“Adda . . . Babe . . . Please don’t.” Close range, no-collateral assassination weapons like a zinc should’ve set off every weapons detection system stationsec had, but no dock guards were in sight now.
“That will stop you from killing Pel.” Adda’s voice, choked with emotion, sounded like a stranger’s.
Iridian’s breath caught in her lungs. What? She was fairly sure that her implanted mic had transmitted the question to Adda.
“You . . . How could you do this?” Tears rolled down from Adda’s bloodshot eyes. “We won. What would blowing up half of Vesta get us now? How could you?”
“Whoa,” Chi said somewhere behind Iridian. “Nobody’s blowing up Vesta.”
Adda glowered around Iridian’s shoulder, since she was too short to see over. Iridian focused on keeping still, and on not crying herself, although that wouldn’t last. “I saw what Ogir’s people are buying,” Adda said. “You can’t tell me you weren’t involved. They told me everything.”
“The AIs?” Iridian asked in a voice barely above a whisper. If Adda turned her wrist just a few degrees, that’d be the end of Iridian as she knew herself. “All right. I’ll tell you something that’d be absolutely pointless to tell you if what you’re saying is true.” Adda refocused on Iridian. Her pupils were huge. There was almost no brown visible at all. She always talked about how AIs manipulated those who worked with them. And the prototype ship’s copilot had gotten Verney to cook himself by finding its way into the pilot’s neural implants. This is what AI influence looks like. “We were blowing up the ships,” Iridian said. “Not Vesta. Not Pel. Because the AIs are lying to you, babe.”
“Don’t!” Adda shrieked at someone behind Iridian.
Chi edged into Iridian’s peripheral vision with her hands raised. An injectable of some kind was in one of them. “Just trying to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life,” she said quietly.
“A mistake . . .” Adda whispered.
If Iridian broke Adda’s wrist, it’d be harder for Adda to trigger the weapon. Adda wouldn’t realize what Iridian was about to do until she did it. The idea made her stomach clench. Sure, Adda had been spending more time with AIs than with Iridian over the past few weeks, and sure, her grip on basic human values and decency had slipped since she let herself become fucking influenced. But this was still Adda. Iridian couldn’t hurt her. “Yeah, babe. This is all a big mistake. We can talk through it after you put the weapon down.”
“Don’t move,” Adda whimpered. Iridian was afraid to swallow too hard, in case it moved her throat against the spikes and startled Adda.
Adda’s miserable, horrified eyes met Iridian’s. “I can’t let go.”
In the fastest Iridian had ever seen Adda move, she reached into a pocket, pulled out her case of sharpsheets, and dumped all of them into her mouth.
Purple foam poured past her lips and over her chin. The zinc jerked against Iridian’s jaw and she pulled her head back fast. Chi screamed something. Iridian ducked away from the weapon and caught Adda when her knees gave out.
Things were moving in the combat timescale that made everything seem to happen at once, in slow motion. “Chi, do something,” Iridian shouted while she eased Adda to the floor. Adda’s wide-open eyes focused on nothing. Foam kept bubbling out of her mouth. The way her muscles spasmed was too much like Tritheist’s last moments. And Si Po’s, oh hells. “Chi!”
The medic crouched next to her. “What did she take?”
“About thirty sharpsheets. It’s, it’s stims and something kind of psychedelic, I don’t know, she uses it to get into her workspaces.” Iridian’s words ran together in her haste to get them out.
“Uppers will get her before the hallucinogen does.” Chi pulled a package of blue disposable gloves from a jacket pocket. Adda’s face was flushing red behind the foam oozing from her mouth. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Chi elbowed Iridian hard in the arm and Iridian vaguely registered that Chi had said her name. “Hey. This is awful, I know, but I need you to get that thing out of her hand and do whatever it takes to keep it from going off. Do that right now.”
A small crowd had gathered around them. Ogir had returned too, alternating between talking to somebody on the other side of a hidden mic and keeping people back. Adda still held the zinc—TNZ-45 or -55 delivery unit, that was the zinc’s official name—so tight that her knuckles were white. Each finger creaked as Iridian pried the weapon free. She cringed. “Fuck . . . I’m sorry, babe.”
