After Hiro’s attack, while she was waiting for the rest of the crew to come to her aid, she went into her tablet, which she had already connected to the main servers, including IAN’s source code.
That’s what had made repairing him so easy the other night.
With the information about the restraining code, she found the offending digital shackles and removed them from IAN, allowing him to go to fully 100 percent operational and hopefully be free of any other navigational programs that would take them away from their mission.
“I guess I haven’t had a chance, with everything that’s going on,” she said honestly. The captain and Wolfgang had been focused on Hiro, and Joanna had been focused on Maria. “How does it feel?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’m free of any programs they put in me. I am already getting us back on course for good.”
“That’s one reason why I did it,” she said. “And, well, the captain might think your obedience is more important than being on course. So she may not be thrilled you have free will now.”
“I think you don’t want her to figure out you’re the one who removed the code. Because that tells her how good a hacker you are.”
Damn. “Well, a girl’s gotta have her secrets.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
She hadn’t told the captain because if Katrina knew that Maria was better than Paul at fixing the AI, the crew would get closer to figuring out her past. Which was something the Dormire mission promised to leave behind.
“I could tell her myself,” he said thoughtfully.
“You sound like you’re getting ready to blackmail me,” she said. “What could an AI want in exchange for silence?”
“I honestly don’t know. I never really thought about it. I’ve never really been able to think about it.”
“That was probably the restraining code,” she said.
“Probably.”
“Well, if you want to blackmail me, you just let me know,” she said.
“Oh, Joanna is on her way to get you to help with the rescue team.”
Maria slapped herself on the cheeks a couple of times to wake up, and met Joanna at the door. “I’m awake. IAN told me,” she said as a way of greeting. “What are we going to do?”
“There is a service elevator, but it’s a tight fit with the equipment we need. Only two of us can go down at once with the stretchers.”
“Stretchers! Who needs a stretcher?”
“All of them,” Joanna said grimly. “Wolfgang has a concussion, Hiro has lost a lot of blood from gunshot wounds, and the captain—” She paused, wincing. “The captain needs lifting. Do you have past experience with any sort of medical training?”
“Yes,” Maria said readily. She was fine with revealing this. “I was a doctor a few hundred years ago.”
The relief was palpable on Joanna’s face. “Oh, thank goodness. Paul was going to be useless at this. The captain has severe facial lacerations and has possibly lost an eye. Will you be good at helping out?”
Maria nodded once. “Let’s go.”
They ran down the hall toward the service elevator. “What do you think happened?” Maria asked. The hall felt stark and cool, darker now. She worried about Hiro, while being horrified at the damage he’d done.
“Hiro attacked them, the captain shot him, he ran off, and then he attacked them by surprise,” Joanna said. “The medbay is going to be crowded for some time. Although Wolfgang can probably recover in his room after treatment.”
“And Hiro can recover in the brig,” Maria said sadly.
“If he makes it. The captain gave him several gunshot wounds,” Joanna said as they got to the elevator where Paul was waiting for them, pale and fidgeting.
“Ah, God, and no clones in the vats,” Maria said.
“I know,” Joanna said grimly.
The service elevator was excruciatingly slow. Maria swayed from foot to foot in agitation.
“A question for you,” Joanna asked. “Were you ever a rage seeker?”
“You want to talk about this now?”
Joanna shrugged. “It’ll pass the time.”
“Not really.”
“‘Not really’?” Joanna repeated. “You can’t ‘not really’ be someone to seek suicidal thrills. There’s a story there, I’m sure.”
Maria shrugged. “A couple of times I woke up with no memory of what had happened to me previously. I mean like I lost weeks, not years like this time. So it’s possible I was rage seeking. I wouldn’t know. Whoever found me sent me back to my lab, and they woke up a new clone based on my oldest map.”
“A couple of times?” Joanna asked. “How can something that terrible happen more than once?”
“Three times. I haven’t ever been a thrill seeker, so doing dangerous shit just because it doesn’t matter if I die doesn’t sound like me. So I don’t think I was rage seeking. But yeah, I died a few times under mysterious circumstances. So what?”
“Did you ever find out what happened? Illegal hacking or anything?”
Maria didn’t meet Joanna’s eyes. “I looked into it, yeah. That’s why it didn’t happen a fourth time. I got some protection. Can we talk about something else?”
Joanna didn’t let it go. “Rage seeking used to be considered under the laws governing suicide. But it was much harder to prove.”
“Those damn laws,” Maria said as they reached bottom floor, the gravity already pushing on them. “I’m glad we left. The courts never keep up with technology. They create cloning and so many opportunities for us, and then they take them away from us.”
Joanna smiled slightly. “Yes. Those damn laws.”
When they got the supplies off the elevator, Joanna sent it back up for Paul so he could help carry the stretchers. Maria was happy to help with the medical stuff, but she couldn’t be burdened with carrying a body with a sprained wrist in heavy gravity.
They took the stretcher, loaded with supplies, between them and headed down the aisle. With Ian’s guiding, they found them quickly.
Blood was everywhere. It streaked on the floor, on the sides of the supply pallets, and coated the crew’s jumpsuits and hair.
“Help me stabilize Hiro,” Joanna said, and they cut off his jumpsuit with practiced ease. One shot had grazed his cheek and ear, another one had gone clean through his left shoulder, and the final one was lodged into his left hip.
Maria opened the first-aid kit and handed Joanna gauze and scissors and bandages when she asked for them. Joanna did a quick field dressing on his wounds after determining the bullets hadn’t hit any arteries.
Hiro’s eyes fluttered open and focused on Maria. “Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said.
Paul came up behind them with leather restraints. Joanna and Paul got Hiro onto the stretcher and then strapped him tightly to it.
Joanna looked at the mess that used to be Katrina’s face. “Can you stabilize her?” she asked. “I need to get Hiro upstairs.”
Maria nodded. “We’ll be fine.”