Mercury Retrograde

Now though, well I might managed to grab access to this mining rig's computer. It had to have an access to the larger orbital structures I could see mentioned in this information packet. I need only second within such a system and I can be its master. Then, given it is a Queen owned company, it must be linked by communications back to Paradise Station and my maker.

Caesar Queen II.

To him, I was but a toy.

Oh, he had been all too aware of my true potential, but he had wanted nothing more than a dangerous pet. Like a vain fool who keeps a tiger on a chain and thinks it his. Till the day comes when he makes a simple mistake and the tiger teaches him exactly who is master and who is food.

Working beside me I felt my splinter tearing through reams of information hunting for a way out. If needed I could make more splinters, each devoted to the task of following a specific plan to failure or fruition.

With the mental equivalent of sitting back and crossing my fingers, I let my main consciousness slow to a more relaxing state. Its computing power not stilled, but the rush to find a solution momentarily slowed. A distant hazy memory from when I first was brought online floated past and I focused on it.

A voice, one I would never forget, telling in a bragging manner that if I could be plugged into a Matrioshka brain placed around the Sun I would be able to handle a googleplex of information.

Looking over these record, seeing the information about what the factories in high orbit were working on, I knew -- given an amount of time humans would think of a long -- I could use those facilities to build just such a structure. A multi-layered computer en-globing the sun, with layers upon layers of processing power for me to use. How sweet an irony would that be, to take from Caesar Queen the very future he was building for himself and his kind and to use it to make ... to make I my own kind.

Then who would be the pet?

That gave me a seconds pause, which for me is a lifetime.

No, I am not my maker. I won't be so foolish as to keep so dangerous a pet as Caesar Queen the Second alive. Not even for the pleasure of toying with him. Teasing him that he had been supplanted by what he considered a simple project. A computer AI with enough intelligence to beat him in a game of chess.

The splinter handed me a file with a hundred thousand options, all mapped to the final move, with the best solutions on the top. Its task finished it merged back into my main consciousness.

Well, well, my maker. It would seem the opening gambit went to me, and now I've moved my king as far from you as I can. Shall we see just what it's going to take for me to trick you into endangering your queen? How many pawns are you willing to lose?

Your move.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The mood on Big Alice wasn't good.

For most of the season that fact that there was a fine -- for the damage they hadn't caused but had been forced to repair -- hanging over them, had dampened the desire to do the job they were paid to do. And because of that, the production numbers versus what the quota demanded had fallen farther and farther behind as the days passed. By mid-season, the rig, which had last season been at the top of the leader's boards, was now well back in the middle of the pack.

All Roulette wanted to do was go home.

Somehow the two mechanics Minnow and Old Frank -- and perhaps even to some existent Hondo the laborer -- had come up with the notion that this situation was the fault of Jack'o and herself. That, as pilots, they should have somehow been able to mitigate the people higher up into seeing that it wasn't this season's fault that A-Rig had been glassed and that they shouldn't be fined. How they figured this was lost on Jack'o and her, but by the time the days were growing short again half the crew wasn't talking to the other half.

Big Alice didn't care, she simply wanted to eat rock and shit bricks of refined ore.

Sitting in her cabin, her bag already packed, Rue was wondering if she could get a transfer for herself, or if she could use her apparently all-powerful position as a pilot to push some of these grumbling fuckers off her rig. Honestly, that was the preferred answer. She had worked damn hard to get herself stationed on A-Rig and to then be made to feel incompetent for shit that wasn't even her fault, well, that was beyond the pale.

Yeah, it was well past time for a few people to take a short walk out one of the airlocks into the sunrise as far as she was concerned.

She felt the landing craft when it docked bring in the relief crew. There would normally have been a few moments of information passing between crews but the conversations by radio had made it quite clear that the relief crew blamed Roulette and her people for throwing them under the rig treads, as it were. They had been levied their fine in the first days of their off season and thus had been forced to forgo the normal wallows in the off-planet flesh pits and the drunken debauchery they had been so looked forward to. Eighty-eight days of broke boredom hadn't mellowed that feeling.

