CHAPTER 4 Days until launch: 72
The Sorenson ITA Station that floated in Venus’s atmo was the prisoner transfer ship’s only stop. Since Iridian’s tiny cabin had no windows, the only thing she knew about her new hab was that its grav was healthy. Docking a craft this size in healthy grav must’ve been a challenge for the pilot. The speaker on the wall had told her to strap in over an hour ago and she was still lying in bed, waiting for the motion to stop.
Iridian fidgeted with the straps and subvocalized, Can you hear me? into her throat mic. Like every other time in the past few weeks, Adda didn’t answer. Maybe she’d had another seizure, or the people at the treatment clinic had found her comms implants and deactivated them or taken them out.
Gods, Iridian hoped that they’d just deactivated the implants. The last she’d heard from Adda was shortly after Adda had contacted Pel. The next time Iridian got the chance, she’d reach out to Pel too and find out what in all hells was going on. Iridian huffed an irritated sigh. She and Adda had missed celebrating the anniversary of their first date. Iridian hadn’t even been able to talk to her.
The lawyer had been apologetic about losing Iridian’s trial in Ceresian court. Without moving the trial to the NEU, which the lawyer had tried and failed to do, she hadn’t started with much of a chance. The ITA’s inhibition-lowering drugs had provided all the evidence the prosecution needed, anyway. While trying not to implicate Adda, Iridian had confessed to a lot. The ITA’s lawyer had made half his case by playing her recorded “interviews” in the courtroom.
The one hope she’d had of a deal, describing the ships carrying the awakened AIs, had been useless. The AIs must’ve left Vesta by the time the ITA went looking for them. If Iridian guessed right, Captain Sloane had assured the ITA that Iridian’s report couldn’t be trusted. She was happy to have cost the damned AIs a safe berth, but the ITA was unimpressed. The rest of the arguments had been a formality.
For the first few weeks she’d been vigilant for opportunities to escape while Ceresian law enforcement officers transferred her back and forth from jail to the courtroom, but she’d never gotten farther than a meter from her captors. The two attempts that triggered the nannite culture convinced her that she’d need outside help to find her way back to Adda.
Still, escaping an ITA prison wouldn’t be the craziest thing Iridian had done to stay with Adda. Iridian had to believe that they’d be together again soon. The alternative would hurt too much to bear.
Miss you, babe, she subvocalized to Adda. Maybe she was listening and couldn’t reply.
The prisoner transport docked and Iridian’s cell door opened straight into a passthrough. A speaker clicked on. “You can walk out on your own, or—”
“Or the nannites will make me, yeah, yeah.” She collected the spare set of clothes they’d left in the cabinet for her. The nannites slowed her pace to a shuffle, a new feature the culture had developed after it’d established itself in her nervous system. Other prisoners in the Ceres Station jail had confirmed that prison-grade cultures did that to everybody they infected. This was the farthest she’d walked in a straight line in days. She wanted to run up and down the passthrough a few times, but the way the nannites affected her muscles meant that her normal walking speed was now the fastest she could move. Even that took more effort than it should’ve.
The passthrough opened on another room with no occupants. It closed as soon as she left the exterior doorway. Medical equipment filled one wall. Across from the passthrough was another closed door. This hab’s atmo processors were incredibly loud, like they were turned all the way up for some reason, although the atmo was as still as it should be in a sealed hab.
She stood there holding her clothes and listened. Atmo processors this loud would take some getting used to, and she’d have to get used to them. If the enviro ever changed for the worse, realizing it and reacting fast might save her life. A hydraulic whine from the passthrough, almost lost under the atmo processors, signaled the transport ship’s departure. Maybe she was hearing Venus’s famous wind.
Auditory directions walked her through a full body scan using the medical equipment. It asked for multiple passes around her head, neck, and hand, where the implanted comms were. It sent her through a deep decon cycle like she’d somehow gotten herself irradiated in jail, demanded that she recycle all her clothes, and gave her identical new ones. After she put those on, the med station prescribed a vaccination that hurt less than she’d expected it to.
The far door opened. Five people in ITA blue stood at the end of a short hallway, watching her. Most of their armor looked light and easy to move in, but the helmets were so overbuilt that it was amazing they could hold their heads up. The faceplates were dark. Two of the agents carried shields, smaller than Iridian’s old one. The ITA shields looked rigid and heavy as the agents awkwardly hauled them into position at full height and width. Either the shields were new, or the agents didn’t train with them often enough.
In the armored suit Captain Sloane had bought Iridian on Vesta, with the mech-ex graphene shield she’d built, she would’ve been able to take them. Unarmed in pants and a thin shirt, that’d be a losing fight. Besides, the agents could activate her nannite culture whenever they wanted. They might not even let her break her knuckles on their faceplates.
“Nassir, Iridian. Yes?” one of them asked.
