Chris Moriarty: Spin State

The Medusa was too slow, though. Its onboard systems were hopelessly obsolete and in uncertain repair. Li spun through the ship comp, tweaking, adjusting, speeding things up wherever she could; but even so the first files had barely loaded before she felt the clank and pressure shift of the frigate’s boarding tube locking onto the Medusa ’s fragile skin.

Christ! All this, only to lose everything because of a slow ship’s comp? She pushed and prodded furiously, but still the numbers seeped through the shipboard systems as reluctantly as cold diesel fuel. And meanwhile it was just a matter of time until the frigate’s techs accessed the Medusa ’s systems and shut down the file transfer.

But they never did. They ran a cursory search that didn’t turn up anything—didn’t even seem intended to turn up anything. Then they closed the airlock and pulled away, leaving a welter of relieved, if confused, internal mail between the freighter’s crew and passengers.

Li breathed a sigh of relief and let her guard down. The frigate kicked in its attitudinals and pulled away. The Medusa continued its radically slowed drift toward Freetown.

Then she saw it. It was as chillingly, breathtakingly clear as sunlight in hard vacuum. The frigate’s crew hadn’t boarded the freighter to take Sharifi’s data off it, but to leave something else on it. Something that would be sitting in one of the dark cargo bays waiting for a signal from the frigate’s bridge.

Nguyen didn’t need the files on the Medusa anymore. She hadn’t fired on the field AI until she knew Li and Cohen had retrieved everything she needed. And the frigate’s crew hadn’t boarded the Medusa until Haas had Li’s hand locked in his and was already stripping the precious data out of her hard files. Nguyen had the data now. So why would she run the risk that someone else might access the Medusa ’s files, that Sharifi’s message might get through? Why would she let the rest of the world in on TechComm’s most jealously guarded secret?

The others were with her before the thought was even a word. They hijacked every navigational buoy within broadcast distance of the Medusa . They hijacked the NowNet lines that ran through the Ring-Freetown axis and out to the Periphery. Then they started shooting Sharifi’s files over every open link they could find.

Your files too , the communications AI said—and before Li could argue he was shooting out the unedited spinfeed of all those long hours in the mine, broadcasting everything she and Cohen had seen and felt since the worldmind first engulfed them.

Watching through the Medusa ’s nav systems, Li saw the frigate slow and turn. Was she too late? Had it all been for nothing?

But no. They had caught the outbound transmissions. Li saw a quick FTL exchange of encrypted data between the frigate and Corps headquarters on Alba. Then the frigate turned tail, fired up its Bussard drives, and vanished into slow time.

The Medusa kept inching toward Freetown, its crew blissfully unaware of their deadly cargo. Meanwhile, Sharifi’s message flashed onto FreeNet and across a dozen Bose-Einstein relays onto a dozen planetary nets throughout the length and breadth of streamspace.

Li opened her eyes, amazed at her ability to act simultaneously in realspace and the whirling chaos of Cohen’s systems. The cuffs fell away from her wrists and ankles with a clatter. Haas looked at them unbelievingly for a split second, then jumped away from her.

Li jumped faster. She was on him before Bella’s body had taken a step, surrounding him, suffocating him, penetrating him. The station AI fought her, but she ground it to dust, barely stopping to think what she was doing, and slid toward Haas through the numbers, bright and pitiless as a shark. He cried out once. Then there was only Li. Her incandescent purpose. Her glacial, inhuman clarity. Her all-too-human fury.

She’d forgotten about the derms, though. At the last instant Haas quivered, mustered his strength, and ripped them off, leaving her with nothing but the empty vessel of Bella’s shunt-suppressed mind.

The last thing she heard as she collapsed was the cool, disembodied echo of Haas’s laughter.

She woke to pain and darkness. Her lungs burned. She put a hand to her face, and it came away wet with blood. Hers or Kintz’s, she couldn’t tell.

She sat up and saw Bella stretched out on the floor in front of her, unmoving but still breathing, thank God. There were voices in her ear. Not the whispers and echoes of the memory palace, but real human voices.

“Daahl?” she called. “Ramirez?”

No answer but crackling, hissing static.

After an eternity something came over the line. It was indistinct at first, lost in interference. But when it cleared, she heard Ramirez calling her name.

“We’re ready to come up,” she told him.

“Good. Hurry. We’d just about decided to let them go down and look for you.”

“Let who down?”

Another garbled, crackling stretch of static.

“What?”

“I said the strike’s over. The troops are pulling out. And there’s a General Nguyen looking for you.”

Nguyen. Christ.

“I need to send a message first. To ALEF.”

“Forget ALEF. It’s over. Just get up here. It’ll make sense as soon as you see the spinfeed.”

The news was all over the station. The streets were still, hushed, dark but for the flickering light of the livewalls and the low murmur of the crowds gathered around them.

Sharifi was on every channel. Interrupting news hour, NowNet programming, the last game of the Series. As they passed the All Nite Noodle, Li glanced at the livewall and saw the Mets and Yankees huddled on the infield, staring up at a two-story-high holomonitor Sharifi who smiled as she explained the unprecedented, unlooked-for, inconvenient miracle that was Compson’s World.

FreeNet’s AIs had been the first to catch the transmission, just as Sharifi must have planned it. Once they realized what they had, they spun it to every channel, every terminal, every press pool in UN space. In a matter of minutes, reporters were calling the General Assembly and the mining companies for position statements.

It wasn’t over yet, of course. There would be debates, compromises, and unholy alliances in the days to come. But they would happen onstream, in public. Compson’s fate wouldn’t be sealed in Nguyen’s office or other equally discreet offices. All of humanity, UN and Syndicate alike, would have a say in it. Sharifi had done that, at least. Her death, Mirce’s death, Cohen’s death had done that.

Security was deserted; everyone was on the street, dealing with the changes, trying to figure out who was in charge now. Li collapsed in a chair, rubbing her eyes. She wanted a shower. And then she needed to see Sharpe, probably.

She looked up. Bella stood over her.

“What are you still doing here?” she asked.

“Who killed her?” It was the first thing Bella had said to Li since they’d hit station.

“What does it matter, Bella? It’s over.”

“It’s not over for me.”

Li stared. The room was so silent she could hear her own pulse drumming in her ears. Bella’s body was taut, every muscle rigidly contracted. Her hands were trembling, the nails dirty and broken. There was blood on her. Her own blood. Li’s blood. Kintz’s blood.

“I have to know,” she said.

Li thought back to the vision of Sharifi in the glory hole. To the lost, desperate, adoring way Bella had looked at Sharifi. Whatever else Bella had done, she’d loved her. And been loved in return. Li was sure of that much.