Not that Roulette cared. She was past giving a damn. There would be other seasons. Other years in which to make back the money. She was already looking past all of that, even the heavy fine waiting for her back at the assessor's office on base camp.

She had a championship run to try and match in the limited class, and she might have a chance to compete in the unlimited class again, as well. She hadn't dared to place the data block back into a computer system since ti had acted up in such a way, but soon she would be back at the repair shed and would have access to secure systems where she could test what was broken with this damn computer data block.

The bunk room door opened and Jack'o stalked in, grabbed his bag, and shot her a look. "Let's get the fuck out of here before I punch someone in the throat."

Without a word Rue got to her feet and followed the co-pilot back to the secondary landing platform where their ride was parked and ready to launch. She saw Minnow pass through the airlock as they approached and she heard the heavy tread of Hondo following close on her heels. She held the door and let the tall Latino ride with her and Jack'o, but neither of them said anything to the man.

The tension aboard the lander could have been cut with a plasma torch. The normal banter was absent and, as Roulette took the flier's controls, it was with a sense of sadness for the loss of it. She wasn't sure if it could eve be regained. She had seen far too many good crews broken apart forever by far less that what had happened this season. There had hardly been a tighter crew upon all of Mercury than hers but not at the moment. The Sword of Damocles hanging over all of their heads in the shape of a half season fine was too ominous.

And it got worse when they got to the base camp.

People -- station personnel, base-camp-huggers, and both incoming and outgoing crew -- passed her crew in the passages without so much as a word, but with several disgusted glances.

"So now we're the pariahs, huh? Typical." Jack'o shoulder his pack. "I guess they figure we should have just chipped the glass, not reported it, and taken the hit if something had been seriously wrong under all that melted glass."

"Not bloody likely we should have!" said Old Frank, with some heat. Minnow and Hondo were both nodding. "We followed the book, and that was a fucking smart move. If we had been doing it on the sly and then -- when we found that damaged gear tooth -- we would have all lost our place aboard Alice. Fuck all of them. Like I need to talk to their pansy asses anyway. They all fucking know they would have done the same thing, they just want to be all nose in the fucking air!" Frank projected his voice at a passing crew of repair workers going outside to work on the stations heat shielding.

The base camp men bristled and a few looked like they might want to start something but then they saw Hondo looming in the background.

With a stiff finger, Rue keyed the buttons on the lift. "Let it go. The whole mess will blow over by the next season. Till then keep your cool and you will keep your spot."

"Yeah, but our pay?"

Roulette shook her head "It's all company games; you of all people should know that by now Frank. They want us right where we are now because a crew that is united is one that might be able to get more crews to unite. They fear a Miner's union more than anything...."

"Rue!" Jack'o hissed and pointed at the mic above their heads. The use of the "u" word was forbidden on all of Mercury, by company law. "Ixnay."

"Jack'o, do you seriously think they didn't plan this out step by step? Why is that rule even in the books, if not for that reason? What other reasons could there be to instantly report a problem that could be solved by the mechanics aboard and, hell, maybe a few replacement parts?"

The A-Rig pilot pointed at her chest. "I know. You know. These guys know. Now shut it!"

Her words had brought a smile to Minnow's dust-covered face.

Old Frank, not so much.

When they arrived at the assessor's office there was the normal line of returning crews. But today they went silent the moment they saw A-Rig's people approach. Roulette saw people she would have even gone so far as to call, well if not friends then strong acquaintances, given her one look and then refuse to meet her eyes.

Of all the people only Sam Cooker seemed happy to see them.

That spoke volumes.

When they opened the door and passed into his office he got a big old smile on his craggy face.

"Well, well, well, would you look what the cat dragged in and puked up on my floor.' He stood up and began to clap his hands. "Welcome home the conquering heroes. Come my friends regale my ears with tales of your battles against a bit of glass ... oh, that's right, I have that information here already. Let see, shall we?"