It’d been a long few weeks without Adda. Iridian grinned wider than she had any reason to, given the question. “If you don’t know who I am by now, then you people have bigger problems than—”
One of the armored people activated Iridian’s nannites. She hit the floor on her side. Over her screams, the first speaker said, “We’re the ERT. Everything here in Sorenson ITAS looks real civilized, and you’re going to think it’d be easy to pull something. Don’t. If you try it, we’ll be there to stop you.”
The nerve pain ended. Iridian had curled up as small as she could make herself, chest heaving against her knees. Breathe, breathe, oh fuck you, you assmongers, breathe, she thought, and hopefully did not say to Adda.
“Get up,” said the guy who talked like he was in charge. “We’ll walk you to your cell.”
Iridian wanted to snap at them, but she didn’t want it enough to risk him activating her nannite culture again. She pushed herself off the floor. The ERT squad, which she guessed stood for something related to emergency response, fell into formation around her. The clack of light armor was comfortably familiar, even though the people wearing it were her enemies, not her allies.
The hab’s low lighting had the orange glow of a very late local time or a very early one. They passed more closed doors in the windowless hallway than Iridian could count. They turned more corners than Iridian was used to in a hab too. With cams near the ceiling watching every angle, the guards saw more than the prisoners did. The ERT people must’ve had cam feeds from every short hallway and cell pumped into their helmets.
Eventually the ERT squad stopped in front of a door and opened it. This section of hallway had only six doors, three on one side and three on the other. The talker said, “Get in, lie down on the bed, and don’t do anything stupid.”
The bed, strangely, was in the middle of the small room, with grav straps dangling from its sides to the floor. Grav here was lighter than would’ve been ideal, but only a little. She’d heard that was normal on Venus. This place couldn’t have been on Venus’s surface, though. Only specially designed equipment survived the weather down there.
The room was too small for multiple beds, so she wouldn’t have roommates to talk to like she’d had in the Ceres Station jail. They hadn’t had anything interesting to say, but anybody would’ve been better than four blank walls and a solid door. A comp terminal with a projection stage was in one corner, and an open door leading to a small bathroom was in the other. She’d rented worse rooms than this. She got onto the bed before the ERT people found another reason to activate her nannite culture.
“Strap yourself in,” was the next order.
Iridian did it even more slowly than the nannites would’ve let her. “How unstable is the grav here?” They ignored her question. Once she’d secured herself, she asked, “Now what?”
One of the armored people, not the one who’d been doing the talking, stepped into the cell and checked her straps. The person did something beside Iridian’s head. The room and hall lights shut off. Iridian opened her mouth to ask what the hell that was about, and somehow . . . didn’t. The words didn’t come out.
When the lights came on a few seconds later, the person who’d been messing with Iridian’s bed was back in the hallway. “What was that?” Iridian was relieved to actually be able to ask the question.
“You can get up once the door closes,” a third armored guy said. “You’ll be locked in until you finish your psych evals, and then you’ll go in with everybody else. Just remember: you get out of line, we’ll be there.”
“Great,” Iridian said sarcastically. “Thanks.” The door shut from the top down, solid metal impacting the plastic floor with a clack, while she released the bed’s straps. Grav had been stable since she’d arrived. Maybe that procedure was to protect the guards from her. Whatever she’d been expecting from the ITA’s prison, it kept surprising her.
According to the time stamp on the comp in the corner, the staff kept Iridian in isolation for two days, punctuated by more blackouts. Each blackout was signaled by a chirping alarm and auditory instructions for her to get into bed (or stay there, if she’d been asleep) and strap in. They’d been happening before all her meals, and at other times too. Maybe whatever made the pouches of flavored goo that they served as food drew a lot of power.
Iridian wanted to know how bad the prisoners she’d be in with were, but the only people she talked to were psychologists running orientation and testing. One of them spoke like an AI in disguise. The interviews were conducted through the comp in her cell, which only showed her what the ITA wanted her to see. NEU internet should’ve been accessible from Venus’s orbit, but the ITA’s network was locked down.
They hadn’t even given her a window, like there’d been in the Ceres Station jail. Ceresians acted like people couldn’t survive with a blank ceiling over their heads all the time. Iridian missed the stars, but Sorenson ITAS was cleaner and calmer than the jail. Not meeting the other residents grated on her, though. In the Ceres Station jail, new prisoner introductions sometimes ended with the newbie beaten bloody. If a fight was coming, she wanted to get it over with.
The comp in the desk had things to read, at least. She skimmed prison rules and her release criteria, the eighteen things she’d have to do before the ITA let her go. The official documents estimated that she’d meet all her release criteria in a couple of years, but almost everybody took longer. People who did it in less made the newsfeeds.
Rehabilitation took as many years as the ITA wanted it to take, but blue boxes hovered beside the documents’ text describing statistical success: 91% of those released leave criminal behavior behind for good! 100% of released persons capable of work have a job within six months of meeting their release criteria! The exclamation points were absent, but implied.
