said right on schedule.
Iridian went to the railing that overlooked the dance floor while Tritheist used his comp to signal the club’s music system to cut the sound. In the sudden silence, dancers groaned and demanded, “Turn it back on!”
Iridian pulled a nannite grenade from her belt and held it up where they’d see it. The baseball-size grenade could fill the first floor with a cloud of nerve-stimulating nasties, and the LEDs on the outside made it look like the kind villains used in the vids. Iridian had added the lights with the hope that it’d look too scary for anyone to make her use it.
As she’d hoped, the crowd shifted away like a single entity, exclaiming in fear. “Go home and get in front of your stage,” she shouted at them. “Big news coming.” If anyone in Oxia had a shred of decency, they’d protect the residential modules. Dancers ran out the front doors, leaving crew security standing around the walls in their wake. In retrospect, Oxia would control the local media for longer than it’d hold off on attacking Sloane’s crew, so the local projection stages might be full of propaganda instead of news.
Tritheist must’ve realized that too, because he laughed while he headed for the lift to the first floor. Iridian joined him, disengaging the grenade’s activation mechanism and returning it to the pouch on her belt.
“Ogir here,” he said on the command channel. “Requesting permission to patch in the NEU operatives.”
“Add them to your team channel.” The smile in Captain Sloane’s voice came over the comms with the order. “The NEU will have much more reasonably priced reliable routes beyond Mars once I break the Oxia monopoly. Make sure they receive my assurances on that point.”
“Fleet’s moving,” Adda rep
orted in her workspace monotone while Tritheist and Iridian donned their armor in the VIP room. When Iridian put her helmet on and tapped the visor down, it immediately filled with comms traffic. She turned sender tagging on and shifted it all to the side of her faceplate while she followed Tritheist to the front door.
On the command channel, Qasid said, “We’ve been ordered to fire on Sloane’s base once the captain returns to it.”
“That’d stop spin grav for the whole station. It’ll put this mod in vac lockdown, won’t it?” Iridian stalked across the empty dance floor toward the club’s street entrance. “People will die. A lot of them.”
“The station’s emergency systems should keep the structure turning with a module damaged, but it’s not worth the risk. I won’t do it.” Commander Qasid sounded angry at being in the position of protecting the ’ject from his own fleet. “Also, a tugboat is loitering at the stationspace perimeter. It isn’t responding to hails or the dock AI. Is she one of yours?”
“Don’t mind the Charon’s Coin,” Captain Sloane replied to Qasid. Sloane was laughing over the command channel, which Iridian last heard . . . months ago, maybe. Being free of a megacorporate contract had to be an overwhelming relief, but with the possibility of an incoming missile strike, nothing felt that funny. Especially not unpredictable awakened AI copilots. “She’ll stay out of your way,” Captain Sloane continued. “Best to stay out of hers too.”
“Understood.”
Iridian and Tritheist joined a squad of Sloane’s security force who’d cleared the street around HQ. Iridian grinned at their slightly lower bows for her than for the lieutenant.
One of the security company commanders, the lean femme with big hair fanned out behind her face in her helmet’s faceplate projection, turned her wrist to show Iridian the lit comp projection on the back of her hand. Almost everyone on crew security wore full armor tonight. Bermudez asked something that, once Iridian parsed her thick Ceres accent, resolved to “Seen the newsfeeds?”
“No, did the Bucs win?” Iridian raised her eyebrows and leaned toward the projection in mock expectancy while watching her heads-up display’s scan of the street. It was becoming too quiet, fast.
“Gods, no.” Bermudez rolled her eyes. “Suhaila Al-Mudari is blowing humanity’s fucking mind.”
Iridian shook her head and deployed her shield. It would’ve been better to tell the sec people about the interstellar bridge before now, but Sloane had advised against it. The captain hadn’t trusted all of them to keep it to themselves until the contract was dissolved. “Amazing, isn’t it?” Iridian said. “That we could reach a new star in our own lifetimes, and Oxia almost fucking annexed it.”
“Watch that later,” Tritheist snapped. “Captain Sloane’s tram has jammers installed but it’s still a target, and it’s going to be a bigger one when the captain arrives.”
“Ogir here.” On the command channel he sounded tense and breathed like he was running. “ITA presence at the contract negotiation was a diversion. They’re in the docks.”
Iridian blinked to cycle through her helmet’s HUD projections. “So they still want to lock us up,” Iridian muttered below her helmet mic’s transmission threshold. “That figures.” The station map now showed yellow dots of ITA agents split between the building where the negotiation took place and the dock. Bright blue NEU agents clustered around the building where Sloane had met with Oxia. Oxia’s green dots were all over the hab.
Open lines of communication be damned, Iridian was fairly sure she thought, not said to Adda. The NEU agents were on Ogir’s team feed now, but they weren’t exactly going out of their way to help. Maybe Ogir didn’t trust them enough to deploy them.
The ITA agents in the docks could be dangerous, though. On the captain’s orders, the crew wouldn’t shoot first. The alliance Sloane was counting on after Oxia left the ’ject would be hard to create over the bodies of hurt or killed ITA agents.
Ogir’s red cluster of operatives moving toward the docks looked small by comparison. “We won’t make it in time to stop them,” he said, “but we’re on our way for damage control.” Two of the Barbary AIs, the Mayhem, and a few other potentially useful vessels were docked. Maybe the ITA agents were just leaving the ’ject, or maybe they had sabotage in mind.