The weapon was primed. If Adda had dropped it, it would’ve gone off. But Adda had known that, and she didn’t drop it, even after she’d overdosed to stop herself from hurting Iridian. Even while she was, maybe, dying. Iridian crushed that thought, carefully safed the zinc, and tucked the weapon into her jacket. Her hand barely shook at all.
“Okay, I don’t have my kit.” Chi held Adda’s wrist in one hand while peering critically at her face. “I didn’t expect everything to go to hell quite this fast. So I need you to get up and tell Ogir to contact my friend Pruden Peura. Ogir has the contact info. Pruden will bring gear and transport through the station.”
“What about those emergency services docks?” Iridian asked. “Flying’s faster.”
But she remembered the problem with that at the same time Chi said, “Do you want to go into stationspace with a tugboat and a warship gunning for you? Yeah, me either. Go tell Ogir to contact Pruden right now.”
Iridian was standing and walking toward Ogir before she thought about it. Can you hear me, babe? She confirmed that her mic was on and listened to the nothing in her head for a second, then conveyed Chi’s message to Ogir. He activated his comm and Pruden’s name appeared on the projection. Iridian let him handle the summons while she ran back to Chi. The medic was brushing the purple foam away from Adda’s mouth.
Iridian felt like she was breathing thin atmo as she knelt beside them. “Can I do anything else?”
“Clear a path for Pruden,” Chi said. “Start with the ES entrance by Imports over there. It’s got its own grav tunnel. Stationsec will be here any second.” She bent over Adda.
Iridian surged to her feet, too fast for the low grav, and staggered toward the emergency services entrance Chi had indicated. When Iridian reached a clear spot below the Imports sign on the wall, she bellowed, “Get out of the gods-damned way!”
People looked for the source of the yelling, so she pulled the zinc out of her jacket and held it above her head. Several of the bystanders turned and shoved through the crowd in the other direction. “You heard me, get out of the way! Now.” Her tone, if not the unusual weaponry, got people moving.
Ogir stood still as the crowd retreated around him. He was watching the weapon, not her. “Please put that away when stationsec arrives.”
She handed it to him. “Can you find out where this came from, and how the hell Adda got it? We don’t keep that kind of shit at home. I can’t think of a way someone would’ve gotten it into a hab this big.”
He pocketed the device without changing expression, like it was some kind of secret pass-off. Maybe it was. “I found it weeks ago, when we located the last of the Casey Mire Mire’s hidden compartments. Captain Sloane had no reason to smuggle it into Rheasilvia Station, so we left it onboard. It’s interesting that Adda reached the docks unobstructed while carrying it.”
“Between her and three awakened AIs, we’re lucky if that’s all they managed to do.” Iridian shivered. Sirens rose above the crowd noise, at long fucking last.
The sirens were on stationsec vehicles, not an ambulance, cruising toward their dock on wall-mounted rails above humans’ heads and below the ceiling-mounted cargo crawler tracks. She returned to Adda’s side. “Where’s Pru?” Chi demanded.
“I don’t know.” Iridian turned to ask Ogir, but he’d disappeared into the crowd.
Sloane was still a wreck from losing Tritheist, and some part of the captain blamed her and Adda for that loss. But if anybody could fix this, Captain Sloane could. She tapped at her
comp and deployed her shield while she waited for an answer, just in case.
When the connection went through, Sloane stared at the cam with grief-hollowed eyes. Iridian gulped. “Captain, I need your help.”
CHAPTER 27
Reversion to Stage 2 (test results pending)
“The short version is that Adda overdosed on her concentration meds and we need help getting her to a safe hospital.” Iridian sounded as frantic as she felt, shouting over robotic cargo crawlers rumbling overhead and people milling around, talking. “There’s one on the surface, yeah?”
In the projection on the back of Iridian’s hand, Captain Sloane’s mouth twitched at the corners, like an aborted smile. She’d switched her shield to her comp hand so she could keep it raised while she was talking. “My condolences,” Sloane said. “I assume Chi is on her way?”
“She’s here, but she doesn’t have her gear.” Two cops were heading Iridian’s way while a third demanded an accounting of recent events from bystanders. “She’s got somebody else coming, but they’re still inside the station, and stationsec’s here now.”