After the third morning’s blackout, Iridian climbed off her bed to find the cell door open. A projector stage in the ceiling presented a message beside it. Follow arrows to the dining room. Please do not deviate from the prescribed route.
Iridian would’ve liked to finish the set of sit-ups she’d started before the blackout. She hadn’t broken a sweat and her joints were still stiff. But this was her chance to find out what the other prisoners were like. Footsteps and an approaching tense conversation drew her through the door.
“. . . is gone. I didn’t do it. Wiley didn’t do it.” The husky feminine voice was familiar, as was the name Wiley, but the speaker was around a corner from Iridian’s cell.
“Who did, then?” a second speaker, male by the sound of it, asked in the same quiet, tense tone.
Iridian stepped around the corner in the direction of the voices, which also happened to be the opposite direction of the white arrows projected onto the walls. A dragging swish and a clack told her that the door had shut behind her. “Blame it on me,” she suggested. Since she’d just arrived, she had nothing to lose with disciplinary action, and solving their problem might head off a physical determination of how much respect Iridian was owed. “I’m new. I don’t know any better.”
Both people stopped walking as Iridian turned a second corner to follow them. At least, she assumed it was two people, because the first person took up the entirety of the narrow hallway. She’d know that silhouette anywhere. The enormous woman turned around and her wide face confirmed it. “Hell’s holy whores. Nassir!”
“Rio!” Iridian shambled forward as fast as the nannites would let her move. On Vesta, Pel had said that Rio had gotten locked up for something, but he’d never said what for or where. Captain Sloane’s ops had kept Iridian too busy to follow up.
Whoever Rio had been talking to used spacefarer cant to compare Iridian’s arrival to a sewage system blowout. Seeing a friend in this place, even one she had befriended on Barbary Station while an AI was trying to kill her, was a powerful relief. She didn’t even get halfway into a bow before brown arms enveloped her in a rib-crushing hug. “What the hell brought you here?” Iridian croaked as her lungs compressed.
Rio chuckled. “Long story. And go easy when you’re walking toward people. Anyway, we don’t have time. It’s important to be on time, as a courtesy to others.” That last sentence sounded memorized, and Rio’s smile fell away as they walked in the direction the arrows pointed. “Uzomo, this is Iridian Nassir,” she said.
“Hey.” Uzomo raised a dark brown hand, tattooed with a black pattern of lines like a ladder from his wrist up as much of the arm as Iridian saw over Rio’s wide shoulders, which were about the height of Iridian’s head. “I’m going to say you lost it,” said Uzomo. “Who’d take one two-kilo dumbbell, anyway? And ‘we are empowered to work it out among ourselves,’ so the therapists aren’t telling us who.” The part about empowerment sounded like a sarcastic quote.
Rio made a displeased grunt. “Speak only the truth.” Her broad shoulders hunched a little more with every platitude she uttered. Iridian frowned. Whatever process the ITA used to turn prisoners into good spacefaring citizens must’ve included catchphrases people felt compelled to repeat.
You’ll never guess who I just met, Iridian subvocalized to Adda. On Barbary Station, Rio had been one of Pel’s staunchest allies, and she’d taken to Iridian and Adda as soon as Captain Sloane stopped aiming weapons at them. Knowing that Iridian had a reliable friend in this place might keep Adda from worrying about her too much. It certainly eased Iridian’s mind. And Adda might be interested to hear how Rio was doing. Like every other time Iridian had talked to Adda recently, there was no response. The silence tore her up inside.
The hallway opened onto a small cafeteria. Over a dozen people sat at blue tables with ITA seals printed onto the tops. As usual, Rio was the most massive person in the room. Like Iridian, most prisoners wore plain clothes that came from default textile printer patterns. Despite the simple clothes, the hunched shoulders and tattoos would’ve looked more at home in the dark corners of Captain Sloane’s club on Vesta than in this well-lit, quiet place. The expressions as they sized her up were mixed. There was some cold disinterest and a couple of approving nods, a lot of suspicious glowering, and a few people who looked like just the sight of her was infuriating. Four of the ubiquitous ERTs stood in full armor around the walls, helmet faceplates showing featureless black.
The tables and benches were bolted to the floor. Short straps hung from the benches, for low-grav seating. They also looked sturdy enough to allow people to sit with their full weight on their asses, and their plates resting on the tabletops, but the straps suggested that low grav was possible, if not common. Perhaps the station rose above the atmosphere in certain situations, like avoiding bad storms. As long as it was going up, not down, short periods of micrograv would be all right. Except for the lack of comp cradles in the tables’ centers, the place looked as civilized as the ERT people had told her to expect.
