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When the grating noise woke Elys, her cell still felt too warm, and the RIS MCAI had replied to the shipboard AI with a notification accessible through the newly implemented communication protocols, using “ecknowledged” the first time the word appeared in the report. She’d taught it that years ago. The MCAI was calling itself SHRIKE now, which, knowing the RIS, stood for something vaguely menacing. It’d formatted the rest of the response the way her team had trained it to.
Despite everything else the RIS had SHRIKE working on, it had retained Elys’s little call and response. Even though she understood the logic that compelled it to value the information, it felt nice to be remembered with the algorithmic equivalent of fondness when everyone on this ship was complicit in her slow death.
Now that SHRIKE knew it was talking to Elys, she had a chance of receiving more answers, if she kept the current protocols active. And if her pickup quit buzzing like it couldn’t read her photophores every time she moved her head too much. The heat prickled under her skin. Fever, maybe. Before Elys made much progress, the Republic soldier with the injector dosed her again.
Elys left the pickup off for several uncomfortable hours to make sure she didn’t visualize anything involving SHRIKE where Krebs would see it. When she put the pickup back on, it buzzed against her neck.
If she were going to get anything out of SHRIKE, she had to do something about her body temperature, to get her photophores back into a shape the pickup recognized. Her head felt heavy as she turned it to see the water bag still sitting by the door. The thought of drinking it made her throat clench and her stomach heave.
Moving slowly, she pushed herself up with her hands on the wall and took the pickup off. She tipped a little water from the bag into her cupped hand and poured it over the photophores, then quickly wiped them dry and set the pickup back on.
A star map flickered and dissolved into the air after only a second, but she’d seen enough. SHRIKE had provided the environment and traffic report she’d asked for, though she only gathered that there were other ships passing relatively near the Orefield. It would’ve been a comfort to know where she was in space, but that was useful. Or would be, if she could keep the pickup on long enough. It was buzzing against her neck again.
So. She got one report. She could run the next through the Orefield’s AI too. It had to be in some limited contact with nearby vessels, to avoid accidents of various sorts. The shipboard AI hadn’t turned on any alarms when Elys had sent the disguised messages to SHRIKE, so it might not alert to ship-to-ship content either. If it did... She’d better make this message count.
If she disguised this message the way she had hidden her message to SHRIKE, the smaller AIs involved wouldn’t know what to do with it. Whoever was monitoring her pickup might see it, but what was the worst they could do to her, that they hadn’t already done? The way she’d set up this delivery should make the Orefield’s AI pass SHRIKE’s report to a nearby ship, from which it should follow the selected communication protocols and relay the information from the ship to the city.
First, she’d attached everything SHRIKE sent to the AI interaction in progress between the two ships... The pickup was buzzing again, refusing to activate for her. She swallowed, a struggle with her throat so dry, and staggered as she brought the bagged water to the padded section of floor with her and dribbled the water over her photophores until they shrank to the pattern the pickup recognized.
Oh. She could have SHRIKE send this message. It would take a long time to go from Krebs’s ship to SHRIKE and on to the nearby ship to relay it toward Alyansa, but the Orefield AI treated communicating with SHRIKE as part of its job.
Why risk discovery with direct contact when she didn’t have to? It took her long enough to think of that. She was so tired, and hot, and even her scalp ached.
She added a small map of as much of the Orefield’s layout as she remembered, including marking her name on her cell. And, because nobody could blame her for talking to herself after untold hours alone in a tiny room, she murmured, “Miss you, Taia. Wish I could see you again.”
Given the city’s effectiveness at delivering mail, it might actually get the message to her, if Elys’s implanted mic and transmitter were still working. If the pickup was even sending anything. It kept buzzing intermittently.
Being a pleasant distraction for one person would’ve been simpler than searching for information Alyansa could use to protect itself, but complexity had always compelled Elys. If that complexity got her killed, she could almost accept it. Besides, Taia would rather Elys use her knowledge to help Alyansans than just to entertain her.
She had to drip more water over her photophores to unlock the pickup. By the time it reactivated, she didn’t want to risk taking time to double-check her message to the city. Sending it took the last of Elys’s energy.
She lay on her back on the floor. The pickup buzzed sullenly between the padding and Elys’s skin. It would be easy to lie here and hope the messages had gone through. That she’d done enough.
But even if Krebs understood what SHRIKE was realistically capable of, it wouldn’t be practical to leave every record and document he needed on Earth when he was so far from there. His ship, or something on it, still had information that Alyansa could use to protect itself. The grating noise played over the speakers. Elys covered her ears until it stopped.
She bit her lip as an alternative to taking the buzzing pickup off and flinging it at the boring Republic wall of this boring Republic ship. Sitting in front of the door, waiting for the soldiers who’d bring her meal and ignoring her aching head and stomach, Elys had time to think. A year ago, when the RIS tried to kill her the first time, while she still had an improvised knife in her lung, she’d fought hard to get medical treatment. Cried, screamed, begged, done everything she could think of to stay alive.
And here she was dying, and she hadn’t even asked for a doctor. Not that Krebs would bring her one.
Eid would be here soon, or had come and gone. Her sister’s family might journey to Reznikov for it, which would save Elys the trip. Of course, everybody else she knew would already have plans. Maybe she should’ve kept better track of friends.
––––––––
It was too bad those communication protocols Elys was talking to SHRIKE with didn’t affect anything happening inside the Orefield. When her pickup deigned to work despite Elys’s overheated skin, it still couldn’t activate the poorly named shipstopper under her collarbone, which would’ve severely limited the Orefield’s maneuverability and kept it closer to the position the city last confirmed it in.
