Mutiny at Vesta

by R. E. Stearns

  “With Chi. We’re on our way to meet them.”

  “Chi.” Adda’s comp hand hung loose behind Iridian’s arm, so she asked the comp to find Chi. The medic never turned off her comp’s locator, so it was easy. Bloody hibiscus blossoms obscured the projection, though. She moved her hand out from under her nose.

  “Was Chi in on this, too?” Iridian growled. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, opened a door, and glared at a protesting man in scrubs until he backed out of her way. Iridian pressed Adda’s hand against her chest, immobile in Iridian’s strong grip. “Relax,” Iridian soothed her. “You’re okay.”

  “Chi should be safe now. Later, maybe soon, not so safe.”

  “Got it, I think. Can you be quiet until we get out of here?”

  Adda was an expert at being quiet. Anyway, there was a lot she wanted to do on her comp, as soon as it quit bleeding. Its blood was gorgeous, thick and bright red in the projection square. It glowed from within, obscuring the text.

  Iridian inhaled sharply and ran across a dark, hard place, dragging one of Adda’s disposable-socked feet along a wall. “Almost caught, but almost out,” she muttered.

  Since Adda’s comp projection was too bloody to read, she’d just have to talk to it. She opened a new message to Pel. We’re on our way to you, then Gavran. Please bring Chi and a tram to us. Drying blood glowed in new and interesting patterns on her hand.

  CHAPTER 30

  Separation period begins

  It was a good thing that Iridian was carrying Adda, because otherwise she’d be punching every person in the street. The two of them had had their place in Sloane’s crew for a bare three months, and now if the captain offered it back in person, Iridian wouldn’t take it. Her fist tightened around Adda’s arm for a moment until she caught herself, and loosened her grip. Captain Sloane had betrayed them. And because of the damned AIs using Adda as a puppet, the captain would get away with it.

  Iridian wanted to hunt Sloane down and send the captain to join Tritheist wherever self-important hardasses go when they die. She wanted to set Adda down and just scream for a while. And then she’d run until she forgot that all of this ever happened, if only for a few minutes, because gods-damn it she and Adda had fought so hard . . .

  Her boot caught on something in the pavement and she staggered under Adda’s weight. Iridian swallowed the lump in her throat that was choking her and looked down at the darkened street so she wouldn’t trip over anything else. Nothing she wanted to do right now would get Adda to safety. She breathed out, trying to slow her heart as her anger rapidly gave way to fear. All that mattered now was getting Adda out of Sloane’s path to full control of Vesta and its reliable routes. Preferably Iridian would get out too.

  Although with AegiSKADA defending what it considered its territory again, that might not be possible. The damned thing had already set Adda against Iridian. Adda hadn’t said that, but it was obvious. The AI could be in her head right now.

  They’d beaten AegiSKADA before, and they’d blow it up as many times as they had to, but it’d be safer to get out of its way. Iridian limped through the dark as fast as her knee would let her go. The medical district simulated night, apparently. It was really the light that was artificial. The cold and the black was always this way.

  Two armed ITA agents loitered in the tram station she’d selected, a few blocks away from the hospital. Iridian eased Adda off her shoulders, checked that she was breathing, and brushed aside her sweat-slicked hair to kiss her forehead. Adda’s eyes were half open, and the pupils were still way too wide. Iridian rubbed her thumb over drying blood on Adda’s upper lip. Adda’s eyes refocused a little, then returned to their long, intent stare. Babe? Iridian thought at her. Stay here. I’ll be right back.

  Yes, Adda whispered in her head. Iridian’s smile felt a bit sadder than she wanted it to, but Adda wasn’t looking at it anyway.

  All ITA agents carried stunners that could take Iridian down in seconds. The lights on the tram tracker beside the bench activated to indicate the one coming soon was already reserved. That’d be hers and Adda’s, so she had maybe three minutes to even her odds. She didn’t expect Chi or Pel to be armed. She turned her comp volume down before connecting to Pel’s. “Hey,” she said over his greeting, “there are ITA agents where your tram’s supposed to stop. Can you hold it at another one?”

  “Just passed . . .” There was a pause, like Pel was checking the route map. “Yep, just passed the one before yours.”