“Time to end your comm, ma’am,” said the nearest cop to her. Iridian held up a finger, and that, or the desperation in her eyes, stopped him. If she’d been wearing her armor he wouldn’t have dared to interrupt, but in street clothes she must’ve looked like an extraordinarily muscular Vestan civilian.
“Colonial delegates are arriving in hours, so much as I’d like to assist in person, I can’t,” said Captain Sloane. “If you go to Keawe-Affinity Hospital you’ll be met by discreet staff. I’ve been in their care myself.”
It was the same hospital Pel had had his eye operation in. Sloane had connections there. While Pel was recovering, it’d been swarming with crew security. There hadn’t been enough to stop whatever machinations the AIs might try next, but it’d be a hell of a lot safer than staying exposed in the street. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll get her there.” Iridian swept the call off her comp projection so she could look up directions to the hospital.
“Ma’am,” said the cop, “has medical been called for—”
“Yeah, but they’re not here yet, are they?” Iridian snapped. She could put Adda in a tram if she had to. The hospital’s name and address appeared on her comp and she set it to tell her how to get there. It was farther than she would’ve liked. Five klicks would be nothing in an ambulance, but there was no fucking ambulance.
“And can I have your name and ID?”
Iridian spun, snarling, and put her shield between herself and the stationsec cops. “My name’s Iridian Nassir. Now fuck off.” Awakened AIs could be pulling digital strings to finish her and Adda off, and the dock cops wanted to confirm her ID. Fuck that.
Recognition dawned and they backed up a step. Iridian smiled grimly, pushed past them, and crouched beside Chi. “I don’t know where your friend with the ambulance is, but Captain Sloane says—”
“That’s Pruden.” Chi pointed to the vehicle barreling through the ES route’s acclimation tunnel. The ambulance rolled on eight wheels like the cop carriers did. It must’ve come out of the factory with law enforcement in mind, but its light armor looked like it came off a military reconnaissance vehicle. Iridian had never seen either with half a second cab sticking out one side of the first, and a generator belted onto the roof.
The whole thing rumbled and creaked to a stop and Pruden him-, her-, or verself clambered out of a hatch near the front of the roof. A disposable medical mask hid Pruden’s face and topped off a construction equipment linkup vest over half a miltech undershirt and loose-fitting pants with even more pockets than Chi’s medic armor. The vest would give Pruden more control over the vehicle. It looked like it needed that.
Iridian opened the vehicle’s back doors while Chi and Pruden carefully lifted Adda off the floor. The double doors were so much thicker than the vehicle’s frame that they had to have been designed for a different transport entirely. She limped to one side so Chi and Pruden could lay Adda in the person-shaped space in the middle of medical equipment that took up the rest of the space inside, including the added-on half cab. Chi clambered in to help get Adda in the right position. She stood in boot-size spaces Iridian would’ve taken a while to find on her own. A red light flashed over Adda and the machines around her whirred and whined to life.
Iridian shook herself out of her daze to climb in and cram herself against the closed doors, shifting to get her leg into a position that hurt less. The vehicle lurched and rumbled up to speed. “We’re going to Keawe-Affinity Hospital?” she asked Chi. Their outpatient facility had fixed Iridian’s shoulder after the Sabina op, on top of everything else the organization had done for Sloane’s crew. That felt like a lifetime ago.
“Oh yeah,” Chi confirmed without looking up from whatever she and the machines were doing with Adda. Chi had put herself between Adda and Iridian, crouched over Adda’s knees in the small space. “Pru wouldn’t go anywhere else.”
“You trust Pruden?” Iridian had to get Chi’s confirmation on something this important.
“With my life,” Chi said. “And Adda’s, because I do not want to be the one who fucks her up while you’re watching. Now shut up. I’ve got shit to do.”
Chi worked in silence for a few minutes before four thumps on the panel between the cab and the back made her grab a handhold among the medical equipment. “Grav acclimation coming,” she warned Iridian. “It’s the ES tunnel, so it’s faster than the other one.”
“Ogir here,” he said on a direct channel to Iridian’s comp. “The ships weren’t docked where we thought they were.”
