Mutiny at Vesta

by R. E. Stearns

  And Sloane’s crew had suffered what, four casualties among headquarters security and the combat experts, and a little over a hundred injuries? The six civilian deaths were clearly Oxia’s fault, not the crew’s, according to everything Casey and AegiSKADA had shown her. The headquarters building was badly damaged, but Sloane could rebuild. By any metric, the crew had won.

  Captain Sloane was walking around in a daze, and Iridian was still acting more like a soldier than an engineer. When Pel’s celebratory messages made him the current exemplar of rational behavior, Adda became certain she was missing something beyond the captain’s efforts to maintain complete control of the crew. Now Sloane had it, but something was still not right. Either she’d made a mistake in her sharpsheet intake—her records said she hadn’t—or the new and intense paranoia she was feeling had a basis in fact.

  CHAPTER 26

  Activation event

  Tritheist’s was the best-attended funeral Iridian had ever seen. Sloane had him incinerated spacefarer-fashion and invited half the station to see him off. Twice Iridian caught the captain staring at her and Adda past the representatives of Tritheist’s technicism conclave who attended the ceremony.

  And yeah, there was probably something Iridian could’ve done to protect Tritheist. Whatever that was, she hadn’t seen it at the time. She’d done everything she could. It hadn’t been enough, but if she tore her mind apart with guilt over what happened in a fight, or fear over what would happen in the next one, then she wouldn’t survive the next one.

  Tritheist’s funeral would be one of the last demonstrations of Sloane’s current security force size. If the ongoing ITA negotiations went well, the captain could choose the best half or quarter of the small army and send the rest elsewhere, or release them from their obligations to the crew. For now, hundreds of people in armored clothes designed to blend in stood guard over the event, among more heavily armored and less formal attendees who were probably some of Sloane’s “experts.” Gavran wasn’t among them, and Iridian sent him a message checking in. Maybe he was getting new legs fitted, or maybe he didn’t like funerals.

  Mourners spilled out of the bar reserved for the wake/after party and into three others. Adda returned to her and Iridian’s temporary apartment and her workspace generator, and Iridian spent most of an hour tracking down Pel to deliver about the worst news she could’ve brought. “Something’s wrong with Adda.”

  Iridian sympathized with the determined confusion on Pel’s face. Denial would hurt less than the truth, but deep down, he knew it too. “What, like more than usual?” he asked.

  And the joking would make them feel better. Iridian wished they could leave it at that. “Yeah.” She sighed and found a projected bottle behind the bar to look at, rather than Pel’s worried red and gold eyes. The mourners around them drank hard or huddled in small groups discussing Tritheist, the interstellar bridge, and news tickers on their comps: OXIA CORP TO CEASE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS TO VESTAN STATION ADMINISTRATORS. Announcing that the real decision-maker on Vesta was now a gods-damned pirate would’ve caused more problems than it solved.

  “Wrong, like, how?” Pel asked at half his usual volume. “I mean, she’s tired, right? She’s been working really hard on getting Captain Sloane back in charge. And she said there was still a chance that the colonial and NEU ships coming to Vesta wouldn’t keep the ITA from trying to throw the captain off the ’ject, and, you know, arrest us for one of eighty-whatever NEU laws we broke.”

  “I’ve seen her overworked. You remember how she was while she was finishing her final project for her degree?” Iridian held his gaze. He had to believe her. She couldn’t confront this alone.

  Pel bit his lip. “Spacey. Angry to be interrupted on her birthday.” He laughed, but there was fear behind it.

  “Yeah, exactly. She put up zero fuss about coming to see Tritheist off. She’s not . . . anything now. She’s just like the gods-damned AIs.”

  “She isn’t,” Pel snapped. “She wouldn’t let them influence her. She knows AIs. This is what she does.”

  Iridian glanced around, but people were still absorbed in their own conversations and beverages. Nobody knew what effect Tritheist’s death would have on Captain Sloane and the crew long-term. Whatever happened would change life for everybody on the ’ject now that Sloane unofficially ran it. For the better, if everything she’d heard about Oxia’s contracts were true. For herself, Iridian couldn’t handle whatever came next without Adda’s help. She didn’t want to. Hell, she missed Adda, even when she was right next to her, ever since the fight for HQ.