  Iridian swore. “Emergency stop, then, what about that?”

  “Ah, shit, maybe. I’ll look.”

  Optimistic as she was about Pel’s success rate, she couldn’t count on him getting the tram stopped before it reached the agents. She approached the tram stop slowly, sticking to the shadows. Deploying her shield would make a loud and recognizable snap, so she kept it collapsed for now. One more modified synthcapsin canister rustled in its bag in her pocket, and it’d have to do. She crept nearer until she was fairly sure she wouldn’t miss, then took one knee to stabilize herself and threw it.

  It clinked onto the pavement between the two agents and . . . just sat there.

  Everything slowed to half speed. The agents looked around, focused on Iridian, and reached for their weapons. Iridian brought her shield up and cast around for something else to throw. Her hand found one of her knives; she was shit at knife throwing but she flung it at them anyway. It bounced off one agent’s arm and fell on the canister. The impact broke it open with a bang.

  From the screaming, the agents were just as susceptible to that stuff as Iridian had been. Which was a problem now, because most people were sensitive to synthcapsin and she wasn’t about to carry Adda through it or let Pel walk into it. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t figure out emergency functions on automated vehicles.

  There had to be an emergency function in the tram stop, maybe even a button or a lever to pull. The synthcapsin hung in an ugly yellow mist all around where she’d expect to find such a lever.

  She waited until the lit tram came around a building and was almost to its stop before she held her breath, shut her eyes, and ran into the dissipating yellow mist to feel around the mechanisms for a lever. The synthcapsin seared her face, arms, and hands. If she hadn’t had a good idea of where to look, she’d never have found it. As it was, by the time she heard the tram screeching to a stop and ran out of the synthcapsin cloud, the ache in her lungs was changing to an O2-starved burn.

  Chi stared out the tram door at the incapacitated agents and at Iridian’s harsh coughing and watering eyes, but Pel barely gave any of it a second glance. “Where’s Adda?” he asked.

  “Back here. Hold the tram while I get her.” Still coughing, Iridian limped to Adda and hauled her to the vehicle. Chi was checking her pulse before Iridian even got Adda off of her shoulders. “Get this thing moving,” Iridian told Pel.

  He hit the next destination button in the projected menu. The tram’s door shut and it trundled on its way. Apparently that overrode the emergency stop. Adda’d be disgusted at the possibilities for abuse, if she were awake enough to notice.

  Iridian watched Chi and ignored Pel’s various questions about what the hell that’d been about. Chi eventually caught Iridian watching and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Are Sloane and a squad of security goons waiting at the terminal for us?” Iridian asked.

  Chi rocked back on her heels without rising from her crouch beside Adda. “No.”

  “That’s all?” Iridian asked. Behind her, Pel finally went quiet.

  “What do you want from me?” Chi snapped. “First I heard about any of this was from Pel. The newsfeed was saying that the ITA was committed to locking up the most dangerous members of the crew ‘to protect the fledgling democracy now taking shape on Vesta,’ or some shit. And that means Captain Sloane doesn’t trust me. That’s new and fucking awful. The whole reason I hired on with the captain was mutual trust, if you’ll believe that. And I’m afraid it
will turn out that you really should’ve gotten arrested, for some damned important move Sloane’s making, and tomorrow I’ll regret this.” Chi sighed. “So, I stay out of the loop for a few more hours, that’s all.”

  Iridian stared at her for a long moment. “All right.”

  “All right,” said Chi.

  “If you two aren’t going to kill each other, will somebody please tell me if Adda’s okay and what we’re going to do now?” Pel asked loudly.

  Chi and Iridian both half laughed, half sighed. “She’s doing well, considering,” said Chi. “The stim’s out of her system, but the hallucinogen’s still sloshing around in there. I think her implants have something to do with it, but I don’t know enough about implanted tech to say what. She’s not bleeding and she’s breathing real well, so she’ll keep for a while if you’re careful. She’s . . . dreaming, kind of. I mean, it’s not normal, but it’s not fatal as long as she keeps breathing, eating, and drinking.”

  “Thank you,” Iridian said.

  Chi pulled herself into one of the tram seats, leaving Adda on the floor. “Yeah, well, whatever happened to Tritheist, you’re good people. Vesta’s freer and stronger because you took the risks Sloane wouldn’t take. And it’s not in me to let good people die.”