Even though the tables were big enough for trays and plates, nobody had any. Everyone held yellow liter-size liquid packets, like the kind that’d been delivered to Iridian’s cell three times a day. Iridian gripped the dispensing machine’s handle while it scanned her vein pattern. A little cabinet door opened to reveal a yellow packet of her own. The contents, when she broke the straw’s seal and sipped, were thick and . . . “Banana flavored?”
“That’s what they’re going for, yeah.” Rio raised hers in farewell to Uzomo, whose tattoos were much more visible in the cafeteria lights as he headed for one of the tables. He had Jovian and Saturnian secessionist iconography on his shoulders and back, peeking through carefully placed tears in his shirt, in addition to the lines Iridian had seen earlier.
Rio was headed for a different table, so Iridian followed her. Once Uzomo was several meters away, Rio muttered, “Assassin. There are at least three in here. Recognition didn’t exactly end the market for violence.” Instead, the NEU recognizing colonial independence had turned a lot of soldiers into bitter freelancers. They hadn’t all joined a legal organization like Rio’s ZV Group. It made sense that some would end up here. “Stay with me and my group and you’ll be all right. Us four watch each other’s backs.” Rio returned to the topic of meal replacements at a normal volume. “Guaranteed allergen and contaminant free, with nutrients mixed up for each of us. No trading, nothing solid.”
“Great,” said Iridian, in regard to both the “food” and the secessionist assassin. It wasn’t.
Everybody kept watching Iridian, the prisoners out of the corners of their eyes and the ERT people through the blank faceplates turned toward her. The prisoners’ muted conversation was full of even more therapeutic-sounding phrases. It was almost like a new cant. Iridian had a lot of rules to learn, written and not, to avoid making any more enemies than she had to. It paid not to piss off your new neighbors when you moved into a mod, especially when some of the neighbors used to kill for a living.
The table Rio walked toward was occupied by a broad-shouldered black man and a shorter man with tawny skin that exposed dark circles under his eyes. They were playing black and white digital checkers on a board rising out of a thumbnail-size projector in the table’s center. Iridian did a double take back to the players.
Rio thumped the table with one big hand, making the digital board game jump. The pieces moved together with the board and stayed in their squares. “Iridian Nassir, this is Noor Beck and—”
“Zayd Wiley,” Iridian said. In her memory, the black man’s head was shaved as bald as she usually kept her own, but he’d grown his hair out a few centimeters. He was heavier than he’d been when they’d driven infantry shield vehicles during the war. Since he was the only person at the table wearing a comp glove, the checkers game had to be running on it. Like everything else, the fingerless glove was ITA blue. Iridian sat down hard on the open bench space next to him.
Wiley looked as shocked as she was. It took a long moment for his face to split into a smile. “Nassir!” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and dragged her into a sideways hug. People in this hab touched each other a lot more often than Iridian had expected. Everybody had gone through the same decon, so it wasn’t a big deal. One of the ERT people stepped away from the wall, heavy helmet lowered threateningly, and Wiley let her go.
“I’d ask why you’re here, but everybody with newsfeed privileges already told everybody else.” Wiley laughed, probably at himself. That laughter was a comforting sound she could’ve heard anytime, if she’d just kept up with him after she left the service for school. “I didn’t believe you were coming,” he said. “Everything’s the same here, day after day. I didn’t believe even you could break the routine.”
Iridian’s shoulders had been up around her ears in a defensive reflex that she only noticed as they relaxed. When she’d walked into the cafeteria, she’d been settling in to stay in this prison. Adda couldn’t think well enough to plan an escape, the ITA security measures seemed solid, and Iridian was just one woman in a cage designed to hold people exactly like her. She’d seen no way out. But now two soldiers she trusted were stuck in this place with her, and that changed everything. If she came up with something resembling a plan, these people could help her get back to Adda before they both got old and gray.
Rio sat beside the man she’d introduced as Noor, looking pleased with herself. Noor moved a checker piece across the board and said, “Iridian Nassir is the Shieldrunner friend you were expecting to get sent here?” Noor’s spacefarer English, like Wiley’s, carried a hint of reassuring Martian twang.
“Yeah,” said Wiley. “We ran together on Titan and Mars.” He shook his head, still looking at Iridian like if he turned away, she’d disappear. “Good times.”
“Your exploits on Vesta catching up with you?” Noor asked Iridian while Wiley took his turn at the checkers board. His voice was lower than it looked like it ought to be for his size.
“Look, Captain Sloane blew our involvement way out of proportion,” Iridian said. “Adda and I were foot soldiers.” Wiley snorted at that, and Iridian grinned. “Yeah, I know.” Aside from Iridian’s understatement regarding Adda’s involvement, the Shieldrunners mocked the exposed and vulnerable infantry who needed the ISVs’ protection. Maybe Wiley had let himself go a bit since the last time he’d driven an infantry shield vehicle, but he remembered those years.
Noor ran a hand through black hair that fell almost to his shoulders. “But you did kidnap the scientist who discovered the interstellar bridge, didn’t you?”