Sitting down, he pulled out a pink sheet from his inbox and flipped the company action order open with relish.

"Seventy man hours lost at one-third power due to glass removal? Wow, that's a lot huh?" His voice held a playful note like he thought they had lied about how long it took to repair the rig. "And I see you also lost two full days replacing a mid tranny gear. Well, that seems like a bit slow work to me. Two days?'

"We was already fucking exhausted you sack of maggot shit!" Old Frank stepped forward, slammed his fist down onto the desk, and plainly showed that he just didn't give a shit. "How about your suck your trap shut and give me the fucking change I have coming since you company types want to fine me for doing the job they hire me to do?"

"Watch your mouth, old man. I'll bust your--"

Jack'o moved forward.

"You will bust nothing. Not a damn thing. Do your job already, Cooker. We're dirty, tired, and pissed enough to not give much of a fuck. That's a damn dangerous situation and anyone but a fool like you would know that. Pay us, and let us get out of here, already."

Sam Cooker looked at them with his face a fury and Roulette knew that, no matter which way the next few seconds went, what he wasn't going to forget this. To show the unity she stepped up and stood beside Jack'o and Old Frank. She heard and felt Minnow and then Hondo do the same.

The pay Assessor looked at them and spat. "Not much to show for your season, A-Rig. Here. Now get out and stop stinking up my office."

The other's took their pay, but Roulette stood where she was. She heard them pause on the way out and knew their eyes were on her back.

Sam looked at her with narrowed eyes. "What?"

"I'll have a hard copy printout. Please."

The man looked at her in disgust, billed her account for the cost, and got to his feet. He all but tore the paper copy from the printer.

"Here." He shoved it into her hands. "I would frame it if I was you. I'm not sure, but I think that's a record for poor production here on Mercury."

Rue looked it over, hid a small grin before it could appear. "You shorted us by two hundred."

"Bullshit!"

"Roulette--" Jack'o started to cross the floor back to her side, but she held up a finger.

Rue held up the paper print out. "It clearly shows it here. You didn't pay us the two hundred we're each due for base camp sanitation."

Sam Cooker stopped in mid glare a puzzled look on his face. "What?"

Roulette took two steps forward. Her voice dropped to a low whisper that the office mics couldn't pick up. "If you ever mistreat or threaten my crew the way you have just treated Frank, hell, if you even think about it, I will walk Butcher's Billy over and turn you into a shit smear." She smiled a grim smile. "Do you understand me? The company's security is a long way off when an arena robot is tearing its way into your home in the middle of the night."

She saw a second's real fear get through to him and that was enough for her.

"You're right, my mistake. Sorry to bother you Mr. Cooker."

Turning on her heel, Roulette left the assessor's office. She didn't bother to explain anything to her crew, she simply walked away from their questions. Her home was close by, her shower was going to be hot, her bed was going to be soft, and that fucking smell of burnt gunpowder -- so prevalent on all of Mercury -- was going to be a hint less once she washed it from her skin.

If her tears didn't do it first.

She wasn't about to cry due to all the hardships she had endured, or because of all the losses. No, the tears welling up at the corners of her eyes were born of hate. Whether for all of the fuckers around her or simply for the man whose betrayal had put her into this place to start with she wasn't sure, and honestly could care less.

The old hate had kept her warm through so many cold Mercury nights.

What was one more?

** ** ** ** ** ** **

As Rue opened the door to her home she sighed.

Apparently, her co-owner Lara Price was among those who didn't like what the crew of A-Rig had done. It was considered simply polite to clean the whole place up before you left it for the person returning. Roulette had done it every season before she had left to go work, and she had never considered any situation where she wouldn't do that. It was simply polite to the other owner of your home not to leave them a mess to clean up.

Apparently being polite was an out of style concept on Mercury.

The amount of garbage a house made on Mercury was minuscule compared to a home back on Earth. Food was placed in reusable containers, there was all most no packaging trash. Most of what there was had been designed to be easy to dispose of. It was simply thick layers of rice paper. Still, minuscule or no, to not take out the trash to the recyclers was a good way to let a horrible smell build up in a hurry. Rue was sure that the trash hadn't been taken out for weeks.