  And they’d won that fight. The whole crew, her and Adda included, should’ve paid their respects to Tritheist and then moved forward to take any job they wanted, anything they could pull off, with two stations’ puppet governments at their backs. Once Captain Sloane finished whatever deals were in the works with the NEU, ITA, and colonial governments, they’d be untouchable. Hell, that kind of setup might’ve made even Tritheist happy. But with Adda spending more time in a workspace than out of one, Iridian could hardly bring herself to care about any of it.

  Pel edged over to the bar and ordered from a virtual bartender in a black mourning dress. The figure pressed a projected button that seemed to deliver the drink up through the bar, but a machine mixed the beverage on its own. Making it look like a person provided it was a pointless artifice Iridian resented. Thanks to the AIs, Adda was putting on a similar performance of her own life.

  “Adda’s fine,” said Pel. “She’s leaving her apartment, which is huge when she’s working on something. All she talks about is what she’s working on, sure, but she’s not running away in one of the ships to kill herself like Verney did.”

  “She’s nothing like Verney.” Iridian smiled, but it didn’t really feel funny. “It took the Casey much, much longer to get into her head than the prototype’s AI took to get into his. Did you hear her on the op channel during the fight at HQ? She was so far out of what was happening physically that she let me walk in front of a damned sniper. I mean, maybe the AI couldn’t see it, or they didn’t tell her about it,” Iridian said before Pel could interrupt. “But keeping people safe was her top priority on Barbary, and you know it wasn’t her priority during this fight. I think the Barbary AIs have been working on her since we took the prototype. Maybe even since we went after Björn.”

  “It hasn’t been this bad all that time,” Pel protested.

  “No, because like I said, the AIs couldn’t spring this on Adda all of a sudden. She’d recognize it. But when have you ever known her to be as secretive as she’s been lately? And to show so little empathy for people around her? She hasn’t even pretended to be sad about Tritheist’s death, and usually she at least tells us she understands what other people are feeling, even when she doesn’t feel it herself. I mean, has she said two words to you that weren’t mission-related since we got back from Jōju Station?” Pel shook his head, and Iridian continued, “It’s like the only things she cares about are the damned AIs. What does that mean?”

  “She’s not influenced.” Pel’s tone was more pleading than certain.

  Iridian took two gulps of beer to wash down the lump in her throat. “Help me talk her into taking a break, then. I’ll get Chi’s help too. The medical angle might make a bigger impact on Adda than your or my observations.”

  “Like an intervention.” Pel laughed nervously. “We should record it and auction it to the feeds.”

  Iridian smiled slightly and finished her drink. “She’ll hate this enough already.”

  * * *

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Chi said once Iridian had explained Adda’s situation in another, less crowded bar a few minutes’ walk down the port’s dock support module.

  This bar projected a headshot of Tritheist on the wall by the door, looking more noble than Iridian had ever seen him in life. Most of the patrons worked Sloane’s HQ or dock security, and Tritheist’s name was in every other conversation. The people not talking about
Tritheist were discussing contract renegotiations, corporations vying for the new spots, and whether Oxia’s mining project beneath Rheasilvia Station would finally be stopped before it shook Vesta apart. The mood was something between anxiety and cautious optimism. Increased ITA attention and the NEU’s incoming delegation wasn’t calming anyone down.

  Chi had been drinking alone until Iridian found her and, apparently, blew her mind. “Are you telling me,” Chi said, “that those ships we’ve been flying between all of these habs full of people are awakened?”

  “Ah, shit.” Iridian shut her eyes and tilted her head back to resist smacking her forehead with her palm. It might’ve been smarter to bring this up sometime when everybody was drinking less, but she couldn’t have asked for better cover. And she probably shouldn’t have been drinking so much herself, but that was what she did at funerals. “You didn’t know.”

  “You’re gods-damned right I didn’t know. All four of them are awakened?”