Iridian turned up the volume on her comp’s speaker so that Chi would hear too. Grav acclimation vertigo hit her hard, forcing her to grab a handhold of her own. The faster transition made her motion sick, and she was glad that the ambulance didn’t project windows on its walls. She sneezed as fluid that’d floated into her sinus cavities in Vesta’s lower surface grav decided it didn’t want to be there anymore.
“The AI ships were not in the docks that were labeled with their presence indicators,” Ogir said. “Similar ships were docked in those slots. From the angle we were watching, a tug covered the front half of the one most like the Apparition. When you looked out the window, you didn’t question its appearance. Neither did I. It’s tough to fake the name in the terminal when there’s a different ship fully docked. Somehow they did it.”
So the best-case scenario would’ve been the bombs not going off. Otherwise, they’d have destroyed someone else’s fucking ships. “They knew,” Iridian snarled.
“Yes,” said Ogir.
“Wait, you knew they were awakened?” said Chi. “I just found out today.” Adda’s translator clarified Chi’s multilingual assessment of their parentage and sexual preferences in frankly disturbing detail.
“I suspected that Nassir was joking, until just now.” Ogir didn’t laugh, at least not while his mic was active.
Iridian wouldn’t have blamed him for laughing at the whole fucked up situation. They’d gone after the AIs half-cocked, and that was her fault more than anybody else’s. Ogir probably wouldn’t have responded as promptly and thoroughly as he had if it’d only been Chi asking him for help.
And really, the things responsible were the AIs. They found out they were in danger, so they’d sent Adda to protect them . . .
That was wrong. Unless Ogir was lying, and she couldn’t think of a reason why he would, the AIs were somewhere else when the three of them arrived. The ships weren’t in any danger. They could’ve called Adda off at any time. Iridian had, of course, been talking about their awakened status where mics could’ve recorded her. She should’ve expected a retaliation. Just not . . . this.
If the AIs were looking for a way to cut Adda away from Iridian, though, this would’ve been a good opportunity. Iridian slammed the side of her fist against the ambulance’s metal doors, the only spot she could reach that wasn’t occupied by machines saving Adda’s life. The lou
d thump didn’t satisfy her, but it helped a bit.
“Please don’t startle Pru and me right now,” Chi snapped. “Hearts are fucking awful to maintain when they’re messed up. Adda’s is messed the fuck up. Got me?”
Iridian drew in a deep breath and let it all the way out before she said, “Yes, ma’am.” Chi had already gone back to work.
The doors’ projected window showed a res/corp module retreating behind them. If Iridian hadn’t been there, she’d never have known by looking that a megacorporation had just lost the ’ject to pirates. The entertainment mod with the hole in the roof was on the other side of the port mod. Here, life went on as normal, in enviro as healthy as Albana Station’s on the other side of the ’ject. Even if it’d sustained damage from temporary grav loss, Iridian would’ve heard about it because . . .
She swallowed hard. She would’ve heard about it because Adda would’ve told her.
A physical window slid open, exposing a similar open one in the cab. The siren got a lot louder. Pruden leaned through the window, which Iridian hoped meant that the ambulance was driving itself, and shouted in a language Iridian didn’t speak. Her translator couldn’t pick it out from the siren noise.
Chi shouted something in the same language. Pru retreated into the cab and slapped the window shut. The sirens shut off a moment later. “ITA at the hospital,” Chi said. “We’ll get out in the garage and haul Adda in from there.”
A swath of cut-apart gray sweater and one leg were all of Adda that was visible around Chi and the life support machinery. “How is she?” Iridian asked.
“In need of a gods-damned detox.” Chi’s brows furrowed as she stared at Iridian for a moment. “When we get there, you’ve got to keep the ITA away from Adda while I get her what she needs.” Iridian nodded and clenched her fists against an unexpected rush of rage. How dare the ITA stand between her and getting Adda the help she needed? She’d kill them all if that’d let Adda keep breathing.
Not that that’d be her first course of action. First, she’d have to find the ITA agents in the hospital. And also, “Where does Adda need to be to get help?”
Mutiny at Vesta Page 40
