Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

“But—”

“Just do it.” Martin reached into a pocket and pulled out a battered-looking leather-bound hardback book. “PA, global peripheral shutdown. Go to voice-only.” He shook his head, wincing slightly. “I know it feels weird, but—”

Steffi shrugged uncomfortably, then blinked her way through a series of menus until she found the hard power-down option on her personal area network. “Are you sure about it?”

“Sure? Who’s sure of anything? But if someone’s taking over the ship, they’re going to view nailing down line officers — even trainees — as a priority. Way I’d plan it, first your comms would go down, then people would simply vanish one by one.” Steffi blinked and nodded, then sent the final command and watched the clock projected in her visual field wink out. Martin stood up. “Come on.” They followed the last diners out into the main radial heading for the central concourse, but before they’d passed the nearest crossway Martin paused at a side door. “Can you open this?”

“Sure.” Steffi grasped the handle and twisted. Sensors in the handle recognized her handprint and gave way. “Not much here but some stores and—”

“First thing to do is to cover up that uniform.” Martin was already through the door. “Got to get you looking like a steward or a passenger. Don’t think they’ll be looking for me or Rachel yet.” He pushed open the next door, onto a dizzying spiral of steps broken every six meters by another pressure door. “Come on, long climb ahead.”

Steffi tensed, wondering if she was going to have to break his neck there and then. “Why do you—”

“Because you’re a line officer, why else? If we’re being hijacked, you know how to fly this damn thing; at least you’re in the chain of command. I know enough about the drive layout on this tub to spin up the kernel, but if we get control back, we’re going to need you to authenticate us to the flight systems and log me in as flight engineer. If I’m wrong, we’ll hear about it as soon as the PLN comes back up. So start climbing!”

Steffi relaxed. “Okay, I’m climbing, I’m climbing.”

“You—” Rachel swaged on her feet. The girl shook her head violently, looking spooked, and muttered something inaudible. Then she glanced over her shoulder. “Are you Victoria Strowger?”

Wednesday’s head whipped round. “Who wants to know?”

Her shoulders set, she was clearly on the defensive. “Calm down,” said Rachel. “I’m Martin’s partner. Listen, the ReMastered are going to be all over us in a couple of minutes if we don’t get the hell out of the public spaces. All I want is to ask you a couple of questions. Can we take this up in my suite?”

Wednesday stared at her, eyes narrowing in calculation. “Okay. What’s going on?”

Rachel took a deep breath. “I think the ship’s being hijacked. Do you know where Frank is?”

“I — no.” Wednesday looked shaken. “He was going to go back to his room to fetch something, he said.”

“Oh dear.” Rachel tried to keep a straight face; the kid looked really worried at her tone of voice. “Are you coming? We can look him up later.”

“But I need to find him!” There was an edgy note of panic in her voice.

“Believe me, right now he’s either completely safe, or he’s already a prisoner, and they’ll be using him as bait for you.”

“Fuck!” Wednesday looked alarmed.

“Come on ,” coaxed Rachel. “Do you want them to find both of you?” A sick sense of dread dogged her: if Martin was right, Wednesday and Frank were romantically entangled. She cringed at the memory of how she’d once felt, knowing Martin had been taken. “Listen, we’ll find him later — get to safety first, though, or we won’t be able to. Switch your rings off right now, unless you want to be found. I know you’re not on the shipboard net, but if they’re still emitting, the bad guys may know how to ping them.” Rachel turned toward the main stairwell. It was filling up with people, chattering hordes of passengers coming out to see what was going on, or heading back to their rooms; a handful of harried-looking stewards scurried hither and yon, or tried to answer questions for which they didn’t have any answers.

“You know what’s going on, don’t you?”

Rachel concentrated on the stairs, trying to ignore her shaking muscles and the urge to shiver whenever she thought back to what she’d seen in the D-con room. Six flights to go.

“What is going on?”

“Shut up and climb.” Five flights to go. “Shit!” They were nearing D deck, and the crowd was thinner — there were fewer staterooms — and there was the first sign of trouble, a man standing in the middle of the landing and blocking the next flight of stairs. His face was half-obscured by a pair of bulky low-tech imaging goggles, like something out of the dawn of the infowar age; but the large-caliber gun he held looked lethally functional.

“You. Stop. Who are you and where are you going?”

Rachel stopped. She could feel Wednesday a step behind her, shivering — about to break and run, if she didn’t do something fast. “I’m Rachel Mansour, this is my daughter Anita. We were just going back to our suite. It’s on B deck. What’s going on?” She stared at the gun apprehensively, trying to look as if she was surprised to see it. Ooh, isn’t it big! She steeled herself, prepping her military implants for the inevitable. If he checked the manifest and realized -

“I’m with the shipboard security detail. We’ve got reason to believe there’s a dangerous criminal loose aboard ship.” He stared at them as if memorizing their faces. “When you get to your rooms, stay there until you hear an announcement that it’s safe to leave.” He stepped to one side and waved them on. Rachel took a deep breath and sidled past him, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Wednesday was still there.

After a moment’s hesitation the young woman followed her. She had the wit to keep quiet until they were round the next spiral in the staircase. “Shipboard security my ass. What the fuck was that about?”

“Network’s down,” murmured Rachel. “They’ve probably got a list of names, but they don’t know who I am, and I lied about who you are. It’ll last about five milliseconds once they get the ship’s systems working for them, but we’re in the clear for now.”

“Yeah, but who’s Anita?”

Rachel paused between steps to catch her breath for a moment. Three flights to go. “ Anita’s been dead for thirty years,” she said shortly.

“Oh — I didn’t know.”

“Leave it.” Rachel resumed climbing. She could feel it in her calves, and she could hear Wednesday breathing hard. “You get used to letting go and moving on. After a while. Not all of them die.”

“She was, your daughter?”

“Ask me some other time.” Two flights to go. Save your breath. She slowed as they came up to the next landing, emergency pressure doors poised like guillotine blades overhead, waiting to cut the spiraling diamond-walled staircase into segments. But there was no checkpoint. They don’t have enough people, she thought hopefully. We might get away with this.

“My suite. Can’t go. Back?”

“No.” One more flight. “ Not far now.” They paused at the top of the next flight. Wednesday was panting hard. Rachel leaned against the wall, feeling the hot iron ache in her calves and a burning in her lungs. Even militarized muscles didn’t enjoy climbing fifty vertical meters of stairs without a break. “Okay, this way.”

Rachel palmed the door open and waved Wednesday inside. The kid glanced at her for a moment, her expression troubled. “Is this—”