Her lawyer had no hope of getting her out of that charge on appeal. “We rescued ver from a disabled ship in the middle of Mangala stationspace first.” Iridian had questions of her own, starting with the ones about the station enviro. People who didn’t learn a hab’s quirks got hurt during “expected” enviro fluctuations. The comp in her cell hadn’t offered the usual public records about this hab. “While it’s question-and-answer time, what’s up with all the blackouts? None of the orientation crap they’ve been testing me on explains those. Is this station stable or what?”
“Rumor is the hab has power problems, but they keep telling us it’s not getting any closer to the surface,” said Rio, which was a relief. Without a lot of specialized gear, Venus’s surface wasn’t survivable, even if you didn’t get there at terminal velocity. “And before you ask, everybody gets up feeling stiff, so that’s not just you either. The beds are shit.” Wiley and Noor nodded agreement. Iridian hadn’t even mentioned her stiff muscles. This was apparently a common complaint.
A white woman wandered toward their table, making her nannite-slowed walk look slinky instead of sluggish, with hips rounded to entertainment-feed perfection. She had the ageless quality of women between thirty and fifty who’d spent most of their lives behind rad shielding. When she reached the table, she draped her arms over Wiley’s shoulders and the rest of herself over his back. Her shirt was tied in a knot to expose a line of small metal ring piercings up the side of her flat stomach, strung through with a pink ribbon. It looked like she had another set on the other side, and the ribbon laced up her front in a row of Xs. The woman cast a challenging look at Iridian while she cooed, “Hey, love,” in Wiley’s ear.
“Hey, yourself.” Wiley patted her arm. “Tash, this is Iridian Nassir. Friend from—”
“The Shieldrunners,” Tash drawled in uncolored spacefarer English like they spoke on Iridian’s home hab. “I know who she is.” She gave Iridian a long look.
“Hey.” Iridian dipped her head for a duration that offered a high level of respect to a stranger. Tash broke off her challenging stare and nodded back.
Iridian would definitely remember meeting this woman, so Tash must’ve heard about her on the newsfeeds. “Nice mods,” she said to Tash. “I’ve only got this.” Iridian raised one side of her shirt to display her tattoo, a triangle of skin peeled up from her side to reveal a realistic lung and liver under two crossed rib bones. A dark scar cut into the crossed-bone design. She hadn’t gotten around to having it repaired. A black skull grinned out from the middle of the peeled-back skin.
Tash leaned closer in a glittering swell of breasts lit with small LED jewels that glowed through her shirt. She hummed in an approving sort of way. “Too bad about the blade that got you. It’s good work.”
“I got him back.” Iridian grinned almost as widely as the tattooed skull. If she could convince these people to help her escape, she’d find her way back to Adda sooner rather than later.
After the meal, loudspeaker instructions directed the prisoners in the cafeteria to their beds for the duration of a brief blackout. From there, Iridian got sent to yet another therapist appointment. It was her second conversation with this skinny old white woman in the past couple of days. During the first, Iridian had halfheartedly completed a barrage of tests while Shera Marsten (“just Shera, I don’t have a doctorate”) observed from the stage built into the desk in Iridian’s cell.
In person, Shera perched on a soft chair across from the equally soft couch on which Iridian sat. The therapists’ and doctors’ offices were the only comfortable places in the whole damned hab. Shera’s office was just warm enough to emphasize that the rest of Sorenson ITAS was slightly too cold.
“Hi.” Shera wore a small, professional smile and earrings that were too big for her face. “How are you feeling about meeting with me today?”
Iridian shrugged. “Not much else to do.”
“That’s a good response.” Except for the ERT people, the staff constantly shared opinions on what Iridian said and did. They’d been doing it since she got onto the transport ship on Ceres. Even the virtual ones did it. “You’re going to be one of my clients,” said Shera.
Iridian leaned back into the couch cushions and crossed her arms under her breasts. “ ‘Client’ sounds like I’m supposed to pay you. Do you have any idea how much a lawyer costs?” The bill from the Ceresian lawyer she’d hired to replace the ITA’s silent one had been a nasty surprise.
Captain Sloane had unexpectedly kicked in 40 percent of the fee, along with a note: “For your trouble on my behalf.” The captain wanted her free eventually but didn’t mind if she was low on funds when she got out. Besides, it would’ve been bad for Sloane’s crew morale to leave even a disgraced member in the ITA’s custody with no support at all.
Shera laughed. “I’m sorry. ‘Client’ is just the lingo here. I’m sure you know that the language we use is important. Positive language has positive effects. Could you repeat that for me?”
Iridian blinked at her. “Why?”
“Repetition reinforces concepts that are important to your release criteria,” Shera said patiently. Demonstrating progress toward each prisoner’s individualized release criteria must’ve been what had the other prisoners repeating phrases that sounded more like psychobabble shit than real speech. No wonder repeating them aggravated Rio so much.