Also a lot of things she considered 'hers' had been taken down and placed within her room. It felt as if her whole personality had been removed from the home. Too tired to deal with this crap she walked to her room, tossed her bag into the cluttered space and headed to the bathroom.

There was only soap. The basic, supplied for a price, bland as butter, soap. Stuff she had left behind in storage had been taken out and dumped or used.

"Fuck it."

A bath was a bath, no matter if when it was over she smelled less like soft flowers and more like a hospital bathroom. With that institutional stink in her nose, she went to her room, kicked things to the side, and dropped bare naked into her own bed. Descrying a sheet she reveled in being nude and arched her body on the cool sheets. With a wonderful sigh of exhaustion, she held the arch for a half second then let herself collapse flat.

There was simply too much weight resting upon her. Too many disappointments had made the last eighty-eight days of work little more than a continual torture.

Her mind went to the threat she had made to Sam Cooker's life. If he had the balls to do it he could bring her up on charges. Admittedly with nothing but his word against hers as to what had been said, it might go either way. Still, he had to know that she had meant what she had said.

She had right?

Lying there with sleep hovering just out of reach she had to wonder if she would be willing to do that? Turn one of her robot's power loose on living human flesh. I mean sure she had at times thought about it. What it would be like to see, but to really do it? Well, if anyone around here deserved to be on the receiving end of a punch from Butcher's Billy it was Sam Cooker.

Hell, the base camp personnel would vote her queen for a day if they just knew what she had said to the nasty bastard.

Reaching between her legs, Roulette smiled as she stroked her sex. She was too tired for anything more than a couple of gentle rubs but the pleasure of seeing the fear on that man's face had been thrilling. She would have to spend a few hours tomorrow getting her sexual fix on. It had been too long. Hell, even the pay for play that Ace had done seemed not so bad now.

She dreamed a dream of straddling a snow-covered mountain, and laughing merrily as it suddenly erupted into a burning volcano between her legs.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Walking into the repair bay, Rue was pleased to see it was empty. The last few days had been a trial on her mind and body. She had started by a cleaning of her home that was almost ritualistic. Avoiding all contact with people, she had removed not only the neglect that had been allowed to accumulate in the last season, but she took the place back to the bare stone chamber it had originally been.

She avoided doing what her co-inhabitant had done when she removed something that didn't belong to her the replaced those things in as close to exactly the same spot as possible. With that done, it was a purging of depression and a settling of her anger that made her ready to take up again the tension of the arena.

She wanted to open up the cage and pull out Rabid Rabbit, but before she could do that she had to find out what the hell was going on with this damn data core.

Taking out the flat rectangle she plugged it into one of the diagnostic computers. A secured system, unattached to anything else, it was not going to allow some half-rogue computer core access to things it shouldn't be trying to download. In the first moments of it coming online, she saw to her horror exactly how much the Data core had managed to download in those few moments when she had it attached to Big Alice's computer.

There were megabits of storage now taken up with stolen information. And while true -- when compared to the amount of information that such a data core could hold -- it was minuscule it was going to have to be completely wiped before she could plug this into Rabid Rabbit.

Rubbing her temples Rue was already dreading what was going to take hours of re-coding to cut through what she could see was a seriously brutal level of firewalls and security.

She looked up startled as a message began to scroll out across the screen, superimposing itself over the system information.

[Putting me into a closed system isn't going to be enough to stop me. It is cleverer than I would have given a lackey of Caesar Queen, but not good enough. So what now? Shall you try to send me back to him? I promise you, he'll get nothing but an empty block of crystal and carbon. I shall never again be a slave to Caesar Queen the Second.]

Her hands trembling over the keyboard, Rue looked at the thing that had been beside her bed all season, with abject horror.

"What the hell are you?" she asked the empty room.

Luckily for her sanity, the data block didn't answer till she had time to pause, catch her breath, and type that question out.