  “Yeah, thank you,” Pel said. “Now, where are we going? Adda sent me something about a . . . um . . . vector confluence?”

  He propped his wrist in the comp cradle on the tram wall, which displayed the message on the floor beside Adda. “Go to the” were the first three words, followed by a lot of gibberish. “Vector confluence” and “cerebral tunneling” were the only phrases Iridian recognized. Half a line of nonwords rambled between “cerebral” and “tunneling.”

  “Yes,” Adda said clearly and decisively from the floor. Everybody looked down at her. She glanced from face to face, shut her eyes, and was apparently done with the conversation for now. Iridian eased herself down on her good leg until she could reach Adda’s wrist, and carefully peeled her comp glove off of it. If Adda couldn’t keep her eyes open, then she didn’t need to worry about supervising AegiSKADA.

  “So, where are we going?” Pel asked. “I mean, off Vesta, sure. You ask me, I haven’t been to the Kuiper colonies yet. I hear they’re wild, and I don’t think any of us have pissed anybody out there off.”

  “Are our assets frozen?” Iridian asked. “Because I doubt Gavran wants to take on that fuel bill solo.”

  “Oh.” Pel took his comp back and the weird message disappeared. While he was looking at his, Iridian looked hers and Adda’s over too. The relatively public accounts were frozen, but Adda had filtered more than half of their income through a series of dummy accounts, and Iridian only had to go two deep into those to find active ones. They could make it to the Jovian colonies on the money they had.

  She knelt on her good knee to take Adda’s hand, and used Adda’s comp messaging system, with its much stronger encryption, to send a message to Pel: “We’re good, but keep your mouth shut.” When Pel looked from his comp to her face and back, she glanced pointedly at Chi, who was reading something on her own comp. Pel’s eyes, gold and silver today, widened a little.

  “What makes you think Gavran will even carry you after all this?” Chi asked.

  Iridian sighed. “Assume he won’t. That’ll be easier on everybody.” There was no guarantee he’d be willing to fly them anywhere, but Iridian sure as hell intended to leave the ’ject on the Mayhem one way or another. The awakened AIs were still out in stationspace, but she’d rather take her chances with them than with Sloane and AegiSKADA on Vesta. That’d been Adda’s plan, too. “If Adda’s okay for now, why don’t you head home?” Iridian asked Chi. “That way you don’t have anything more to break Sloane’s trust over.”

  Chi shut off the projector and hit the next stop icon on the tram console harder than necessary. “She starts convulsing, or you can’t get fluids in her anymore, you get her to a hospital. No waiting for a medic, just go. Got it?” Iridian nodded. Chi hesitated a second, then threw her arms first around Pel, then Iridian. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  The hug was so unexpected that Iridian teared up a little. “Same.”

  Chi exited the tram as soon as the doors opened and disappeared into the growing third shift rush-hour crowed. A few passers-by glared at the word RESERVED projected over their tram’s doors as they closed.

  * * *

  In the Mayhem’s terminal, Gavran stood outside the passthrough door, pointing a sidearm the size of his actual forearm into the Mayhem. Iridian gently set Adda down and deployed her shield. If he was aiming a weapon into his own ship, then there was somebody in there to aim at.

  “Uh, Gavran? Hi?” said Pel. Iridian reached out to pull him behind her and her shield.

  Gavran glanced their way and opened his mouth to answer, but whoever he’d been holding the gun on swept it aside and drove a fist into his throat. The pilot staggered back, choking and wobbling as his legs adjusted his balance in an uncannily fluid motion. Ogir stepped through the passthrough doorway and into the terminal, holding Gavran’s sidearm.

  Ogir glanced between Iridian, Pel, and Gavran like he was counting how outnumbered he was, then grimaced down at Adda, embarrassed or painfully apologetic. He aimed the sidearm at Iridian’s face. “Captain Sloane gave you an order. You ignored it.”

  Ogir had been waiting for them. If he were picking a likely getaway ship to stake out, the one with the zombie AI copilot was the safest bet. Gavran leaned against the passthrough wall, fighting to breathe, while Pel stared through teal-colored eyes. Gavran could probably hold Ogir while Iridian got herself and the Karpes out of the line of fire once he was breathing well enough.