“I understood what you said. What’s next?” Iridian wasn’t interested in progressing toward any of her eighteen release criteria. Not while she hadn’t even tried to find a faster way back to Adda. At the trial they’d talked about months of drug testing, developing a group of “prosocial” friends and advocates who the therapists thought would somehow make crime less profitable or debts less crushing, and psychological “milestones” that were arbitrary as hell. The repeated phrases must’ve counted as progress toward those milestones.
The small and professional smile returned to Shera’s face. “Since you’ve passed the tests on our introduction vids, I know you understand that our goal is to ensure that you don’t have to spend any more time here than necessary, and that this will be your only stay in ITA facilities. So we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, aren’t we?”
Iridian shrugged. “The only person I want to see right now is my wife. When can somebody set that up?”
“Adda Karpe is very unwell, isn’t she?” Shera asked.
That was a hell of a way to describe recovering from brain damage and AI influence. “Yeah,” Iridian said. “I want to know how she’s doing.” And see her face, and hear her voice, and if Iridian were lucky, make her smile . . . She sighed. She’d been on missions without Adda before, but she’d always known when they’d meet up again. Now that she didn’t know, Adda was all she thought about.
Shera frowned quickly and deeply, like she’d been stopping herself from making that face ever since Iridian started talking. “Ordinarily, connecting you with your family would be wonderful motivation to meet your release criteria. In your and Adda’s case, though . . . I’m going to ask you a question, and I’m going to preface it with the reminder that our observer is very good at identifying aggressive motion. You will not be permitted to continue any such motion.”
“I’ll curl up and scream on the floor instead, got it.” With Iridian’s luck, the observer was an AI that’d flatten her no matter how she reacted.
“Do you feel that your relationship with Adda has had a positive influence on your interaction with society?”
Iridian had been right about the question’s effect. She shut her eyes and held herself still until she thought she could move slowly and calmly enough not to get hit with the nannites again. “Thank you for thinking carefully about your response,” said Shera.
Through clenched teeth, Iridian said, “Adda’s has a positive influence on everything about me.”
When she opened her eyes, the therapist was still frowning. “Hmm.”
Between the nannite culture in every prisoner’s body and the long list of privileges that improved their stay in the silent, bare, internet-restricted cells, Sorenson ITAS was breaking people’s minds to fix them. And now Shera thought she could change Iridian’s opinion about Adda. The ITA had whole lifetimes to work on people who still had release criteria to meet. The prospect of staying here long enough for them to change how Iridian felt about her wife made her sick.
Now that Iridian knew the extent of the mind games the ITA was playing, she was watching for them in the cafeteria during lunch. The furniture and the machine that dispensed the food packets weren’t bolted down to handle grav adjustments, they were bolted down to keep people from moving them. She could do absolutely no damage with the off-white packet the meal came in, unless she stuffed it down somebody’s throat. The top was folded over and stiff, and too wide for most people’s mouths. The stuff inside tasted like fish stew with an aftertaste of powdered ass.
Tash was at another table, hanging off a person of indiscriminate gender who was very much not Wiley. Wiley followed Iridian’s gaze and shrugged. “She does that. She’ll be back.”
“Did your counselors ever try to break the two of you up?” Iridian was still angry about Shera asking whether Adda was good for Iridian, as if that was anybody else’s decision to make.
“Oh yeah,” said Wiley. “I took some heat for . . . an event that happened near Tash. It could’ve gotten her shipped off to the asteroid belt, if she’d been involved. Which she wasn’t. It set my release progress back, and right after that they started in on our relationship.” Wiley’s gaze went distant. “They had me thinking about it for a while. I actually sat Tash down to break it off, but she snapped me out of it. If you read into the recovery program, it’s big on ‘removing temptation to reoffend.’ That includes people they think are bad for you.”
Iridian scowled at her packaged meal. “That’s fucked up. Of them, not you.” Adda was her second set of eyes, her calm when everything else came apart, her reason when nothing else made sense. The ITA couldn’t make Iridian question that. But they’d almost talked Wiley into breaking up with his girlfriend, and he looked happy to be with her now. The ITA definitely thought they could change Iridian’s mind.
She bit the inside of her cheek to ground herself. This was why she had to believe she could leave this place on her own terms. She wouldn’t give them the chance to do that to her and Adda.
Wiley frowned at his own meal packet. “Remember that time the secessionists hit the mess and logistics outside Chien-Shiung Wu Station on Mars and we had to go begging from the locals?”
The abrupt shift from her personal war with the ITA to her and Wiley’s shared war against the secessionists suggested that Iridian had been scowling at her lunch for longer than she’d thought. “Oh gods, I’d forgotten what fresh food tasted like. I was choking on the replacement rations for weeks after that.”
“The good old days.” Wiley snorted a laugh. “I never would’ve believed it.” They knew when their next meal would be and the atmo was clean, but meeting Adda had raised Iridian’s standards for good living. Perfect enviro was boring without Adda there to share it.