The cell’s lights dimmed. Seconds later, a massive jolt knocked Elys flat on the floor. The engine rumble surged to a roar.
She had hardly recovered from the dizzying ache of being thrown onto the floor when the whole ship jolted again, rolling her into a wall. Was this a battle? Who in the universe would attack a Republic military ship?
In the hallway outside, there was a lot of shouting and running footsteps, but no gunfire. It’d been so loud during the CRU’s departure in Mayari orbit that there was no way Elys could miss hearing it.
Despite the fear shaking through her, she smiled under a surge of pride. SHRIKE had disabled their weapons, and the soldiers were fine. Her team hadn’t made a killer. If Krebs had given the MCAI space to calculate likely long-term reactions of the political dissidents and their communities, it would’ve advised the RIS to take more productive, and almost certainly less violent, action when dealing with them. All those dissidents and their families would be alive and whole, if not free.
Heavy footfalls thumped down the hall. The soldiers must have put on their exosuits.
The cell door opened, revealing an armored suit with Taia’s work face in its helmet. Elys stared up at it from the floor. Was hallucination an omnipirin side effect? Oh, right, sleep deprivation caused hallucinations.
“Elys!”
All the other mediators had called Elys by her family name. That had to be Taia. When the mediator took a heavy step forward, their profile had Taia’s ID number.
Elys had been so afraid to say she’d loved her before, and she wouldn’t say it now, but the way her heart leapt when Taia said Elys’s name, and had barely stirred during all the running and shouting outside her cell, explained everything she’d been ignoring about what she felt for Taia. If hugging Taia in full armor didn’t seem like a good way for Elys to get her neck broken, she would’ve run to her.
As it was, Taia was holding what Elys had thought was a fist-sized part of her suit, raised and pointed down the hall at something Elys couldn’t see. Another mediator stepped up to join them, raising a weapon of their own. Someone else with an Alyansan accent was shouting nearby. Elys couldn’t make out individual words.
Since she couldn’t think of a way to prove that this wasn’t a hallucination, Elys decided to act as if this were really happening. “Krebs must have a local copy of everything he’s working on here. He’s been too far outside Republic space to leave it all stored remotely. I’ve pulled what I can from... Other sources. If there’s anything that Alyansa can use, it’s on this ship somewhere.”
Taia held out a huge armored glove. When Elys took it, Taia lifted her to her feet like she weighed nothing. The gentleness of those gloves’ grip surprised Elys.
“Are you hurt?” Taia asked.
Elys was fairly sure she’d survive the day, so she didn’t want Taia panicking about her health while they could be finding the information she’d come here to get. “I’m fine. Just wish this pickup weren’t locked down so I could find Krebs’s records.” It was buzzing steadily against her neck.
“So that’s why you didn’t accept my invitation.” Taia still looked confused, but her eyes focused on something Elys couldn’t see. A hand-sized exterior compartment in her suit popped open, from which she extracted one of the thinner Alyansan pickups with rounded edges. “I saw you wearing one and I didn’t think you needed this after all. It’s already keyed to your profile.”
“Oh, fuck, finally. Excuse me. Thank you.” Elys dropped the useless Republic pickup on the floor and put on the Alyansan one, which fit more securely over her photophores, despite the sweat on her overheated skin. She resisted the impulse to smash the one Krebs had given her. The thin socks she still wore would tear and she’d cut her feet on the pieces.
As much as she would’ve liked to just follow the mediators to their ship, she said, “Wait. There’s more to get off this ship.”
The new pickup let her ask Nisse, and through it the shipboard AI, to point her toward Krebs. Nisse made her a map to the ship’s center. The bridge. Of course he’d be telling people more qualified than him how to do their jobs.
If he were there, then he wasn’t in whatever part of the ship the crew had given him to do whatever he did when he wasn’t asking Elys questions. She asked for access to his records, but the Orefield AI denied that she had the rights to them. Nisse got her directions to Krebs’s personal room instead.
The new visualized path led her to a door at the end of a hallway labeled Officers’ Quarters. The door the visualized path ended at was locked. Nisse reported having No access to the lock in visualized text beside the door.
Taia and the other mediators were right behind her, although two had stopped earlier to talk through a shut door to Republic soldiers. “Krebs’s office is here,” Elys told Taia. “I can’t get to his records remotely...” And now this pickup was buzzing too, distracting her. “There may be a few more things I can try, if I can get to the physical storage media he’s used.”
“Then let’s open that door.” Taia turned to the unseen hallway. After some shuffling around of very large boots, another armored mediator joined Elys and Taia at the end of the hall. At the other end, the Republic soldiers had gotten another door open and scrambled out of sight with their useless weapons.
“Stand back, Kundakçı.” The mediator with the engineer’s face set their padded palms against the hinge side of the door, then leaned on it.
Metal squealed. The mediator’s boots whined with hydraulic tension as they braced their feet and shoved. Something snapped so loudly Elys jumped.
The mediator grunted in apparent satisfaction and kicked the bottom, turning the whole thing several centimeters and leaving the mediator enough room to work their fingers between it and the frame. Another hard shove ripped the door free.
“There you go.” The mediator propped the mangled door against the hallway wall. Every armored fingertip had left a dent in the metal, despite the light blue pads on the gloves’ palms and the undersides of the fingers.
“Somebody should get Krebs out of the bridge. In case we need to open biolocks in here.” Elys felt like she was floating, and the fever wasn’t entirely to blame. All these people were on her side. She had so many options now.