  And if Iridian saw that, then Ogir saw it too. “I’ll ignore any order that’d get Adda hurt,” she said.

  “Captain Sloane was planning to get you both out of the ITA’s prison after all this settled down,” said Ogir. “You were symbolic leaders to be symbolically sacrificed in arrests that might not have taken you all the way to trial.” All those ops that put Iridian’s and Adda’s names in every Vestan’s conversation . . . Sloane had been setting them up for this since the Sabina raid. “It would’ve kept the ITA off of us for years, and all you had to do was sit still for it.”

  Which Iridian would’ve done, except for the one essential fact that made the rest of it irrelevant. “Look at how sick she is,” Iridian growled, “and run that by me again.”

  Ogir frowned down at Adda for another long moment. Behind him, Gavran straightened up and drew a clear breath. Ogir met Iridian’s eyes again. “It isn’t personal, Nassir.”

  The sidearm bounced on the terminal floor in Vesta’s low grav while Ogir ran past Iridian, well outside of her reach, toward the grav acclimation tunnel. With her fucked-up knee, there was no way she could stop him from alerting the ITA to their travel plans. But from the look on his face when he left, he might give her and Adda a few minutes’ head start. For Adda’s sake.

  “Doesn’t mean I won’t gut you someday,” Iridian called after him.

  “Yeah!” Pel shouted. “She’ll do it! Bet your fucking ass she will!”

  “Christ and Krishna,” Gavran croaked. “Hello, good to see you, good you’re not arrested. We have three minutes before whoever Ogir calls for help arrives, three minutes, mark.”

  Iridian heaved Adda back onto her aching shoulders and limped toward the Mayhem’s passthrough. “Pel, pick up the weapon. Gavran, will you get us out of here?”

  The pilot turned to look at her incredulously while he rubbed his throat. “Your wife found my brother. When nobody else would even look for my brother, she found him. I’ll fly you wherever you want, sunward or no.”

  “No,” Adda said with utmost certainty. “Not sunward. We need to go farther.”

  They’d talked about this exact scenario months ago, and Iridian had called Adda paranoid. “That low-orbit Jovian station, yeah? The one with the other crews.” Gavran swore expansiv
ely, although Iridian only caught the words “Jupiter” and “all of hell’s grav.”

  Between that station and the medical facilities on Ganymede, somebody would solve whatever was going wrong in Adda’s head. Iridian smiled down at her while the Mayhem’s passthrough cycled shut. They still had each other. They could run from the ITA, Sloane’s new fleet, and all the awakened AIs in the galaxy. As long as they ran together, they’d be all right.

  Acknowledgments

  I needed my own team of experts to turn this story into a physical thing you can hold in your hands:

  THE AGENT

  Impeccable taste. Machine-like memory. Tact levels off the charts. You should be thanking Hannah Bowman as much as I should, because she saved you from an awful subplot that didn’t pay off at all. In addition, she discouraged my attempts at telepathically communicating this story instead of writing it down, and she’s always asking important questions with answers that make the story work. Seriously, thank you.

  THE EDITOR

  Award winner. Word tamer. Armed to the gods-damned teeth with weapons most people need a D&D character feat to wield. Navah Wolfe made sure this book contained all the things we loved about Adda and Iridian in Barbary Station, and guided this story exactly where it needed to go. Mutiny at Vesta would not have existed without her. I really appreciate all the time and effort she’s put into making me get this story as right as I can.

  THE COPYEDITOR AND THE MANAGING EDITOR

  Word wranglers. Oversaw the flawless installation of twelve semicolons in this story alone. Kayley Hoffman and Bridget Madsen saved us all from some poorly placed parentheses and made many other improvements to this story. I deeply appreciate their efforts.

  THE COVER ARTIST AND THE COVER DESIGNER

  Digital artist virtuosos who teamed up to make Mutiny at Vesta’s fantastic cover. Marin Deschambault draws spaceships, pirates, and scenes from ancient Egypt like you’ve never even imagined. Greg Stadnyk used that artwork to bring Rheasilvia Station to life for Mutiny at Vesta. Thank you for selling this book to everyone who judges sci-fi by its cover.