  “Just the three from . . . where we were before we got to Vesta.” Dropping identifiable keywords like “Barbary” or the ship names in a place with security cams and mics seemed like an invitation for the Casey to pay attention. “That was my reaction too, but I wasn’t in public at the time.” The only person nearby who looked surprised was a human bartender. Iridian tapped at her comp to leave a ludicrously large tip for her drink. “Keep it to yourself, yeah?” she told the bartender sternly. A braided lock of white hair fell into the person’s face when ve nodded and found something to do at the other end of the bar.

  “This is . . .” Chi waved her hands around in front of her like she could grab the words she wanted out of the atmo. “Fucking stupid, is what it is. Of course she’s influenced. It’s what awakened AIs do. Even a lab-bred grease monkey like you should fucking know better.”

  “Yeah, but I thought Adda had a handle on them. She doesn’t now.” Maybe she never did. Iridian wasn’t ready to admit that out loud, and drank like the alcohol would make her mistake hurt less. She wished, desperately, that it would. Gods, I hope she didn’t hear that. Or this. Shut up, Nassir, stop thinking and shut up. She turned off her throat mic and cursed herself for not doing that sooner.

  “What are we even talking about this for?” Chi tapped the paypad on the bar, but Sloane had already paid for every drink sold in the port modules. “Let’s take them out. That’ll solve all the problems at once. Ogir’s got a couple bombers on call.”

  “He does?” Iridian blinked. “Wait, no. First of all, Adda’d kill us. She thinks the AIs are precious alien life-forms or something, and protecting them is her life’s work. Second, we still need them, with all the NEU ships on their way here.”

  “Captain Sloane’s signing on half the Oxia fleet,” Chi said. What Sloane planned to do with the Oxia fleet ships that’d stayed was anybody’s guess, but Iridian would bet that the captain now had more under crew control than the Ceres syndicate had. “What do we need three awakened flying AIs for?”

  “A third of the fleet, Adda said, not half.” But that was an excellent point. With all those human-crewed ships, why keep climbing into conscious things with minds of their own?

  “You thinking of that dumbass Oxia pilot who cooked himself in the cabin of a zombie ship?” asked Chi. “ ’Cause that’s what I’m thinking of. That AI copilot was limited all to hell. Now imagine what three awakened ones could do. And one of them has missiles. What were you thinking? Who keeps giving it missiles?” Chi glared around at the mourners who were staring at her for shouting.

  “It buys its own,” Iridian admitted. And didn’t that just seal the deal. With Captain Sloane in control of the crew and the ’ject, it was time to do something about those damned AIs. Except . . . “Say, Ogir does have bombers on call. How careful are they about collateral damage? The AIs are bad, but I don’t want to hurt people or destroy enviro equipment taking them down.”

  “Don’t know, that’s his job,” Chi said. “But let’s ask him.”

  “Yeah.” Iridian finished her drink and stood. “Let’s. He’s here somewhere.”

  * * *

  “So,” Pel’s voice said from Iridian’s comp the next day as he concluded a ridiculously long greeting, “I hope our intervention with Adda is happening soon.”

  Iridian almost missed the last line. She and Chi stood in a maintenance dock a few down from the dock the Coin used. The noise of drones and humans disassembling an engine was, as Ogir promised, good for muffling sound. She still heard the bags around the two altered synthcapsin canisters rustling in her pockets, because she’d taken a risk bringing them for emergency crowd control and she was listening for a break or a leak. Ogir was taking measurements while appearing to admire the view out the projected window. His retinal implants recorded every detail to the millimeter.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking tonight would be a good time to talk to Adda,” Iridian told Pel. She wanted to pace while she talked, but three or four steps in Vesta’s surface grav would take her all the way out of the dock. “Why?”

  “Um, she’s going to be talking to you a lot sooner.”

  Chi raised her eyebrow at the comp and Iridian’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

  “Well, I was talking to her, because she actually unplugged for a few minutes to use the toilet,” Pel said, “and I might have mentioned that you and Chi were getting together to talk about what you could do to help her out, right? Then she asked a bunch of questions I didn’t know answers to, and now she’s heading your way.”