“Go get ’em, Ogir!” Iridian said over the same channel. Nearby crew security people who heard her through her helmet cheered him on too. Sloane and Adda had concentrated their ground forces in HQ. Even if Iridian could help Ogir in the port module, she wouldn’t leave HQ unless Adda left with her.
The projected night sky that kept the spinning dome’s ceiling from looking claustrophobically close to the buildings flickered. When it stabilized, Jupiter and Mars were in completely different positions. “The sky projectors in our module—oh, all of them now—just switched to a looped recording,” said Adda.
“So people won’t see the ships about to fire on them,” Iridian concluded. “Poor fuckers.”
Her comp pinged, along with all the other crew comps. “You’ve just received a position tracker,” Adda said over the surface op channel that excluded the fleet. “It vibrates when the station’s rotation puts your module closest to the fleet, with no others in the way.”
“What the hell are we supposed to do while we’re in range?” Tritheist growled over the command channel.
The seconds of silence were not comforting. Eventually, Adda replied, “You’d know better than me.”
A tram pulled up in front of the club. Captain Sloane climbed out and hit the pavement sprinting. “Inside, now.”
Iridian whirled to slam the club doors up their tracks. Her comp vibrated against her wrist, lightly at first and progressively harder as Sloane, Tritheist, Iridian, and the crew security force ran across the empty dance floor. The fleet channel blew up with calls, responses, and accusations. Iridian blinked to turn the fleet chatter off. There was nothing she could do about their problems, and it might make her miss something nearer and more dangerous to her, Adda, and Sloane.
“Three ships are positioning to fire.” Adda sounded too far into her workspace to be afraid of the personal implications.
Iridian gave up hope that Qasid would get his captains in line before one of them took a shot at HQ. “Down to the lower floors,” Tritheist shouted at the crew security people still crossing the dance floor. A couple of them grabbed bottles from behind the bar on their way to the stairs, bypassing elevators that were locking and going to the lowest floors on their own.
“Ogir here,” he said on the command channel. “The ITA agents have locked both the Mayhem and the Apparition into their docks. Repeat, the Apparition cannot engage and the Mayhem cannot launch.”
“Fuck,” Iridian and Captain Sloane said in unison. “So much for orbital support from the Apparition,” added Iridian.
“Moving to intercept before they—” Ogir’s transmission ended in an electronic shriek that made everybody listening wince and swear. That didn’t sound healthy. Zhang, one of the security company commanders, said a brief prayer for Ogir’s safety. The implanted comms awkwardly translated the prayer in Iridian’s ear.
On the map overlay in Iridian’s HUD, blue icons representing NEU agents remained clustered in the negotiation building. Ogir or Sloane must’ve convinced them to stay out of the fight, which was a hell of a lot better than coming in on the ITA’s or Oxia’s sides. Now Ogir, and presumably the team channel they’d been operating on, were offline. The smart thing for the NEU agents to do would be to stay where they were, out of the way.
A massive boom from above startled her into taking two steps down the stairs instead of one and running into the armor-clad person in front of her. Everybody slammed into the wall as grav stuttered, then pushed off the wall and kept running. Klaxons outside the building warned of atmo loss at a scale Iridian didn’t want to imagine. The sound like ripping fabric that followed was louder and nearer. The projected marker for the second subterranean floor passed on Iridian’s le
ft.
The shockwave shoved her down a flight of stairs with everybody around her while the whole building groaned. There should’ve been an impact or explosion, but her helmet must’ve limited it to protect her hearing. Heat poured through cracks in the stairs above. Smoke followed, dropping visibility to red HUD outlines of walls and railings in the dark. Fire alarms in the building clashed with the klaxons outside. Somebody screamed. Iridian’s HUD was still parsing the abrupt lack of light and she couldn’t see the screamer, let alone figure out what had happened to her.
The stairs above them would fall eventually, and not everybody had full armor to filter out smoke. “Move down or find the fucking door!” Iridian shouted. She repeated her instruction on the local comm channel while wading down the stairs, through struggling security people. The door to the residential level should be one more flight down. That floor was low and reinforced enough that it shouldn’t collapse, according to Adda’s calculations. It was also the lowest floor with an exit.
Sloane and Adda were talking on the command channel about information the Casey had brought them. The command channel overrode the others on Iridian’s comms. When she switched back to the local channel, Tritheist was shouting, “. . . can’t break it because it’s designed not to break. Get out of the gods-damned way.”
Once Tritheist got the door open, people flowed into the lower floor, where the ceiling was holding, for now. The crew server tanks were a floor above them, but defending them was secondary to staying alive. Captain Sloane could wipe the tanks remotely, if it came to that.
Iridian stationed herself next to Tritheist, who was directing traffic. “Squad Nineteen, you’re assigned to Checkpoint Three. Even numbers fortify at the elevator, odds set up by the back door. Sloane’s personal detail stays here.”
Tritheist met Iridian’s eyes on the last order, including her in that number. She was fine with that. Her and Adda’s suites in the center of this floor would be protected from both ends of the hallway. Adda was in there, tracking the AIs and coordinating events, which meant she was high as hell. If the floor above held, she’d be fine. And it should, as long as there wasn’t a second orbital strike.
Mutiny at Vesta Page 36