If Adda were here with her, planning a jailbreak, the first thing she’d say was that the AI running this hab was watching for a breakout. Iridian didn’t care about that, since she couldn’t do anything to affect it. Then Adda would list all her available resources and options.
Although Iridian had no equipment or supplies, she did have allies. Some of Wiley’s skills mirrored her own. He’d never been as interested as she was in how the ISVs worked, so he would’ve done something other than engineering school and piracy after the war. When Rio and Noor sat down with their personalized fish-ass stew, Iridian said, “So everybody knows what I’ve been up to. What about you all?”
“In case you were wondering, everything here’s recorded.” Rio shrugged. “I’m still with the ZVs. They’ll take me back when I meet my release criteria.”
Iridian wanted to ask why the ZVs hadn’t broken Rio out yet, but that question would sound suspicious on a recording. Besides, the ZV Group upheld NEU laws unless they had a good reason not to. There were few benefits and a lot of drawbacks to taking somebody out of an ITA prison without an ITA order to do it.
“You’re lucky,” said Wiley. “Nobody’s waiting for me to reform. Sentence I got was one trouble too many for Martian government work.”
Iridian raised an eyebrow at him. “What were you doing for the Martian government?”
“Construction.” It sounded about as interesting as changing oil or checking reading bots’ work, the way Wiley said it. “Building bridges and tearing down walls.”
Judging by Rio’s and Noor’s coordinated eye roll, the line about bridges and walls was another catchphrase from “therapy.” It was more like brainwashing. She and the other prisoners were disconnected from the rest of humanity, bombarded with “correct” messages, and expected to conform. And the alternative was a lot of pain.
“But the construction work meant something to people,” Wiley continued. “People remembered how their ’ject used to be before the war. Helping the bots put it back was putting Mars back together. Boring job, but it meant something.”
“Just like army life,” said Iridian. “You must’ve felt right at home.”
“It was Mars. I was at home.” He glanced around, maybe missing windows like Iridian did.
She turned to Noor, who was watching her over a tablet that looked almost as old as she was. Before she could ask about his skill set, he said, “Why do you want to know?”
“She’s just making conversation,” said Wiley.
“Is she?” Noor’s question was more contemplative than accusatory. He studied her for a moment more. “Information security.” Wiley chuckled. That sounded like digital theft, which often involved manipulating physical security systems. Skills like that would be useful in an escape and lucrative afterward.
“And I can mix drinks on eight different ’jects when the AI breaks down,” said Tash, “and look better doing it.” Iridian hadn’t noticed her approach, but she couldn’t help noticing when Tash draped herself over Wiley’s shoulders and grinned. The tattoo on the forearm ten centimeters from Iridian’s face read Fabulous in black calligraphy that stood out on Tash’s pale skin. More tattoos, mostly text in languages Iridian couldn’t read, encircled Tash’s upper arms and her other forearm, and hid among pink and white stars lit with LEDs that gleamed where they emerged from the skin of her chest.
Her effect on people who got off on her level of body modification would be a more useful skill, in terms of getting out of this hab. “So, one more question,” Iridian said. “If I wanted to have a private conversation, is there any way to do that?”
Everyone at the table stiffened slightly. “Nope,” said Rio, but she met Iridian’s eyes and tilted her head up and down fractionally. There was a place that wasn’t micced, but not one Rio would name aloud.
After the post-lunch blackout, Iridian was back to testing and talking to ITA people for hours. The next time she saw the group she was beginning to think of as her crew was a recreational period in a gym designed for the healthy grav. Although the sunsim was comfortable, the walls were decorated only with a projected list of gym rules.
According to the staff, windows were an earned privilege. The gym was too small for a track, but a row of treadmills lined one wall and somebody was running on one. The runner met Iridian’s envious gaze and made a rude gesture. Moving faster than a walk must’ve been an earned privilege too.
“What, we don’t get to go outside?” Iridian asked Wiley. He was spotting Rio at a weight bench. The readout on the frame attached to the bench reported that Rio was pressing 332 kilos of metal with perfect form. Even with her visible strain, the sight gave Iridian mild vertigo. When somebody moved that much weight without a suit, they were usually doing it in low grav. At first glance Rio carried a lot of fat. Underneath was a remarkable amount of muscle.
Wiley was looking at Iridian with a similar level of incredulity, but when she smiled at him, he relaxed at the realization that she was joking about exercising outdoors. “Pretty sure acid rain and wind strong enough to blow this whole hab around aren’t on the privileges list.”
Noor appeared with a two-kilogram dumbbell and spent a couple of seconds positioning it on the weight rack beside its mate. “Ah . . . ha!” Rio said, one syllable per repetition, with her head tilted back to watch.