  “Adda’s coming here?” Iridian asked. Adda was coming to see her, instead of using their implanted comms . . . That was strange. Iridian clicked through the three toggle settings in the implant at the base of her thumb to confirm that although her mic had been off, her earpiece was on. Adda could’ve talked to her that way. Adda almost never traveled through Rheasilvia Station by herself. “Did you mention the ships at all?”

  “No!” Pel laughed, a bit too high in pitch. “Why would I do that? That’s the big secret, isn’t it?”

  Iridian shut her eyes and rubbed them with her thumb and forefinger. “So you did.”

  “I didn’t name any of them.”

  “Pel, Adda is the smartest person you and I know,” Iridian said. “You drop a hint, it goes up like a gods-damned spark in pure O2.” Iridian had left their temporary apartment in casual clothes and no suit, to keep Adda from asking what she needed armor for. Iridian would’ve lied, Adda would’ve seen through it, and she’d have figured out the whole scheme before she reached the port mod. Iridian had only managed to grab her shield, a couple knives, and the synthcapsin cannisters without attracting Adda’s attention. “I’ve got to figure out what to say to her now,” Iridian said. “See you later.” She ended the conversation and blocked the little jerk.

  Chi’s cackling didn’t do much to calm Iridian down. “When you people have a family fight, you don’t mess around.”

  “Ogir,” Iridian called over her shoulder, “ETA on your . . .” “Bomber” and “explosives engineer” would both trigger every keyword-based alarm in the mod, so she couldn’t say either of those. “Expert?”

  When Ogir focused on Iridian, the surface of his eyes rippled from the pupils outward. “She’s making a purchase. If that goes well, she’ll be here within the hour. If it doesn’t, it will be several hours before she can . . . extricate herself.”

  Chi held her hands in front of her, palms out in a warding motion. “I don’t want to know.”

  “That’s wise,” said Ogir.

  Hell, Iridian didn’t have to wait until Adda arrived to talk to her. She might as well just go for it. She’d figure something out. I hear you’re coming our way, babe?

  Yes. Adda’s reply was immediate. I understand what Casey’s been trying to tell me. I want to show you.

  That’s great! Silence pooled without the affirmation or explanation Iridian expected. She frowned. Isn’t it?

  I’ll tell you when I get there.

  Wh
en they watched vids together, Adda always mocked the “tell you later” cliché because something always prevented that information from being communicated. She’d never say it seriously if she were thinking straight.

  If she were thinking like Adda.

  “I’m really looking forward to seeing your expert’s work,” Iridian told Ogir. Gods, she sounded so normal for being scared as hell. “But Adda’s on her way here and it could get a bit . . . dramatic. You might want to get scarce until it’s time to set things off.”

  Ogir smiled slightly, which told Iridian that she’d guessed right about how interested he was in being in a lovers’ spat with AIs involved. “I’ll be nearby.”

  Chi was grinning. “Might go buy some popcorn and come back.” When Iridian glanced back to where Ogir had been standing, he was gone. Nobody in sight had long dreadlocks like Ogir’s, even though he couldn’t possibly have reached the door that fast. Chi looked around too. “Spooky.”

  “Yeah.” Iridian crossed the terminal, staying well out of the dockworkers’ way. The knee that’d caught a chunk of metal during the defense of HQ was still healing and she’d refused the heavy painkillers the hospital had offered, so she limped more than she walked.

  Adda stood across the wide shipping thoroughfare from the door. Among the normal shipping traffic of cargo-hauling bots trundling along the ceiling and people heading to and from the grav acclimation tunnel to the rest of the station, Adda stood eerily still. She held something in her hand, and her expression was fucking furious despite the tears in her eyes. She stomped up to Iridian and jammed the thing in her hand against the underside of Iridian’s chin, pushing her head back.

  Spikes on the end poked her jaw, and Iridian finally understood what the thing was. People called them “zincs” because of the sound the spikes made when the weapon was triggered, extending and punching through muscle and bone to inject a nasty pseudo-organic payload into a target’s skull.