“The only mic I’ve found in this area is now flattened against that rack,” Noor murmured. Iridian fought the instinct to lean in to hear him over Rio’s breathing and the background buzz of other prisoners’ workout conversations. “The next closest mics are two meters on either side of us, so keep it down. Now.” Noor turned to face Iridian. “Did you come here to break somebody out, or are you leaving by yourself?” Iridian gaped at him while Rio and Wiley switched places and Rio took some weight plates off the bar. Noor smiled thinly. “You don’t hide your intentions well, and you’re recently of Sloane’s crew. How else would Captain Sloane get somebody out of here? So my question is, who would Sloane be that interested in?”
Iridian frowned. “The captain was willing to let my wife die to deal with political fallout. I don’t care what the hell Captain Sloane’s interested in. I just want to leave, and I think you can help.”
“Help with what?” Tash whispered behind Iridian, making Iridian spin around and raise her hands in a pointless, shieldless block. Tash grinned while Iridian looked between Rio and Wiley to see if either of them would trust Tash with their topic of conversation.
Rio shrugged, and Wiley nodded at her. Noor just watched, so Iridian said, “I’m talking about getting the fuck out of here. You in?”
Tash laughed delightedly. “You just got here!” She grasped Wiley’s weight bar and leaned on it. The ribbon that laced through the rings on her stomach dangled from the bottom of her shirt. Wiley gave one strenuous heave with her added weight, which also made her laugh, then paused at the low point of his rep to accommodate her. “But yeah, why not? I’m not making any money here, and it’s so boring that I keep ‘backtracking’ on my release criteria. So, sure. On one condition.”
“Yeah?” said Iridian.
“Tell Captain Sloane all about me.”
Rio snorted. “Sloane’s got all the bartenders a captain could want, Tash.”
“Who knew the ITA micromanaged the habs so thoroughly that they’d send people here for mixing bad drinks?” Noor asked. He watched Tash coolly.
“Like I keep saying, some of them were very bad drinks.” Tash leaned over Wiley as if inviting Noor to count the stars on her chest. Wiley grinned up at her. He had the better view.
Rio casually turned her head to take in their surroundings. Everyone else was keeping their distance. An ERT guard ambled past, black faceplate staring at them, and Rio and Wiley switched places on the bench again. “I’m . . . in,” Rio said after the guard was out of range, still in time to her reps. “I owe . . . you and Adda . . . a big one.”
Noor and Wiley both gave Rio surprised looks. Wiley recovered first. He offered Iridian a shallow bow. “It’ll be good to work with you again,” Wiley said to her.
“That would be amazing, but you’ve got to be close to getting out of here the right way,” Iridian said.
Wiley scowled. “I’ve got two criteria left to prove and four more to maintain, but everybody knows my position on secessionists hasn’t changed. And a couple months ago, I set myself back hard.” He and Tash shifted, probably to put something between them and cams, eyes locked and hands reaching for each other. It was abruptly too intimate for Iridian to watch. Did she and Adda look like that when they were together?
She turned to Noor, who was watching the other exercisers thoughtfully. “Can you imagine what it’s like, watching your personalized ITA ‘reintegration’ program turn you into somebody you don’t recognize anymore?” Noor asked. “I’ve seen it happen.” He looked like he might say something else but swallowed visibly instead. “I’m not interested in letting them tie my brain into any more knots than it’s already in.” He turned to Iridian. “Do you have a plan?”
For a second, Iridian thought the ERT people had activated her nannite culture again, but it was just a sudden, physical ache of not having Adda here. She’d make three plans that’d definitely work and a few more that might work even when everything else went to shit. After taking a moment to catch her breath and locate the ERT people, Iridian said, “Do any of these emergency response people have dirt we could use to, say, replace one with a ZV?”
Rio, Wiley, and Noor all shook their heads. Tash, however, smiled wider. “Oh yeah, I know exactly the one you want. You won’t even need to replace him.”
Iridian knew next to nothing about Tash, but trusting her looked like Iridian’s best option. This was coming together better than she’d expected, and without all the sitting in a corner and pondering that Adda loved and Iridian tolerated. “Okay. Okay!”
If Tash had a comms line to the outside, or if Iridian convinced her therapist that she’d be talking to somebody “motivational,” then Iridian would find a way to contact Rio’s merc outfit, the ZV Group. They had the personnel and expertise to break her out. More importantly, they owed her and Adda for getting off Barbary Station alive. That made them the only private military company she’d be able to afford. Even if they gave her a break on the price, they’d cost everything she and Adda had saved. Once she was out, nothing would stop her from freeing Adda.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Iridian said, “and I’ll send the message to a relative who will help.” Not that Iridian’s blood relatives wanted anything to do with her at the moment, except for her uncle in the Kuiper colonies. The counselor, Shera, might even give Iridian progress points for asking to talk to family other than Adda. Unfortunately, the only person she could count on to get her plan moving was her fuckup brother-in-law, Pel.